CHAPTER III.
_Of his Conversation with the Vice-Roy of New France; and of the systemof this Universe._
When I was going to Bed at night, he came into my Chamber, and spoketo me to this purpose: "I should not have come to disturb your Rest,had I not thought that one who hath found out the secret of Travellingso far in Twelve hours space, had likewise a charm against Lassitude.But you know not," added he, "what a pleasant Quarrel I have just nowhad with our Fathers, upon your account? They'll have you absolutelyto be a Magician; and the greatest favour you can expect from them, isto be reckoned only an Impostor: The truth is, that Motion which youattribute to the Earth[1] is a pretty nice Paradox; and for my partI'll frankly tell you, That that which hinders me from being of yourOpinion, is, That though you parted yesterday from _Paris_, yet youmight have arrived today in this Country without the Earth's turning:For the Sun having drawn you up by the means of your Bottles, ought henot to have brought you hither; since according to _Ptolemy_, and theModern Philosophers,[2] he marches obliquely, as you make the Earth tomove? And besides, what great Probability have you to imagine, that theSun is immoveable, when we see it go? And what appearance is there,that the Earth turns with so great Rapidity, when we feel it firm underour Feet?"
"Sir," replied I to him, "These are, in a manner, the Reasons thatoblige us to think so: In the first place, it is consonant to commonSense to think that the Sun is placed in the Center of the Universe;seeing all Bodies in nature standing in need of that radical Heat, itis fit he should reside in the heart of the Kingdom, that he may bein a condition readily to supply the Necessities of every Part; andthat the Cause of Generations should be placed in the middle of allBodies, that it may act there with greater Equality and Ease: Afterthe same manner as Wise Nature hath placed the Seeds in the Center ofApples, the Kernels in the middle of their Fruits; and in the samemanner as the Onion, under the cover of so many Coats that encompassit, preserves that precious Bud from which Millions of others are tohave their being. For an Apple is in itself a little Universe; theSeed, hotter than the other parts thereof, is its Sun, which diffusesabout it self that natural Heat which preserves its Globe: And in theOnion, the Germ is the little Sun of that little World, which vivifiesand nourishes the vegetative Salt of that little mass. Having laid downthis, then, for a ground, I say, That the Earth standing in need of theLight, Heat, and Influence of this great Fire, it turns round it, thatit may receive in all parts alike that Virtue which keeps it in Being.For it would be as ridiculous to think, that that vast luminous Bodyturned about a point that it has not the least need of; as to imagine,that when we see a roasted Lark, that the Kitchin-fire must have turnedround it. Else, were it the part of the Sun to do that drudgery, itwould seem that the Physician stood in need of the Patient; that theStrong should yield to the Weak; the Superior serve the Inferior; andthat the Ship did not sail about the Land, but the Land about the Ship.
"Now if you cannot easily conceive how so ponderous a Body can move;Pray, tell me, are the Stars and Heavens, which, in your Opinion, areso solid, any way lighter? Besides, it is not so difficult for us, whoare assured of the Roundness of the Earth, to infer its motion from itsFigure: But why do ye suppose the Heaven to be round, seeing you cannotknow it, and that yet, if it hath not this Figure, it is impossible itcan move? I object not to you your _Excentricks_ nor _Epicycles_,[3]which you cannot explain but very confusedly, and which are out ofdoors in my Systeme. Let's reflect only on the natural Causes of thatMotion. To make good your Hypothesis, you are forced to have recourseto Spirits or _Intelligences_, that move and govern your Spheres. Butfor my part, without disturbing the repose of the supreme Being, who,without doubt, hath made Nature entirely perfect, and whose Wisdomought so to have compleated her, that being perfect in one thing, sheshould not have been defective in another: I say, that the Beams andInfluences of the Sun, darting Circularly upon the Earth, make it toturn as with a turn of the Hand we make a Globe to move; or, which ismuch the same, that the Steams which continually evaporate from thatside of it which the Sun shines upon, being reverberated by the Coldof the middle Region, rebound upon it, and striking obliquely do ofnecessity make it whirle about in that manner.
"The Explication of the other Motions[4] is less perplexed still; forpray, consider a little" At these words the Vice-Roy interrupted me: "Ihad rather," said he, "you would excuse your self from that trouble;for I have read some Books of _Gassendus_[5] on that subject: And hearwhat one of our Fathers, who maintained your Opinion one day, answeredme. 'Really,' said he, 'I fancy that the Earth does move, not for theReasons alledged by _Copernicus_; but because Hell-fire being shut upin the Center of the Earth, the damned, who make a great bustle toavoid its Flames, scramble up to the Vault, as far as they can fromthem, and so make the Earth to turn, as a Turn-spit[6] makes the Wheelgo round when he runs about in it.'"
We applauded that Thought, as being a pure effect of the Zeal of thatgood Father: And then the Vice-Roy told me, That he much wondered,how the Systeme of _Ptolemy_, being so improbable, should have beenso universally received. "Sir," said I to him, "most part of Men, whojudge of all things by the Senses, have suffered themselves to beperswaded by their Eyes; and as he who Sails along a Shoar thinks theShip immoveable, and the Land in motion; even so Men turning with theEarth round the Sun have thought that it was the Sun that moved aboutthem. To this may be added the unsupportable Pride of Mankind, whoperswade themselves that Nature hath only been made for them; as ifit were likely that the Sun, a vast Body Four hundred and thirty fourtimes bigger than the Earth,[7] had only been kindled to ripen theirMedlars and plumpen their Cabbage.
"For my part, I am so far from complying with their Insolence, thatI believe the Planets are Worlds about the Sun, and that the fixedStars are also Suns which have Planets about them, that's to say,Worlds, which because of their smallness, and that their borrowed lightcannot reach us, are not discernable by Men in this World: For in goodearnest, how can it be imagined that such spacious Globes are no morebut vast Desarts; and that ours, because we live in it, hath beenframed for the habitation of a dozen of proud Dandyprats? How, must itbe said, because the Sun measures our Days and Years, that it hath onlybeen made to keep us from running our Heads against the Walls? No, no,if that visible Deity shine upon Man, it's by accident, as the King'sFlamboy by accident lightens a Porter that walks along the Street."
"But," said he to me, "[if,] as you affirm, the fixed Stars be somany Suns, it will follow that the World is infinite; seeing it isprobable that the People of that World which moves about that fixedStar you take for a Sun, discover above themselves other fixed Stars,which we cannot perceive from hence, and so others in that manner _ininfinitum_."
"Never question," replied I, "but as God could create the SoulImmortal, He could also make the World Infinite; if so it be, thatEternity is nothing else but an illimited Duration, and an infinite, aboundless Extension: And then God himself would be Finite, supposingthe World not to be _infinite_; seeing he cannot be where nothing is,and that he could not encrease the greatness of the World withoutadding somewhat to his own Being, by beginning to exist where he didnot exist before. We must believe then, that as from hence we see_Saturn_ and _Jupiter_; if we were in either of the Two, we shoulddiscover a great many Worlds which we perceive not; and that theUniverse extends so _in infinitum_."
"I' faith;" replied he, "when you have said all you can, I cannot atall comprehend that Infinitude." "Good now," replied I to him, "doyou comprehend the Nothing that is beyond it? Not at all. For whenyou think of that _Nothing_, you imagine it at least to be like Windor Air, and that is a Being: But if you conceive not an _Infinite_ ingeneral, you comprehend it at least in particulars; seeing it is notdifficult to fancy to our selves, beyond the Earth, Air, and Fire whichwe see, other Air, and other Earth, and other Fire. Now Infinitudeis nothing else but a boundless Series of all these. But if you askme, How these Worlds have been made, seeing Holy Scripture speaksonly of one that God made? My answer is, That I h
ave no more to say:For to oblige me to give a Reason for every thing that comes into myImagination, is to stop my Mouth, and make me confess that in things ofthat nature my Reason shall always stoop to Faith."
He ingeniously[8] acknowledged to me that his Question was to becensured, but bid me pursue my notion: So that I went on, and toldhim, That all the other Worlds, which are not seen, or but imperfectlybelieved, are no more but the Scum that purges out of the Suns. For howcould these great Fires subsist without some matter, that served themfor Fewel? Now as the Fire drives from it the Ashes that would stifleit, or the Gold in a Crucible separates from the Marcasite[9] andDross, and is refined to the highest Standard; nay, and as our Stomackdischarges it self by vomit, of the Crudities that oppress it; evenso these Suns daily evacuate, and reject the Remains of matter thatmight incommode their Fire: But when they have wholly consumed thatmatter which entertains[10] them; you are not to doubt, but they spreadthemselves abroad on all sides to seek for fresh Fewel, and fasten uponthe Worlds which heretofore they have made, and particularly upon thosethat are nearest: Then these great Fires, reconcocting all the Bodies,will as formerly force them out again, Pell-mell, from all parts; andbeing by little and little purified, they'll begin to serve for Suns toother little Worlds, which they procreate by driving them out of theirSpheres: And that without doubt, made the _Pythagoreans_ foretel theuniversal Conflagration.
"This is no ridiculous Imagination, for _New-France_ where weare, gives us a very convincing instance of it. The vast Continentof _America_ is one half of the Earth, which in spight of ourPredecessors, who a Thousand times had cruised the Ocean, was notat that time discovered: Nor, indeed, was it then in being, no morethan a great many Islands, Peninsules, and Mountains that have sincestarted up in our Globe, when the Sun purged out its Excrements to aconvenient distance, and of a sufficient Gravity to be attracted by theCenter of our World; either in small Particles, perhaps, or, it maybe also, altogether in one lump. That is not so unreasonable but that_St. Austin_[11] would have applauded to it, if that Country had beendiscovered in his Age. Seeing that great Man, who had a very clear Wit,assures us, That in his time the Earth was flat like the floor of anOven, and that it floated upon the Water, like the half of an Orange:But if ever I have the honour to see you in _France_, I'll make youobserve, by means of a most excellent Celescope, that some Obscurities,which from hence appear to be Spots, are Worlds a forming."
My Eyes that shut with this Discourse, obliged the Vice-Roy towithdraw.
[1] In connection with this discussion it is to be remembered thatnearly two centuries were required for the Copernican system,promulgated in 1543, in the De orbium _coelestium revolutionibus_, tobecome generally popularized; and that in 1633, only sixteen yearsbefore the _Voyage to the Moon_ was written, Galileo had been compelledby the Inquisition to deny the motion of the earth.
[2] According to the Ptolemaic system, still generally accepted by"modern Philosophers" at the time of Cyrano's writing, the fixed stars,the sun, the moon, and each of the five (then known) planets, revolvedabout the earth in different orbits, according to various "epicycles"and "excentrics."
[3] The motion of the moon, for instance, was explained in thePtolemaic system as an epicycle carried by an excentric; the centre ofthe excentric moving about the earth in a direction opposite to that ofthe epicycle.
[4] The French has: "of the _two_ other motions": _i.e._, the movementof the fixed stars, and that of the planets.
[5] _Gassendus_ or _Gassendi_ was Cyrano's own teacher of Philosophy.Of Provencal origin, and at first Professor in the University of Aix,he came to Paris in 1641, and gave both private lessons and publiccourses as Professor of the College Royal. It was in one of his privateclasses that Cyrano was a fellow-student with Chapelle, Hesnaut,Bernier, and almost certainly Moliere; the most important group ofyoung "libertins" (_i.e._ free-thinkers) of the epoch.
Gassendi was a bitter opponent of the supposedly Aristotelianschool-philosophy of the time; and was on the whole the leader ofthose who in the seventeenth century followed Epicurean methods inthought. He is the author of a life of Epicurus, and an expositionof his philosophy. He was also an opponent of Descartes, being themost important contemporary supporter of empiricism as against theessentially idealistic method of Descartes.
He is important also as a popularizer of the Copernican system, by hisLife of Copernicus, and his _Institutio Astronomica_ (1647).
[6] A dog trained to turn a spit, by running about in a rotary cageattached to it. The French has simply: "as a _dog_ makes a wheel turn,when he runs about in it."
[7] Cyrano had probably learned this from his master Gassendi. _Cf_.his "Epistola XX. de apparente magnitudine solis," 1641. ModernGassendis say the sun is 1,300,000 times greater than the earth involume, 316,000 times in mass.
[8] _Ingenuously_. The two words were interchangeable in theseventeenth century.
[9] Iron pyrites.
[10] _Supports, feeds_; cf. Shakspere, _Richard III_.
"I'll be at charges for a looking-glass, And entertain a score or two of tailors."
[11] St. Augustine.
Histoire comique des états et empires de la lune. English Page 6