Micromegas (Phalen)/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
What happened on planet Earth.
After resting for some time they ate two mountains for lunch, which
their crew fixed up pretty nicely. Then they decided to get to know
the small country they were in. They went first from north to south.
The usual stride of the Sirian and his crew was around 30,000 feet.
The dwarf from Saturn, who clocked in at no more than a thousand
fathoms, trailed behind, breathing heavily. He had to make twelve
steps each time the other took a stride; imagine (if it is alright to
make such a comparison) a very small lapdog following a captain of
the guards of the Prussian king.
Since our strangers moved fairly rapidly, they circumnavigated the globe in 36 hours. The sun, in truth, or rather the Earth, makes a similar voyage in a day; but you have to imagine that the going is much easier when one turns on one's axis instead of walking on one's feet. So there they were, back where they started, after having seen the nearly imperceptible pond we call the Mediterranean, and the other little pool that, under the name Ocean, encircles the molehill. The dwarf never got in over his knees, and the other hardly wet his heels. On their way they did all they could to see whether the planet was inhabited or not. They crouched, laid down, felt around everywhere; but their eyes and their hands were not proportionate to the little beings that crawl here, they could not feel in the least any sensation that might lead them to suspect that we and our associates, the other inhabitants of this planet, have the honor of existing.
The dwarf, who was a bit hasty sometimes, decided straightaway that the planet was uninhabited. His first reason was that he had not seen anyone. Micromegas politely indicated that this logic was rather flawed: "For," said he, "you do not see with your little eyes certain stars of the 50th magnitude that I can perceive very distinctly. Do you conclude that these stars do not exist?"
"But," said the dwarf, "I felt around a lot."
"But," answered the other, "you have pretty weak senses."
"But," replied the dwarf, "this planet is poorly constructed. It is so irregular and has such a ridiculous shape! Everything here seems to be in chaos: you see these little rivulets, none of which run in a straight line, these pools of water that are neither round, nor square, nor oval, nor regular by any measure; all these little pointy specks scattered across the earth that grate on my feet? (This was in reference to mountains.) Look at its shape again, how it is flat at the poles, how it clumsily revolves around the sun in a way that necessarily eliminates the climates of the poles? To tell the truth, what really makes me think it is uninhabited is that it seems that no one of good sense would want to stay."
"Well," said Micromegas, "maybe the inhabitants of this planet are not of good sense! But in the end it looks like this may be for a reason. Everything appears irregular to you here, you say, because everything on Saturn and Jupiter is drawn in straight lines. This might be the[1] reason that you are a bit puzzled here. Have I not told you that I have continually noticed variety in my travels?"
[1] All the editions that precede those of Kehl read: "It might be
for this" B.
The Saturnian responded to all these points. The dispute might never
have finished if it were not for Micromegas who, getting worked up,
had the good luck to break the thread of his diamond necklace. The
diamonds fell; they were pretty little carats of fairly irregular
size, of which the largest weighed four hundred pounds and the
smallest fifty. The dwarf recaptured some of them; bending down for a
better look, he perceived that these diamonds were cut with the help
of an excellent microscope. So he took out a small microscope of 160
feet in diameter and put it up to his eye; and Micromegas took up one
of 2,005 feet in diameter. They were excellent; but neither one of
them could see anything right away and had to adjust them. Finally
the Saturnian saw something elusive that moved in the shallow waters
of the Baltic sea; it was a whale. He carefully picked it up with his
little finger and, resting it on the nail of his thumb, showed it to
the Sirian, who began laughing for a second time at the ludicrously
small scale of the things on our planet. The Saturnian, persuaded
that our world was inhabited, figured very quickly that it was
inhabited only by whales; and as he was very good at reasoning, he
was determined to infer the origin and evolution of such a small
atom; whether it had ideas, a will, liberty. Micromegas was confused.
He examined the animal very patiently and found no reason to believe
that a soul was lodged in it. The two voyagers were therefore
inclined to believe that there is no spirit in our home, when with
the help of the microscope they perceived something as large as a
whale floating on the Baltic Sea. We know that a flock of
philosophers was at this time returning from the Arctic Circle, where
they had made some observations, which no one had dared make up to
then. The gazettes claimed that their vessel ran aground on the coast
of Bothnia, and that they were having a lot of difficulty setting
things straight; but the world never shows its cards. I am going to
tell how it really happened, artlessly and without bias; which is no
small thing for an historian.