Not P but Moby-Dick (35)

[Mike Jing]

>From Chapter 50:

—those insulated, immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these
modern days still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth’s
primal generations, when the memory of the first man was a distinct
recollection, and all men his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed
each other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why they
were created and to what end;  when though, according to Genesis, the
angels indeed consorted with the daughters of men, the devils also, add the
uncanonical Rabbins, indulged in mundane amours.

What does "they" refer to in "and asked of the sun and the moon why they
were created and to what end"?