In truth, the naked eye perceives the larger configurations of the lunar surface more clearly than the most powerful telescope shows the details on the disk of Mars.

Long before the time of Galileo and the invention of the telescope, men had noticed that the face of the moon bears a resemblance to the appearance that the earth would present if viewed from afar off.

In remote antiquity there were philosophers who thought that the moon was an inhabited world, and very early the romancers took up the theme.

Lucian, the Voltaire of the second century of our era, mercilessly scourged the pretenders of the earth from an imaginary point of vantage on the moon, which enabled him to peer down into their secrets.

Lucian's description of the appearance of the earth from the moon shows how clearly defined in his day had become the conception of our globe as only an atom in space.
"Especially did it occur to me to laugh at the men who were quarreling about the boundaries of their land, and at those who were proud because they cultivated the Sikyonian plain, or owned that part of Marathon around Oenoe, or held possession of a thousand acres at Acharnae.