Chapter 7

Conversation with the men.

“Oh intelligent atoms, in which the Eternal Being desired to make manifest his skill and his power, you must, no doubt, taste pure joys on your planet; for having so little matter, and appearing to be entirely spirit, you must live out your life thinking and loving, the veritable life of the mind. Nowhere have I seen true bliss, but it is here, without a doubt.”

At this all the philosophers shook their heads, and one of them, more frank than the others, avowed that if one excepts a small number of inhabitants held in poor regard, all the rest are an assembly of mad, vicious, and wretched people. “We have more substance than is necessary,” he said, “to do evil, if evil comes from substance; and too much spirit, if evil comes from spirit. Did you know, for example, that as I am speaking with you[1], there are 100,000 madmen of our species wearing hats, killing 100,000 other animals wearing turbans, or being massacred by them, and that we have used almost surface of the Earth for this purpose since time immemorial?”

[1] We saw, at the end of chapter III, that the story occurs in 1737. Voltaire is referring to the war between the Turks and the Russians, from 1736 to 1739. B.

The Sirian shuddered, and asked the reason for these horrible quarrels between such puny animals.

“It is a matter,” said the philosopher, “of some piles of mud as big as your heel[2]. It is not that any of these millions of men that slit each other’s throats care about this pile of mud. It is only a matter of determining if it should belong to a certain man who we call ‘Sultan, ‘ or to another who we call, for whatever reason, ‘Czar.’ Neither one has ever seen nor will ever see the little piece of Earth, and almost none of these animals that mutually kill themselves have ever seen the animal for which they kill.”

[2] Crimea, which all the same was not reunited with Russia until 1783. B.

“Oh! Cruel fate!” cried the Sirian with indignation, “who could conceive of this excess of maniacal rage! It makes me want to take three steps and crush this whole anthill of ridiculous assassins.”

“Do not waste your time,” someone responded, “they are working towards ruin quickly enough. Know that after ten years only one hundredth of these scoundrels will be here. Know that even if they have not drawn swords, hunger, fatigue, or intemperance will overtake them. Furthermore, it is not they that should be punished, it is those sedentary barbarians who from the depths of their offices order, while they are digesting their last meal, the massacre of a million men, and who subsequently give solemn thanks to God.”

The voyager was moved with pity for the small human race, where he was discovering such surprising contrasts.

“Since you are amongst the small number of wise men,” he told these sirs, “and since apparently you do not kill anyone for money, tell me, I beg of you, what occupies your time.”

“We dissect flies,” said the philosopher, “we measure lines, we gather figures; we agree with each other on two or three points that we do not understand.”

It suddenly took the Sirian and the Saturnian’s fancy to question these thinking atoms, to learn what it was they agreed on.

“What do you measure,” said the Saturnian, “from the Dog Star to the great star of the Gemini?”

They responded all at once, “thirty-two and a half degrees.”

“What do you measure from here to the moon?”

“60 radii of the Earth even.”

“How much does your air weigh?”

He thought he had caught them[3], but they all told him that air weighed around 900 times less than an identical volume of the purest water, and 19,000 times less than a gold ducat. The little dwarf from Saturn, surprised at their responses, was tempted to accuse of witchcraft the same people he had refused a soul fifteen minutes earlier.

[3] The edition I believe to be original reads “put them off” in place of “caught them.”

Finally Micromegas said to them, “Since you know what is exterior to you so well, you must know what is interior even better. Tell me what your soul is, and how you form ideas.” The philosophers spoke all at once as before, but they were of different views. The oldest cited Aristotle, another pronounced the name of Descartes; this one here, Malebranche; another Leibnitz; another Locke. An old peripatetic spoke up with confidence: “The soul is an entelechy, and a reason gives it the power to be what it is.” This is what Aristotle expressly declares, page 633 of the Louvre edition. He cited the passage[4].

[4] Here is the passage such as it is transcribed in the edition dated 1750: “Entele’xeia’ tis esi kai’ lo’gos toû dy’namin e’xontos toude’ ei’nai.”

This passage of Aristotle, On the Soul, book II, chapter II, is translated thusly by Casaubon: Anima quaedam perfectio et actus ac ratio est quod potentiam habet ut ejusmodi sit. B.