Voyages to the Moon and the Sun

by Cyrano de Bergerac

"The demonstration of touch is not more difficult. There is a perpetual emission of little bodies from all palpable matter; the more we touch it the more they are evaporated, because we squeeze them out of the object we handle like water from a sponge when we compress it. Hard bodies report to the organ their solidity; supple bodies, their softness; the rough, their harshness; the burning, their heat; the frozen, their cold. And as a proof of this, observe that hands hardened by labour are not so sensitive in discerning by the touch, and this is because of the thickness of the callus, which is neither porous nor animated and therefore transmits with great difficulty these fumes of matter. Some will desire to know where the organ of touch resides. For my part, I think it extends over all the superficies of our mass, since it happens through the agency of our nerves; and our skin is merely an imperceptible and continuous texture of nerves. I imagine, however, that the nearer to the head the limb with which we touch, the sooner we perceive. You may make the experiment as follows: if we close our eyes and touch something with the hand we discover what it is immediately, but if on the contrary we touch it with the foot we are some time in finding out what it is. The reason for this is that our nerves, whose matter is no more compact than that of our skin (which is everywhere pitted with little holes), lose many of these little atoms on the way through the small channels of their texture before the atoms reach the brain, the end of their journey.

"It remains for me to prove that smell and taste are caused also by the agency of these same little bodies. Tell me, then, when I taste a fruit, is it not through the moisture of my mouth melting it? Admit then that since there are different salts in a pear, which by being dissolved are split up into little bodies differing in shape from those making the taste of a plum, they must pierce our palate in a different way; just as the gash made by a pike piercing me is unlike that which I endure from a pistol-bullet, and as a pistol-bullet causes me a pain different from that of a steel arrow-head.

"I have nothing to say about smell, since even your philosophers admit that it takes place through a continual emission of little bodies cast off from their mass which strike our noses as they pass.

"On this principle I will now explain to you the creation, the harmony and the influence of the celestial globes with the immutable variety of meteors."

He was about to continue when our old host entered and turned our philosopher's thoughts toward departure. He brought with him crystals filled with glow-worms to lighten the room, but these little fire-insects lose much of their light when they are not freshly gathered and as these were ten days old they hardly shone at all. My demon did not wait for the company to be inconvenienced by this; he went up to his room and returned immediately with two fire balls, so brilliant that we were all surprised he did not burn his fingers.

"These incombustible torches", said he, "will serve us better than your clusters of worms. They are sun-rays which I have purged of their heat; otherwise the corrosive qualities of its fire would have dazzled and hurt your sight. I have extracted the light and shut it in these transparent balls I am holding. This should not be a matter of great surprise to you; I was born in the Sun and so it is no more difficult for me to condense the rays which are the dust of that world than for you to collect the dust or atoms which are the pulverised earth of this world."

When we had finished praising this child of the Sun, it was late, and the young host sent his father home with the two philosophers, with a dozen balls of glow-worms hanging from his four legs. The rest of us, that is to say, the young host, my Instructor and I, went to bed by order of the Physionome. This time he put me in a room of violets and lilies and had me tickled in the usual way to send me to sleep. The next morning about nine o'clock my demon came in and told me he had just returned from the palace, whence he had been sent for by

, one of the Queen's waiting-women. She had inquired after me and said she still persisted in keeping her word, which is to say that she would gladly follow me if I would take her with me to the other World.

"I was greatly edified", he continued, "when I found that the principal motive for her journey was directed towards making herself a Christian. I have promised to help her design with all my ability and for this purpose to invent a machine capable of holding three or four persons, in which you can rise up together. From to-day onwards I shall apply myself seriously to the execution of this project. To amuse you during my absence here is a book which I brought from my native land. It is called A Voyage to the Sun. I am also giving you another, which I rate more highly, the Great Works of the Philosophers, composed by one of the greatest Wits of the Sun. He proves in it that all things are true and shows the way to unite physically the truths of each contradiction; for example, that white is black and black is white, that you can be and not be at the same time, that there can be a mountain without a valley, that nothing is something and that all things which exist do not exist. But notice that he proves these unheard-of paradoxes without any sophistry or captious reasoning. When you are tired of reading you can take a walk or converse with your companion, our young host. His mind has many charms; but what displeases me in him is his impiety. If he scandalizes you or shakes your faith by his reasoning do not fail to come at once and tell them to me; I will resolve the difficulties for you. Another would tell you to leave his company directly he began to philosophize on these matters, but he is extremely vain and I am certain he would take your flight for a defeat and would imagine your belief to be contrary to reason if you refused to listen to his reasons. Remember to live free."