Of Noses
He was still a speaking, when I saw a man come in stark Naked; I presently sat down and put on my Hat to shew him Honour, for these are the greatest Marks of Respect, that can be shew'd to any in that Country. "The Kingdom," said he, "desires you would give the Magistrates notice, before you return to your own World; because a Mathematician hath just now undertaken before the Council, that provided when you are returned home, you would make a certain Machine, that he'll teach you how to do; he'll attract your Globe, and joyn it to this."
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.
[1] Cyrano's own work. It is full of interesting matters, including a trip through the country of the Birds, which offers many points of comparison with Gulliver's Voyage to the country of the Houyhnhms. Cyrano finally, under the guidance of Campanella, arrives at the land of the Philosophers of the Sun (compare Swift's Laputa), where he meets Descartes and Gassendi, as Gulliver does in the Laputan province of Glubbdubdrib (Voyage to Laputa, chap. viii.).
Cyrano's machine for reaching the sun, depicted in the illustration opposite, is best described in the words of M. Rostand's play, and completes our parallels with all the six means of scaling the sky which Cyrano there enumerates: "Or else, I could have let the wind into a cedar coffer, then ratified the imprisoned element by means of cunningly adjusted burning glasses, and soared up with it."
[2] Probably Campanella; cf. [p. 78, n. 1]. On his "great work," cf. also [p. 79, n. 1].
[3] Is this an anticipation of the phonograph?
[4] Readings. Cf. Sir Thomas Browne: "In the lecture of Holy Scripture, their apprehensions are commonly confined unto the literal sense of the text."
[5] Cf. M. Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, act I. scene iv.: "Cyrano. A great nose is properly the index of an affable, kindly, courteous man, witty, liberal, brave, such as I am! and such as you are forevermore precluded from supposing yourself, deplorable rogue!"