Globular Figure but very large the Orifice whereof joyned exactly to and was enchaced in the hole I had made in the head The Vessel was purposely made with many Angles and in form of an Icosaedron to the end that every Facet being convex and concave my Boul might produce the effect of a Burning-Glass The Goaler and his Turn-keys never came up to my Chamber but they found me employed in this work but they were not at all surprised at it because of the many Mechanick Knacks which they met with in my Chamber whereof I told them I was the Inventor Amongst others there was a Wind-Clock an Artificial Eye wherewith one might see by night and a Sphere wherein all the Stars followed the regular motion that they have in the Heavens By these things they were perswaded that the Machine I was a making was a Curiosity of the like Nature and besides the Money wherewith Colignac greased their fists made them go fair and soft Now it was about nine in the Morning my Keeper was gone down and the Skie was hazy when I placed this Machine on the top of my Tower that 's to say on the openest place of my Terrass walk It shut so close that a grain of Air could not enter it except by the two openings and I had placed a little very light Board within for my self to sit upon Things being ordered in this manner I shut my self in and waited there almost an hour expecting what it might please Fortune to do with me When the Sun breaking out from under the Clouds began to shine upon my Machine that transparent Icosaedron which through its Facets received the Treasures of the Sun diffused by it's Orifice the light of them into my Cell and seeing that splendor grew fainter because of the Beams that could not reach me without many Refractions that tempered vigour of light converted my Case into a little Purple Firmament enameled with Gold. With extasie I admired the Beauty of such a mixture of Colours when all of a sudden I found my Bowels to move in the same manner as one finds them that is tossed in a swing I was about to open my Wicket to know the cause of that emotion but as I was stretching out my Hand through the hole of the Floor of my Box I perceived my Tower already very low beneath me and my little Castle in the Air pushing my Feet upwards in a trice shew'd me Thoulouse sinking into the Earth That Prodigy surprised me not at all by reason of so sudden a soaring but because of that dreadful transport of Humane Reason at the Success of a design which even frightned me in the Project The rest did not at all Startle me for I foresaw very well that the Vacuity that would happen in the Icosaedron by reason of the Sun-beams united by the concave Glasses would to fill up the space attract a great abundance of Air whereby my Box would be carried up and that proportionably as I mounted the rushing wind that should force it through the Hole could not rise to the roof but that furiously penetrating the Machine it must needs force it up on high Though my design was very cautiously projected yet I was mistaken in one circumstance because I was not confident enough of my Glasses I had prepared round my Box a little Sail easie to be turned with a Line that passed through the Orifice of the Vessel and which I held by the end I had fancied to my self that when I should be in the Air I might thus make use of as much wind as might serve to convey me to Colignac But in the twinkling of an Eye the Sun which beat perpendicularly and obliquely upon the Burning-Glasses of the Icosaedron hoisted me up so high that I lost sight of Thoulouse That made me let go my sheet and soon after I perceived through one of the Glasses which I had put in the four sides of the Machine my Sail flying in the Air and tossed to and fro by a Whirl-wind that had got within it I remember that in less than an hour I was got above the Middle Region and I soon perceived it because I saw it hail and rain below me It may be asked perhaps whence then came that wind without which my Box could not mount in a story in the Sky exempt from Meteors but provided I may have a hearing I 'll answer that Objection I have told you that the Sun which beat vigorously upon my Concave Glasses uniting his Rayes in the middle of the Vessel by his heat drove out the Air it was full of through the upper Conduit and that so the Vessel being void Nature which abhors Vacuity made it suck in by the opening below other Air to fill it again If it lost much it regained as much and so one is not to wonder that in a Region above the middle where the winds are I continued to mount up because the Aether became wind by the furious Rapidity wherewith it forced in to hinder a Vacuity and by consequence ought incessantly push up my Machine I felt little or no Hunger except when I passed that Middle Region of the Air for in reality the coldness of the Climate made me see it at a distance I say at a distance because a Bottle of Spirits which I carried always about me whereof I now and then took a dram kept it from approaching me During the rest of my Voyage I felt not the least touch of it on the contrary the more I advanced towards that enflamed World the stronger I found my self I selt my Face to be a little hotter and more gay than ordinary my Hands appeared to be of an agreable Vermilion Colour and I know not what Gladness mingled with my Blood which put me beyond my self I remember that reflecting once on this Adventure I reasoned thus with my self Hunger without doubt cannot reach me because that pain being but an Instinct of Nature which prompts Animals to repair by Nourishment what they lose of their Substance At present when she finds that the Sun by his pure continual and neighbouring Irradiation stocks me with more natural Heat than I lose she gives me no more that Desire which would be useless Nevertheless I objected against those Reasons that seeing the Temperament which maketh Life consisted not only in natural Heat but also in radical Moisture on which that heat is to feed as the Flame in the Oyl of a Lamp The sole Rays of that vital Fire could not make Life unless they encountered some unctuous Matter that should fix them But I presently overcame that difficulty when I had observed that in our Bodies the radical Moisture and natural Heat are but one and the self same thing for that which is called Moisture whether in Animals or in the Sun that great Soul of the World is but a flux of Sparkles more continuous because of their Mobility and that which we name Heat a
yet in the Cradle being but newly Born and its Young and smooth Face shews not the least Wrinkle The large Compasses it fetches in circling within it self demonstrate its unwillingness to leave its native Soyl And as if it had been ashamed to be caressed in presence of its Mother with a Murmuring it thrust back my hand that would have touched it The Beasts that came to drink there more rational than those of our World seemed surprised to see it day upon the Horizon whilst the Sun was with the Antipodes and durst not bend downwards upon the Brink for fear of falling into the Firmament I must confess to you That at the sight of so many Fine things I found my self tickled with these agreeable Twitches which they say the Embryo feels upon the infusion of its Soul My old Hair fell off and gave place for thicker and softer Locks I perceived my Youth revived my Face grow ruddy my natural Heat mingle gently again with my radical Moisture And in a word I grew younger again by at least Fourteen Years I had advanced half a League through a a Forest of Jessamines and Myrtles when I perceived something that stirred lying in the Shade It was a Youth whose Majestick Beauty forced me almost to Adoration He started up to hinder me crying It is not to me but to God that you owe these Humilities You see one answered I stunned with so many Wonders that I knew not what to admire most for coming from a World which without doubt you take for a Moon here I thought I had arrived in another which our Worldlings call a Moon also and behold I am in Paradice at the Feet of a God who will not be Adored Except the quality of a God replied he whose Creature I only am the rest you say is true This Land is the Moon which you see from your Globe and this place where you are is Now at that time Man's Imagination was so strong as not being as yet corrupted neither by Debauches the Crudity of Aliments nor the alterations of Diseases that being excited by a violent desire of coming to this Sanctuary and his Body becoming light through the heat of this Inspiration he was carried thither in the same manner as some Philosophers who having fixed their Imagination upon the contemplation of a certain Object have sprung up in the Air by Ravishments which you call Extasies The Woman who through the infirmity of her Sex was weaker and less hot could not without doubt have the Imagination strong enough to make the Intension of her Will prevail over the Ponderousness of her Matter but because there were very few The Sympathy which still united that half to its whole drew her towards him as he mounted up as the Amber attracts the Straw the Load-stone turns towards the North from whence it hath been taken and drew to him that part of himself as the Sea draws the Rivers which proceed from it When they arrived in your Earth they dwelt betwixt Mesopotamia and Arabia Some People knew them by the name of and others under that of Prometheus whom the Poets feigned to have stolen Fire from Heaven by reason of his Off-spring who were endowed with a Soul as perfect as his own So that to inhabit your World that Man left this destitute but the All-wise would not have so blessed an Habitation to remain without Inhabitants He suffered a few ages after that cloyed with the company of Men whose Innocence was corrupted had a desire to forsake them This person however thought no retreat secure enough from the Ambition of Men who already Murdered one another about the distribution of your World except that blessed Land which his Grand-Father had so often mentioned unto him and to which no Body had as yet found out the way But his Imagination supplied that for seeing he had observed that he filled Two large Vessels which he sealed Hermetically and fastened them under his Arm-pits So soon as the Smoak began to rise upwards and could not pierce through the Mettal it forced up the Vessels on high and with them also that Great Man. When he was got as high as the Moon and had cast his Eyes upon that lovely Garden a fit of almost supernatural Joy convinced him that that was the place where his Grandfather had heretofore lived He quickly untied the Vessels which he had girt like Wings about his Shoulders and did it so luckily that he was scarcely Four Fathom in the Air above the Moon when he set his Fins a going yet het was high enough still to have been hurt by the fall had it not been for the large skirts of his Gown which being swelled by the Wind gently upheld him till he set Foot on ground As for the two Vessels they mounted up to a certain place where they have continued And those are they which now adays you call the Balance I must now tell you the manner how I came hither I believe you have not forgot my name seeing it is not long since I told it you You shall know then that I lived on the agreeable Banks of one of the most renowned Rivers of your World where amongst my Books I lead a Life pleasant enough not to be lamented though it slipt away fast enough In the mean while the more I encreased in Knowledge the more I knew my Ignorance Our Learned Men never put me in mind of the famous Mada but the thoughts of his perfect Philosophy made me to Sigh I was despairing of being able to attain to it when one day after a long and profound Studying I took a piece of Load-stone about two Foot square which I put into a Furnace and then after it was well purged precipitated and dissolved I drew the calcined Attractive of it and reduced it into the size of about an ordinary Bowl After these Preparations I got a very light Machine of Iron made into which I went and when I was well seated in my place I threw this Magnetick Bowl as high as I could up into the Air. Now the Iron Machine which I had purposely made more massive in the middle than at the ends was presently elevated and in a just Poise because the middle received the greatest force of Attraction So then as I arrived at the place whither my Loadstone had attracted me I presently threw up my Bowl in the Air over me But said I interrupting him How came you to heave up your Bowl so streight over your Chariot that it never happened to be on one side of it That seems to me to be no wonder at all said he for the Loadstone being once thrown up in the Air drew the Iron streight towards it and so it was impossible that ever I should mount side-ways Nay more I can tell you that when I held the Bowl in my hand I was still mounting upwards because the Chariot flew always to the Load-stone which I held over it But the
World no more but the shadow of their Virtues he with his Companions had retreated to Temples and Solitudes In a word added he the People of your World became so dull and stupid that my Companions and I lost all the Pleasure that formerly we had had in instructing them Not but that you have heard Men talk of us for they called us Oracles Nymphs Geniuses Fairies Houshold-Gods Lemmes Larves Lamiers Hobgoblins Nayades Incubusses Shades Manes Visions and Apparitions We abandoned your World in the Reign of Augustus not long after I had appeared to Drusus the Son of Livia who waged War in Germany whom I forbid to proceed any farther It is not long since I came from thence a second time within these Hundred Years I had a Commission to Travel thither I roamed a great deal in Europe and conversed with some whom possibly you may have known One Day amongst others I appeared to Cardan as he was at his Study I taught him a great many things and he in acknowledgment promised me to inform Posterity of whom he had those Wonders which he intended to leave in writing There I saw Agrippa the Abbot Trithemius Doctor Faustus La Brosse Caesar and a certain Cabal of Young Men who are commonly called Rosacrucians or Knights of the Red-Cross whom I taught a great many Knacks and Secrets of Nature which without doubt have made them pass for great Magicians I knew Campanella also it was I that advised him whilst he was in the Inquisition at Rome to put his Face and Body into the usual Postures of those whose inside he needed to know that by the same frame of Body he might excite in himself the thoughts which the same scituation had raised in his Adversaries because by so doing he might better manage their Soul when he came to know it and at my desire he began a Book which we Entituled De Sensu Rerum I likewise haunted in France La Mothe le Vayer and Gassendus this last hath written as much like a Philosopher as the other lived I have known a great many more there whom your Age call Divines but all that I could find in them was a great deal of Babble and a great deal of Pride In fine since I past over from your Country into England to acquaint my self with the manners of its Inhabitants I met with a Man the shame of his Country for certainly it is a great shame for the Grandees of your States to know the virtue which in him has its Throne and not to adore him That I may give you an Abridgement of his Panegyrick he is all Wit all Heart and possesses all the Qualities of which one alone was heretofore sufficient to make an Heroe It was Tristan the Hermite The Truth is I must tell you when I perceived so exalted a Virtue I mistrusted it would not be taken notice of and therefore I endeavoured to make him accept Three Vials the first filled with the Oyl of Talk the other with the Powder of Projection and the third with Aurum Potabile but he refused them with a more generous Disdain than Diogenes did the Complements of Alexander In fine I can add nothing to the Elogy of that Great Man but that he is the only Poet the only Philosopher and the only Free-man amongst you These are the considerable Persons that I conversed with all the rest at least that I know are so far below Men that I have seen Beasts somewhat above them After all I am not a Native neither of this Country nor yours I was born in the Sun but because sometimes our World is over-stock'd with people by reason of the long Lives of the Inhabitants and that there is hardly any Wars or Diseases amongst them Our Magistrates from time to time send Colonies into the neigbouring Worlds For my own part I was commanded to go to yours being declared Chief of the Colony that accompanyed me I came since into this World for the Reasons I told you and that which makes me continue here is because the Men are great lovers of Truth have no Pedants among them that the Philosophers are never perswaded but by Reason and that the Authority of a Doctor or of a great number is not preferred before the Opinion of a Thresher in a Barn when he has right on his side In short none are reckoned Mad-men in this Country but Sophisters and Orators I asked him how they lived he made answer three or four thousand Years and thus went on Though the Inhabitants of the Sun be not so numerous as those of this World yet the Sun is many times over stocked because the People being of a hot constitution are stirring and ambitious and digest much You ought not to be surprised at what I tell you for though our Globe be very vast and yours little though we die not before the end of Four thousand Years and you at the end of Fifty yet know that as there are not so many Stones as clods of Earth nor so many Animals as Plants nor so many Men as Beasts just so there ought not to be so many Spirits as Men by reason of the difficulties that occur in the Generation of a perfect Creature I asked him if they were Bodies as we are He made answer That they were Bodies but not like us nor any thing else which we judged such because we call nothing a Body commonly but what we can touch That in short there was nothing in Nature but what was material and that though they themselves were so yet they were forced when they had a mind to appear to us to take Bodies proportionated to what our Senses are able to know and that without doubt that was the reason why many have taken the Stories that are told of them for the Delusions of a weak Fancy because they only appeared in the night time He told me withal That seeing they were necessitated to piece together the Bodies they were to make use of in great haste many times they had not leisure enough to render them the Objects of more Senses than one at a time sometimes of the Hearing as the Voices of Oracles sometimes of the Sight as the Fires and Visions sometimes of the Feeling as the Incubusses and that these Bodies being but Air condensed in such or such a manner the Light dispersed them by its heat in the same manner as it scatters a Mist So many fine things as he told me gave me the curiosity to question him about his Birth and Death if in the Country of the Sun the individual was procreated by the ways of Generation and if it died by the dissolution of its Constitution or the discomposure of its Organs Your senses replied he bear but too little proportion to the Explication of these Mysteries Ye Gentlemen imagine that whatsoever you cannot comprehend is spiritual or that it is not at all but that Consequence is absurd and it is an argument that
Lodgings here that I may lay hold on all Opportunities of Instructing him He said no more that he might give me the Liberty to speak if I had a mind to it and then made a sign that they should strip me of my disgraceful Ornaments in which I still glistered The Two Professors whom we expected entered just as I was undrest and we went to sit down to Table where the Cloth was laid and where we found the Youth he had mentioned to me fallen to already They made him a low Reverence and treated him with as much respect as a Slave does his Lord. I asked my Spirit the reason of that who made me answer that it was because of his Age seeing in that World the Aged rendered all kind of Respect and Difference to the Young and which is far more that the Parents obeyed their Children so soon as by the Judgment of the Senate of Philosophers they had attained to the Years of Discretion You are amazed continued he at a Custom so contrary to that of your Country but it is not all repugnant to Reason For say in your Conscience when a brisk young Man is at his Prime in Imagining Judging and Acting is not he fitter to govern a Family than a Decrepit piece of Threescore Years dull and doting whose Imagination is frozen under the Snow of Sixty Winters who follows no other Guide but what you call the Experience of happy Successes and yet are no more but the bare effects of Chance against all the Rules and Oeconomy of humane Prudence And as for Judgment he hath but little of that neither though the people of your World make it the Portion of Old Age But to undeceive them they must know That that which is called Prudence in an Old Man is no more but a panick Apprehension and a mad Fear of acting any thing where there is danger So that when he does not run a Risk wherein a Young Man hath lost himself it is not that he foresaw the Catastrophe but because he had not Fire enough to kindle those noble Flashes which make us dare Whereas the Boldness of that Young Man was as a pledge of the good Success of his design because the same Ardour that speeds and facilitates the execution thrust him upon the undertaking As for Execution I should wrong your Judgment if I endeavoured to convince it by proofs You know that Youth alone is proper for Action and were you on t fully perswaded of this tell me pray when you respect a Man of Courage is it not because he can revenge you on your Enemies or Oppressors And does any thing but meer Habit make you consider him when a Battalion of Seventy Januarys hath frozen his Blood and chilled all the noble Heats that youth is warmed with When you yeild to the Stronger is it not that he should be obliged to you for a Victory which you can Dispute him Why then should you submit to him when Laziness hath softened his Muscles weakened his Arteries evaporated his Spirits and suckt the Marrow out of his Bones If you adore a Woman is it not because of her Beauty Why should you then continue your Cringes when Old Age hath made her a Ghost which only represents a hideous Picture of Death In short When you loved a Witty Man it was because by the Quickness of his Apprehension he unravelled an intricate Affair seasoned the choicest Companies with his quaint Sayings and sounded the depth of Sciences with a single Thought and do you still honour him when his worn Organs disappoint his weak Noddle when he is become dull and uneasy in Company and when he looks like an aged Fairy rather than a rational Man Conclude then from thence Son that it is fitter Young Men should govern Families than Old and the rather that according to your own Principles Hercules Achilles Epaminondas Alexander and Caesar of whom most part died under Fourty Years of Age could have merited no Honours as being too Young in your account though their Youth was the only cause of their Famous Actions which a more advanced Age would have rendered ineffectual as wanting that Heat and Promptitude that rendered them so highly successful But you 'll tell me that all the Laws of your World do carefully enjoin the Respect that is due to Old Men That 's true but it is as true also that all who made Laws have been Old Men who feared that Young Men might justly have dispossessed them of the Authority they had usurped You owe nothing to your mortal Architector but your Body only your Soul comes from Heaven and Chance might have made your Father your Son as now you are his Nay are you sure he hath not hindered you from Inheriting a Crown Your Spirit left Heaven perhaps with a design to animate the King of the Romans in the Womb of the Emperess it casually encountered the Embryo of you by the way and it may be to shorten its journey went and lodged there No no God would never have razed your name out of the List of Mankind though your Father had died a Child But who knows whether you might not have been at this day the work of some valiant Captain that would have associated you to his Glory as well as to his Estate So that perhaps you are no more indebted to your Father for the life he hath given you than you would be to a Pirate who had put you in Chains because he feeds you Nay grant he had begot you a Prince or King a Present loses its merit when it is made without the Option of him who receives it Caesar was killed and so was Cassius too In the mean time Cassius was obliged to the Slave from whom he begg'd his Death but so was not Caesar to his Murderers who forced it upon him Did your Father consult your Will and Pleasure when he Embraced your Mother Did he ask you if you thought fit to see that Age or to wait for another if you would be satisfied to be the Son of a Sot or if you had the Ambition to spring from a Brave Man Alas you whom alone the business concerned were the only Person not consulted in the case May be then had you been shut up any where else than in the Womb of Nature's Ideas and had your Birth been in your own Opinion you would have said to the Parca my dear Lady take another Spindle in your Hand I have lain very long in the Bed of Nothing and I had rather continue an Hundred years still without a Being than to Be to day that I may repent of it to morrow However Be you must it was to no purpose for you to whimper and squall to be back again at the long and darksome House they drew you out of they made as if they believed you cryed for the Teat These are the Reasons at least some of them my Son why Parents bear so much respect to their Children
his Companions who by their Bodies stopt up the Pores of ours hath made way out for the waterish Matter which being extravasated and out of the Sphere of the Circulation of our Blood is corrupted It may be asked perhaps why a Nit or Hand-worm produces so many disorders But that 's easily conceived for as one Revolt begets another so these little People egg'd on by the bad Example of their Seditious Companions aspire severally to Soveraign Command and occasion every where War Slaughter and Famine But you 'll say some are far less subject to Itching than others and nevertheless all are equally inhabited by these little Animals since you say they are the Cause of our Life That 's true for we observe that Phlegmatick People are not so much given to scratching as the Cholerick because the People sympathizing with the Climate they inhabit are slower in a cold Body than those others that are heated by the temper of their Region who frisk and stir and cannot rest in a place Thus a Cholerick Man is more delicate than a Phlegmatick because being animated in many more Parts and the Soul being â—he Action of these little Beasts he is capable of Feeling in all places where those Cattle stir Whereas the Phlegmatick Man wanting sufficient Heat to put that stirring Mobile in Action is sensible but in a few places and to prove more plainly that universal Vermicularity you need but consider when you are wounded how the Blood runs to the Sore Your Doctors say that it is guided by provident Nature who would succour the parts debilitated which might make us conclude that besides the Soul and Mind there were a third intellectual Substance that had distinct Organs and Functions And therefore it seems to me far more Rational to say That these little Animals finding themselves attacked send to demand Assistance from their Neighbours and that Recruits flocking in from all Parts and the Country being too little to contain so many they either die of Hunger or are stifled in the Press That Mortality happens when the Boil is ripe for as an Argument that these Animals at that time are stifled the Flesh becomes insensible Now if Blood-letting which is many times ordered to divert the Fluxion do any good it is because much being lost by the Orifice which these little Animals laboured to stop they refuse their Allies Assistance having no more Forces than is enough to defend themselves at home Thus he concluded and when the second Philosopher perceived by all our Looks that we longed to hear him speak in his turn Men said he seeing you are curious to instruct this little Animal our like in somewhat of the Science which we profess I am now dictating a Treatise which I wish he might see because of the Light it gives to the Understanding of our Natural Philosophy it is an Explication of the Original of the World But seeing I am in haste to set my Bellows at work for to Morrow without delay the Town departs I hope you 'll excuse my want of time and I promise to satisfie you assoon as the Town is arrived at the place whither it is to go At these words the Landlord's Son called his Father to know what it was a Clock who having answered him that it was past Eight he asked him in a great Rage Why he did not give him notice at Seven according as he had commanded him that he knew well enough the Houses were to be gone to Morrow and that the City Walls were already upon their Journey Son replyed the good Man since you sate down to Table there is an Order published That no House shall budg before next day That 's all one answered the young Man you ought blindly to obey not to examine my Orders and only remember what I commanded you Quick go fetch me your Effigies So soon as it was brought he took hold on 't by the Arm and Whipt it a whole quarter of an Hour Away you ne'er be good continued he as a Punishment for your disobedience it 's my Will and Pleasure that this day you serve for a Laughing-stock to all People and therefore I command you not to walk but upon two Legs till Night The Poor Man went out in a very mournful Condition and the Young Man excused to us his Passion I had much ado though I bit my Lip to forbear Laughing at so pleasant a Punishment and therefore to take me off of this odd piece of Pedantick Discipline which without doubt would have made me burst out at last I prayed my Philosopher to tell me what he meant by that Journey of the Town he talked of and if the Houses and Walls Travelled Dear Stranger answered he we have some Ambulatory Towns and some Sedentary the Ambulatory as for instance this wherein now we are are Built in this manner The Architector as you see builds every Palace of a very light sort of Timber supported by four Wheels underneath in the thickness of one of the Walls he places ten large pair of Bellows whose Snouts pass in a Horizontal Line through the upper Story from one Pinacle to the other so that when Towns are to be removed from one place to another for according to the Seasons they change the Air every one spreads a great many large Sails upon one side of the House before the Noses of the Bellows then having wound up a Spring to make them play in less then Eight days time their Houses by the continual Puffs which these Windy Monsters blow are driven if one pleases an Hundred Leagues and more For those which we call Sendentary they are almost like to your Towers save that they are of Timber and that they have a Great and Strong Skrew or Vice in the Middle reaching from the Top to the Bottom whereby they may be hoisted up or let down as People please Now the Ground underneath is dugg as deep as the House is high and it is so ordered that so soon as the Frosts begin to chill the Air they may sink their Houses down under Ground where they keep themselves secure from the Severity of the Weather But assoon as the gentle Breathings of the Spring begin to soften and qualifie the Air they raise them above Ground again by means of the great Skrew I told you of I prayed him since he had shew'd me so much goodness and that the Town was not to part till next day that he would tell me somewhat of that Original of the World which he had mentioned not long before and I promise you said I that in requital so soon as I am got back to the Moon from whence my Governour pointing to my Spirit will tell you that I am come I 'll spread your Renown there by relating the rare things you shall tell me I perceive you Laugh at that promise because you do not believe that the Moon I speak of is a World and that I am an Inhabitant of
it but I can assure you also that the People of that World who take this only for a Moon will Laugh at me when I tell them that your Moon is a World and that there are Fields and Inhabitants in it He answered only with a smile and spake in this manner Since in Ascending to the Original of this great ALL we are forced to run into three or four Absurdities it is but reasonable we should follow the way wherein we may be least apt to stumble I say then that the first Obstacle that stops us short is the Eternity of the World and the minds of men not being able enough to conceive it and being no more able to imagine that this great Universe so lovely and so well ordered could have made it self they have had their recourse to Creation But like to him that would leap into a River for fear of being wet with Rain they save themselves out of the Clutches of a Dwarf by running into the Arms of a Giant and yet they are not safe for all that For that Eternity which they deny the World because they cannot comprehend it they attribute it to God as if he stood in need of that Present and as if it were easier to imagine it in the one than in the other for tell me pray was it ever yet conceived in Nature how Something can be made of Nothing Alas betwixt Nothing and an Atome only there are such infinite Disproportions that the sharpest Wit could never dive into them therefore to get out of this inextricable Labyrinth you must admit of a Matter Eternal with God But you 'l say to me grant I should allow you that Eternal Matter how could that Chaos dispose and order it self That 's the thing I am about to explain to you My little Animal after you have mentally divided every little Visible Body into an infinite many little invisible Bodies you must imagine That the infinite Universe consists only of these Atomes which are most solid most incorruptible and most simple whose Figures are partly Cubical partly Parallelograms partly Angular partly Round partly Sharp-pointed partly Pyramidal partly Six-cornered and partly Oval which act all severally according to their Various Figures And to shew that it is so put a very round Ivory Bowl upon a very smooth place and with the least touch you give it will be half a quarter of an hour before it rest Now I say that if it were perfectly round as some of the Atomes I speak of are and the Surface on which it is put perfectly smooth it would never rest If Art then be capable of inclining a Body to a perpetual Motion why may we not believe that Nature can do it It 's the same with the other Figures of which the Square require a perpetual Rest others an oblique Motion others a half Motion as Trepidation and the Round whose Nature is to move joyning a Pyramidal makes that perhaps which we call Fire because not only Fire is in continual Agitation but also because it easily penetrates Besides the Fire hath different effects according to the opening and quality of the Angles when the round Figure is joyned for Example The Fire of Pepper is another thing than the Fire of Sugar the Fire of Sugar differs from that of Cinnamon that of Cinnamon from that of the Clove and this from the Fire of a Faggot Now the Fire which is the Architect of the parts and whole of the Universe hath driven together and Congregated into an Oak the quantity of Figures which are necessary for the Composition of that Oak But you 'l say how could Hazard congregate into one place all the Figures that are necessary for the production of that Oak I answer That it is no wonder that Matter so disposed should form an Oak but the wonder would have been greater if the Matter being so disposed the Oak had not been produced had there been a few less of some Figures it would have been an Elm a Poplar a Willow and fewer of 'em still it would have been the Sensitive Plant an Oyster a Worm a Flie a Frog a Sparrow an Ape a Man. If three Dice being flung upon a Table there happen a Raffle of two or all a three a four and a five or two sixes and a third in the bottom would you say O strange that each Die should turn up such a chance when there were so many others A Sequence of three hath happened O strange Two sixes turned up and the bottom of the third O strange I am sure that being a man of Sense you 'l never make such Exclamations for since there is but a certain quantity of Numbers upon the Dice it 's impossible but some of them must turn up and you wonder after that how matter shuffled together Pell-Mell as Chance pleases should make a Man seeing so many things were necessary for the Construction of his Being You know not then that this Matter tending to the Fabrick of a Man hath been a Million of times stopt in it's Progress for forming sometimes a Stone sometimes Lead sometimes Coral sometimes a Flower sometimes a Comet and all because of more or less Figures that were required for the framing of a Man So that it is no greater wonder if amongst infinite Matters which incessantly change and stir some have hit upon the construction of the few Animals Vegetables and Minerals which we see than if in a Hundred Casts of the Dice one should throw a Raffle Nay indeed it is impossible that in this hurling of things nothing should be produced and yet this will be always admired by a Block-head who little knows how small a matter would have made it to have been otherwise When the great River of makes a Mill to Grind guides the Wheels of a Clock and the Brook of only runs and sometimes absconds you will not say that that River hath a great deal of Wit because you know that it hath met with things disposed for producing such rare Feats for had not the Mill stood in the way it would not have ground the Corn had it not met the Clock it would not have marked the Hours and if the little Rivulet I speak of had met with the same Opportunities it would have wrought the very same Miracles Just so it is with the Fire that moves of it self for finding Organs fit for the Act of Reasoning it Reasons when it finds only such as are proper for Sensation it Sensates and when such as are fit for Vegetation it Vegetates And to prove it is so put out but the Eyes of a Man the Fire of whose Soul makes him to see and he will cease to see just as our great Clock will leave off to make the Hours if the Movements of it be broken In fine these Primary and indivisible Atomes make a Circle whereon without difficulty move the most perplexed Difficulties of Natural Philosophy not so much as even the very
Operation of the Senses which no Body hitherto hath been able to conceive but I will easily explain by these little Bodies Let us begin with the Sight It deserves as being the most incomprehensible our first Essay It is performed then as I imagine when the Tunicles of the Eye whose Pores resemble those of Glass transmitting that fiery Dust which is called Visual Rays the same is stopt by some opacous Matter which makes it recoil and then meeting in its retreat the Image of the Object that forced it back and that Image being but an infinite number of little Bodies exhaled in an equal Superfice from the Object beheld it pursues it to our Eye You 'll not fail to Object I know that Glass is an Opacous Body and very Compact and that nevertheless instead of reflecting other Bodies it lets them pass through But I answer that the Pores of Glass are shaped in the same Figure as those Atomes are which pass through it and as a Wheat-Sieve is not proper for Sifting of Oats nor an Oat-Sieve to Sift Wheat so a Box of Deal-Board though it be thin and lets a sound go through it is impenetrable to the Sight and a piece of Chrystal though transparent and pervious to the Eye is not penetrable to the Touch. I could not here forbear to interrupt him A great Poet and Philosopher of our World said I hath after Epicurus and Democritus spoken of these little Bodies in the same manner almost as you do and therefore you don't at all surprise me by that Discourse Only tell me I pray as you proceed how according to your Principles you 'll explain to me the manner of drawing your Picture in a Looking-Glass That 's very easie replied he for imagine with your self that those Fires of our Eyes having passed through the Glass and meeting behind it an Opacous Body that reverberates them they come back the way they went and finding those little Bodies marching in equal Superfices upon the Glass they repel them to our Eyes and our Imagination hotter than the other Faculties of our Soul attracts the more subtile wherewith it draws our Picture in little It is as easie to conceive the Act of Hearing and for Brevities sake let us only consider it in the Harmony of a Lute touched by the Hand of a Master You 'll ask me How can it be that I perceive at so great a distance a thing which I do not see Does there a Sponge go out of my Ears that drinks up that Musick and brings it back with it again Or does the Player beget in my Head another little Musician with another little Lute who has Orders like an Eccho to sing over to me the same Airs No But that Miracle proceeds from this that the String touched striking those little Bodies of which the Air is composed drives it gently into my Brain with those little Corporeal Nothings that sweetly pierce into it and according as the String is stretched the Sound is high because it more vigorously drives the Atomes and the Organ being thus penetrated furnisheth the Fancy wherewith to make a Representation if too little then our Memory not having as yet finished its Image we are forced to repeat the same sound to it again to the end it may take enough of Materials which for Instance the Measures of a Saraband furnish it with for finishing the Picture of that Saraband but that Operation is nothing near so wonderful as those others which by the help of the same Organ excite us sometimes to Joy sometimes to Anger And this happens when in that motion these little Bodies meet with other little Bodies within us moving in the same manner or whose Figure renders them susceptible of the same Agitation for then these New-comers stir up their Landlords to move as they do thus when a violent Air meets with the Fire of our Blood it inclines it to the same Motion and animates it to a Sally which is the thing we call Heat of Courage if the Sound be softer and have only force enough to raise a less Flame in greater Agitation by leading it along the Nerves Membranes and through the interstices of our Flesh it excites that Tickling which is called Joy And so it happens in the Ebullition of the other Passions according as these little Bodies are more or less violently tossed upon us according to the Motion they receive by the rencounter of other Agitations and according as they find Dispositions in us for motion So much for Hearing Now I think the Demonstration of Touching will be every whit as easie if we conceive that out of all palpable Matter there is a perpetual Emission of little Bodies and that the more we touch them the more evaporate because we press them out of the Subject it self as Water out of a Sponge when we squeez it The Hard make a report to the Organ of their Hardness the Soft of their Softness the Rough c. And that this is so we are not so quaint in Feeling with Hands used to Labour because of the Thickness of the Skin which being neither porous nor animated with difficulty transmits the Evaporations of Matter Some perhaps may desire to know where the Organ of Touching has its Residence For my part I think it is spread over all the Surface of the Body seeing in all parts it feels Yet I imagine that the nearer the Member wherewith we touch be to the Head the sooner we distinguish which Experience convinces us of when with shut Eyes we handle any thing for then we 'll more easily guess what it is and if on the contrary we feel it with our hinder Feet it will be harder for us to know it And the Reason is because our Skin being all over perforated our Nerves which are of no compacter Matter lose by the way a great many of those little Atomes through the little Holes of their Contexture before they reach the Brain which is their Journeys end It remains that I speak of the Smelling and Tasting Pray tell me when I taste a Fruit is it not because the Heat of my Mouth melts it Confess to me then that there being Salts in a Pear and that they being separated by Dissolution into little Bodies of a different Figure from those which make the Taste of an Apple they must needs pierce our Pallate in a very different manner Just so as the thrust of a Pike that passes through me is not like the Wound which a Pistol-Bullet makes me feel with a sudden start and as that Pistol-Bullet makes me suffer another sort of Pain than that of a Slug of Steel I have nothing to say as to the Smelling seeing the Philosophers themselves confess that it is performed by a continual Emission of little Bodies Now upon the same Principle will I explain to you the Creation Harmony and Influence of the Celestial Globes with the immutable Variety of Meteors He was about to proceed but
covenanted with our Body that as soon as he should receive a prick with a Sword in the Heart a Bullet in the Brain or a Musket-shot through the Chest she should pack up and be gone and if that Soul were Spiritual and of her self so Rational that being separated from our Mass she understood as well as when Clothed with a Body why cannot Blind Men born with all the fair advantages of that intellectual Soul imagine what it is to see Is it because they are not as yet deprived of Sight by the Death of all their Senses How I cannot then make use of my Right Hand because I have a Left. And in fine to make a just comparison which will overthrow all that you have said I shall only alledge to you a Painter who cannot work without his Pencil And I 'll tell you that it is just so with the Soul when she wants the use of the Senses O yes but added he In the mean time they 'l have this Soul which can only act imperfectly because of the loss of one of her Tools in the course of Life to be able then to work to Perfection when after our death she hath lost them all If they tell me over and over again that she needeth not these Instruments for performing her Functions I 'll tell them e'en so That then all the Blind about the Streets ought to be Whipt at a Carts-Arse for playing the Counterfeits in pretending not to See a bit He would have gone on in such impertinent Arguments had not I stopt his Mouth by desiring him to forbear as he did for fear of a quarrel for he perceived I began to be in a heat So that he departed and left me admiring the People of that World amongst whom even the meanest have Naturally so much Wit whereas those of ours have so little and yet so dearly bought At length my Love for my Country took me off of the desire and thoughts I had of staying there I minded nothing now but to be gone but I saw so much impossibility in the matter that it made me quite peevish and melancholick My Spirit observed it and having asked me What was the reason that my Humor was so much altered I frankly told him the Cause of my Melancholy but he made me such fair Promises concerning my Return that I relied wholly upon him I acquainted the Council with my design who sent for me and made me take an Oath that I should relate in our World all that I had seen in that My Pass ports then were expeded and my Spirit having made necessary Provisions for so long a Voyage asked me What part of my Country I desired to light in I told him that since most of the Rich Youths of Paris once in their life time made a Journey to Rome imagining atter that that there remained no more worth the doing or seeing I prayed him to be so good as to let me imitate them But withal said I in what Machine shall we perform the Voyage and what Orders do you think the Mathematician who talked t'other day of joyning this Globe to ours will give me As to the Mathematician said he let that be no hinderance to you for he is a Man who promises much and performs little or nothing And as to the Machine that 's to carry you back it shall be the same which brought you to Court. How said I will the Air become as solid as the Earth to bear your steps I cannot believe that And it is strange replied he that you should believe and not believe Pray why should the Witches of your World who march in the Air and conduct whole Armies of Hail Snow Rain and other Meteors from one Province into another have more Power than we Pray have a little better opinion of me than to think I would impose upon you The truth is said I I have received so many good Offices from you as well as Socrates and the rest for whom you have so great kindness that I dare trust my self in your hands as now I do resigning my self heartily up to you I had no sooner said the word but he rose like a Whirl-wind and holding me between his Arms without the least Uneasiness he made me pass that vast space which Astronomers reckon betwixt the Moon and us in a day and a halfs time which convinced me that they tell a Lye who say that a Mill-stone would be Three Hundred Threescore and I know not how many years more in falling from Heaven since I was so short a while in dropping down from the Globe of the Moon upon this At length about the beginning of the Second day I perceived I was drawing near our World since I could already distinguish Europe from Africa and both from Asia when I smelt Brimstone which I saw steaming out of a very high Mountain that incommoded me so much that I fainted away upon it I cannot tell what befel me afterwards but coming to my self again I found I was amongst Briers on the side of a Hill amidst some Shepherds who spake Italian I knew not what was become of my Spirit and I asked the Shepherds if they had not seen him At that word they made the sign of the Cross and looked upon me as if I had been a Devil my self But when I told them that I was a Christian and that I begg'd the Charity of them that they would lead me to some place where I might take a little rest they conducted me into a Village about a Mile off where no sooner was I come but all the Dogs of the place from the least Cur to the biggest Mastiff flew upon me and had torn me to pieces if I had not found a House wherein I saved my self But that hindered them not to continue their Barking and Bawling so that the Master of the House began to look upon me with an Evil Eye and really I think as people are very apprehensive when Accidents which they look upon to be ominous happen that man could have delivered me up as a Prey to these accursed Beasts had not I be thought my self that that which madded them so much at me was the World from whence I came because being accustomed to bark at the Moon they smelt I was come from thence by the scent of my Cloaths which stuck to me as a Sea-smell hangs about those who have been long on Ship-board for sometime after they come ashore To Air my self then I lay three or four hours in the Sun upon a Terrass-walk and being afterwards come down the Dogs who smelt no more that influence which had made me their Enemy left barking and peaceably went to their several homes Next day I parted for Rome where I saw the ruins of the Triumphs of some great Men as well as of Ages I admired those lovely Relicks and the Repairs of some of them made by the Modern At length having stayed there a fortnight in Company of
not produce but a little Wind hardly able to support it I never reflected upon the Malicious Capriciousness of Fortune which always so obstinatly opposed the Success of my undertaking but I wonder my brains did not turn But listen to a Miracle which future Ages will hardly be inclined to believe Being shut up in a Box as clear as day that I had just lost sight of and my flight flagging so that I had much ado not to fall in a word being in a condition that all that 's contained in the great Fabrick of the World was unable to assist me I found my self reduced to the Period of extream Misfortune Nevertheless as when we are expiring we find an internal Impulse in us to embrace those who have given us a Being I lifted up my Eyes to the Sun our common Father That ardour of Will not only supported my Body but also raised it up towards the thing which it aspired to embrace My Body pushed forwards my Box and in that manner I continued my Vovage So soon as I perceived this more intensly than ever I plyed all the faculties of my Soul to raise my Imagination towards that which attracted me but my head being loaded with my Shed against the upper-part whereof the Efforts of my Will pusht it whether I would or not that did so incommode me that at length so much weight forced me to grope for the place of its invisible Door By good fortune I found it and having opened it threw my self out But that natural Apprehension of falling which all Animals have when they find nothing to support them made me briskly stretch forth my Arm that I might take hold of somewhat I had no other Guide but Nature which stands not upon Reasoning and therefore Fortune her Enemy maliciously forced my hand upon the Capital of Chrystal Alas what Thunder-clap to my Ears was the sound of the Icosaedron which to my hearing broke in pieces Such a Disorder Misfortune and Fright are beyond all expressions The Glasses attracted no more Air for no more Vacuity was made the Air became no more wind by its hastening to fill it and the wind ceased to carry my Box on high In short immediately after that wrack I saw it long a falling through those vast plains of the World. It recontracted in the same Region the dark Opacity which it had exhaled in respect that the energetick Vertue of the Light ceasing in that place it greedily vnited again to the obscure Thickness which was in a manner essential to it in the same manner as Spirits long after their Separation have been seen to come in search of their Bodies and that they might rejoyn them to wander for the space of an hundred years about their Graves I fancy it lost in this manner its Transparency for I have seen it since in Poland in the same condition it was in when first I entered it Now I have been informed that it fell under the Equinoctial Line in the Kingdom of Borneo that a Portuguess Merchant bought it of the Islander that found it and that from hand to hand it fell into the possession of that Polish Engineer who makes use of it at present to fly with Thus then hanging in the open space of the Heavens and terrified already by the Death which my fall threatned me with I turned as I told you my sad eyes towards the Sun My Sight carried my thought thither and my Looks being fixed upon his Globe marked out a way which my Will followed to transport my Body to the same place That vigorous Launching out of my Soul will not be incomprehensible to any that will but consider the simple Efforts of our Will as for Instance It is very well known that when I have a mind to leap my Will being excited by my Fancy raises the whole Microcosm and endeavours to transport it to the mark that it proposed to it self If it attain not always to it it 's because that the Universal Principles of Nature prevail over the Particullar and that the Power of Willing being particular to sensitive Beings and that of falling to the Center proper to all things materâ—… in general my Leap is forced to cease so soon as the Mass of my Body having overcome the Insolence of the Will that surprized it draws near the Point to which it tends I shall wave what else happened to me during the rest of my Voyage lest I should be as long in relating as I was in making it I 'll only tell you in general that at the end of 22. Months I at length happily arrived at the great plains of Day That Land looks like flakes of burning Snow so luminous it is nevertheless it is a thing pretty incredible that I could never comprehend after that my Box fell whether I mounted up or descended towards the Sun. I only remember when I arrived there that I walkt lightly I toucht only the Ground in a point and I often rowled like a Bowl finding it alike commodious to walk either upon my Head or Feet Though sometimes my Feet were towards Heaven and my Shoulders towards the Earth yet in that posture I found my self as naturally situated as if my Feet had been towards the Earth and my Shoulders towards Heaven Upon what part soever of my Body I placed my self whether upon my Belly or Back on Elbow or Ear I found my self standing By that I knew that the Sun is a World which hath no Center and that as I was far enough from the active Sphere of ours and of all the others which I met so by consequence it was impossible that I should still be ponderous seeing Weight is nothing else but an Attraction of the Center within the Sphere of its Activity The Respect wherewith I printed my steps upon that Luminous Plain suspended for some time the eager Desire I had to advance on my Journey I was all ashamed to walk upon the Day Nay and my astonished Body desiring to relie upon mine Eyes and that transparent Ground which they pierced not being able to support them my Instinct in spight of me now become Master of my thought hurried it into the Abyss of a bottomless Light. My Reason nevertheless by degrees undeceived my Instinct I walked confidently and without trembling upon the Plain and directed my steps so boldly that if Men could have perceived me from their World they would have taken me for some Power marching upon the Clouds Having as I think travelled about fifteen days time I came into a Country of the Sun not so resplendent as those I had left I found my self transported with Joy and I imagined that undoubtedly that Joy proceeded from a secret Sympathy which my Being still retained with its Opacity Nevertheless the knowledge I had of this made me not desist from my Enterprise for then I was like to those sleepy Old men who tho' they know that sleep is hurtful to them and that they
were consumed by the Fire the Rain that fell calcined their Ashes so that the congealed Juyce was petrified in the same manner as the sap of burnt Fern is changed into Glass Hence it is that in all Climates of the Earth two Metallick Stones are formed of the ashes of those Twin-Trees that now adays are called the Iron and Load-stone which because of the Sympathy of the Fruits of Pylades and Orestes the virtue whereof they have still retained always aspire to embrace one another and observe that if the piece of the Load-stone be the bigger it attracts the Iron or if the piece of Iron exceed in quantity it attracts the Load-stone as formerly it happened in the miraculous Effects of the Apples of Pylades and Orestes of the one of which whosoever had eaten most was the most beloved of him who had eaten the other Now Iron feeds so visibly upon the Loadstone and the Load-stone upon the Iron that the one rusts and the other loses its force unless they be put together for the reparation of what substance they lose Have you never observed a piece of Loadstone laid upon the File-dust of Iron you 'll see the Load-stone cover it self in a trice with these metallick Atoms and the amorous Heat wherewith they cling together is so sudden and impatient that when they have embraced one another in all places you would say that there is not one grain of the Load-stone that would not kiss a grain of the Iron nor a grain of the Iron that would not be united to a grain of the Load-stone for the Iron or Load-stone being separated continually send out from their Mass some most agile little Bodies in quest of that which they love But when they have found that having got their desire every one puts an end to their Progress and the Load-stone takes its rest in possessing the Iron as the Iron wholly contents its self in the enjoyment of the Load-stone From the Sap then of these two Trees the humour which hath given Being to those two Metals has been derived Before that they were unknown and if you have a mind to know of what matter Arms were made for the War Sampson armed himself against the Philistines with the Jaw-bone of an Ass Jupiter King of Crete with Artificial Fire-works whereby he imitated the Thunder in subduing of his Enemies and in a word Hercules with a Club overcame Tyrants and crushed Monsters But these two Metals have another more specifick relation to our two Trees You must know that though that Couple of Life-less Lovers incline towards the Pole yet they never tend thither but in Company and I 'll tell you the Reason of it after I have discoursed to you a little about the Poles The Poles are the Mouths of Heaven by which it sucks up again the Light Heat and Influences that it hath shed upon the Earth Otherwise if all the Treasures of the Sun remounted not to their source all its Brightness being only a dust of inflamed Atoms which are detached from its Globe it would have been long ago extinguished and shone no more Or that abundance of little igneous Bodies heaping together upon the Earth when they could not get out again would have already consumed it There must then as I have told you be breathing Holes in Heaven by which the Repletions of the Earth are discharged and others by which Heaven may repair its losses to the end the eternal Circulation of these little bodies of Life may successively pass through all the Globes of this vast Universe Now the breathing holes of Heaven are the Poles through which it retakes the Souls of all that die in the other Worlds without it and all the Stars are its Mouths and the Pores through which again it exhales its Spirits But to shew you that this is not so new an Imagination when your Ancient Poets to whom Phylosophy discovered the most hidden secrets of Nature spake of an Hero whose Soul they would have said was gone to live with the Gods they expressed it in this manner He is gone up to the Pole he is seated on the Pole he hath past through the Pole because they knew that the Poles where the only Avenues through which Heaven receives again all that is gone out from thence If the Authority of these great Men be not sufficient to convince you the Experience of your modern Navigators who have sailed towards the North may perhaps give you satisfaction They have found that the nearer they drew towards the Bear during the Six Months of Night when it was thought that Climate lay under a black Darkness a great Light cleared the Horizon which could not proceed but from the Pole because the more one drew near to it and by consequence removed from the Sun that Light became greater It is very probable then that it proceeds from the Beams of day and a great heap of Souls which as you know are only made of Luminous Atoms that are returning to Heaven by their wonted Doors This being so it is no difficult matter to comprehend wherefore the Iron rubbed with the Load-stone or the Load-stone rubbed with the Iron turns towards the Pole for they being an Extract of the Body of Pylades and Orestes and having still retained the Inclinations of the two Trees as the two Trees have those of the Two Lovers they ought to aspire to be rejoined to their Soul and therefore they skip towards the Pole through which they perceive that it hath mounted but with this Reserve still that the Iron never turns that way unless it be touched by the Load-stone nor the Load-stone unless it be rubbed with the Iron by reason that the Iron will not quit a World leaving his Friend the Load-stone behind nor the Load-stone leaving its Friend the Iron and that the one cannot resolve to perform this Voyage without the other This voice as I think was about to go on with another Discourse but the noise of a great Alarm that happened hindred it All the Forest in an uproar resounded with nothing but these Words The Plague the Plague stand upon your Guard look about ye I adjured the Tree that had so long entertained me in discourse to tell me the Cause of so great a Disorder Friend said he to me we are not in these quarters sufficiently as yet informed of all the Particulars of the Evil I 'll only tell you in Three Words that the Plague wherewith we are threatned is that which Men call a Fire we may very well call it so because amongst us there is no such contagious Distemper The remedy we are about to use against it is to force our breath and blow altogether towards the place from whence the Inflamation comes to the end we may drive back that bad Air. I believe that burning Feaver is occasioned us by a fiery Beast that for some days has been roaming about our Woods for seeing they never go without Fire and
might be made use of to torment it I was by good luck in the Province of the Trees when the disorders of the Salamander began those great Thunder-claps that you must have heard as well as I which guided me to their Field of Battel whither you came soon after but I was upon my return to the Province of Philosophers What said I to him are there Philosophers also then in the Sun Are there replied the good Man yes sure and they are the chief Inhabitants of the Sun and the very same whom Fame in your World doth celebrate with so full Mouth You may shortly converse with them provided you have the Courage to follow me for before Three Days be over I hope to be in their City I don't think you can possibly perceive the manner how these great Spirits are transported hither No certainly cried I for could so many others been hitherto so blind as not to find the way Or that after our Death we fall into the Hands of an Examiner of Spirits who according to our Capacity grants or refuses us our freedom in the Sun Nothing of that replied the old Man It 's by a Principle of Similitude that Souls attain to this mass of Light for this World is made up of nothing else but the Spirits of every thing that dies in the Circumambient Orbs such as Mercury Venus the Earth Mars Jupiter and Saturn Thus so soon as a Plant a Beast or a Man expire their Souls without extinction mount to its Sphere just as you see the flame of a Candle points up thither in spight of the Tallow that holds it by the Feet Now all these Souls being united to the source of Day and purged from the gross matter that pestered them exert far more noble Functions than those of Growing Feeling and Reasoning for they are employed in making the Blood and vital Spirits of the Sun that great and perfect Animal And therefore also you ought not to doubt but that the Sun acts by the Spirit more perfectly far than you do since it is by the heat of a Million of these Souls rectified whereof his own is an Elixir that he knows the secret of Life that he influences the matter of your Worlds with the power of Generation and that he makes Bodies sensible that they have a Being and in short that he renders himself and all things else visible Now it remains that I should clear to you why the Souls of Philosopers do not essentially join to the mass of the Sun as those of other Men. There are three orders of Spirits in all the Planets that is to say in the little Worlds which move about this The grosser serve only to repair the Plumpness of the Sun the subtile insinuate into the place of his Beams but those of Philosophers having contracted no Impurity in their exile arrive entire in the Sphere of Day to become its Inhabitants Now they are not as others a constituent part of its Mass because the matter that composes them in the point of their Generation is so exactly mixed that nothing can again dissolve it Like to that which forms Gold Diamonds and the Stars whereof all the parts are so closely interwoven and knit together that the strongest Dissolvent cannot separate the Mixture Now these Souls of Philsophers are so much in regard of other Souls what Gold Diamonds and the Stars are in respect of other Bodies that Epicurus in the Sun is the same Epicurus who heretofore lived in the Earth The pleasure which I received in hearing that great Man shortned my way and I often started curious Questions about which I importuned his opinion that I might be thereby instructed And really I never found so great goodness in any Man as in him for though by reason of the Agility of his Substance he might in a few Days have arrived in the Kingdom of Philosophers yet he chose rather to take the trouble of Jogging on with me than to leave me amidst vast Solitudes Nevertheless he was in great haste for I remember that having asked him why he returned before he had surveyed all the Regions of that great world He made answer that his Impatience to see one of his Friends who was newly arrived obliged him to break off his Travels I found by the sequel of his discourse that his Friend was that famous Philosopher of our time Monsieur des Cartes and that he made all haste to meet him He made answer also when I asked him what he thought of his natural Philosophy that it ought to be read with the same respect as Men listen to Oracles Not added he but that the Science of natural things hath need as other Sciences have to prepossess our Judgment with Axioms which it proves not But the Principles of his are simple and so natural that being once supposed there is nothing that more necessarily satisfies all Appearances I could not forbear to interrupt him in this place But methinks said I to him that that Philosopher hath always impugned the Vacuum And nevertheless though he was an Epicurean yet that he might have the honour of giving a Beginning to the Principles of Epicurus that 's to say to Atomes he hath supposed for the beginning of things a Chaos of matter throughly solid which God divided into an innumerable number of little Squares to every one of which he gave opposite Motions Now he will have these Cubes by rubbing one against another to have crumbled themselves into pieces of all sorts of Figures But how can he conceive that these square Peices could begin to turn separately without granting a Vacuity betwixt their Angles Must there not be necessarily a Void in the spaces which the Angles of these Squares were forced to leave that they might move And then could these Squares which only possessed a certain Extent before they turned move in a Circle unless in their Circumference they had possessed as much more Geometry tells us That that cannot be one half then of that space ought necessarily to have remained void seeing there were as yet no Atomes to fill it My Philosopher made me answer That Monsieur des Cartes himself would give us a reason for that and that being an obliging Gentleman as well as a Philosopher he would certainly be overjoyed to find a mortal Man in this World that he might clear him of an Hundred Doubts which his unexpected Death had constrained him to leave in the Earth that now he had forsaken That he did not think though there was any great difficulty to answer that objection according to his Principles which I had not examined but as far as the weakness of my Wit could permit me because said he the Works of that great Man are so full and so subtile that to understand them there is need of the attention of the Soul of a true and consummated Philosopher Which is the reason that there is not a Philosopher in the Sun but has a
Concourse of Atomes of Fire which appear looser because of their interruption but though the radical Moisture and natural Heat were two distinct things yet it is certain that the Moisture would not be necessary for living so near the Sun for seeing that Humidity in living Creatures serves only to detain the heat which would exhale too fast and could not be restored so soon I was in no danger of wanting it in a Region whereof these little Bodies of Flame which constitute Life more of it was united to my Being then separated from it There 's another thing that may be wondered at and that is why the approaches of that burning Globe consumed me not for I was already got almost within the full Activity of its sphere but I have a reason at hand for that To speak properly it is not the Fire it self that burns but a grosser matter tossed to and fro by the dartings out of it's moveable Nature and that Powder of little Sparks which I call Fire moveable of it self owes possibly all it's Action to the Roundness of it's Atomes for they tickle warm or burn according to the Figure of the Bodies which they draw along with them So Straw sends not forth so burning a Flame as Wood does Wood burns with less violence than Iron and the Reason of this is because the Fire of Iron of Wood and of Straw though in it self it be the same Fire yet it acts variously according to the diversity of the Bodys that it moves And therefore in Straw the Fire that spiritual Dust as it were being entangled only with a soft Body is less corrosive In Wood whose substance is more compact it enters more hardly and in Iron the Mass whereof is almost wholely solid and knit together by Angular Particles it penetrates and consumes in a trice whatsoever it touches These Observations being also familiar no Body will wonder that I approached the Sun without being burnt seeing that which burns is not the Fire but the matter to which it is joyned and that the Fire of the Sun cannot be mingled with any matter Don't we even find by experience that Joy which is a Fire because it only moves an Aërial Blood whose subtile Particles beat gently against the Membranes of our Flesh tickles and produces I know not what blind Pleasure and that that Pleasure or rather that first Progress of Pain advances not so far as to threaten the Animal with Death but only to make him sensible that Desire causes a Motion in our Spirits which we call Joy. Not but that a Feaver though it have quite contrary Symptoms is a Fire as well as Joy but it is a Fire wrapped up in a Body of Horned Particles such as the Atra bilis or Melancholy which darting out his hooked Points in all parts where its movable Nature carries it pierces cuts excoriates and by that violent Agitation produces that which is called the Heat of a Feaver but this Concatenation of Proofs is useless the most vulgar Experiments are sufficient to convince the obstinate I have no time to lose I must look to my self I am like Phaeton in the middle of a Career where I cannot turn back again and wherein if I make but one false step all Nature is not able to save me I perceived most distinctly what heretofore I suspected when I went up to the Moon that indeed it is the Earth that moves from East to West about the Sun and not the Sun about it For I saw next to France the Foot of the Boot of Italy then the Mediterranean-Sea then Greece then the Bosphorus the Euxin-Sea Persia the Indies China and at length Japan pass successively over against the hole of my Lodging and some Hours after my Elevation all the South-Sea having turned gave way to the Continent of America I clearly distinguished all these Revolutions nay and I remember that a long time after I saw Europe mount once more again upon the Scene but I could not now observe the separate States thereof because I was exalted too high I left by the way sometimes on the right and sometimes on the left several Earths like ours where if I touched the least upon the Spheres of their Activity I found my self incline side-ways However the rapid force of my soaring Flight surmounted the Power of these Attractions I coasted by the Moon which at that time was got betwixt the Sun and the Earth and I left Venus on my right-hand But now I am speaking of that Star the old Astronomy hath so long preached that the Planets are Stars which turn round the Earth that the Modern dares not make a doubt of it And nevertheless I observed that during the whole time that Venus appeared on this side the Sun about which she turns I saw her always Crescent but finishing her course I observed that as she past gradually behind him the Horns drew nearer and her Black Belly was guilt again Now this vicissitude of Light and Darkness makes it very evident That the Planets are like the Moon and the Earth Globes without Light capable only to reflect that which they borrow The Truth is as I still mounted I made the same Observation of Mercury I observed besides that all these Worlds have other little Worlds also which move about them Musing afterwards on the Causes of the Construction of this great Universe I imagined that at the clearing of the Chaos after that God had created the Matter Bodies of the like Nature joined together by that Principle of unaccountable Love by which we see by Experience that every thing covets its like Particles formed after a certain Fashion assembled together and that made Air Others again to which the shape gave a circular Motion by clinging fast together composed the Globes that are called Stars which not only because of that Inclination of whirling about upon their Poles to which their Figure determines them ought to truss together into a Round as we see them but ought in the same manner as they evaporated from the Mass and kept a Parallel March in their flight make the lesser Orbs which they met in the Sphere of their Activity to turn And therefore Mercury Venus the Earth Mars Jupiter and Saturn have been constrained to whirlegig it and move both at once about the Sun. Not but that one may imagine that heretofore all those other Globes have been Suns since the Earth still retains in spight of its present Extinction heat enough to make the Moon turn about it by the circular motion of the Bodies which are detach'd from its Mass and that Jupiter retains enough to make four to turn But these Suns by the length of time have sustained so considerable a loss of Light and Fire by the continual Emission of the little Bodies which make Heat and Light that they remain no more but a cold dark and almost unactive Caput Mortuum Nay we discover that these spots which are in the