Experiments and reasonings of the two voyagers.
Micromegas slowly reached his hand towards the place where the object
had appeared, extended two fingers, and withdrew them for fear of
being mistaken, then opened and closed them, and skillfully seized
the vessel that carried these fellows, putting it on his fingernail
without pressing it too hard for fear of crushing it.
"Here is a very different animal from the first," said the dwarf from
Saturn.
The Sirian put the so-called animal in the palm of his hand. The
passengers and the crew, who believed themselves to have been lifted
up by a hurricane, and who thought they were on some sort of boulder,
scurried around; the sailors took the barrels of wine, threw them
overboard onto Micromegas hand, and followed after. The geometers
took their quadrants, their sextants, two Lappland girls[1], and
descended onto the Sirian's fingers. They made so much fuss that he
finally felt something move, tickling his fingers. It was a steel-tipped
baton being pressed into his index finger. He judged, by this
tickling, that it had been ejected from some small animal that he was
holding; but he did not suspect anything else at first. The
microscope, which could barely distinguish a whale from a boat, could
not capture anything as elusive as a man. I do not claim to outrage
anyone's vanity, but I am obliged to ask that important men make an
observation here. Taking the size of a man to be about five feet, the
figure we strike on Earth is like that struck by an animal of about
six hundred thousandths[2] the height of a flea on a ball five feet
around. Imagine something that can hold the Earth in its hands, and
which has organs in proportion to ours--and it may very well be that
there are such things--conceive, I beg of you, what these things
would think of the battles that allow a vanquisher to take a village
only to lose it later.
[1] See the notes to the speech in verse, "On Moderation" (Volume
XII), and those of "Russia to Paris" (Volume XIV). K.
[2] The edition that I take to be original reads "sixty
thousandths." B.
I do not doubt that if ever some captain of some troop of imposing
grenadiers reads this work he will increase the size of the hats of
his troops by at least two imposing feet. But I warn him that it will
have been done in vain; that he and his will never grow any larger
than infinitely small.
What marvelous skill it must have taken for our philosopher from
Sirius to perceive the atoms I have just spoken of. When Leuwenhoek
and Hartsoeker tinkered with the first or thought they saw the grains
that make us up, they did not by any means make such an astonishing
discovery. What pleasure Micromegas felt at seeing these little
machines move, at examining all their scurrying, at following them in
their enterprises! how he cried out! with what joy he placed one of
his microscopes in the hands of his traveling companion!
"I see them," they said at the same time, "look how they are carrying
loads, stooping, getting up again." They spoke like that, hands
trembling from the pleasure of seeing such new objects, and from fear
of losing them. The Saturnian, passing from an excess of incredulity
to an excess of credulity, thought he saw them mating.
"Ah!" he said. "I have caught nature in the act"[1]. But he was
fooled by appearances, which happens only too often, whether one is
using a microscope or not.
[1] _j'ai pris la nature sur le fait_. A happy, good-natured turn
of phrase expressed by Fontenelle upon making some observations of
natural history. K.