my conceptions I showed them how I could talk. Already in gatherings
people were speaking of nothing but the prettiness of my jests; and
the esteem for my wit grew to such a point that the Clergy were forced
to publish a decree forbidding any one to believe that I possessed
reason, with a very strict command to all persons of whatever rank and
condition they might be to believe that any intellectual thing I did
was only through instinct.
However, the definition of what I was divided the Town into two
factions; the party which took sides in my favour increased every day.
At length in spite of the anathema and the excommunication of the
Prophets who tried in this way to terrify the people, my supporters
demanded an assembly of the Estates of the realm to resolve this
religious hitch. It was a long time before they could agree on the
choice of judges, but the arbitrators pacified animosity by making the
judges consist of an equal number from each party.
They carried me openly to the court of justice, where I was severely
treated by the examiners. Among other things they asked me my
philosophy. In all good faith I showed them what I had formerly been
taught by my Master, but they had no difficulty in refuting me with
numerous reasons, which were in truth very convincing. When I found
myself wholly refuted, so that I could not reply, as a last refuge I
alleged the Principles of Aristotle, which were no more useful to me
than his Sophisms, for they showed me their falsity in a few words.
"Aristotle", said they, "fitted principles to his philosophy instead
of fitting his philosophy to principles. And at least he ought to have
proved these principles to be more reasonable than those of other
sects, which he could not do. For this reason the good man must not
complain if we agree to differ from him."
At last when they saw that I kept bawling this and nothing else, save
that they were not more learned than Aristotle, and that I had been
forbidden to argue with those who denied his Principles, they concluded
with one accord that I was not a man but perhaps some sort of ostrich,
seeing I carried my head upright like that bird; and so the falconer
was ordered to take me back to the cage. I passed my time amusingly
enough, for my possessing correctly their language was a cause that
the whole Court diverted itself by making me chatter. Among others the
Queen's ladies-in-waiting always thrust some scraps of food into my
basket, and the prettiest of them all conceived a certain friendship
for me. Once when we were alone I discovered to her the mysteries of
our religion and I discoursed principally of our bells and our relics;
she was so transported with joy that she vowed with tears in her eyes
that if ever I were able to fly back to our world she would gladly
follow me.
One day I woke up early with a start and saw her tapping against the
bars of my cage. "I have good news for you!" said she, "yesterday the
council declared for war against the great King [Image]; and I
hope, with the bustle of preparation and the departure of our Monarch
and his subjects, to find an opportunity to set you free."
"War!" I interrupted immediately, "do the Princes of this world quarrel
among themselves like those of ours? Tell me, I beseech you, how they
fight."
"The Umpires elected by the consent of both parties", she replied,
"fix the time allowed for arming, the time of marching, the number of
combatants, the day and place of the battle; all with such impartiality
that neither army has a single man more than the other. On each
side the maimed soldiers are enrolled in one company and on the day
of battle the Generals are careful to send them against the maimed
soldiers on the other side. The giants are opposed by the colossi, the
fencers by the nimble, the valiant by the courageous, the weak by the
feeble, the unhealthy by the sick, the robust by the strong; and if
someone should strike any but his prescribed enemy he is found guilty
of cowardice unless he can clear himself by showing it was a mistake.
After the battle they count the wounded, the dead and the prisoners,
for none is ever seen to run away. If the losses are equal on each side
they draw lots as to who shall be proclaimed the victor. But although
a King may have defeated his enemy in open war he has achieved little;
there are other less numerous armies of men of wit and learning, upon
whose disputes depends wholly the real triumph or servitude of States.
A man of learning is opposed to another, men of wit and judgment are
set against their like; and the triumph gained by a State in this way
is considered equal to three victories of brute force. When a nation is
proclaimed victorious, they break up the assembly and the conquering
people chooses for its King either their own or that of their enemies."
I could not forbear laughing at this scrupulous manner of making war
and as an example of a far stronger policy I alleged the customs of
our Europe, where the Monarch takes care to omit no opportunity of
conquest; and she answered me in this way:
"Tell me", said she, "do your Princes justify their arms by anything
save the right of force?"
"Yes indeed", replied I, "with the justice of their cause."
"Why then", she continued, "do not they choose arbitrators above
suspicion to reconcile them? And if there is as much right on the one
side as on the other let them stay as they were or let them play a
hundred up at piquet for the Town or Province about which they are
disputing. And yet, while they are the cause that more than four
millions of better men than themselves get broken heads, they are
in their cabinets joking over the circumstances of the massacre of
these poor boobies. But I am wrong to blame the courage of your brave
subjects; they do well to die for their country; 'tis an affair of
importance, a matter of being the vassal of a King who wears a ruff or
of a King who wears falling bands."
"But", I replied, "why all these circumstances in your manner of
fighting? Is it not enough for armies to be equal in numbers?"
"Your judgment is all astray", she replied. "On your faith now, do
you think that if you overcome your enemy in the field face to face,
that you have beaten him in fair warfare if you wear mail and he
does not? If he has only a dagger and you a rapier? Finally, if he
is one-armed and you have both your arms? Yet with all the equality
you recommend so much to your gladiators, they never fight on equal
terms; one will be tall, another short; one skilful, the other will
never have handled a sword; one will be strong, the other weak. And
even if these proportions are equalised, if they are equally tall,
equally nimble and equally strong, they will still not be on an equal
footing, for one of the two will perhaps be more courageous than the
other. And because a brutal fellow will not consider the peril, will
be bilious and will have more blood, will have a heart more set with
the qualities which make for courage (as if this were not an arm his
enemy does not possess, just like a sword!), he will rush violently
upon his adversary, terrify him and deprive of life a poor man who saw
the danger, whose vital heat was stifled in phlegm and whose heart
is too large to collect the spirits necessary to get rid of that ice
we call poltroonery. So you praise a man for having killed his enemy
when he had him at an advantage, and by praising his boldness you
praise him for a sin against Nature, since boldness tends to its own
destruction.[47]
[Footnote 47: This from so renowned a duellist and so brave a soldier
is worth noting.]
"You must know that a few years ago a Remonstrance was sent up to the
council of war, demanding a more circumspect and more conscientious
regulation of combats. The philosopher who sent up the notice spoke in
these words:
"'You imagine, gentlemen, that you have equalised two combatants
when you have chosen them both hardy, both tall, both active, both
courageous, but this still is not enough; the conqueror must win by
skill, by force or by chance. If it were by skill, he has doubtless
struck his adversary in a place he has not expected, or more quickly
than seemed likely; or, feigning to attack him on one side, he paid
him home on the other. This is finesse, deceiving, betraying. And
such finesse, such deceit, such treason should not contribute to the
fair fame of a true gentleman. If he has triumphed by force, will
you consider his enemy beaten because he has been overwhelmed? No,
doubtless; any more than you would say that a man had lost the victory
if he should be overwhelmed by the fall of a mountain, since it was not
in his power to gain it. Moreover he has not been overcome, because at
that moment he was not disposed to be able to resist the violence of
his adversary. And if he has beaten his enemy by chance, you should
crown Fortune, not him, for he has contributed nothing; and the loser
is no more to be blamed than a dice-player who sees eighteen thrown
when he has cast seventeen.'"
It was admitted that he was right, but that it was impossible in all
human probability to remedy it and that it was better to yield to
one small inconvenience than to give way to a thousand of greater
importance.
She did not say any more on that occasion, because she was afraid to
be found alone with me at so early an hour. In that country unchastity
is no crime; on the contrary, except for condemned criminals any
man may take any woman, and similarly a woman may cite a man before
the law-courts if he has refused her. But she dared not frequent me
publicly, according to her own account, because at the last sacrifice
the priests had declared that the women chiefly reported I was a man
to hide under this pretext the execrable desire which burned them to
mingle with beasts and to commit shamelessly sins against Nature with
me. For this reason I remained a long time without seeing her or any of
her sex.
Somebody must have re-lighted the quarrels about the definition of what
I was, for just as I was resigned to die in my cage they came for me
again to examine me. I was interrogated in the presence of a number of
courtiers on several points in physics, but I do not think my responses
were satisfactory; since the president of the court in a manner the
reverse of dogmatic gave me at length his opinions on the structure
of the world. They seemed to me ingenious and I should have found his
philosophy much more reasonable than ours had he not gone back to the
origin of the world, which he maintained was eternal. As soon as I
heard him support a fantasy so contrary to what faith teaches us, I
asked him what he could reply to the authority of Moses and that this
great patriarch expressly declares that God created the world in six
days. Instead of answering me the ignorant fellow only laughed. I could
not prevent myself from saying then that since he took this attitude I
began to think their world was only a Moon.
"But", said they all, "you see here earth, forests, rivers, seas; what
is all that?"
"No matter", I replied, "Aristotle asserts that it is only the Moon;
and if you had asserted the contrary in the classes where I made my
studies, you would have been hissed."
At this there was a great shout of laughter. No need to ask whether it
were the result of their ignorance! And I was taken back to my cage.
The priests were told, however, that I had dared to say the Moon whence
I came was a World and theirs was only a Moon. They believed this
furnished them with a sufficient pretext for having me condemned to the
water (which is their method of exterminating atheists); and with this
purpose they went in a body to complain to the King, who promised them
justice. It was ordered that I should be interrogated once more.
For the third time I was taken out of my cage and the Great Pontiff
himself spoke against me. I do not remember his speech, because I was
too frightened to receive the expressions of the voice without disorder
and also because in declaiming he made use of an instrument whose noise
deafened me; it was a trumpet which he had chosen on purpose so that
the violence of its martial tone should heat up their minds for my
death and by this emotion prevent reason from performing its office; as
in our own armies, where the clamour of trumpets and drums prevents the
soldier from reflecting on the importance of his life.
When he had spoken, I got up to defend my cause, but I was freed from
this trouble by the occurrence you are about to hear. As I opened my
mouth, a man who had forced his way with great difficulty through the
crowd fell at the King's feet and for a long time lay on his back. This
action did not surprise me; I had long known that they assumed this
posture when they desired to discourse in public. I simply pocketed my
speech and here is the one we had from him:
"Just judges, hear me! You cannot condemn this Man, this Monkey or this
Parrot for having said that the Moon is a World whence he came. If
he is a man; even though he did not come from the Moon, every man is
free and is he not free to imagine what he wishes? What! Can you force
him to have no fancies but yours? You may easily compel him to say he
believes the Moon is not a World, nevertheless he will not believe it;
for, in order to believe something, there must be presented to his
imagination certain possibilities leaning rather to the Yes than to
the No of this thing. So unless you furnish him with this probability
or unless it spontaneously offers itself to his mind he may say he
believes it, but for all that he will not believe it.
"I have now to prove to you that he should not be condemned if you put
him in the category of beasts. Admitted that he is an animal without
reason--then what reason have you yourselves to accuse him for having
sinned against reason? He has said that the Moon is a World. Well,
brute beasts act only by Nature's instinct; therefore it is Nature says
it, not he. To believe that this wise Nature who made the Moon and this
World does not know herself what it is, while you, who know nothing
save what you get from her, should know it more certainly, would be
very ridiculous. But even if passion should make you abandon your first
principles and you should suppose that Nature does not direct animals,
blush at least at the uneasiness caused you by the whimsies of a beast.
Truly, gentlemen, if you met a man of ripe age who devoted himself
to policing an ant-hill, giving a blow to one ant who had made his
companion fall, imprisoning another for stealing a grain of corn from
his neighbour, prosecuting another for abandoning its eggs, would you
not consider such a man senseless to attend to things too much beneath
him and to desire to subject to reason animals which do not use it?
Venerable Pontiffs, what should you call the interest that you take in
the whimsies of this little animal? Just judges, I have spoken."
As soon as he had finished a loud music of applause echoed through the
hall; and after the opinions had been discussed for a long quarter of
an hour, the King pronounced the following sentence:
"That henceforth I should be considered a man; as such set at liberty,
and that the punishment of being drowned should be modified into making
a 'shameful amends' (for there is no 'honourable amends' in that
land), in which amends I should publicly disavow having taught that the
Moon was a World, and this on account of the scandal the novelty of the
opinion might have caused the souls of the weaker brethren."
When this sentence was pronounced I was taken out of the Palace. As a
mark of ignominy I was dressed very magnificently; I was borne along on
the seat of a superb chariot; and I was drawn by four Princes, who were
attached to the pole and at every crossroads in the town I was obliged
to declare as follows:
"People, I declare to you that this Moon is not a Moon, but a World;
and that World is not a World but a Moon. For your priests think good
that you should believe this."
After I had cried the same thing in the five principal squares of the
city, I perceived my defender holding out his hand to help me to get
down. I was vastly surprised to recognise him when I looked in his
face, for he was my demon. We embraced each other for an hour.
"Come away home with me", said he, "for if you return to Court you will
be frowned upon after a shameful amends. Moreover I must tell you that
you would still be with the Monkeys, like your friend the Spaniard,
if I had not published abroad the vigour and strength of your wit
and secured in your favour the protection of the nobles against the
prophets."
I had barely finished thanking him when we reached his lodging. Before
our meal he told me of the wheels he had set in motion to force the
priests to let me be heard, in spite of all the specious scruples with
which they had wheedled the people's conscience. We sat before a large
fire, because the weather was cold, and I think he was going on to
tell me what he had done during the time I had not seen him, when they
came to inform us that supper was ready.
"I have invited", he went on, "two professors from the academy of
this town to eat with us this evening. I will bring them round to the
subject of the philosophy taught in this world. You will also see my
host's son. I have never met a young man so full of wit and he would
be a second Socrates if he could regulate his knowledge and not stifle
in vice the grace with which God continually visits him and cease to
affect impiety out of mere ostentation. I have taken up my lodging here
to find some occasion for instructing him."
He was silent as if to give me an opportunity of speaking in my
turn; then he made a sign that they should divest me of the shameful
ornaments with which I was still brilliant. Almost at the same time the
two professors we were waiting for entered and we all four went off to
the dining-room, where we found the young man he had spoken of already
eating. They made him profound bows and treated him with a respect as
deep as that of a slave for his lord. I asked my demon the reason of
this, and he replied that it was on account of his age, because in that
world the old render every deference and honour to the young. And more:
the fathers obey their children, as soon as the latter have attained
the age of reason in the opinion of the Senate of philosophers.
"You are surprised", he continued, "at a custom so contrary to that
of your country? But there is nothing contrary to right reason in it
for, tell me on your conscience, when a warm young fellow is most
apt to imagine, to judge and to execute, is he not more capable of
governing a family than an infirm man of sixty? The poor dullard, whose
imagination is frozen by the snow of sixty winters, acts from the
experience of fortunate successes, yet it was not he but his fortune
which made them so, against all the rules and the whole management of
human prudence.
"As to judgment he has just as little, although the common opinion of
your world makes it a prerogative of old age. To remove this error, it
must be known that what in an old man is called prudence is simply a
panic apprehension, a mad fear of undertaking anything, which becomes
an obsession. And so, my son, when he has not risked a danger by
which a young man has been ruined, it was not because he foresaw the
catastrophe but because he lacked fire to kindle those noble ardours
which make us dare; and in that young man boldness was, as it were,
a pledge of the success of his plan, because that spirit which gives
promptitude and facility of execution is precisely that which urged him
to undertake it.
"As to his carrying things out, I should be wronging your wit did I
labour to convince it by proofs. You know that youth alone is fit for
action; and if you are not fully persuaded of this, tell me, I beg you,
when you respect a brave man is it not because he can avenge you upon
your enemies or your oppressors? Why then should you still consider
him such, except from habit, when a battalion of seventy Januaries
has frozen his blood and killed with cold all the noble enthusiasms
which inflame young persons in the cause of justice? When you defer
to the strong man is it not in order that he may be obliged to you
for a victory which you could not dispute? Why then should you submit
to him, when idleness has melted his muscles, weakened his arteries,
evaporated his spirits and sucked the marrow from his bones?
"If you adore a woman, is it not because of her beauty? Why then
continue your genuflections when old age has made her a phantom
menacing the living with death? In fine, when you honour a witty man
it is because through the liveliness of his genius he grasps a tangled
affair and unravels it, because he delights the most distinguished
assembly with his talk, because he digests the sciences into a single
thought, and a noble soul will never form a more violent desire than
to resemble him; and yet you continue to pay homage to him when his
outworn organs render his head imbecile and heavy and his silence in
company makes him rather like the statue of a Household God than a man
capable of reason. Resolve yourself, my son, it is better that young
men should be given the control of families than old men. Certainly,
you would be very weak to think that Hercules, Achilles, Epaminondas,
Alexander and Caesar, who all died before they were forty, were persons
to whom one would owe no more than ordinary courtesies, while bringing
incense to a doting old fool simply because the Sun had ninety times
looked upon his harvest.
"'But', you will say, 'all the laws of our world are careful to repeat
this respect which we owe to the aged.' It is true. But all who
introduced these laws were old men and they were afraid the young men
would dispossess them of the authority they had usurped; and so, like
the legislators of false religions, they made a mystery of what they
could not prove.
"'Yes but,' you will say, 'this old man is my father and Heaven
promises me a long life if I honour him.'
"My son, if your father commands nothing contrary to the inspirations
of the Most High, I grant it. If not; tread upon the belly of the
father who engendered you, stamp on the bosom of the mother who
conceived you, for I see no likelihood that your supposing this
cowardly respect wrenched from your weakness by vicious parents would
be agreeable to Heaven will lengthen the thread of your life.
"What! That doffing your hat, which so tickles and nourishes your
father's pride, will it break an abscess you have in your side, will
it renew your radical moisture, will it cure a rapier wound in your
stomach, will it disperse a stone in your bladder? If this is so,
doctors are grievously wrong. Instead of the infernal potions with
which they poison men's lives, let them prescribe for smallpox with
'three congees fasting', four 'humble thanks' after dinner and twelve
'good night, father and mother', before going to bed. You will retort
that without him you would not be at all. It is true, but he himself
would never have been without your grandfather, nor your grandfather
without your great-grandfather, and without you your father could not
have a grandson. When Nature brought him forth it was on condition that
he should return that which she lent him; so when he begot you he gave
you nothing, he merely paid a debt! Moreover I should very much like to
know if your parents were thinking of you when they begot you? Alas,
not at all! And yet you think yourself obliged to them for a present
they made you without thinking!
"What, because your father was so lascivious he could not resist the
charms of some baggage, because he made a bargain to satisfy his desire
and you were the masonry which resulted from their puddling, you are
to revere this sensual fellow as one of the seven wise men of Greece?
What, because a miser purchased the rich goods of his wife by means of
a child, must that child only speak to him on its knees? In this way
your father acted well when he was bawdy and the other when he drove
a hard bargain, for otherwise neither of you children would ever have
been; but I should like to know whether he would not have pulled the
trigger just the same, if he had been certain that his pistol would
miss fire? Good God! What the people in your world can be made to
believe.