Conversation with the men.
"Oh intelligent atoms, in which the Eternal Being desired to make
manifest his skill and his power, you must, no doubt, taste pure joys
on your planet; for having so little matter, and appearing to be
entirely spirit, you must live out your life thinking and loving, the
veritable life of the mind. Nowhere have I seen true bliss, but it is
here, without a doubt."
At this all the philosophers shook their heads, and one of them, more
frank than the others, avowed that if one excepts a small number of
inhabitants held in poor regard, all the rest are an assembly of mad,
vicious, and wretched people. "We have more substance than is
necessary," he said, "to do evil, if evil comes from substance; and
too much spirit, if evil comes from spirit. Did you know, for
example, that as I am speaking with you[1], there are 100,000 madmen
of our species wearing hats, killing 100,000 other animals wearing
turbans, or being massacred by them, and that we have used almost
surface of the Earth for this purpose since time immemorial?"
[1] We saw, at the end of chapter III, that the story occurs in
1737. Voltaire is referring to the war between the Turks and the
Russians, from 1736 to 1739. B.
The Sirian shuddered, and asked the reason for these horrible
quarrels between such puny animals.
"It is a matter," said the philosopher, "of some piles of mud as big
as your heel[2]. It is not that any of these millions of men that
slit each other's throats care about this pile of mud. It is only a
matter of determining if it should belong to a certain man who we
call 'Sultan,' or to another who we call, for whatever reason,
'Czar.' Neither one has ever seen nor will ever see the little piece
of Earth, and almost none of these animals that mutually kill
themselves have ever seen the animal for which they kill."
[2] Crimea, which all the same was not reunited with Russia until
1783. B.
"Oh! Cruel fate!" cried the Sirian with indignation, "who could
conceive of this excess of maniacal rage! It makes me want to take
three steps and crush this whole anthill of ridiculous assassins."
"Do not waste your time," someone responded, "they are working
towards ruin quickly enough. Know that after ten years only one
hundredth of these scoundrels will be here. Know that even if they
have not drawn swords, hunger, fatigue, or intemperance will overtake
them. Furthermore, it is not they that should be punished, it is
those sedentary barbarians who from the depths of their offices
order, while they are digesting their last meal, the massacre of a
million men, and who subsequently give solemn thanks to God."
The voyager was moved with pity for the small human race, where he
was discovering such surprising contrasts.
"Since you are amongst the small number of wise men," he told these
sirs, "and since apparently you do not kill anyone for money, tell
me, I beg of you, what occupies your time."
"We dissect flies," said the philosopher, "we measure lines, we
gather figures; we agree with each other on two or three points that
we do not understand."
It suddenly took the Sirian and the Saturnian's fancy to question
these thinking atoms, to learn what it was they agreed on.
"What do you measure," said the Saturnian, "from the Dog Star to the
great 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 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 pronounced 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
passage[4].
[4] Here is the passage 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 passage 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]. "God 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 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, "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 God 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 gods. 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 assign 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.
End of Project Gutenberg's Romans -- Volume 3: Micromegas, by Voltaire