On a planet revolving around the
star Sirius there lived a young man of great intelligence, whose acquaintance I
had the honor of making during his recent visit to our little anthill. He was
called Micromegas, an appropriate name for great people. He had a stature of
eight leagues, or 24,000 geometrical paces of five feet each, or 120,000
statute feet.
Given his Excellency's height,
any sculptor or painter would agree his waist should, proportionally, be about
50,000 feet around. His nose being one third the length of his handsome face,
and his handsome face being one-seventh the height of his handsome body, it
follows that the Sirian's nose is some 5,714 statute feet long.
The mufti of that country, much
given to hair-splitting and very ignorant, found in his work statements they
deemed suspicious, offensive, rash, and heretical, and they prosecuted him with
bitter animosity. The question in dispute was whether the substantial form of
which the fleas of Sirius consisted was of the same nature as that of the
snails.
Micromegas defended himself
spiritedly, and had all the ladies on his side; the trial lasted 220 years. At
last, the mufti had the book condemned by judges who had never read it, and the
author was forbidden to appear at court for 800 years.
He was only moderately afflicted
at being banished from a court full of trickery and meanness. He composed a
very funny song ridiculing the mufti, which in turn failed to give the latter
much annoyance; and he himself set forth on his travels from planet to planet,
with a view to improving his mind and soul, as the saying goes.
Those who travel only in coaches
will doubtless be astonished at the sort of conveyance adopted up there; for
we, on our little mound of mud, can imagine nothing beyond our own experience.
Our traveler had such a marvelous acquaintance with the laws of gravitation,
and all the forces of attraction and repulsion, and made such good use of his
knowledge, that, sometimes by means of a sunbeam, and sometimes with the help
of a comet, he went from one world to another as a bird hops from bough to
bough.
He traversed the Milky Way in a
short time; and I am obliged to confess that he never saw, beyond the stars
with which it is thickly sown, that beautiful celestial empyrean which the
illustrious parson, Derham, boasts of having discovered at the end of his
telescope. Not that I would for a moment suggest Mr. Derham mistook what he
saw; Heaven forbid! But Micromegas was on the spot, he is an accurate observer,
and I have no wish to contradict anybody.
He laughed a little at first at
these people, in much the same way an Italian musician, when he comes to
France, derides Lulli's performances. But, being a sensible fellow, the Sirian
was soon convinced that a thinking being need not be altogether ridiculous
because he is only 6,000 feet high. He was soon on familiar terms with the
Saturnians after their astonishment had somewhat subsided. He formed a close
friendship with the secretary of the Academy of Saturn, a man of great
intelligence, who had not indeed invented anything himself, but excelled at
describing the inventions of others, and who could turn a little verse neatly
enough or perform an elaborate calculation.
One day, after the Sirian had
laid down and the secretary had approached his face to facilitate conversation,
Micromegas said, "I must confess that nature is full of variety."
"Yes," said the
Saturnian; "nature is like a flower-bed, the blossoms of which--"
"Oh," said the other,
"have done with your flower-bed!"
"She is," resumed the
secretary, "like an assembly of blondes and brunettes, whose
attire--"
"No, no," said the
traveler. "Nature is like nature. Why do you search for comparisons?"
"To please you,"
answered the secretary.
"I do not want to be
pleased," rejoined the traveler; "I want to be instructed; begin by
telling me how many senses the men in your world possess."
"We have 72," said the
academician; "and we are always complaining that they are so few. Our
imagination soars beyond our needs; we find that with our 72 senses, our ring,
and our five moons, that our range is too restricted, and, in spite of all our
curiosity and the tolerably large number of passions which spring out of our 72
senses, we often feel bored."
"I can well believe
it," said Micromegas; "for on our globe, though we have nearly a
thousand senses, there lingers even in us a certain vague desire, an
unaccountable restlessness, which warns us that we are of little account in the
universe, and that there are beings much more perfect than ourselves. I have
traveled; I have seen mortals far below us, and others greatly superior; but I
have seen none who have not more desires than real wants, and more wants than
they can satisfy. I shall someday, perhaps, reach the country where there is
lack of nothing, but hitherto no one has been able to give me any positive
information about it."
The Saturnian and the Sirian
thereupon exhausted themselves with ingenius yet futile conjectures on the
subject, but were eventually obliged to return to facts.
"How long do you people
live?" asked the Sirian.
"Ah! a very short
time," replied the little man of Saturn.
"So too with us," said
the Sirian. "We are always complaining of the shortness of life. This must
be a universal law of nature."
"Alas!" quoth the
Saturnian, "none of us live more than 500 annual revolutions of the
Sun." (That amounts to about 15,000 years, according to our manner of
counting.) "You see how it is our fate to die almost as soon as we are
born; our existence is a point, our duration an instant, our globe an atom.
Scarcely have we begun to acquire a little information when death arrives
before we can put it to use. I myself do not venture to lay any schemes; I feel
like a drop of water in a boundless ocean. I am ashamed, especially before you,
of the absurd figure I make in this universe."
Micromegas answered: "Were
you not a philosopher, I should fear to distress you by telling you our lives
are 700 times as long as yours; but you know too well that when the time comes
to give back one's body to the elements, and reanimate nature under another
form--the process called death--when that moment of metamorphosis comes, it is
precisely the same whether we have lived an eternity or only a day.
“I have been in countries where
life is a thousand times longer than with us, and yet have heard murmurs of its
brevity even there. But people of good sense exist everywhere, who know how to
make the most of what they have, and to thank the Author of nature. He has
spread over this universe abundant variety, together with a kind of admirable
uniformity. For example, all thinking beings are different, yet resemble each
other in the common endowment of thought and will. Matter is infinitely
extended, but has different properties in different worlds. How many of these
various properties do you reckon in the matter with which you are acquainted?"
"If you speak," replied
the Saturnian, "of those properties without which we believe this globe
could not subsist as it is, we count 300 of them, such as extension,
impenetrability, mobility, gravitation, divisibility, etc."
"Apparently," rejoined
the traveler, "this small number is sufficient for the Creator's purpose
in constructing this little habitation. I admire His wisdom throughout; I see
differences everywhere, but everywhere also a due proportion. Your globe is
small; you who inhabit it are small likewise; you have few senses; the matter
comprising your world has few properties; all this is the work of Providence.
What color is your sun when carefully examined?"
"White deeply tinged with
yellow," said the Saturnian; "and when we split up one of its rays,
it consists of seven colors."
"Our sun has a reddish
light," said the Sirian, "and we have 39 primary colors. There is not
a single sun, among all those I have approached, which resembles any other,
just as among yourselves there is not a single face which is not different from
all the rest."
After several other questions of
this kind, he inquired how many modes of existence essentially different were
enumerated on Saturn. He was told that not more than 30 were distinguished, as
God, space, matter, beings occupying space which feel and think, thinking
beings which do not occupy space, those which possess penetrability, others
which do not, etc.
The Sirian, in whose world they
count 300 of them, and who had discovered 3,000 more in the course of his travels,
astonished the philosopher of Saturn. At length, after having communicated to
each other a little of what they knew, and a great deal of that about which
they knew nothing, and after having exercised their reasoning powers during a
complete revolution of the Sun, they resolved to make a little exploratory tour
together.
Our two philosophers were ready
to embark upon the atmosphere of Saturn, with a fine collection of scientific
instruments, when the Saturnian's mistress, who had heard what he was up to,
came in tears to remonstrate with him. She was a pretty little brunette, barely
660 fathoms high, but her agreeable manners amply atoned for that deficiency.
"Oh, cruel one!" she
exclaimed, "after having resisted you for 1,500 years, and when I was at
last beginning to surrender, and have passed scarcely a hundred years in your
arms, to leave me thus, and start on a long journey with a giant of another
world! Go, you have no taste for anything but novelty, you have never felt true
love; were you a real Saturnian, you would be constant. Whither away so fast?
What would you have? Our five moons are less fickle than you, our ring less
changeable. So much for the past! I will never love again."
The philosopher embraced her,
and, in spite of all his philosophy, joined his tears with hers. As to the
lady, after having fainted away, she consoled herself with a certain beau who
lived in the neighborhood.
Meanwhile our two inquirers
commenced their travels; they first jumped onto Saturn's ring, which they found
pretty flat, as an illustrious inhabitant of our little globe has cleverly
conjectured; thence they easily made their way from moon to moon. A comet
passed near the last one, so they sprang upon it, along with their instruments.
When they had gone about
150,000,000 leagues, they came across the satellites of Jupiter. They landed on
Jupiter itself, and remained there a year, during which they learned some very
remarkable secrets which would now be appearing in the press, were it not for
certain censors who find them too hard to swallow.
Leaving Jupiter, our explorers
crossed a space of about 100,000,000 leagues, and, coasting along the planet
Mars, which, as is well known, is five times smaller than our own little globe,
they saw two moons. These have escaped the observation of our astronomers. I am
well aware that Father Castel will write, and pleasantly enough too, against
the existence of these two moons, but I believe those who reason from analogy.
Those excellent philosophers know
how difficult it would be for Mars, which is so distant from the Sun, to get by
with less than two moons. Be that as it may, our friends found the planet so
small they were afraid of finding no room there to put up for the night, so they
proceeded on their way, like a pair of travelers who disdain a humble village
inn, and push on to the nearest town. But the Sirian and his companion soon
repented this decision, for they went a long time without finding anything at
all.
At last they perceived a faint
glimmer; it came from our Earth, and created compassion in the minds of those
who had so lately left Jupiter. However, for fear of repenting a second time,
they decided to disembark. They passed over the tail of the comet, and with the
aid with an aurora borealis close at hand, alighted on Earth by the northern
shore of the Baltic Sea, July 5, 1737.
After resting, they consumed for
breakfast a couple of mountains. Then wishing to inspect the countryside, they
first went from north to south. Each of the Sirian's ordinary steps was about
30,000 statute feet; the Saturnian dwarf, whose height was only a thousand
fathoms, followed panting far behind, for he had to take 20 steps when the other
made a single stride. Picture to yourself a tiny little toy spaniel pursuing a
captain of the King of Prussia's grenadiers!
The strangers proceeded quickly,
circling the globe in 36 hours; the Sun, indeed, or rather the Earth, makes the
same journey in a day; but it is much easier to turn on one's axis than to walk
on one's feet. Behold our travelers, then, returned to the same spot from which
they had started, after having set eyes upon that sea, to them almost
imperceptible, called the Mediterranean, and that other little pond which,
under the name of the great Ocean, surrounds this molehill. Therein the dwarf
had never sunk much above the knee, while the other had scarcely wetted his
ankle.
They did all they could,
searching here and there, to ascertain whether Earth was inhabited. They
stooped, lay down, and groped about in all directions; but their eyes and hands
being out of all proportion to the tiny beings who crawl up and down here, they
felt not the slightest sensation which could lead them to suspect that we and
our fellow creatures have the honor to exist.
The dwarf hastily declared there
was not a single creature on this planet. His first reason was that he had not
seen one. But Micromegas politely explained that that was not a good argument:
"For," said he,
"you, with your little eyes, cannot see certain stars of the 50th
magnitude which I distinctly discern; do you conclude that those stars have no
existence?"
"But," argued the
dwarf, "this globe is so ill-constructed, so irregular, and so
ridiculously shaped! All here appears chaotic; look at these little brooks, not
one of which goes in a straight line, and these ponds, which are neither round,
square, oval, nor of any regular form; and all these little bristles which have
rubbed the skin off my feet!"--he alluded to the trees--"Observe too
the shape of the globe as a whole, how it is flat at the poles, how it turns
around the Sun in a clumsily slanting manner, so that the polar climes are mere
wastes. In truth, what chiefly makes me think there is nobody here, is that I
cannot suppose any sensible people should wish to occupy such a dwelling."
"Well," said
Micromegas, "perhaps the people who inhabit it are not sensible. But there
are in fact signs of its not having been made for nothing. Everything here
seems irregular, you say; but you judge by the standards of Saturn and Jupiter.
Have I not told you that in the course of my travels I have always found
variety?"
The Saturnian had answers to
these arguments, and the dispute might never have ended, had not he suddenly
spied what seemed to him a small tadpole moving half underwater in the Baltic
sea. Actually, it was a whale. He caught it cleverly with his little finger,
and placing it on his thumbnail, showed it to the Sirian, who burst out
laughing a second time at the extreme minuteness of the inhabitants of our
system.
The Saturnian, now convinced our
world was inhabited, immediately concluded that whales were the only creatures
to be found here, and, as speculation was his strong point, made conjectures
about the origin of so insignificant an atom, the source of its movement, and
whether it had ideas and free will.
Micromegas drew a magnifying
glass from his bundle of instruments, examined the creature patiently, and
found no evidence that it had a soul lodged in its body. The two travelers then
suspected there were no intelligent beings in this habitation of ours, when at
last they noticed something as big as a whale, floating on the Baltic sea.
We know that at that very time, a
flock of philosophers was returning from the polar circle, where they had gone
to make observations no one had attempted before. The newspapers say their
vessel ran aground in the gulf of Bothnia, and that they had great difficulty
saving their lives; but we never know in this world the real truth about
anything. I will relate honestly what occurred, without adding anything of my
own invention--a task which demands no small effort on the part of a historian.
The Saturnian stretched out his
hand, seized with great dexterity the ship which carried those gentlemen, and
placed it in the hollow of his hand without squeezing it too much, for fear of
crushing it. "Here is an animal quite different from the first," he
observed.
The passengers and crew, who
thought a tempest had whirled them aloft, and supposed they had struck upon
some kind of rock, began to stir; the sailors seized casks of wine, threw them
overboard on the Saturnian's hand, then jumped down themselves, while the
geometers seized their quadrants, their sectors, and a pair of Lapland girls,
and descended on the Saturnian's fingers.
They made such a commotion that
at last he felt a tickle--a pole with an iron point being driven a foot deep
into his forefinger. He surmised that this prick proceeded somehow from the
little animal he was holding; but at first he perceived nothing more than
minute specks, which he guessed to be turds, spilling away from the creature.
I have no wish to shock anyone's
vanity, but I must beg those who are sensitive about their own importance to
consider what I have to say on this subject. Taking the average stature of
mankind at five feet, we make no greater figure on Earth than an insect not
quite one 200,000th of an inch in height on a bowl 10 feet around.
Imagine a being who could hold
Earth in his hands and who had organs of sense proportionate to our own--there
are in fact many such beings--and consider what they would think of those
battles which give the conqueror possession of some village, to be lost again
soon after.
No doubt some captain of tall
grenadiers will read this work and raise the caps of his company a couple of
feet; but I warn him, it will be all in vain; he and his men will never be
anything but the merest mites.
It was not until both Sirian and
Saturnian examined the "turds" with microscopes that they realized
the amazing truth. When Leeuwenhoek and Hartsoeker first saw, or thought they
saw, the minute speck out of which we are formed, they did not make nearly so
surprising a discovery. What pleasure Micromegas and the dwarf felt in watching
the movements of those little machines, in examining their feats, in following
their operations! How they shouted with joy!
"I see them!" they
exclaimed both at once. "Do you not observe how they are carrying burdens,
how they stoop down and rise up?"
As they spoke, their hands
trembled with delight at beholding objects so unusual, and with fear lest they
lose them. The Saturnian, passing from extreme skepticism to utter credulity,
fancied he saw them engaged in the work of propagation.
"Ah!" said he, "I
have surprised nature in the very act."
But he was deceived by
appearances, an accident to which we are only too liable, whether using
microscopes or not.
Micromegas, a much better
observer, perceived clearly that the atoms were speaking to each other, and
corrected his companion; but the dwarf, ashamed of having erred on this
delicate subject, refused to believe that such creatures could have any means
of communicating ideas. He had the gift of tongues as did the Sirian; he did
not hear the atoms speak, so he concluded that they did not; besides, how could
those imperceptible beings have vocal organs, and what could they have to say?
To be able to speak, one must
think, or at least make some approach to thought; but if those creatures could
think, they must have something equivalent of a soul; and to attribute the
equivalent of a soul to these little animals seemed absurd.
"But," said the Sirian,
"you fancied just now they were making love; can they make love without
being able to think or utter a word, or even to make themselves understood?
Moreover, do you suppose it is more difficult to produce arguments than
offspring? Both appear to me equally mysterious operations."
"I no longer venture either
to believe or deny," said the dwarf; "We must try to examine these
insects, then form our conclusions afterward."
"Well said!" replied
Micromegas. Using the equipment he had brought with him, he fabricated a pair
of monster speaking-trumpets, like huge funnels, the narrow ends of which he
and the Saturnian placed in their ears. As the wide part of the trumpets
covered the ship and her crew, the faintest voice was conveyed in such a manner
that the philosophers high above them clearly heard the buzzing of our insects
down below.
In a few hours they succeeded in
distinguishing the words, and at last in understanding the French language. The
travelers' astonishment increased every instant. They heard mere mites speaking
tolerably good sense; such a freak of nature seemed inexplicable.
You may imagine how impatiently
the Sirian and his dwarf longed to converse with the atoms; but the dwarf
feared that his voice of thunder, and still more that of Micromegas, might
deafen the mites without conveying any meaning. To diminish its strength, they
placed in their mouths little toothpicks, the tapering ends of which were
brought near the ship. Then the Sirian, holding the dwarf on his knee (who in
turn held the vessel with her crew upon his palm), bent his head down and spoke
in a low voice, thus at last addressing them:
"Invisible insects, whom the
hand of the Creator has been pleased to produce in the abyss of the infinitely
little, I thank Him for having deigned to reveal to me secrets which seemed
inscrutable. It may be the courtiers of my country would not condescend to look
upon you, but I despise no one, and offer you my protection."
If ever anyone was astonished, it
was the people who heard these words, nor could they guess whence they came.
The ship's chaplain recited the prayers used in exorcism, the sailors swore,
and the philosophers constructed theories; but whatever theories they
constructed, they could not divine who was speaking to them. The dwarf of
Saturn, who had a softer voice than Micromegas, then told them briefly with
what kind of beings they were dealing.
He gave an account of their journey
from Saturn, and acquainted them with the parts and powers of Mr. Micromegas;
and, after having commiserated them for being so small, he asked if they had
always been in that pitiful condition little better than annihilation, what
they found to do on a globe that appeared to belong to whales, if they were
happy, if they increased and multiplied, whether they had souls, and a hundred
other questions.
A philosopher of the party,
bolder than the rest, and shocked that the existence of his soul should be questioned,
took observations of the speaker with a quadrant from two different stations,
and, at the third, spoke: "Do you then suppose sir, because a thousand
fathoms extend between your head and feet, that you are--"
"A thousand fathoms!"
cried the dwarf. "Good heavens! How can he know my height? A thousand
fathoms! He is not an inch out of his reckoning. What! Has that atom actually
measured me? He is a geometer, he knows my size; while I, who can barely see
him except through a microscope, am still ignorant of his!"
"Yes, I have taken your
measure," said the man of science; "and, based on your relative
proportions, I further deduce that your big companion is approximately 120,000
statute feet tall."
Thereupon Micromegas uttered,
"I see more clearly than ever that we should judge nothing by its apparent
importance. O God, Who hast bestowed intelligence upon things which seemed so
despicable, the infinitely little is as much Thy concern as the infinitely
great; and, if it is possible that there should be living things smaller than
these, they may be endowed with minds superior even to those of the magnificent
creatures I have seen in the sky, who with one foot could cover this globe upon
which I have alighted."
One of the philosophers agreed he
might with perfect confidence believe there actually were intelligent beings
much smaller than man. He related, not the fables Virgil told on the subject of
bees, but the results of Swammerdam's discoveries, and Reamur's dissections.
Finally, he informed him that there are animals which bear the same proportion
to bees that bees bear to men, or that the Sirian himself bore to those huge
creatures of which he spoke, or that those great creatures themselves bore to others
before whom they seemed mere atoms.
The conversation grew more and
more interesting, and Micromegas spoke as follows:
"O intelligent atoms, in whom the Eternal Being has been pleased to manifest His skill and power, you must doubtless taste joys of perfect purity on your globe; for, being encumbered with so little matter, and seeming to be all spirit, you must pass your lives in love and meditation--the true life of spiritual beings. I have nowhere beheld genuine happiness, but here it is to be found, without a doubt."
On hearing these words, all the
philosophers shook their heads, and one, more frank than the others, candidly
confessed that, with the exception of a small number held in mean estimation
among them, all the rest of mankind were a multitude of fools, knaves, and
miserable wretches.
"We have more matter than we
need," said he, "the cause of much evil, if evil proceeds from
matter; and we have too much mind, if evil proceeds from mind. For instance, at
this very moment there are 100,000 fools of our species who wear hats, slaying
100,000 fellow creatures who wear turbans, or being massacred by them, and over
almost all of Earth such practices have been going on from time
immemorial."
The Sirian shuddered, and asked
what could cause such horrible quarrels between those miserable little
creatures.
"The dispute concerns a lump
of clay," said the philosopher, "no bigger than your heel. Not that a
single one of those millions of men who get their throats cut has the slightest
interest in this clod of earth. The only point in question is whether it shall
belong to a certain man who is called Sultan, or another who, I know not why,
is called Caesar. Neither has seen, or is ever likely to see, the little corner
of ground which is the bone of contention; and hardly one of those animals, who
are cutting each other's throats has ever seen the animal for whom they fight
so desperately."
"Ah! wretched
creatures!" exclaimed the Sirian with indignation; "Can anyone
imagine such frantic ferocity! I should like to take two or three steps, and
stamp upon the whole swarm of these ridiculous assassins."
The traveler, moved with
compassion for the tiny human race, among whom he found such astonishing
contrasts, said to the gentlemen:
"Since you belong to the
small number of wise men, and apparently do not kill anyone for money, tell me,
pray, how you occupy yourselves."
"We dissect flies,"
said the same philosopher, "measure distances, calculate numbers, agree
upon two or three points we understand, and dispute two or three thousand
points of which we know nothing."
The visitors from Sirius and
Saturn immediately desired to question these intelligent atoms about the
subjects on which they agreed.
"How far do you reckon
it," said the latter, "from the Dog Star to the great star in
Gemini?"
They all answered together:
"32 degrees and a half."
"How far do you make it from
here to the Moon?"
"60 half-diameters of the
Earth, in round numbers."
"What is the weight of your
air?"
He thought to trick them, but
they all answered that air weighs about 900 times less than an equal volume of
distilled water, and 19,000 times less than pure gold.
The little dwarf from Saturn,
astonished at their replies, was now inclined to take for sorcerers the same
people he had disbelieved, just a quarter hour ago, could possess souls.
Then Micromegas said: "Since
you know so well what is outside yourselves, doubtless you know still better
what is within you. Tell me what is the nature of your soul, and how you form
ideas."
The philosophers spoke all at
once as before, but this time all their opinons differed. The oldest quoted
Aristotle, another pronounced the name of Descartes, this spoke of Malebranche,
that of Leibnitz, and another again of Locke. The old Peripatetic said loudly
and confidently: "The soul is an actuality and a rationality, in virtue of
which it has the power to be what it is; as Aristotle expressly declares on
page 633 of the Louvre edition of his works"; and he quoted the passage.
"I don't understand Greek very well," said the giant.
"Because," replied the
sage, "it is right and proper to quote what we do not comprehend in a
language we least understand."
The Cartesian interposed and
said: "The soul is pure spirit, which receives in its mother's womb all
metaphysical ideas, and which, on issuing thence, is obliged to go to school as
it were, and learn afresh all it knew so well, and will never know again."
"It was hardly worthwhile,
then," answered the eight-leagued giant, "for your soul to have been
so learned in your mother's womb, if you were to become so ignorant by the time
you have a beard on your chin. But what do you mean by spirit?"
"Why do you ask?" said
the philosopher; "I have no idea of its meaning, except that it is said to
be independent of matter."
"Perfectly well,"
replied the man. "For instance, this stone is gray, is of such and such a
form, has three dimensions, has weight and divisibility."
"Very well," said the
Sirian, "Now tell me, please, what this thing actually is which appears to
you to be divisible, heavy, and of a gray color. You observe certain qualities;
but are you acquainted with the intrinsic nature of the thing itself?"
"No," said the other.
"Then you do not know what
matter is."
Thereupon Mr. Micromegas,
addressing his question to another sage, whom the Saturnian held on his thumb,
asked him what the soul was, and what it did.
"Nothing at all," said
the disciple of Malebranche; "it is God who does everything for me; I see
and do everything through Him; He it is who does all without my
interference."
"Then you might just as well
not exist," replied the sage of Sirius.
"And you, my friend,"
he said to a follower of Leibnitz, who was there, "what is your
soul?"
"It is," answered he,
"a hand which points to the hour while my body chimes, or, if you like, it
is the soul which chimes, while my body points to the hour; or to put it
another way, my soul is the mirror of the universe, and my body is its frame:
that is all clear enough."
A little student of Locke was
standing near; and when his opinion was at last asked: "I know
nothing," said he, "of how I think, but I know I have never thought
except on the suggestion of my senses. That there are immaterial and
intelligent substances is not what I doubt; but that it is impossible for God
to communicate the faculty of thought to matter is what I doubt very strongly.
I adore the eternal Power, nor is it my part to limit its exercise; I assert
nothing, I content myself with believing that more is possible than people
think."
The creature of Sirius smiled; he
did not deem the last speaker the least sagacious of the company; and, were it
possible, the dwarf of Saturn would have clasped Locke's disciple in his arms.
But unluckily a little animalcule
was there in a square cap, who silenced all the other philosophical mites,
saying that he knew the whole secret, that it was all to be found in the
"Summa" of St. Thomas Aquinas; he scanned the pair of celestial
visitors from top to toe, and maintained that they and all their kind, their suns
and stars, were made solely for man's benefit.
At this speech our two travelers
tumbled over each other, choking with that inextinguishable laughter which,
according to Homer, is the special privilege of the gods; their shoulders
shook, and their bodies heaved up and down, till in those merry convulsions,
the ship the Saturnian held on his palm fell into his breeches pocket. These
two good people, after a long search, recovered it at last, and duly set to
rights all that had been displaced.
The Saturnian once more took up
the little mites, and Micromegas addressed them again with great kindness,
though he was a little disgusted in the bottom of his heart at seeing such
infinitely insignificant atoms so puffed up with pride. He promised to give
them a rare book of philosophy, written in minute characters, for their special
use, telling all that can be known of the ultimate essence of things, and he
actually gave them the volume ere his departure. It was carried to Paris and
laid before the Academy of Sciences; but when the old secretary came to open
it, the pages were blank.
"Ah!" said he. "Just as I expected."
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