Evangelist was so detached that he only retained it by clenching his
teeth. The Eternal Wisdom was mightily surprised at so unexpected an
accident, exclaiming: 'Alas! He must not taste death. He is predestined
to rise up to the Earthly Paradise in his flesh and bones. Yet the hour
wherein I had foreseen he should be uplifted has almost expired! Just
Heavens! What will men say of Me when they know I have been mistaken?'
Thus to cover up His mistake the Eternal was constrained in His
irresolution to cause him to be there without having the time to make
him go there."
All the time I was speaking Elijah gazed at me with eyes that would
have killed me had I been in a condition to die of anything but hunger.
"Abominable wretch!" said he, recoiling from me, "you have the
impudence to banter holy things and assuredly it would not be with
impunity if the All-Wise did not wish to leave you as a famous example
of His pity to all nations. Hence, thou impious fellow, go from here,
publish in this little world and in the other (for you are predestined
to return there) the irreconcilable hatred of God to Atheists."
He had scarcely finished this imprecation when he seized hold of me and
began to drag me roughly towards the gate. When we came near a large
tree, whose branches were weighed almost to the ground by their burden
of fruit, he said: "That is the Tree of Knowledge from which you would
have drawn inconceivable enlightenment had you not been so irreligious."
He had not finished speaking when, pretending to faint with weakness,
I stumbled against a branch from which I nimbly stole an apple. I had
still several steps to make before I should get out of this delightful
park but I was so violently attacked by hunger that I forgot I was in
the hands of an angry prophet, pulled out one of the apples I had put
in my pocket and thrust my teeth into it. But instead of taking one
of those which Enoch had given to me, my hand fell on the apple I had
picked from the Tree of Knowledge, which unfortunately I had not peeled.
I had scarcely tasted it when a thick night descended upon my soul;
I did not see my apple any more nor Elijah beside me and my eyes did
not recognise a single trace of the Earthly Paradise in the whole
hemisphere, yet I did not cease to remember all that had happened to me
there.
Afterwards, reflecting on this miracle, I supposed that the rind of
this fruit did not wholly stupefy me, because my teeth went through
it and felt a little of the inner juice, whose energy dispelled the
malignities of the peel.
I was vastly surprised to find myself all alone in the midst of a land
I did not know. I turned my eyes about me and gazed over the country,
but no living thing presented itself to console me. At last I resolved
to walk forward until Fortune brought me into the company of some
creature or of death. She heard me favourably, for at the end of a
half-quarter of an hour I met with two very large animals, one of which
stayed before me while the other ran swiftly towards its den; at least
I thought so, because a little time later I saw it return with more
than seven or eight hundred of the same species, who surrounded me.
When I could examine them near at hand I perceived that their body and
face were like ours. This adventure made me remember the stories I had
heard my nurse tell formerly about sirens, fauns and satyrs; from time
to time they set up such furious shriekings, caused no doubt by their
wonder at seeing me, that I almost thought I had become a monster.
One of these beast-men seized me by the neck, as wolves do when they
carry off a sheep, cast me upon his back and took me to their town.
I was greatly astounded when I saw that they were indeed men and yet
every one I met walked on four legs. When the people saw me pass,
seeing I was so small (for most of them are twelve cubits high) and
that my body was supported by two feet only, they could not believe
I was a man; for they hold that as Nature has given men two arms and
two legs like the beasts, they ought to use them in the same way. And
indeed, musing on this subject afterwards, I have thought that this
position of the body was not so extravagant, for I recollected that our
children walk on four feet when they are taught by Nature alone and
only rise on two feet through the care of their nurses who set them in
little carts and tie them with straps to prevent their falling on four
feet, which is the only position wherein the shape of our body tends to
repose.
At that time they said (according to the interpretation made to me
afterwards) that I was certainly the female of the Queen's little
animal. As this or as something else I was carried to the town hall,
where I noticed from the buzz and the gestures made by the people and
the magistrates that they were arguing together about what I might
be. When they had talked together for a long time a certain citizen
who kept rare beasts begged the aldermen to lend me to him until the
Queen sent for me to live with my male. No objection was made. This
mountebank took me to his home; he taught me to play the buffoon, to
throw somersaults, to make grimaces and in the afternoon he took money
at the door for showing me.[36]
[Footnote 36: See Appendix I. for Swift's use of this idea.]
At length Heaven, moved by my misfortunes and displeased to see the
Temple of its Master profaned, willed that one day when I was tied
to the end of a cord with which the mountebank made me leap to amuse
the mob, one of those looking on gazed at me very attentively and at
length asked me in Greek who I was. I was vastly surprised to hear him
speak there as in our world. He questioned me for some time; I replied
and told him afterwards in general terms what I had undertaken and
the success of my voyage. He consoled me and I remember that he said:
"Well, my son, you suffer the penalties of the failings of your world
at last. Here, as there, exists a mob which cannot endure the thought
of things to which it is not accustomed, but know that you receive a
reciprocal treatment, for if someone from this earth should rise to
yours and have the boldness to call himself a man, your learned men
would have him smothered as a monster or as an ape possessed by a
Devil." He promised me afterwards that he would inform the Court of
my disaster; he added that as soon as he looked at me his heart told
him I was a man, because he had formerly travelled to the world whence
I came, that my country was the Moon, that I was a Gaul and that he
had once lived in Greece, where he was called the Demon of Socrates
and that after the death of this philosopher he had directed and
instructed Epaminondas at Thebes; that afterwards he had passed over to
the Romans, where Justice had attached him to the party of the younger
Cato; then, that after his death he had devoted himself to Brutus;
that since these great personages had left nothing behind them in the
world but the phantom of their virtues, he retired with his companions
sometimes to the temples, sometimes into solitude. "At last", he
added, "the people of your world became so stupid and so gross that
my companions and I lost all the pleasure we once had in teaching
them. You must inevitably have heard us spoken of. They called us
Oracles, Nymphs, Genii, Fairies, Hearth-gods, Lemures, Larvae, Lamias,
Hobgoblins, Naiades, Incubi, Shades, Ghosts, Spectres, Phantoms. We
left your World in the reign of Augustus a little after the time when
I appeared to Drusus, the son of Livia, who was waging war in Germany,
and forbade him to proceed further. It is not long since I returned
thence for the second time. During the last hundred years I was
instructed to travel there, I wandered about in Europe and conversed
with persons whom you may have known. One day I appeared to Cardan as
he was reading; I instructed him in many things and in recompense he
promised me that he would bear witness to posterity that I was the
person from whom he obtained knowledge of the miracles he proposed
to write. I saw Agrippa, Abbot Tritheim, Doctor Faust, La Brosse,
César[37] and a certain group of young men, known to the uninitiate
by the name of Knights of the Rosy-Cross, to whom I imparted a number
of artifices and natural secrets which no doubt will have caused the
people to consider them great magicians. I knew Campanella[38] also.
When he was in the inquisition at Rome it was I who advised him to
conform his face and body to the usual grimaces and postures of those
whose inner mind he needed to know, so that he might excite in himself
by a similar position the thoughts which this same situation had called
up in his adversaries; because he would treat better with their soul
when he knew it. At my request he began a book, which we called _De
Sensu Rerum_. Similarly in France I frequented La Mothe Le Vayer and
Gassendi[39]: the second is a man who has written as much philosophy as
the first has lived. I know there are numbers of other men whom your
age considers divine, but I found nothing in them save a vast deal of
chatter and pride.
[Footnote 37: Famous sorcerers.]
[Footnote 38: See Introduction.]
[Footnote 39: See Introduction.]
"When I left your country for England to study the manners of its
inhabitants I met a man who is the shame of his country; for certainly
it is a shame to the great men of your state who recognize in him,
yet fail to adore, the virtue of which he is the throne. To cut short
his panegyric; he is all Wit, he is all Heart, and if by giving both
these qualities (one of which formerly sufficed to mark a hero) to one
person were not as good as naming Tristan L'Hermite,[40] I should not
have mentioned his name, for I am sure he will not forgive me for this
indiscretion. But as I do not expect ever to return to your World I
desire to bear witness to this truth for my conscience's sake. Truly
I must tell you that when I saw so high a virtue I feared that it
was not recognized; for this reason I tried to make him accept three
phials. The first was full of oil of Talc, the second of the powder
of projection, and the third of potable Gold, that is to say, the
vegetable salt whose eternity is promised by your chemists. But he
refused them with a disdain more generous than that with which Diogenes
received the compliments of Alexander who came to visit him in his tub.
Finally I can add nothing to the praise of this great man except that
he is the only Poet, the only Philosopher and the only free Man that
you have. These are the eminent persons with whom I have conversed; all
the others, at least those I knew, are so far below men that I have
seen beasts who were above them.
[Footnote 40: See Introduction.]
"For the rest, I am not an inhabitant of your earth nor of this; I
was born in the Sun; but because our world is sometimes overpeopled
on account of the long life of its inhabitants and the fact that it
is practically free from wars and diseases, our rulers from time to
time send out colonies to the surrounding worlds. I was ordered to go
to your Earth and declared leader of the expedition sent out with me.
Since then I have come to this world for the reasons I told you; and I
remain here because these men are lovers of truth; there are no pedants
to be seen here, the philosophers allow themselves to be convinced by
reason alone and neither the authority of a learned man nor numbers can
overwhelm the opinion of a corn-thresher if the corn-thresher reason
powerfully. In short the only madmen recognised in this country are the
sophists and the orators."
I asked him how long they lived; he replied, "Three or four thousand
years", and continued in this manner: "To render myself visible as I
am now, when I feel the corpse I dwell in almost used up or when the
organs do not exercise their functions perfectly, I breathe myself into
a young body that has recently died.
"Although the inhabitants of the Sun are not so numerous as those
of this World, nevertheless the Sun is often overcrowded, because
the people are of a very hot temperament and consequently restless,
ambitious and voracious.
"What I tell you ought not to seem a marvellous thing; for, although
our globe is very vast and yours small, although we only die at the
end of four thousand years and you after half a century, learn that,
just as there are not so many pebbles as earth, nor so many insects as
plants, nor so many animals as insects, nor so many men as animals; so
there cannot be so many demons as men, because of the difficulties to
be met with in the generation of so perfect a composition."
I asked him if they were bodies like us. He replied that, yes, they
were bodies, but not like us nor like anything that we consider such,
because we call vulgarly a body that which can be touched; for the
rest, there was nothing in Nature that was not material,[41] and
although they were material themselves, when they wished to be seen by
us they were forced to take bodies such as our senses are capable of
perceiving.
[Footnote 41: This shows the disciple of Lucretius.]
I assured him that many in the world thought the stories told of
them were only an effect of the fancy of feeble-minded individuals,
seeing that they only appeared at night. He replied that, since they
were forced to build themselves hastily the bodies they had to make
use of, they often had only time enough to fit them for a single
sense, sometimes hearing, as the voices of Oracles; sometimes sight,
as Will-o'-the-Wisps and Spectres; sometimes touch, as Incubi and
Nightmares; and that this mass being only thickened air, the light
destroyed it with its heat just as we see it disperse a fog by
expanding it.
All these things he explained to me aroused in me the curiosity to
question him about his birth and death; if in the country of the Sun
the individual saw the day by the means of generation, and whether he
died through the disintegration of his mind or the breaking down of his
organs.
"There is too little connection", said he, "between your senses and
the explanation of these mysteries. You imagine that what you cannot
comprehend is spiritual or that it does not exist; the inference is
false, but it is a proof that the universe contains perhaps a million
things, to know which you would require a million different organs.
Thus, I conceive through my senses the cause of the loadstone's turning
to the north, the cause of the tides, and what an animal becomes after
death; but you cannot rise to these high conceptions because there
is nothing in you related to these miracles, any more than a child
born blind can imagine the beauty of a landscape, the colouring of a
picture, the tints of the rainbow; rather he will imagine them at one
time as something palpable, then as something to eat, then as a sound,
then as an odour. So if I tried to explain to you what I perceive
through senses which you lack you would conceive it as something which
can be heard, seen, touched, smelled or tasted, when it is nothing of
the kind."
He was at this point of his discourse when my mountebank saw the
company was growing weary of our jargon, for they could not understand
it and mistook it for an inarticulate grunting. He began to pull
heartily at my cord and made me gambol until the spectators had their
fill of mirth and vowed I was nearly as clever as the animals in their
country, and so went off to their homes.
The harshness of my master's bad treatment was softened by the visits
of this obliging demon; I could not converse with those who came to see
me, since they took me for an animal deeply rooted in the category of
brutes; I did not know their language, they did not know mine! Judge
then what relation there was between us.
You must know that two idioms are used in that country, one of which
serves the nobles while the other is peculiar to the people.
The language of the nobles is simply different tones not articulated,
very much like our music when no words have been added to it. Certainly
it is an invention altogether useful and agreeable, for when they are
tired of speaking, or when they disdain to prostitute their throats
to this usage, they take a lute or some other instrument, with whose
aid they communicate their thought as easily as by the voice; so that
sometimes fifteen or twenty of them may be met with debating a point
of theology or the difficulties of a law case in the most harmonious
concert that could tickle one's ears.[42]
[Footnote 42: See Appendix I.]
The second, which is used by the people, is carried out by movements
of the limbs, though perhaps not precisely as you imagine, for certain
parts of the body mean a whole speech. For example, the movement of
a finger, of a hand, of an ear, of a lip, of an arm, of a cheek,
will make singly a discourse or a sentence; others are only used
to designate words, such as a wrinkle in the forehead, different
shiverings of the muscles, turnings of the hands, stampings of the
foot, contortions of the arm, so that, as it is their custom to go
quite naked, when they talk their limbs (which are accustomed to
gesticulate their ideas) move so briskly that it does not seem a man
talking but a body trembling.
The demon came to visit me almost every day and his marvellous
conversation helped me to endure the miseries of captivity without
repining. One morning a man whom I did not know came into my lodging,
and having well stroked me for a long time, gently lifted me up under
the arm-pit; then, holding me with one hand lest I should be hurt,
cast me upon his back, where I found myself seated so softly and so
comfortably that although I was afflicted to find myself treated like
a beast I had no desire to escape. Moreover these four-footed men move
with a swiftness different from ours, since the heaviest of them can
catch a running deer.
I was vastly perturbed at having no news of my courteous demon and on
the evening of the first day's journey, after I had reached the inn, I
was walking in the courtyard waiting for supper when my carrier, whose
face was young and handsome, came up to me, laughing before my nose,
and cast his two forefeet around my neck. After I had gazed at him for
a while he said to me in French: "What! Do you not know your friend?"
I leave you to imagine what I then felt. My surprise was so great
that thereafter I imagined that the whole globe of the Moon, all that
happened to me there, everything that I saw there, were an enchantment.
The man-beast who had served me as a steed continued to speak in these
words: "You had promised that the favours I did you would never leave
your memory."
I protested that I had never seen him. At last he said: "I am that
demon of Socrates who entertained you during the time of your
captivity. As I had promised you, I left yesterday to inform the King
of your misfortune and I covered three hundred leagues in eighteen
hours, for I arrived at midday to await you...."
"But", I interrupted, "how can all this be, seeing that yesterday
you were extremely tall and to-day you are very short; yesterday you
had a weak broken voice and to-day it is strong and clear; in short,
yesterday you were a hoary old man and to-day you are a young man?
What! While in my country we travel from birth to death, do the animals
of this land go from death to birth; do they grow younger the older
they are?"
"When I had spoken to the Prince", said he, "and had received his order
to bring you to him, I felt the body I inhabited so worn out with
lassitude that all its organs refused their functions. I inquired the
way to the hospital, went there, and as soon as I entered the first
room found a young man who had just given up the ghost. I approached
the body and feigning to have recognised movement in it I protested
to all present that he was not dead, that his disease was not even
dangerous, and without being perceived I skilfully breathed myself into
him. My old body immediately fell backwards; and I rose up in this
young one.[43] They exclaimed at the miracle, but without arguing with
any one I went off promptly to your mountebank, where I took you up."
[Footnote 43: This idea comes from Charles Sorel's _Berger
Extravagant_.]
He would have told me more but they came to fetch us for supper. My
conductor led me into a magnificently furnished room but I saw nothing
prepared to eat. Such a lack of meat when I was perishing of hunger
forced me to ask him where the table was laid. I did not hear what he
replied, for three or four young boys, the host's children, came up
to me at that instant and with great civility undressed me to the
shirt. This new ceremonial vastly astonished me, but I dared not ask
its reason of my handsome attendants; and when my guide asked how I
should like to begin I know not how I was able to reply with these two
words: "A soup". Immediately I smelt the odour of the most succulent
simmering that ever hit the nose of a rich sinner. I tried to get up
from my place to track down with my nose the source of this agreeable
vapour, but my guide prevented me: "Where are you going?" said he, "we
will take a walk soon, but this is the time to eat; finish your soup
and then we will have something else."
"But where the devil is the soup?" cried I in a rage. "Have you made a
wager to banter me all day?"
"I thought", he replied, "that you had seen at the town whence we came
either your master or someone else taking his meals; that is why I did
not tell you of their methods of eating in this country. But since
you are still ignorant of it, let me tell you that here they live on
nothing but vapour. The art of cookery here is to enclose in large,
specially moulded vessels the fumes which rise from meats and, having
collected several kinds and several tastes, according to the appetite
of those they entertain, they open the vessel which holds this odour
and then another and then another until the company is quite satisfied.
Unless you have already lived in this manner you will never believe
that the nose unassisted by the teeth and throat can perform the
office of the mouth in feeding a man; but I will make you see it by
experience."
He had scarcely finished his promise when I smelled successively as
they entered the room so many agreeable and nourishing vapours that
I felt myself completely satisfied in less than a half-quarter of an
hour. When we had risen he said: "This should not cause you a great
deal of surprise, since you cannot have lived so long without having
noticed that in your world cooks and pastry-cooks, who eat less than
people of other occupations, are nevertheless fatter than they are.
Whence is their fatness derived, unless it be from the smell of the
food that perpetually surrounds them, penetrates their bodies and
nourishes them? People in this world enjoy a more vigorous and less
interrupted health, because their food causes hardly any excrements,
which are the origin of almost all diseases. You were surprised perhaps
when they undressed you before the meal, because the custom is never
employed in your country, but here it is, and it is done in order that
the animal may imbibe the vapour more easily."
"Sir", said I, "what you say appears very probable and I myself
have just experienced something of it, but I must confess I cannot
de-brutalise myself so promptly, and I should be very glad to have a
solid morsel under my teeth."
He promised it, but only for the next day, because he said that to eat
so soon after a meal would give me indigestion. We continued talking
some time and then went up to our room to go to bed.
At the top of the staircase we were met by a man who gazed very
attentively upon us and then conducted me to a cabinet whose floor was
covered with orange flowers to the depth of three feet; and took my
demon into another filled with carnations and jasmine. Seeing that I
appeared amazed at this magnificence he told me this was the method of
making beds in that country. At last we each lay down in our chamber
and as soon as I was stretched out on my flowers I perceived by the
light of thirty large glow-worms enclosed in a crystal (for they use
no other candle) the three or four young boys who had undressed me at
supper, one of whom began to tickle my feet, another my thighs, another
my flanks, another my arms, so delicately and nicely that in less than
a moment I fell asleep.