by Voltaire
"We dissect flies," said the philosopher, "we measure lines, wegather figures; we agree with each other on two or three points thatwe do not understand."
It suddenly took the Sirian and the Saturnian's fancy to questionthese thinking atoms, to learn what it was they agreed on.
"What do you measure," said the Saturnian, "from the Dog Star to thegreat star of the Gemini?"
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 airweighed around 900 times less than an identical volume of the purestwater, and 19,000 times less than a gold ducat. The little dwarf fromSaturn, surprised at their responses, was tempted to accuse ofwitchcraft the same people he had refused a soul fifteen minutesearlier.
[3] The edition I believe to be original reads "put them off" inplace of "caught them."
Finally Micromegas said to them, "Since you know what is exterior toyou so well, you must know what is interior even better. Tell me whatyour soul is, and how you form ideas." The philosophers spoke all atonce as before, but they were of different views. The oldest citedAristotle, another pronounced the name of Descartes; this one here,Malebranche; another Leibnitz; another Locke. An old peripateticspoke up with confidence: "The soul is an entelechy, and a reasongives it the power to be what it is." This is what Aristotleexpressly declares, page 633 of the Louvre edition. He cited thepassage[4].
[4] Here is the passage such as it is transcribed in the editiondated 1750: "Entele'xeia' tis esi kai' lo'gos tou dy'namine'xontos toude' ei'nai."
This passage of Aristotle, _On the Soul_, book II, chapter II, istranslated thusly by Casaubon: _Anima quaedam perfectio et actusac 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 namedAristotle in the Greek?"
"Because," replied the savant, "one should always cite what one doesnot understand at all in the language one understands the least."
The Cartesian took the floor and said: "The soul is a pure spiritthat has received in the belly of its mother all metaphysical ideas,and which, leaving that place, is obliged to go to school, and tolearn all over again what it already knew, and will not know again."
"It is not worth the trouble," responded the animal with the heightof eight leagues, "for your soul to be so knowledgeable in itsmother's stomach, only to be so ignorant when you have hair on yourchin. But what do you understand by the mind?"
"You are asking me?" said the reasoner. "I have no idea. We say thatit is not matter--"
"But do you at least know what matter is?"
"Certainly," replied the man. "For example this stone is grey, hassuch and such a form, has three dimensions, is heavy and divisible."
"Well!" said the Sirian, "this thing that appears to you to bedivisible, heavy, and grey, will you tell me what it is? You see someattributes, 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, askedwhat his soul was, and what it did.
"Nothing at all," said the Malebranchist philosopher[5]. "God doeseverything 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 entitled "All in God" 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, "whatis your soul?"
"It is," answered the Leibnitzian, "the hand of a clock that tellsthe time while my body rings out. Or, if you like, it is my soul thatrings out while my body tells the time, or my soul is the mirror ofthe universe, and my body is the border of the mirror. All that isclear."
A small partisan of Locke was nearby, and when he was finally giventhe floor: "I do not know," said he, "how I think, but I know that Ihave only ever thought through my senses. That there are immaterialand intelligent substances I do not doubt, but that it is impossiblefor God to communicate thought to matter I doubt very much. I reverethe eternal power. It is not my place to limit it. I affirm nothing,and content myself with believing that many more things are possiblethan one would think."
The animal from Sirius smiled. He did not find this the least bitsage, while the dwarf from Saturn would have kissed the sectarian ofLocke were it not for the extreme disproportion. But there was,unfortunately, a little animalcule in a square hat who interruptedall the other animalcule philosophers. He said that he knew thesecret: that everything would be found in the _Summa_ of SaintThomas. He looked the two celestial inhabitants up and down. Heargued that their people, their worlds, their suns, their stars, hadall been made uniquely for mankind. At this speech, our two voyagersnearly fell over with that inextinguishable laughter which, accordingto Homer[6], is shared with the gods. Their shoulders and theirstomachs heaved up and down, and in these convulsions the vessel thatthe Sirian had on his nail fell into one of the Saturnian's trouserpockets. These two good men searched for it a long time, found itfinally, and tidied it up neatly. The Sirian resumed his discussionwith the little mites. He spoke to them with great kindness, althoughin the depths of his heart he was a little angry that the infinitelysmall had an almost infinitely great pride. He promised to make thema beautiful philosophical book[7], written very small for theirusage, and said that in this book they would see the point ofeverything. Indeed, he gave them this book before leaving. It wastaken 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 dated1750, reads, "philosophical book, that would teach them ofadmirable things, and show them the goodness of things."
[8] Although this scene occurs in 1737, as one saw in pages 177 to188, one could assign the epithet of "old" to Fontenelle, who was80 at that point, and who died 20 years later. In 1740 he resignedfrom his position as perpetual secretary.
END OF THE HISTORY OF MICROMEGAS.