they might spare themselves the trouble of so long a conference they had with Cardan But straight added I I can never be fully cleared of this doubt without ascending thither But I presently asked my self Why not Prometheus heretofore durst steal fire out of Heaven it self Am I less daring then he Then why should I fear a less favourable success To these conceits which may be perchance called the effects of a feverish distemper succeeded the hopes of effecting this fine journey so that I shut my self up in a Countrey-house distant from any resort to accomplish my wishes where having flattered my Fancy with some means proportionate to that subject at last I resolved upon these for my Heavenly voyage I had fastned about me a many small vials filled with Dew upon which the Sun darting most violent Beams the heat whereof attracting as it doth the grossest Clouds drew me insensibly above the middle Region but as this attraction was somwhat too rapid and in stead of approaching the Moon as I pretended I found my self further off then at my departure I began to break some of my glasses till I found that my weight had mastered the attraction so that I began to descend towards the Earth I was not mistaken for a little after I landed and to reckon the hour I departed at it should have been midnight yet there I perceived the Sun in the height of the Horizon which made it noon I leave you to imagine how my astonishment was really so great that not knowing to what I should attribute this wonder I was tempted to beleeve that in favour of my boldness God had repeated that Miracle and once more fixt the Sun to the Hemisphere to give light to so worthy an enterprize but what more amazed me was that I knew not the Countrey where I was for ascending in a direct line as I thought I did imagine that I should have fallen just where I took my rise yet equipaged as I was I walked towards a kinde of desart ground from whence I perceived some smoak I was hardly within pistol-shot when I saw my self surrounded by a number of naked men they seemed much startled at the rencountre for I beleeve I was the first they had ever seen garnished with bottles and to overthrow all interpretations might have been given to that clothing they saw that in my march I scarce touched the ground for they did not know that with the least shake of my Body the ardor of the Midday-Beams drew me and my dew upwards and had not most of my bottles been broak I might have soared into the Air before their eyes I would have accosted them but in a moment as if their fear had lent them wings they flew into the next forest yet I catcht one whose legs betray'd his heart I askt him with a great deal of trouble for I was quite out of breath how far he reckoned it from thence to Paris and how long people had gone naked in France and why they so frightfully avoyded me This old man to whom I talkt was of an Olive-colour who presently cast himself at my feet and joyning his hands behinde his head opened his mouth and shut his eyes he mumbled a great while betwixt his teeth but I could perceive no distinct articulation so that I fancied his discourse to be like the confused blattering of a dumb-man A small while after I perceived a company of Souldiers marching towards me to the sound of a Drum some of which did separate themselves to take a view of me when they were neer enough to hear what I said I humbly interrogated where I was You are in France answered they But who the Devil hath put you in this condition and how comes it that we are not acquainted with your Worship Are the Ships arrived and are you going to advertise the Governour And pray why have you divided your Aquavitae into so many bottles To which I answered that it was not the Devil that had put me in that condition that they did not know me because they could not be acquainted with all men and that I never knew that the River of Seine was navigable to Paris that I had nothing to say to the Marshal de l'Hospital and that I was not laden with aqua-vitae Ho ho Blade cry they You 're a merry Gentleman the Governour will go neer to know you i'faith Then they conducted me to their squadron by the arm where I was given to understand that I was really in France but with the addition of Novella so that some while after I was presented to the Viceroy who enquired of my Country my name and quality and after I had satisfied him in all and related the agreeable success of my Voyage whether he beleeved me or whether he onely seemed to beleeve me however he had the goodness to command me to be lodg'd in his own Appartement it was no small addition of my good fortune to meet with a man capable of lofty imaginations and who was not amazed when I said that the world had turned about in the time of my elevation being that I rose within two leagues of Paris and fell as it were in a perpendicular line in Canada At night when I was just going to bed he came into my chamber saying I should not have come to disturb your rest if I had not beleeved that a man who had found out the secret of riding so much way in half a day could not be ignorant of a means not to be tired But you know not continued he the pleasant quarrel which I have had about you with our Fathers who will needs have you to be a Magician nay the greatest favour they can allow you is to beleeve you an Impostor and in effect that Notion which you attribute to the Earth is a nice Paradox and for my part I tell you truly the reason why I am not of your opinion is that though you parted from Paris but yesterday yet you might arrive as you did in this Countrey without the motion of the Earth for the Sun that drew you up by the means of your bottles might bring you hither since according to Ptolomy and the modern Philosophers he hath that Circular motion which you attribute to the Earth and what solid Reason can you give for the Suns stability when we see his motion or for the rapid motion of the Earth when we find it so firm under us Sir answered I these are the reasons as neer as I can judge which tie us to this belief First of all Common sense obliges us to beleeve that the Sun is placed in the Centre of the Universe being that all the Bodies which are in nature have need of that Radical heat and that he inhabits the heart of the whole that he might the radier satisfie each part and that the cause of Generation is placed in the midst of all Bodies to act with more equality and agility
in such things I shall always submit my reason to faith He told me that his Question was to be blam'd but I reassumed my Idea and added that all those other Worlds which we do not see or which we but imperfectly beleeve are nothing but the froth or foam of the Suns purgations for how could those great fires subsist if they were not fastned to some matter capable of their nourishment as fire rejects the ashes that smother it or as gold doth separate it self in the crucible when it grows to perfection from the Marcasite which lessens his Carat or again as our hearts disingage themselves by vomit from the indigested humors which assault them so those Suns every day disgorge and purge themselves of all matter obnoxious to their fires but when they have quite consumed that matter which entertains them you need not doubt but they will scatter themselves about to seek a new pasture and fasten upon the Worlds they have formed heretofore and particularly to the neerest then those great fires confounding afresh all those bodies will eject them higgledy-piggledy from every part as before and so purifying themselves by little and little begin to serve for Suns to those little Worlds they have created by the vomit of their own spheres which was certainly the cause why the Pythagoreans foretold the general confusion This is no ridiculous imagination for this new frame where we are produceth a convincing reason the vast continent of America is the one half of the Earth which in despite of our Forefathers who had rounded the Ocean a thousand times was not discovered Neither was it any more then many Isles and Peninsula's and mountains which have swell'd in our Globe when the Sun hath purged himself of Rusts which have been rejected and condens'd into bodies capable of attraction from our Centre may be a little after in less particles or may be all together in a mass this is not so unreasonable but that St. Augustine would have given his applause to it if these countreys had been discovered in his dayes since he whose genius was very clear sighted assures us that in his time the Earth was flat like an Oven and that it swam on the water like half an Orange But if I have ever the honour to meet you in France I will let you see by the means of an admirable glass that certain obscurities which from hence seem spots are Worlds that are framing My eyes which were almost closed with the period of this discourse obliged the Viceroy to leave me the next day and some other days following we had entertainments of the like nature but some while after the troublesome affairs of the Province disturbed our Philosophy and I revived my curiosity of visiting the Moon Assoon as she appeared in our Nocturnal Hemisphere I went musing up and down the Woods my fancy still agitating my propounded enterprise and at last one Midsummer Eve when they were at Counsel in the Fort to determine whether they should succour the Savages of the Countrey against the Europeans I stole behind our habitation to the top of a small hill where you shall hear what I executed I had fram'd a Machine which I did suppose capable of raising me as high as I pleased so that nothing of what I thought was necessary being wanting I placed my self in it and precipitated my self from a Rock into the Air but because I had not well taken my measures I rudely saluted the valley with my Bulk yet all bruised as I was without being abashed I returned to my chamber where I took beef-marrow and anointed my Body for I was mortified from the Noddle to the Heel and after having fortifyed my heart with a bottle of cordial Essence I returned to seek my Engine but in vain for certain Souldiers who were sent into the Forrest to cut wood for the Bon-fire of that day having found it by chance had brought it to the Citadel where after many explications of what it could be and at last having found out the spring some were of opinion that fire-works should be fastned unto it being their rapidity and the springs agitating its large wings would elevate it mightily so that none should see it without beleeving it a fiery flying Dragon In the mean time I sought it with all diligénce and for a period to my labour found it in the Market place of Lebee just as they were giving fire to their squibs The grief of finding the labour of my hands in so imminent danger did so transport me that I 'gan to seize the arm of the Souldier who was to be engineer I snatcht his match from him and flung my self furiously into my Engine to dash in pieces the Artifice with which they had adorn'd it But I arrived too late for scarce were both my leggs in when I was snatcht up in a Cloud the horrour with which I was surrounded did not so much confound the faculties of my soul but that I remember every thing that happened in that instant for assoon as the flame had devoured one rank of crackers which they had disposed by six and six and a priming to each half dozen another rank began to play the Devil and another so that the Salt-petre taking fire did by increasing avoyd the danger the consuming of the matter was the reason that the Artifice failed and when I thought of nothing but leaving my head upon the top of some mountain I found without stirring my self at all my Elevation continued and my Engine taking a farewell of me I perceived it to fall towards the Earth again This extraordinary adventure did swell my heart with so high a joy that ravisht to see my self delivered from certain danger I had the impudence to Philosophy upon it so as examining with my eyes and thoughts what should be the cause I perceived my skin all puft up and greasie with the Marrow I had applyed to the bruises of my last plunge I found that the Moon being in the decline and in that quarter using to exhale the Marrow of Animals she suckt mine with which I was anointed with so much the more force as her Globe was neerer to me and that no interposition of Clouds did weaken her vigor When I had shot thorow according to the calculation I had more then three parts of the distance betwixt the Earth and the Moon I found my feet turn over of a sudden without any apparent jerk nay I had not perceived it if I had not found my head loaden with the rest of my body truly I found that I did not tumble towards our World for though I found my self betwixt two Moons and that I noted how I in going from the one approached the other yet I was certain that the biggest was our Globe because that after a day or two's voyage the distant refractions of the Sun coming to confound the diversity of bodies and climates it appeared to me like a large
only Philosopher and the only Free-man you have amongst you These are the considerable persons I convers'd withal all the rest at least that I knew are so much below humanity that I have known beasts something above them Now I am not born neither in your Countrey nor this for my birth I owe to the Sun but because that sometimes our World is over-peopled in respect of the length of the inhabitants lives and that it is almost exempted from Wars and Diseases from time to time our Magistrates send Colonies to the World about them for my part I was commanded to go to yours and declared Chief of the people that did accompany me I since came to this for the causes I told you and the reason why I actually stay here is that the men are lovers of Truth and that no Pedants are seen and that the Philosophers will not be perswaded but by reason and that the Authority of a Wise man nor a multitude will not confute the opinion of a Thrasher if he reason as well as they in brief in this Countrey none are counted mad but Sophisters and Orators I asked how long they lived he told me three or four thousand years and in this sort continued Though the inhabitants of the Sun are not so numerous as those of this World yet the Sun makes frequent emissions because that the people are of a very hot temper stirring and ambitious and digest much what I tell you need not seem strange for though that our Globe be very vast and yours little and though that we die but after two or three thousand years and you in half an Age Know that in the same manner as there is not so many stones as clods of Earth nor so many plants as stones nor so many Animals as Plants nor so many rational as irrational Creatures so there ought not to be so many Spiriti as men becouse of the difficult conjunction of things fit for the Generation of so perfect a Composition I demanded of him if they were bodies like us He answered me that they were bodies but not like us not any thing which we did beleeve were bodies for we vulgarly onely called them so which we can touch besides there is nothing in Nature but what is material and though they be so of themselves yet they were forced when they would represent themselves to us to take bodies proportionate to what our senses are capable to conceive which was without doubt the reason that a great many beleeved that the stories which are told of them was an effect of an idle fancy because they appeared but in the night to which he added that being forced to form those bodies they intended to make use of in haste they had not time often to accommodate them proper for above one sense at once sometimes the Hearing as the voices of Oracles sometimes the Sight as Fires and Visions sometimes the Feeling as Incubusses and these bodies being but condens'd Clouds in this or that shape the light by its heat disperses them as we see it dissipate a Mist The explication of many fine things gave me the curiosity of interrogating him about his Birth and Death and if in the Country of the Sun the Individuum came to light by the ways of Generation And if it were extinguished by the disorder of its Temperament or the fraction of its Organs There is too little alliance said he betwixt your senses and the explication of these Mysteries that you imagine that what you cannot comprehend is spiritual or that it is not at all but your consequence is very false and it shews that may be there is in the Universe a million of things which would require in you a million of different Organs to be understood I for example know by my senses the reason of the sympathy betwixt the Load-stone with the Pole and of the flowing of the Sea and what becoms of a Beast after his Death you cannot arrive at these high conceptions but by faith because the proportions of these Miracles are unknown to you a blinde man may as well imagine the beauty of a pleasant Meadow the colours of a Picture or the streaked Rainbow for he will fancy it sometimes palpable as something of eating or hearing or a fragrant smell in the like manner if I should go about to explicate things to you which I behold by senses you want you would imagine it something that might be heard seen smelt or tasted and yet it is none of all these He was in this part of his Discourse when my Juggler who perceived that the company was weary of my gibberish because they did not understand it and that they took it for a grumbling not articulated he began to pluck the cord again to make me leap and skip till the spectators were satisfied with laughing who affirmed that I had almost as much wit as the Beasts of their countrey so they retired to their homes The visits of this officious Spirit were singular solacements to the hardships of my usage for to entertain my self with those that came to see me besides that they beleeved me but for an Animal of the cunningest sort in the Cathegorick of Beasts neither could I speak their tongue nor they mine and by that you may judge the proportions for you must know there are two Idioms used in that Countrey one the great ones make use of the other is generally used by the vulgar that of the great ones is nothing else but different tones not articulated almost like our Musick when the words are not added to the Air and really it is an invention which is both useful and pleasant for when they are weary with talking or when they disdain to prostitute their throats to that use they take a Lute or some other instrument with which as well as with their voices they communicate their thoughts to one another so that sometimes you shall have 15 or 20 of them in company who will discourse a point of Divinity or the difficulties of a Process by the most harmonious consent of Musick that ever tickled the Ear The second which the Common People use is by the motion of the Members but not may be as we imagine for some parts of the body signifie a whole Discourse as for example the agitation of a finger of a hand of an ear of a lip of an arm of an eye or of a cheek each will signifie an Oration in particular or at least a Period with all these members the rest do but serve to design the words as a wrinkle upon the fore-head the several quiverings of the muscles the reversion of the hands the stampings of the feet the contorsion of the arms so that when they Dialogue with the custome they have of going quite naked and their members accustomed to gesticulate their conceptions they stir with such alacrity that it is not like a man that speaks but like one that trembles My Spirit
two Professors entred and we went to sit down where the cloath was spred where we found the youth he talkt of already at his meal they saluted him profoundly and used him with an high respect as a slave useth his Lord and Master I demanded the the cause of my Spirit who said it was because of his age because that in that World the aged bear all sort of respect to the young nay more Parents obey'd their children assoon as by the advice of the Synod of Philosophers they had attained to Reason You wonder said he at a custome so contrary to that of your Countrey but it is not at all repugnant to Reason for in your Conscience is not a young man who is hot in the force of imagination of judgment and execution fitter to govern a Family then an infirm bundle of threescore yeers besotted whose imagination is frozen by threescore winters and who governs himself but by what you call Experience of happy successes which in the mean while are but meer effects of hazard against all rules and Oeconomy of humane Prudence For judgment there is also as little though the People of your World make an Idol of old Age But to disabuse them they must know that what is call'd Prudence in an old man is nothing but a pannical apprehension and a mad fear of acting nothing but what they have already seen done so that when he doth not hazard a danger where a young man had lost himself it is not that he fore-judged the Catastrophe but that he wanted fire to warm the noble parts which make us dare whereas the boldness of that young man was as a pledge of the efficaciousness of his design because that order which makes the promptitude and facility of an execution was that which thrust him upon that enterprise For execution I should wrong your judgment if I went about to convince you with proofs you know youth only is fit for action which will enough perswade you to it Pray tell me why doe you respect a couragious man but because he can avenge your injuries and repel your oppressors and is it for any consideration but meer habit that you consider him where a Battalion of seventy Ianuaries hath frozen his blood and kill'd with cold all the noble Enthusiasms that young men are warmed with when you yeeld to the stronger is it not because that he should be obliged to you when you know you can no longer dispute the victory with him But why should you submit to him when idleness hath melted his muscles debilitated his arteries evaporated his Spirits and dried the marrow in his bones If you adored a woman would it not be because of her Beauty But to continue your adorations when old age had made her a Phantasm which represents nothing but the hideous picture of Death were very strange In fine when you love a man of Spirit it is because by the vivacity of his Genius he penetrates into a turbulent business and straight untangles it that he can defray by his good words the Assembly of the richest Carat and that he could digest the Sciences in one thought and yet you would continue your esteem when his worm-Organs split his weak noddle heavy and inoportune to good company and when he rather resembles a Fairy Deity then a reasonable man By which my son you may conclude it is fitter young men should manage the government of Families then old and the rather because that according to your Maximes Hercules Achilles Epaminondas Alexander and Caesar the most of which died before fifty years of age should have merited no honours being by your account too young when their youth was the onely cause of their admirable actions which a more advanced age would have frustrated because it would have wanted ardour and promptitude the Authors of such high Successes You say true all the Laws of our World loudly proclaim the respect we owe old Age for those that introduced those Laws were old men who justly feared that the young men should depose them from their usurpt Authority You owe nothing to your mortal Architecture but your Body your Soul coms from Heaven and it was in the power of hazard to have created your father your son as you now are his Nay how do you know but that he hath debarr'd you the inheritance of a Diadem May be your Soul departed Heaven with a design of inhabiting the King of the Romans in the belly of the Empress where may be to shorten her journey she lodged No no God would not have blotted you out of the calculation he made of Mankinde though your father had died a little boy but who knows if you had not been the work of some great Captain who would have associated you with his Glory as well as his goods so that you are no more obliged to your father for the life he gave you then you would be to a Pirate who should chain you to the Bank that he might there feed you Nay I will suppose he had ingendered you a Prince of King a Present loses its merit when it is not left in the receivers choice of receiving it or no Death was given to Caesar and to Cassius and Cassius was obliged to the slave of whom he begged it so was not Caesar to his murderers who forced him to accept that unwelcome gift Did your father consult your will when he embraced your Mother Did he ask you if you had a minde to see this age or to wait for another If you would be contented to be the son of a sot or if you had the ambition to derive your self from a gallant man But alas you who were most concerned in the business were he who was least consulted May be then if you had been lockt up in any place but in the Matrix of the Idea's of Nature and that your birth had been in your option you had said to the Parca My dear pretty Lady take the spindle of another in hand it is a great while since I am in the number of nothings and I had rather remain so a hundred yeers longer then to be to day to repent to morrow And yet this you must pass through your begging to return to the long black house from whence you were hal'd signified nothing for they seemed to understand you cry'd for the teat These are the reasons my son why fathers bear a respect to their children I know that I have inclined to the childrens side more then Justice required and that in their favour I have a little spoken against my Conscience but being willing to correct that pride with which some Parents brave their childrens weakness I have done as they who vvill straighten a crooked tree draw it on the other side that between two contorsions it may affect straightness so I have made fathers render to their children vvhat they took from them by taking away something that belonged to them that they might
another time be contented with what 's their own I know that by this Apology I have choak'd all the old fathers but let them remember they vvere children before they vvere fathers and that it is impossible but that I have spoke extreamly to their advantage since they were not found under a Cabbage But in fine whatsoever happens and though my Enemies should range themselves in battalia against my friends it can be but well for me for I have obliged all men and have disobliged but the half At these vvords he held his tongue and our Landlords son began in this manner Permit me said he since by your care I am instructed in the Original History Customes and Philosophy of the World of this little man to add something to what you said and that I may prove that children are not obliged to their fathers for their Generation because that they were obliged in Conscience to get them The most strict Philosophy of their World confesses that it is more advantageous to die since to die you must have liv'd then to have had no being then not to give a being to that Nothing were worse then giving death I am more faulty in not peoducing it then in killing it if it were produced Yet my little man thou wouldst beleeve it an unpardonable parricide to strangle thy son really it would be enormous but it is much more execrable not to give a being to what can receive it For that child thou deprivest of light for ever would have had the satisfaction of enjoying it some while Nay and we know that it is deprived but for some ages but those poor forty Nothings of which thou mayest have made forty good Souldiers for thy King thou maliciously deprivest of life and suffer'st them to corrupt in thy reins with the hazard of an Apoplexy which will be thy death But this did not at all satisfie me which I witnessed with three or four shakes of my head But our Teacher held his tongue for our supper was ready to fly away We did then stretch our selves upon soft quilts covered with great carpets and a young serving-man having taken the oldest of our Philosophers did conduct him into a little parlour apart from whence my Spirit begg'd him to come assoon as he had ended his meal This fancy of eating apart inspired me with the curiosity of demanding the cause he will neither accept the smell of meat nor herbs if they doe not die of themselves beleeving them sensible of pain I do not so much wonder said I that he abstains from flesh and all things that have a sensitive life for in our World the Pythagoreans nay and some holy Anchorites use this rule but for example not to dare to cut a Cabbage for fear of hurting it seems very ridiculous to me But I answered my Spirit finde a great deal of Reason in this opinion For that Cabbage which you spoke of had it not as well as you an existent being in Nature And is she not mother to you both Nay and it seems she hath more necessarily provided for the vegetable then the rational since she hath remitted the Generation of a man to the capriciousness of his father and can according to his pleasure get him or not get him a rigor with which she hath not treated the Cabbage for instead of remitting it to the will of the father to generate the son as if she had more feared the loss of the Cabbages species then that of man she constrains them whether they will or no to give a being to one another and not like men who do fantastically generate when the freak takes them and who in their life-time surpass not the number of above twenty whereas each Cabbage can produce forty thousand And yet we tickle our selves with the imagination that nature is more affected to Mankinde then to this Cabbage being incapable of passion she can neither love nor hate any thing but if she were susceptible of love she would rather affect this Cabbage which you know cannot offend her then man who would destroy her if he could to which you may add that man cannot be born guiltless being a member of the first Criminal but we know that the first Cabbage did not offend his Maker Now if you will say that we were formed ad Imaginem Dei which the Cabbage is not which grant it be true we have blotted out that likeness in our Souls wherein we resemble him since there is nothing so contrary to God as sin Now if our Soul be no longer his Image we are not more like him in our hands feet mouth forehead and ears then the Cabbage is in its leaves flowers stalk pith or head Doe not you really beleeve that if that poor Plant could speak it would say Man my dear Brother what have I done to thee to merit death I onely grow in gardens nor am I ever found in desert places where I may live in security I disdain all other societies but thine and I am scarce in thy garden when to shew thee my complacency I blow I stretch out my arms to thee and I offer thee my children in grace and for the requital of my courtesie thou makest my head to be cut off These are the discourses a Cabbage would hold if it could express its meaning What and because he cannot complain may we justly doe him all the wrong he cannot resist If I find a miserable man bound may I kill him because he cannot defend himself Quite contrary his weakness would aggravate my cruelty and though this poor Creature be disrobed of all our advantages yet it deserves not death and of all the gifts of being it hath but that of increase which we cruelly deprive it of the sin of massacring a man is not so great because one day he must revive as that of cutting a Cabbage who can never hope another life You annihilate the Cabbage in cutting of it and in killing a man you doe but change his mansion Nay I 'le say more since God doth equally cherish all his works and that he hath equally divided his favours between us and Plants we ought to have an equal esteem for them as our selves It is true we were first born but in Gods family there is no birth-right and if the Cabbage share not with us in the blessing of immortality it hath certainly something else to recompense the shortness of it being may be it is an Universal Intellect or a perfect knowledge of all things in their Causes For which cause the Wise Director of all things hath not given them Organs like ours who have but a simple reasoning weak and often deceitful But others more ingeniously framed stronger and more numerous which serve for the operation of their speculative entertainments May be you will ask me when they ever communicated to us any of those high thoughts But then tell me who ever taught us certain Essences which we admit
So Wise Nature placed the Privities of man the cores of apples in their Centre the kernel in the middest of all fruit and the Onyon conserves with an hundred rindes the precious germe from whence ten millions of others must draw their Original For this apple is a little Universe of it self and the kernel thereof hotter then any of the other parts is its Sun which casts round about it the conservatory heat of that Globe and the Germ or sprout of the Onyon is the little Sun of that small World which doth warm and nourish the vegetive salt of that body which being supposed I say the world having need of the light the heat and influence of that great fire turns round about it to receive the vertues which conserves it equally in all its parts for it would be as ridiculous to beleeve that great Luminous Body should wheel about a Punctum which it hath no need of as to beleeve when we see a rosted Lark that it was turned by the Chimney otherwise for the Sun to Carracole thus would look as if the Physitian had need of the Patient and that the strong ought to submit to the weak and the great serve the little and that in stead of a Ships coasting round an Island the Island should turn about the Ship If it be difficult for you to comprehend how so heavy a Mass can move Pray tell me are the Heavens and Stars which you affim so solid lighter nay it is easier for us who are assured of the World's roundness to conclude its Motion by its Figure But why must we suppose the Heaven's round and we doe not know it and that of all Figures if it have any other it must want that motion I doe not reproach you your Excentriques nor your Concentriques nor your Epicycles all which you can but confusedly explicate and I save my Systeme let us onely speak of the Natural Causes of this Motion you are fain to fly to Intelligences which move and govern your Globes but I without disquieting the most Soveraign Essence who without doubt hath created Nature perfect and with whose Wisdome it must stand to have finished it so that having accomplished it for one thing it would not leave it defective in another say that the Beams of the Sun and his influences coming to strike upon it by their Circulation makes it turn as we doe a Globe by a stroke of our hands or as the fumes which it breaths from its breast continually on the side the Sun is of repercussed by the cold of the Middle Region breaths back upon their mother whom they cannot hit but slopingly by which means she is turned The explication of the other two Motions are less knotty for pray consider a little At these words the Viceroy interrupted me I had rather dispense with you for that trouble for I have read some Books of Gassendi upon that Subject but upon condition that you will hear what one of our Fathers answered me one day who maintained your opinion in effect said he I imagine that the Earth turneth not for the Reasons which Copernicus alleadges but because the fire of Hell being inclosed in the Centre of the Earth the Damned who would fly the ardor of its flames crawl up against the vault and so turn the Earth as a turn-spit Dog doth when he is shut up in a wheel We were some while praysing the zealous conceit of the good father and in the end the Viceroy told me he wondred much that the Systeme of Ptolomy being so unlikely should be so generally received Sir answered I the greatest part of mankind who judge by their senses let themselves be perswaded by their eyes and as he who sayls in a bounding Ship beleeves himself fixt and that the land moves so men wheeling with the Earth about the Heavens did beleeve that it was the Heavens that mov'd about them To which we may add the insupportable arrogance of Mankinde which fancies that Nature was onely created to serve it as if it were likely that the Sun whose Body is four hundred and thirty times bigger then the Earth should onely have been lighted to ripen their Medlars or inlarge the Sphere of their Cabbages For my part far from consenting to their insolence I beleeve that the Planets are Worlds above the Sun and that the fixt Stars are Suns which have Planets about them which is to say Worlds which we see not from hence because of their smallness is the cause that their borrowed light cannot reach us And in good faith why should we imagine that such spacious Globes as those should be uninhabited deserts and that ours because we live in it has been built for a dozen of little proud things Must we because the Sun directs our Dayes and Years beleeve that it was onely made that we might not break our heads against the Walls No no If that visible Deity give its light to mankinde it is by accident as the Kings torch may light a beggar that 's passing the street at the same time But Sir said he if the fixt Stars are so many Suns as you assure me one may conclude from thence that the World is infinite being that it is probable that the People of that World which is above a fixt Star which you take for a Sun doe discover above them other fixt Stars which we cannot perceive from hence and that in this sort we may judge ad infinitum Doe not doubt it answered I as God could create the soul immortal he could in the same manner make the World infinite if Eternity be nothing else but a lasting without limits and infinity an unbounded reach and God himself would be limited supposing the World not infinite being he could not be where nothing is and he cannot increase the World without adding somewhat to his own existence by beginning to be where he was not before We must therefore beleeve that as we behold Saturn and Iupiter from hence so if we were in either of them we should discover many Worlds of which we are ignorant and that the infinity of the Universe is thus form'd 'Faith answered he you may say what you please but I cannot comprehend this infinity Why pray answered I doe you comprehend that Nothing which is beyond it No certainly for when you think of that Nothing your imagination represents it to you like Winde or Air and that's something But infinity if you doe not comprehend it in general you do at least in parts being that it is not difficult to suppose to our selves other Earth Air or Fire then what we just see now infinity is nothing but an unlimitted contexture of all these But if you ask me how these Worlds were created since the Holy Scriptures mention but one of Gods making my answer is that I dispute no longer for if you will oblige me to give you an account of my imaginations that stops my mouth and makes me confess that