experience itself are both plausible. There are a few minor
discrepancies, but when the chief assumption is granted the
deductions will all stand examination. The invention of cavorite, the
substance that is impervious to the force--whatever it may be--of
gravitation, as other substances are impervious to light, heat, sound
or electricity, is not a priori impossible, nor is the theory that the
moon is hollow, that the "Selenites" live below the surface, or that
evolution has produced on our satellite an intelligent form which,
anatomically, is more nearly allied to the insect than to the
vertebrate type as we know it. The exposition of lunar social
conditions cannot be taken very seriously. Specialisation is the
key-note; the production by education and training, of minds, and, as
far as possible, bodies, adapted to a particular end, and incapable of
performing other technical functions. The picture of this highly
developed state, however, is not such as would tempt us to emulation.
As a machine it works; as an ideal it lacks any presentation of the
thing we call beauty. The apotheosis of intelligence in the concrete
example leaves us unambitious in that direction.

One chapter, however, stands apart and elaborates once more that
detachment for space and time which I have so particularly emphasised
as the more important feature of these particular books. Mr Bedford,
alone in his Cavorite sphere between the Earth and the Moon,
experiences this sensation of aloofness. "I became, if I may go
express it, dissociate from Bedford," he writes. "I looked down on
Bedford as a trivial, incidental thing with which I chanced to be
connected," Bedford, unfortunately for my moral, was a poor creature
who got no benefit from his privilege, who flouted it indeed and
regretted his inability "to recover the full-bodied self-satisfaction
of his early days." Possibly the fact that in his case the knowledge