"Young mortal", said he, "(for I see you have not yet, like me, paid that tribute we all owe to Nature), as soon as I saw you I recognised in your face something which makes one anxious to pursue the acquaintance. If I am not mistaken, from the circumstances of your body's conformation you must be French, and a native of Paris. That town is the place where I ended my misfortunes after having carried them through all Europe.
"I am called Campanella and I am a Calabrian by birth. Since I came to the Sun I have spent my time in visiting the countries of this great globe to discover their wonders. It is divided into kingdoms, republics, states and principalities, like the Earth. Thus the quadrupeds, the birds, the plants, the stones, all have their own states; and although some of them do not allow animals of a different species to enter, particularly men, whom, above all, the birds hate with a deadly hatred, I can travel everywhere without running any risk, because a philosopher's soul is composed of particles much finer than the instruments they would use to torment him. Happily I was in the province of the trees when the Salamander's disturbances began; those great thunder-claps, you must have heard as well as I, guided me to their battlefield, where you arrived a moment afterwards. For the rest, I am returning to the province of philosophers...."
"What", said I, "are there philosophers in the Sun, too?"
"There are, indeed", replied the good man, "yes, they are the principal inhabitants of the Sun and the very same who so fill the mouth of fame in your world. You may soon converse with them, if you have the courage to follow me; for I hope to set foot in their town before three days have passed. I do not suppose you can conceive in what manner these great geniuses were transported here?"
"No, indeed", I exclaimed, "have so many other people had their eyes closed hitherto not to have found the way? Or after death do we fall into the hands of an Examiner of Spirits who, according to our capacity, grants or refuses us rights of citizenship in the Sun?"
"Nothing of the kind", replied the old man, "souls come to join this mass of light by a principle of similarity; for this world is formed of nothing but the spirits of all who die in the surrounding orbs, such as Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
"Thus, as soon as a plant, a beast, a man, expire, their souls rise to its sphere, just as you see a candle flame fly there in a point, in spite of the soot which holds its feet. Now, when all these souls are united to the source of the day and purged of the gross matter which impeded them, they exercise functions far more noble than those of growing, feeling and reasoning; they are used to form the blood and vital spirits of the Sun, that vast and perfect animal. And therefore you should not doubt that the Sun works intellectually much more perfectly than you, since it is by means of the heat of a million of these rectified souls (whereof its own is an elixir, since it knows the secret of life), that it infuses into the matter of your world the power of procreation, renders bodies capable of consciousness and, in short, is visible and makes all things visible.
"I have now to explain to you why the souls of philosophers are not essentially joined to the mass of the Sun like those of other men.
"There are three orders of spirits in all the planets, that is in the little worlds which move around this one.
"The grossest merely serve to repair the Sun's mass. The subtle insinuate themselves in the place of its rays; but those of philosophers, having acquired nothing impure during their exile, arrive complete to inhabit the sphere of day. Now, they do not become like others an integral part of its mass, because the matter which composes them at the point of their begetting is so exactly mingled that nothing can separate it; like the matter which forms gold, diamonds and the stars, whose parts are so closely mingled and intertwined, the strongest dissolvent could not loosen their embrace.