Adventures in the Moon, and Other Worlds — John Shaqi
Adventures in the Moon, and Other WorldsRussell, John Russell, Earl
Science
Adventures in the Moon, and Other Worlds
Russell, John Russell, Earl
Utopias
I was pleased to see the restoration of beauty to a young woman who had
lost it by the small-pox. She had found her former face, which was a
mere surface like a mask; and applying it to her features, perceived
that it adjusted itself, and adhered to them without needing any care or
contrivance. I saw some depredations committed by women, who never
having been able to acquiesce in their own features would not lose this
opportunity of obtaining others: and I was amused by the incoherent
faces which they constructed; for whenever a feature was appropriated to
a strange face, it evidently dissented from all the other parts of it.
There was a girl, who never having regarded her nose with approbation,
was earnestly engaged in fixing to it a new outline that she had found;
but at first sight this nose was not at all to the purpose. She was
adjusting it by a small mirror, and I heard her expressing her fears
that it never would be made to co-operate with her chin. Another woman,
endowed with long sallow features, had obtained possession of a
beautiful complexion off a small face, and without any regard to the
disproportion had pressed it down upon her boundless features, whence it
projected and had a very ridiculous appearance. However, she walked
away, seeming very well pleased with her new bloom.
When I had left this building and was wandering on for new adventures, I
heard a confused sound, which I supposed to proceed from a valley the
receptacle of some particular kind of eloquence or noise. I soon arrived
at the place, and found it to be the valley containing lost advice,
whence had escaped the father's counsel against gambling, which I had
heard on my first arrival in the moon.
In this valley innumerable voices were striving to hinder various kinds
of imprudence; and I wondered how it happens that with so much good
advice in the world there is also so much folly. When I compared the
excellent precepts which I heard all round me with the actions of men, I
could not avoid considering why it is that we are so much wiser for our
friends than for ourselves; why, in our own case, we are liable to be
misled by every temptation, and usually pursue the most agreeable
course instead of the wisest, while in any other person's case we find
ourselves inspired with invincible resolution, can resist the strongest
temptations and make the greatest sacrifices. From this reflection I
determined that were I to receive a commission to alter and reform the
human race, I would contrive that, instead of being obliged to act for
ourselves, we should all act for each other, by which invention there
would be no such thing as vice or imprudence in the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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