The more common and generall opinion[1] is, that the spots are the thinner parts of the Moone, which are lesse able to reflect the beames that they receive from the Sunne, and this is most agreeable to reason, for if the starres are therefore brightest, because they are thicker and more solid then their orbes, then it will follow, that those parts of the Moone which have lesse light, have also lesse thickenesse. It was the providence of nature (say some) that so contrived that planet to have these spots within it, for since that is neerest to those lower bodies which are so full of deformity, ’tis requisite that it should in some measure agree with them, and as in this inferiour world the higher bodies are the most compleat, so also in the heavens perfection is ascended unto by degrees, and the Moone being the lowest, must be the least pure, and therefore _Philo_ the Jew[2] interpreting _Iacobs_ dreame concerning the ladder, doth in an allegory shew, how that in the fabricke of the world, all things grow perfecter as they grow higher, and this is the reason (saith hee) why the Moone doth not consist of any pure simple matter, but is mixed with aire, which shewes so darkely within her body. [Sidenote 1: _Albert. mag. de coævis. Q. 4. Art. 21._ _Colleg. Con._] [Sidenote 2: _De Somniis._] But this cannot be a sufficient reason, for though it were true that nature did frame every thing perfecter as it was higher, yet is it as true, that nature frames every thing fully perfect for that office to which shee intends it. Now, had she intended the Moone meerly to reflect the Sunne beames and give light, the spots then had not so much argued her providence, as her unskilfulnesse and imperfection,[1] as if in the haste of her worke shee could not tell how to make that body exactly fit, for that office to which she appointed it. [Sidenote 1: _Scalig. exercit. 62._] Tis likely then that she had some other end which moved her to produce this variety, and this in all probability was her intent to make it a fit body for habitation with the same conveniencies of sea and land, as this inferiour world doth partake of. For since the Moone is such a vast, such a solid and opacous body like our earth (as was above proved) why may it not be probable, that those thinner and thicker parts appearing in her, doe shew the difference betwixt the sea and land in that other world; and _Galilæus_ doubts not, but that if our earth were visible at the same distance, there would be the like appearance of it.