Voyages to the Moon and the Sun

by Cyrano de Bergerac

"Do not answer me with panegyrics of virginity. This virtue is only a smoke, for all the respect with which it is commonly idolised is, even among you, merely an advice, not to kill, but to refrain from making, one's son; and hence to make him more unfortunate than a dead man. It is a commandment; but since in the world whence you come chastity is considered so preferable to carnal propagation I marvel that God did not cause you to be born like mushrooms from the dew of May, or, at least, like crocodiles from thick mud heated by the sun. Yet it is only by accident that He sends eunuchs among you and He does not tear the genitals from your monks, your priests or your cardinals. You will say these were bestowed on them by Nature. Yes, but He is Nature's Master and if He had recognised that this piece was harmful to their salvation He would have ordered them to cut it off, as by the old law He commanded the Jews to cut off their foreskins. But these fancies are too ridiculous. On your honour, is there any part of your body more sacred or more profane than another? Why should I be a sin when I touch my centre-piece and not when I touch my ear or my heel? Is it because there is a tickling sensation? Why then I should not purge myself in the privy, for that cannot be done without some sort of pleasure; and pious men should not raise themselves to the contemplation of God, since thereby they enjoy a great pleasure in the imagination. Truly, seeing how much the religion of your country is contrary to Nature and how jealous it is of man's enjoyments, I am surprised your priests have not made it a crime to scratch oneself, on account of the agreeable sensation one feels from it. On the other hand I have noticed that far-seeing Nature has made all great, valiant and witty persons lean towards the delicate pleasures of love, as, for example, Samson, David, Hercules, Caesar, Hannibal and Charlemagne. Was this done for them to reap this organ of pleasure with a blow from a sickle? Alas, even in a tub Nature found out and debauched Diogenes, thin, ugly, and lousy; and forced him to make the breath that cooled his carrots into sighs for Lais. Doubtless Nature acted in this way for fear lest honest men should cease in the world. Let us conclude from this that your father was conscientiously obliged to set you free to the light and, when he imagines you are greatly obliged to him for his having made you by tickling himself, he actually has only given you what an ordinary bull gives his calves ten times every day for his amusement."

"You are wrong", interrupted my demon, "to try to regulate God's wisdom. It is true that He has forbidden us excess in this pleasure, but how do you know that He has not so willed it in order that the difficulties we find in compassing this passion may fit us for the glory He is preparing for us? How do you know that it was not to sharpen appetite by forbidding it? How do you know that He did not foresee that if youth gave itself up to the impetuosities of the flesh, too frequent enjoyment would enfeeble their seed and bring about the end of the world at the grandsons of the first man? How do you know He did not wish to prevent too many hungry generations from finding the fertility of the earth insufficient for their needs? Finally, how do you know He has not willed to act against all appearance of reason in order to reward fully those who have believed in His word against all appearance of reason?"

It seemed to me that this reply did not satisfy our young host, for he shook his head two or three times; but our mutual instructor was silent, because the meal was about to be carried in. We stretched ourselves out upon very soft mattresses covered with wide embroideries, where the vapours came to us as they had done before at the inn. A young servant took the elder of our two philosophers and led him into another little room. "Come back to us here", cried my instructor, "as soon as you have eaten." He promised to do so.

This fantasy of eating alone gave me the curiosity to ask the reason.

"He does not taste", said he, "the odour of meat or even of herbs unless they have died naturally, because he thinks them capable of pain."

"I am not greatly surprised", I replied, "that he should abstain from flesh and everything which has a sensitive life. In our world the Pythagoreans and even certain holy Anchorites observed this regime. But it seems to me altogether ridiculous not to cut a cabbage, for example, for fear of hurting it."

"For my part", replied my demon, "I see a good deal of probability in his opinion. Is not the cabbage you speak of as much a creation of God as yourself? Have you not both equally God and want for father and mother? Has not God's intellect been occupied from all eternity with its birth as well as yours? Moreover it seems He has provided more necessarily for the birth of vegetable than of reasonable life, since He has committed the generation of man to the caprice of his father, who can beget or not beget at his pleasure. But God has not treated the cabbage with such rigour, for He seems to have been more concerned lest the race of cabbages should perish than the race of men, and instead of permitting the father the option of begetting the son He forces them willy-nilly to give birth to others. And while men can at most beget a score in their lifetime, cabbages produce four hundred thousand a head. And to say that God loves man more than a cabbage is to tickle ourselves to make ourselves laugh; He is incapable of passion and therefore cannot love or hate anybody; and if He were capable of love He would rather feel tenderness for the cabbage you are holding (which cannot offend Him) than for a man when He already has before His eyes the wrongs the man is fated to commit. Add to this that a man cannot be born without sin, for he is a part of the first man who rendered him guilty, but we know very well that the first cabbage did not offend its Creator in the Earthly Paradise. Will it be said that we are made in the image of the Sovereign Being and that cabbages are not? Suppose that were true, by polluting in ourselves the soul whereby we resembled Him we have effaced the resemblance, for nothing is more contrary to God than sin. Then if our soul is no longer His portrait, we no more resemble Him through our hands, our feet, our mouth, our forehead and ears than a cabbage through its leaves, its flowers, its stalk, its heart and its head. If this poor plant could speak when you cut it do you not think it would say:

"'Man, my dear brother, what have I done to you to merit death? I grow only in your gardens, I am never found in wild places where I should live safely; I scorn to be the work of any hands but yours and I have scarcely left them when I lift myself from the ground to return to them. I spread out, I hold out my arms to you, I offer you the seeds my children, and to reward my courtesy you have my head cut off!'

"This is what a cabbage would say if it could express itself, and, because it cannot complain, does that mean that we have the right to do it all the ill it cannot prevent? If I find a wretch in fetters am I guiltless if I kill him, merely because he cannot defend himself? On the contrary, my cruelty is rendered worse by his weakness; however poor, however lacking in all advantages this hapless cabbage may be, it does not merit death on that account. What! Of all the goods of life it has none but that of vegetating and we deprive it of this? The sin of murdering a man is not so great as to cut a cabbage and to deprive it of life, because one day the man will live again while the cabbage has no other life to hope for. By killing a cabbage you annihilate its soul; but by killing a man you simply make him change his domicile. And I go further. Since God, the common Father of all things, cherishes equally all His works, is it not reasonable that He should have shared His benefits equally between us and plants? True, we were born first, but in God's family there is no right of primogeniture. If then cabbages did not share with us the fief of immortality, doubtless they received some other advantage, the briefness of whose existence is compensated for by its grandeur. This may be an universal intellect, a perfect knowledge of all things in their causes; for this reason it may be that the wise Contriver did not fashion them organs like ours, whose effect is only a simple, weak and often deceitful reasoning, but gave them organs that are stronger, more numerous and more skilfully elaborated to serve the purposes of their speculative conversations? Perhaps you will ask me why they have never communicated these great thoughts to us? But tell me, have you ever been taught by the Angels any more than by them? Since there is no proportion, no relation and no harmony between man's imbecile faculties and those of these divine creatures, these intellectual cabbages may try their best to make us understand the hidden cause of all miraculous events, we still lack senses capable of perceiving these fine points.

"Moses, the greatest of all philosophers, since according to what you say he gathered his knowledge of Nature from the source of Nature itself, indicated this truth when he spoke of the Tree of Knowledge. Under this enigma he wished to teach us that plants possess perfect philosophy. Remember then, O proudest of all animals, that although the cabbage you cut says not a word, it thinks none the less. The poor vegetable has no organs like ours to howl, to wriggle and to weep, but it has others to complain of the trick we play upon it, to draw down upon us the vengeance of Heaven. And if you ask me how I know that cabbages have these fine thoughts I ask you how you know that they do not have them? And how do you know that they do not say at night when they close up, in imitation of you: 'Master Curly-cabbage, I am your most humble servant, Savoy-Cabbage.'"