there are a Million of things perhaps in the Universe that would require a Million of different Organs in you to understand them For instance I by my Senses know the cause of the Sympathy that is betwixt the Loadstone and the Pole of the ebbing and flowing of the Sea and what becomes of the Animal after Death you cannot reach these high Conceptions but by Faith because they are Secrets above the power of your Intellects no more than a Blind-man can judge of the beauties of a Land-skip the Colours of a Picture or the streaks of a Rain-bow or at best he will fancy them to besomewhat palpable to be like Eating a Sound or a pleasant Smell Even so should I attempt to explain to you what I perceive by the Senses which you want you would represent it to your self as somewhat that may be Heard Seen Felt Smelt or Tasted and yet it is no such thing He was gone on so far in his Discourse when my Juggler perceived that the Company began to be weary of my Gibberish that they understood not and which they took to be an inarticulated Grunting He therefore fell to pulling my Rope afresh to make me leap and skip till the Spectators having had their Belly-fulls of Laughing affirmed that I had almost as much Wit as the Beasts of their Country and so broke up Thus all the comfort I had during the misery of my hard Usage were the visits of this officious Spirit for you may judge what conversation I could have with these that came to see me since besides that they only took me for an Animal in the highest class of the Category of Bruits I neither understood their Language nor they mine For you must know that there are but two Idioms in use in that Country one for the Grandees and another for the People in general That of the great ones is no more but various inarticulate Tones much like to our Musick when the Words are not added to the Air and in reality it is an Invention both very useful and pleasant for when they are weary of talking or disdain to prostitute their Throats to that Office they take either a Lute or some other Instrument whereby they communicate their Thoughts as well as by their Tongue So that sometimes Fifteen or Twenty in a Company will handle a point of Divinity or discuss the difficulties of a Law-suit in the most harmonious Consort that ever tickled the Ear. The second which is used by the Vulgar is performed by a shivering of the Members but not perhaps as you may imagine for some parts of the Body signifie an entire Discourse for example the agitation of a Finger a Hand an Ear a Lip an Arm an Eye a Cheek every one severally will make up an Oration or a Period with all the parts of it Others serve only instead of Words as the knitting of the Brows the several quiverings of the Muscles the turning of the Hands the stamping of the Feet the contorsion of the Arm so that when they speak as their Custom is stark naked their Members being used to gesticulate their Conceptions move so quick that one would not think it to be a Man that spoke but a Body that trembled Every day almost the Spirit came to see me and his rare Conversation made me patiently bear with the rigour of my Captivity At length one morning I saw a Man enter my Cabbin whom I knew not who having a long while licked me gently took me up in his Teeth by the Shoulder and with one of his Paws wherewith he held me up for fear I might hurt my self threw me upon his Back where I found my self so softly seated and so much at my ease that being afflicted to be used like a Beast I had not the least desire of making my escape and besides these Men that go upon all four are much swifter than we seeing the heaviest of them make nothing of running down a Stagg In the mean time I was extreamly troubled that I had no news of my courteous Spirit and the first night we came to our Inn as I was walking in the Court expecting till Supper should be ready a pretty handsome young Man came smiling in my Face and cast his Two Fore-Legs about my Neck After I had a little considered him How said he in French do not you know your Friend then I leave you to judge in what case I was at that time really my surprise was so great that I began to imagine that all the Globe of the Moon all that had befallen me and all that I had seen had only been Enchantment And that Beast-man who was the same that had carried me all day continued to speak to me in this manner You promised me that the good Offices I did you should never be forgotten and yet it seems you have never seen me before but perceiving me still in amaze In fine said he I am that same Demon of Socrates who diverted you during your Imprisonment and who that I may still oblige you took to my self a Body on which I carried you to day But said I interrupting him how can that be seeing that all Day you were of a very long Stature and now you are very short that all day long you had a weak and broken Voice and now you have a clear and vigorous one that in short all day long you were a Grey-headed old Man and are now a brisk young Blade Is it then that whereas in my Country the Progress is from Life to Death Animals here go Retrograde from Death to Life and by growing old become young again So soon as I had spoken to the Prince said he and received orders to bring you to Court I went and found you out where you were and have brought you hither but the Body I acted in was so tired out with the Journey that all its Organs refused me their ordinary Functions so that I enquired the way to the Hospital where being come in I found the Body of a young Man just then expired by a very odd Accident but yet very common in this Country I drew near him pretending to find motion in him still and protesting to those who were present that he was not dead and that what they thought to be the cause of his Death was no more but a bare Lethargy so that without being perceived I put my Mouth to his by which I entred as with a breath Then down dropt my old Carcass and as if I had been that young Man I rose and came to look for you leaving the Spectators crying a Miracle With this they came to call us to Supper and I followed my Guide into a Parlour richly furnished but where I found nothing fit to be eaten No Victuals appearing when I was ready to die of Hunger made me ask him where the Cloath was laid But I could not hear what he answered for at that instant Three or Four young Boys
by a long and powerful Coction he separated the more contrary and reverted the more similary parts of this Bowl the Mass pierced through with heat sweat so that it made a Deluge which covered it above Forty days for so much Water required no less time to â—…ll down into the more declining and lower Regions of our Globe The Liquor of these Torrents being assembled formed the Sea which by its Salt makes it still apparent that it must needs be a conflux of Sweat all sweat being Salt. When the Waters were retired a fat and fertile Mud remained upon the Earth Now when the Sun shone out there arose a kind of a Tumor or Wheal which could not because of the Cold thrust out its bud It therefore received another coction and that coction still rectifying and perfecting it by a more exact mixture it sent forth a Sprout endowed then only with Vegetation but capable of Sense But because the Waters which had so long stood upon the slime had too much chilled it the swelling broke not so that the Sun recocted it once more and after a third Digestion that Matrix being so thoroughly heated that the Cold brought forth a Man who hath retained in the Liver which is the seat of the vegetative Soul and the place of the first Concoction the power of Growing in the Heart which is the seat of Activity and the place of second Concoction the vital Power and in the Brain which is the seat of the Intellectual and the place of the third Concoction the power of Reasoning Otherwise why should we be longer in the Womb of our Mothers than the rest of Animals unless it be that our Embryo receives three distinct Concoctions for forming the three distinct Faculties of our Soul and the Beasts only two for forming their two Powers I know that the Horse is not compleated in the Belly of the Mare before the tenth twelsth or fourteenth Month But seeing he is of a Constitution so contrary to that which makes us men that he never has Life but in Months which are observed to be fatal to ours when we remain in the Womb beyond the natural Course it is no wonder that Nature needs another period of time for delivering a Mare than that which brings a Woman to Bed. It is so but in fine some body may say The Horse remains longer than we in the Belly of his Mother and by consequence he receives there either more perfect or more numerous Coctions I answer that it follows not for not to rely upon the Observations that so many Learned men have made upon the Energy of numbers when they prove That all Matter being in motion some Beings are compleated in a certain Revolution of days which are destroyed in another nor yet to lay any great stress upon the Arguments they deduce from the Cause of all these motions to prove that the number Nine is the most perfect I shall content my self with this answer That the Bud of man being hotter the Sun interferes and compleats more Organs in the space of nine Months than he hath rough-hew'n in a Colt during a whole year Now it is not to be doubted but that a Horse is a great deal colder than a Man seeing that Beast never dies but of a Swelling of the Spleen or other Diseases that proceed from Melancholy Nevertheless you 'l tell me there is no man in our World engendred of Mud and produced in that manner I believe it your World at present is over-heated for so soon as the Sun draws a sprout out of the Earth finding none of that cold Humidity or to say better that certain Period of compleated Motion which obliges it to several Coctions it turns it presently into a Vegetable or if it make two Coctions seeing the second has not time enough to receive perfection in it only engenders an Insect And it is a Remark that I have made also That the Ape which as we carrys it's young almost nine Months resembles us in so many Humors that not a few Naturalists have ranked us in the same Species and the reason is that their Seed being of a temper much like ours hath during that time had almost the leisure to perfect those three Digestions You 'l undoubtedly ask me of whom I have the Story that now I have told you you 'l tell me that I could not have had it from those that were not in being It 's true I am the only person that hath hit upon it and by consequence I can give no Vouchers for it because it 's a thing that happened before I was born that 's likewise true But take this along with you also That in a Kegion bordering upon the Sun as ours does the Souls full of Fire are more illuminated more subtile and more penetrant than those of other Animals in remoter Spheres Now seeing even in your World there have been Prophets heretofore whose minds heightened by a vigorous Inspiration have had Fore-knowledge of future things it is not impossible but that in this which is far nearer the Sun by consequence more luminous than yours a strong Genius may have some smelling of what is past that his active Reason may move as well backwards as forwards and that it may be able to attain to the Cause by the Effects seeing it can reach the Effects by the Cause Thus he ended his Philosophical Disscourse but after a more particular Conserence that we had about very deep Secrets which he revealed to me part whereof I 'll conceal and of which the rest has escaped me he told me That it was not as yet three Weeks since a clod of Earth impregnated by the Sun was brought to Bed of him Consider that Tumor attentively Then he made me observe I know not what Swelling upon the Mud not unlike to a Mole-Hill That says he is an Apostume or to say better a Matrix which for these Nine Months past hath contained the Embryo of one of my Brothers I wait here on design to play the part of a Midwife to it He would have gone on had he not perceived a Palpitation of the Earth about that Swelling of Clay That with the bigness of the Tumor made him conclude that the Earth was in Labour and that that Shake was already the effort of the Pangs of Travel He thereupon immediately left me that he might run to it and for my part I went to look for my Lodge I therefore clambered up again the Mountain I had come down from and was very weary before I got to the top of it You may imagine what trouble I was in when I did not find my House where I had left it I began to lament the loss of it when I perceived it skipping and vaulting at a great distance I ran thither as fast as my Legs could carry me till I was out of Breath again and really it was an agreeable Diversion to behold that new way of Coursing for
The truth is that Motion which you attribute to the Earth is a pretty nice Paradox and for my part I 'll frankly tell you That that which hinders me from being of your Opinion is That though you parted yesterday from Paris yet you might have arrived to day in this Country without the Earth's turning For the Sun having drawn you up by the means of your Bottles ought he not to have brought you hither since according to Ptolemy and the Modern Philosophers he marches obliquely as you make the Earth to move And besides what great Probability have you to imagine that the Sun is immoveable when we see it go And what appearance is there that the Earth turns with so great Rapidity when we feel it firm under our Feet Sir replied I to him These are in a manner the Reasons that oblige us to think so In the first place it is consonant to common Sense to think that the Sun is placed in the Center of the Universe seeing all Bodies in nature standing in need of that radical Heat it is fit he should reside in the heart of the Kingdom that he may be in a condition readily to supply the Necessities of every Part and that the Cause of Generations should be placed in the middle of all Bodies that it may act there with greater Equality and Ease After the same manner as Wise Nature hath placed the Genitals in Man the Seeds in the Center of Apples the Kernels in the middle of their Fruits and in the same manner as the Onion under the cover of so many Coats that encompass it preserves that precious Bud from which Millions of others are to have their being for an Apple is in it self a little Universe the Seed hotter than the other parts thereof is its Sun which diffuses about it self that natural Heat which preserves its Globe And in the Onion the Germ is the little Sun of that little World which vivifies and nourishes the vegetative Salt of that little mass Having laid down this then for a ground I say That the Earth standing in need of the Light Heat and Influence of this great Fire it turns round it that it may receive in all parts alike that Virtue which keeps it in Being For it would be as ridiculous to think that that vast luminous Body turned about a point that it has not the least need of as to imagine that when we see a roasted Lark that the Kitchin-fire must have turned round it Else were it the part of the Sun to do that drudgery it would seem that the Physician stood in need of the Patient that the Strong should yield to the Weak the Superior serve the Inferior and that the Ship did not sail about the Land but the Land about the Ship. Now if you cannot easily conceive how so ponderous a Body can move Pray tell me are the Stars and Heavens which in your Opinion are so solid any way lighter Besides it is not so difficult for us who are assured of the Roundness of the Earth to infer its motion from its Figure But why do ye suppose the Heaven to be round seeing you cannot know it and that yet if it hath not this Figure it is impossible it can move I object not to you your Excentricks nor Epicycles which you cannot explain but very confusedly and which are out of doors in my Systeme Let 's reflect only on the natural Causes of that Motion To make good your Hypothesis you are forced to have recourse to Spirits or Intelligences that move and govern your Spheres But for my part without disturbing the repose of the supreme Being who without doubt hath made Nature entirely perfect and whose Wisdom ought so to have compleated her that being perfect in one thing she should not have been defective in another I say that the Beams and Influences of the Sun darting Circularly upon the Earth make it to turn as with a turn of the Hand we make a Globe to move or which is much the same that the Steams which continually evaporate from that side of it which the Sun shines upon being reverberated by the Cold of the middle Region rebound upon it and striking obliquely do of necessity make it whirle about in that manner The Explication of the other Motions is less perplexed still for pray consider a little At these words the Vice-Roy interrupted me I had rather said he you would excuse your self from that trouble for I have read some Books of Gassendus on that subject And hear what one of our Fathers who maintained your Opinion one day answered me Really said he I fancy that the Earth does move not for the Reasons alledged by Copernicus but because Hell-fire being shut up in the Center of the Earth the damned who make a great bustle to avoid its Flames scramble up to the Vault as far as they can from them and so make the Earth to turn as a Turn-spit makes the Wheel go round when he runs about in it We applauded that Thought as being a pure effect of the Zeal of that good Father And then the Vice-Roy told me That he much wondered how the Systeme of Ptolemy being so improbable should have been so universally received Sir said I to him most part of Men who judge of all things by the Senses have suffered themselves to be perswaded by their Eyes and as he who Sails along a Shoar thinks the Ship immoveable and the Land in motion even so Men turning with the Earth round the Sun have thought that it was the Sun that moved about them To this may be added the unsupportable Pride of Mankind who perswade themselves that Nature hath only been made for them as if it were â—ikely that the Sun a vast Body Four â—undred and thirty four times bigger than â—he Earth had only been kindled to ripen â—heir Medlars and plumpen their Cabbage â—or my part I am so far from complying â—ith their Insolence that I believe the Plaâ—…ets are Worlds about the Sun and that â—…e fixed Stars are also Suns which have â—…anets about them that 's to say Worlds which because of their smallness and that their borrowed light cannot reach us are not discernable by Men in this World For in good earnest how can it be imagined that such spacious Globes are no more but vast Desarts and that ours because we live in it hath been framed for the habitation of a dozen of proud Dandyprats How must it be said because the Sun measures our Days and Years that it hath only been made to keep us from running our Heads against the Walls No no if that visible Deity shine upon Man it 's by accident as the King's Flamboy by accident lightens a Porter that walks along the Street But said he to me if as you affirm the fixed Stars be so many Suns it will follow that the World is infinite seeing it is probable that the People of that World which moves about that fixed
had been ranked among the things that are not the Prometheus of every Animal and the indefatigable Repairer of the Frailties of Nature Unhappy Country where the Marks of Generation are Ignominious and those of Destruction Honourable In the mean time you call that Member the shameful Privy-Parts as if any thing were more Glorious than to give Life or any thing more disgraceful than to take it away 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 Next Morning so soon as I awoke I went to call up my Antagonist It is said I accosting him as great a Miracle to find a great Wit like yours buried in Sleep as to see Fire without Heat and Action He bore with this ugly Compliment but cryed he with a Cholerick kind of Love will you never leave these Fabulous Terms Know that these Names defame the Name of a Philosopher and that seeing the wise Man sees nothing in the World but what he conceives and judges may be conceived he ought to abhor all those Expressions of Prodigies and extraordinary Events of Nature which Block heads have invented to excuse the Weakness of their Understanding I thought my self then obliged in Conscience to endeavour to undeceive him and therefore said I though you be very stiff and obstinate in your Opinions yet I have plainly seen supernatural Things happen Say you so continued he you little know that the force of Imagination is able to cure all the Diseases which you attribute to supernatural Causes by reason of a certain natural Balsam that contains Qualities quite contrary to the qualities of the Diseases that attack us which happens when our Imagination informed by Pain searches in that place for the specifick Remedy which it applies to the Poiso◠That 's the reason why an able Physician 〈◊〉 your World advises the Patient to make use of an Ignorant Doctor whom he esteems to be very knowing rather than of a very Skilful Physician whom he may imagine to be Ignorant because he fancies that our Imagination labouring to recover our Health provided it be assisted by Remedies is able to cure us but that the strongest Medicines are too weak when not applied by Imagination Do you think it strange that the first Men of your World lived so many Ages without the least Knowledge of Physick No. And what might have been the Cause of that in your judgement unless their Nature was as yet in its force and that natural Balsam in vigour before they were spoilt by the Drugs wherewith Physicians consume you it being enough then for the recovery of ones Health earnestly to wish for it and to imagine himself cured So that their vigorous Fancies plunging into that vital Oyl extracted the Elixir of it and applying Actives to Passives in almost the twinkling of an Eye they found themselves as sound as before Which notwithstanding the Depravation of Nature happens even at this day though somewhat rarely and is by the Multitude called a Miracle For my part I believe not a jot on 't and have this to say for my self that it is easier for all these Doctors to be mistaken than that the other may not easily come to pass For I put the Question to them A Patient recovered out of a Feaver heartily desired during his sickness as it is like that he might be cured and may be made Vows for that effect so that of necessity he must either have dyed continued sick or recovered Had he died then would it have been said kind Heaven hath put an end to his Pains Nay and that according to his Prayers he was now cured of all Diseases praised be the Lord Had his Sickness continued one would have said he wanted Faith but because he is cured it 's a Miracle forsooth Is it not far more likely that his Fancy being excited by violent Desires hath done its Duty and wrought the Cure For grant he hath escaped what then must it needs be a Miracle How many have we seen pray and after many solemn Vows and Protestations go to pot with all their fair Promises and Resolutions But at least replied I to him if what you say of that Balsam be true it is a mark of the Rationality of our Soul seeing without the help of our Reason or the Concurrence of our Will she Acts of her self as if being without us she applied the Active to the Passive Now if being separated from us she is Rational it necessarily follows that she is Spiritual and if you acknowledge her to be Spiritual I conclude she is immortal seeing Death happens to Animals only by the changing of Forms of which Matter alone is capable The Young Man at that decently sitting down upon his Bed and making me also to sit discoursed as I remember in this manner As for the Soul of Beasts which is Corporeal I do not wonder they Die seeing the best Harmony of the four Qualities may be dissolved the greatest force of Blood quelled and the loveliest Proportion of Organs disconcerted but I wonder very much that our intellectual incorporeal and immortal Soul should be constrained to dislodge and leave us by the same Cause that makes an Ox to perish Hath she
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