Micromegas Part 3

They responded all at once, "thirty-two and a half degrees."

"What do you measure from here to the moon?"

"60 radii of the Earth even."

"How much does your air weigh?"

He thought he had caught them[3], but they all told him that air weighed around 900 times less than an identical volume of the purest water, and 19,000 times less than a gold ducat. The little dwarf from Saturn, surprised at their responses, was tempted to accuse of witchcraft the same people he had refused a soul fifteen minutes earlier.

[3] The edition I believe to be original reads "put them off" in place of "caught them."

Finally Micromegas said to them, "Since you know what is exterior to you so well, you must know what is interior even better. Tell me what your soul is, and how you form ideas." The philosophers spoke all at once as before, but they were of different views. The oldest cited Aristotle, another p.r.o.nounced the name of Descartes; this one here, Malebranche; another Leibnitz; another Locke. An old peripatetic spoke up with confidence: "The soul is an entelechy, and a reason gives it the power to be what it is." This is what Aristotle expressly declares, page 633 of the Louvre edition. He cited the pa.s.sage[4].

[4] Here is the pa.s.sage such as it is transcribed in the edition dated 1750: "Entele'xeia' tis esi kai' lo'gos tou dy'namin e'xontos toude' ei'nai."

This pa.s.sage of Aristotle, _On the Soul_, book II, chapter II, is translated thusly by Casaubon: _Anima quaedam perfectio et actus ac ratio est quod potentiam habet ut ejusmodi sit_. B.

"I do not understand Greek very well," said the giant.

"Neither do I," said the philosophical mite.

"Why then," the Sirian retorted, "are you citing some man named Aristotle in the Greek?"

"Because," replied the savant, "one should always cite what one does not understand at all in the language one understands the least."

The Cartesian took the floor and said: "The soul is a pure spirit that has received in the belly of its mother all metaphysical ideas, and which, leaving that place, is obliged to go to school, and to learn all over again what it already knew, and will not know again."

"It is not worth the trouble," responded the animal with the height of eight leagues, "for your soul to be so knowledgeable in its mother's stomach, only to be so ignorant when you have hair on your chin. But what do you understand by the mind?"

"You are asking me?" said the reasoner. "I have no idea. We say that it is not matter--"

"But do you at least know what matter is?"

"Certainly," replied the man. "For example this stone is grey, has such and such a form, has three dimensions, is heavy and divisible."

"Well!" said the Sirian, "this thing that appears to you to be divisible, heavy, and grey, will you tell me what it is? You see some attributes, but behind those, are you familiar with that?

"No," said the other.

"--So you do not know what matter is."

So Micromegas, addressing another sage that he held on a thumb, asked what his soul was, and what it did.

"Nothing at all," said the Malebranchist philosopher[5]. "G.o.d does everything for me. I see everything in him, I do everything in him; it is he who does everything that I get mixed up in."

[5] See the opuscule ent.i.tled "All in G.o.d" in _Miscellaneous_ (1796).

"It would be just as well not to exist," retorted the sage of Sirius.

"And you, my friend," he said to a Leibnitzian who was there, "what is your soul?"

"It is," answered the Leibnitzian, "the hand of a clock that tells the time while my body rings out. Or, if you like, it is my soul that rings out while my body tells the time, or my soul is the mirror of the universe, and my body is the border of the mirror. All that is clear."

A small partisan of Locke was nearby, and when he was finally given the floor: "I do not know," said he, "how I think, but I know that I have only ever thought through my senses. That there are immaterial and intelligent substances I do not doubt, but that it is impossible for G.o.d to communicate thought to matter I doubt very much. I revere the eternal power. It is not my place to limit it. I affirm nothing, and content myself with believing that many more things are possible than one would think."

The animal from Sirius smiled. He did not find this the least bit sage, while the dwarf from Saturn would have kissed the sectarian of Locke were it not for the extreme disproportion. But there was, unfortunately, a little animalcule in a square hat who interrupted all the other animalcule philosophers. He said that he knew the secret: that everything would be found in the _Summa_ of Saint Thomas. He looked the two celestial inhabitants up and down. He argued that their people, their worlds, their suns, their stars, had all been made uniquely for mankind. At this speech, our two voyagers nearly fell over with that inextinguishable laughter which, according to Homer[6], is shared with the G.o.ds. Their shoulders and their stomachs heaved up and down, and in these convulsions the vessel that the Sirian had on his nail fell into one of the Saturnian's trouser pockets. These two good men searched for it a long time, found it finally, and tidied it up neatly. The Sirian resumed his discussion with the little mites. He spoke to them with great kindness, although in the depths of his heart he was a little angry that the infinitely small had an almost infinitely great pride. He promised to make them a beautiful philosophical book[7], written very small for their usage, and said that in this book they would see the point of everything. Indeed, he gave them this book before leaving. It was taken to the academy of science in Paris, but when the ancient[8]

secretary opened it, he saw nothing but blank pages. "Ah!" he said, "I suspected as much."

[6] Illiad, I, 599. B.

[7] The edition that I believe to be original, and the one dated 1750, reads, "philosophical book, that would teach them of admirable things, and show them the goodness of things."

[8] Although this scene occurs in 1737, as one saw in pages 177 to 188, one could a.s.sign the epithet of "old" to Fontenelle, who was 80 at that point, and who died 20 years later. In 1740 he resigned from his position as perpetual secretary.

END OF THE HISTORY OF MICROMEGAS.