The need for a megatelescope

from The Arcades Project:

From Fourier’s last work, La Fausse Industrie ,1835-1836>: “The celebrated American hoax associated with Herschel’s discoveries about the world of the moon had raised in Fourier, once the hoax was revealed as such, the hope of a direct vision of the phalanstery on other palnets. … Here is Fourier’s response: ‘The American hoax,’ he declares, ‘proves, first, the anarchy of the press; second, the barrenness of storytellers concerned with the extraterrestrial; third, man’s ignorance of the atmospheric shells; fourth, the need for a megatelescope.’” Ferrari, ‘Des Idées et de l’école de Fourier,” Revue des deux mondes, 14, no. 3 (1845), p. 415.

-Benjamin, The Arcades Project, convolute W [Fourier], W6a,4