_Of the Books in the Moon, and their Fashion; of Death, Burial, and
Burning; of the Manner of telling the Time; and of_ Noses.
Next Morning about Nine a Clock, my Spirit came in, and told me that
he was come from Court, where [Illustration: bar 1] one of the Queens
Maids of Honour, had sent for him, and that she had enquired after me,
protesting that she still persisted in her Design to be as good as her
Word; that is, that with all her Heart she would follow me, if I would
take her along with me to the other World; "which exceedingly pleased
me," said he, "when I understood that the chief Motive which inclined
her to the Voyage, was to become Christian: And therefore, I have
promised to forward her Design, what lies in me; and for that end to
invent a Machine that may hold three or four, wherein you may mount to
day, both together, if you think fit. I'll go seriously set about the
performance of my Undertaking; and in the mean time, to entertain you,
during my Absence, I leave you here a Book, which heretofore I brought
with me from my Native Countrey; the Title of it is, _The States and
Empires of the Sun, with an Addition of the History of the Spark_.[1] I
also give you this, which I esteem much more; it is the great Work of
the Philosophers, composed by one of the greatest Wits of the Sun.[2]
He proves in it that all things are true, and shews the way of uniting
Physically the Truths of every Contradiction; as, for Example, That
White is Black, and Black White; that one may be, and not be at the
same time; that there may be a Mountain without a Valley; that nothing
is something, and that all things that are, are not; but observe,
that he proves all these unheard-of Paradoxes without any Captious or
Sophistical Argument."
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR'S FLYING MACHINE.--From a 17th Century
Engraving]
"When you are weary of Reading, you may Walk, or Converse with our
Landlord's Son, he has a very Charming Wit; but that which I dislike
in him is, that he is a little Atheistical. If he chance to Scandalize
you, or by any Argument shake your Faith, fail not immediately to come
and propose it to me, and I'll clear the Difficulties of it; any other,
but I, would enjoin you to break Company with him; but since he is
extreamly proud and conceited, I am certain he would take your flight
for a Defeat, and would believe your Faith to be grounded on no Reason,
if you refused to hear his."
Having said so, he left me; and no sooner was his back turned, but I
fell to consider attentively my Books and their Boxes, that's to say,
their Covers, which seemed to me to be wonderfully Rich; the one was
cut of a single Diamond, incomparably more resplendent than ours; the
second looked like a prodigious great Pearl, cloven in two. My Spirit
had translated those Books into the Language of that World; but because
I have none of their Print, I'll now explain to you the Fashion of
these two Volumes.
[Sidenote: Books in the Moon]
As I opened the Box, I found within somewhat of Metal, almost like to
our Clocks, full of I know not what little Springs and imperceptible
Engines: It was a Book, indeed; but a Strange and Wonderful Book, that
had neither Leaves nor Letters: In fine, it was a Book made wholly for
the Ears, and not the Eyes. So that when any Body has a mind to read in
it, he winds up that Machine with a great many Strings; then he turns
the Hand to the Chapter which he desires to hear, and straight, as from
the Mouth of a Man, or a Musical Instrument, proceed all the distinct
and different Sounds,[3] which the _Lunar_ Grandees make use of for
expressing their Thoughts, instead of Language.
When I since reflected on this Miraculous Invention, I no longer
wondred that the Young--Men of that Country were more knowing at
Sixteen or Eighteen years Old, than the Gray-Beards of our Climate;
for knowing how to Read as soon as Speak, they are never without
Lectures,[4] in their Chambers, their Walks, the Town, or Travelling;
they may have in their Pockets, or at their Girdles, Thirty of these
Books, where they need but wind up a Spring to hear a whole Chapter,
and so more, if they have a mind to hear the Book quite through; so
that you never want the Company of all the great Men, living and Dead,
who entertain you with Living Voices. This Present employed me about an
hour; and then hanging them to my Ears, like a pair of Pendants, I went
a Walking; but I was hardly at End of the Street when I met a Multitude
of People very Melancholy.
Four of them carried upon their Shoulders a kind of a Herse, covered
with Black: I asked a Spectator, what that Procession, like to a
Funeral in my Country, meant? He made me answer, that that naughty
[Illustration bar 2] called so by the People because of a knock he had
received upon the Right Knee, being convicted of Envy and Ingratitude,
died the day before; and that Twenty Years ago, the Parliament had
Condemned him to die in his Bed, and then to be interred after his
Death. I fell a Laughing at that Answer. And he asking me, why? "You
amaze me," said I, "that that which is counted a Blessing in our World,
as a long Life, a peaceable Death, and an Honourable Burial, should
pass here for an exemplary Punishment." "What, do you take a Burial for
a precious thing then," replyed that Man? "And, in good earnest, can
you conceive any thing more Horrid than a Corps crawling with Worms, at
the discretion of Toads which feed on his Cheeks; the Plague it self
Clothed with the Body of a Man? Good God! The very thought of having,
even when I am Dead, my Face wrapt up in a Shroud, and a Pike-depth of
Earth upon my Mouth, makes me I can hardly fetch breath. The Wretch
whom you see carried here, besides the disgrace of being thrown into
a Pit, hath been Condemned to be attended by an Hundred and Fifty
of his Friends; who are strictly charged, as a Punishment for their
having loved an envious and ungrateful Person, to appear with a sad
Countenance at his Funeral; and had it not been that the Judges took
some compassion of him, imputing his Crimes partly to his want of Wit,
they would have been commanded to Weep there also.
"All are Burnt here, except Malefactors: And, indeed, it is a most
rational and decent Custom: For we believe, that the Fire having
separated the pure from the impure, the Heat by Sympathy reassembles
the natural Heat which made the Soul, and gives it force to mount
up till it arrive at some Star, the Country of certain people more
immaterial and intellectual than us; because their Temper ought to suit
with, and participate of the Globe which they inhabit.
"However, this is not our neatest way of Burying neither; for when any
one of our Philosophers comes to an Age, wherein he finds his Wit begin
to decay, and the Ice of his years to numm the Motions of his Soul, he
invites all his Friends to a sumptuous Banquet; then having declared to
them the Reasons that move him to bid farewel to Nature, and the little
hopes he has of adding any thing more to his worthy Actions, they
shew him Favour; that's to say, they suffer him to Dye; or otherwise
are severe to him and command him to Live. When then, by plurality of
Voices, they have put his Life into his own Hands, he acquaints his
dearest Friends with the day and place. These purge, and for Four and
Twenty hours abstain from Eating; then being come to the House of the
Sage, and having Sacrificed to the Sun, they enter the Chamber where
the generous Philosopher waits for them on a Bed of State; every one
embraces him, and when it comes to his turn whom he loves best, having
kissed him affectionately, leaning upon his Bosom, and joyning Mouth to
Mouth, with his right hand he sheaths a Dagger in his Heart."
[Sidenote: Telling the Time]
I interrupted this Discourse, saying to him that told me all, That this
Manner of Acting much resembled the ways of some People of our World;
and so pursued my Walk, which was so long that when I came back Dinner
had been ready Two Hours. They asked me, why I came so late? It is not
my Fault, said I to the Cook, who complained: I asked what it was a
Clock several times in the Street, but they made me no answer but by
opening their Mouths, shutting their Teeth, and turning their Faces
awry.
"How," cried all the Company, "did not you know by that, that they
shewed you what it was a Clock?" "Faith," said I, "they might have
held their great Noses in the Sun long enough, before I had understood
what they meant." "It's a Commodity," said they, "that saves them the
Trouble of a Watch; for with their Teeth they make so true a Dial, that
when they would tell any Body the Hour of the day, they do no more but
open their Lips, and the shadow of that Nose, falling upon their Teeth,
like the Gnomon of a Sun-Dial, makes the precise time.
"Now that you may know the reason, why all People in this Country have
great Noses; as soon as a Woman is brought to Bed the Midwife carries
the Child to the _Master of the Seminary_; and exactly at the years
end, the Skillful being assembled, if his Nose prove shorter than the
standing Measure, which an Alderman keeps, he is judged to be a _Flat
Nose_, and delivered over to be gelt. You'll ask me, no doubt, the
Reason of that Barbarous Custom, and how it comes to pass that we,
amongst whom Virginity is a Crime, should enjoyn Continence by force;
but know that we do so, because after Thirty Ages experience we have
observed, that a great Nose is the mark of a Witty, Courteous, Affable,
Generous and Liberal Man; and that a little Nose is a Sign of the
contrary:[5] Wherefore of _Flat Noses_ we make Eunuchs, because the
Republick had rather have no Children at all than Children like them."
[Sidenote: Of Noses]
He was still a speaking, when I saw a man come in stark Naked; I
presently sat down and put on my Hat to shew him Honour, for these
are the greatest Marks of Respect, that can be shew'd to any in
that Country. "The Kingdom," said he, "desires you would give the
Magistrates notice, before you return to your own World; because
a Mathematician hath just now undertaken before the Council, that
provided when you are returned home, you would make a certain Machine,
that he'll teach you how to do; he'll attract your Globe, and joyn it
to this."
During all this Discourse we went on with our Dinner; and as soon as we
rose from Table, we went to take the Air in the Garden; where taking
Occasion to speak of the Generation and Conception of things, he said
to me, "You must know, that the Earth, converting it self into a Tree,
from a Tree into a Hog, and from a Hog into a Man, is an Argument that
all things in Nature aspire to be Men; since that is the most perfect
Being, as being a Quintessence, and the best devised Mixture in the
World; which alone unites the Animal and Rational Life into one. None
but a Pedant will deny me this, when we see that a Plumb-Tree, by the
Heat of its Germ, as by a Mouth, sucks in and digests the Earth that's
about it; that a Hog devours the Fruit of this Tree, and converts it
into the Substance of it self; and that a Man feeding on that Hog,
reconcocts that dead Flesh, unites it to himself, and makes that Animal
to revive under a more Noble Species. So the Man whom you see, perhaps
threescore years ago was no more but a Tuft of Grass in my Garden;
which is the more probable, that the Opinion of the _Pythagorean
Metamorphosis_, which so many Great Men maintain, in all likelyhood has
only reached us to engage us into an Enquiry after the truth of it; as,
in reality, we have found that Matter, and all that has a Vegetative
or Sensitive Life, when once it hath attained to the period of its
Perfection, wheels about again and descends into its Inanity, that it
may return upon the Stage and Act the same Parts over and over." I went
down extreamly satisfyed to the Garden, and was beginning to rehearse
to my Companion what our Master had taught me; when the Physiognomist
came to conduct us to Supper, and afterwards to Rest.
[1] Cyrano's own work. It is full of interesting matters, including
a trip through the country of the Birds, which offers many points of
comparison with Gulliver's Voyage to the country of the Houyhnhms.
Cyrano finally, under the guidance of Campanella, arrives at the land
of the Philosophers of the Sun (compare Swift's Laputa), where he meets
Descartes and Gassendi, as Gulliver does in the Laputan province of
Glubbdubdrib (Voyage to Laputa, chap. viii.).
Cyrano's machine for reaching the sun, depicted in the illustration
opposite, is best described in the words of M. Rostand's play, and
completes our parallels with all the six means of scaling the sky
which Cyrano there enumerates: "Or else, I could have let the wind
into a cedar coffer, then ratified the imprisoned element by means of
cunningly adjusted burning glasses, and soared up with it."
[2] Probably Campanella; cf. p. 78, n. 1. On his "great work," _cf_.
also p. 79, n. 1. (see note 12 and 13 chap. VII.)
[3] Is this an anticipation of the phonograph?
[4] _Readings_. Cf. Sir Thomas Browne: "In the lecture of Holy
Scripture, their apprehensions are commonly confined unto the literal
sense of the text."
[5] _Cf_. M. Rostand's _Cyrano de Bergerac_, act I. scene iv.:
"_Cyrano_. A great nose is properly the index of an affable, kindly,
courteous man, witty, liberal, brave, such as I am! and such as you are
forevermore precluded from supposing yourself, deplorable rogue!"