The "Characters" of Jean de La Bruyère

by Jean de La Bruyère

Remember that the diameter of the earth is nine thousand miles, that of the sun a hundred times more,[878] which gives nine hundred thousand miles;[879] now, if this be its width in every direction, judge what its superficies and volume must be. Can you comprehend the vastness of this extent, and that a million of such globes as the earth, all together, would not exceed the sun in size?[880] You will ask, then, how far is the sun from the earth, if one can judge of it by its apparent small size? You are quite right, the distance can hardly be conceived; for it is proved that the sunʼs distance from the earth can be no less than ten thousand times the diameter of the earth, or, in other words, than ninety millions of miles; it may be four times, perhaps six times, perhaps ten times as much, for ought we know; there is no method discovered to determine this distance.[881]

Now, to assist you in understanding this, let us suppose a millstone falling from the sun upon the earth; let it come down with all swiftness imaginable, and even swifter than the heaviest bodies descend, falling from a very great height; let us also suppose that it always preserves the same swiftness, without increase or diminution; that it advances thirty yards every second, which is half the height of the highest steeple, and consequently, eighteen hundred yards in a minute; but to facilitate our computation, let us allow it two thousand six hundred and forty yards a minute, which is a mile and a half; its fall will then be three miles in two minutes, ninety miles in an hour, and two thousand one hundred and sixty miles in a day; now, it must fall ninety millions of miles before it comes down to the earth; so that it cannot be less than forty-one thousand six hundred and sixty-six days, which is more than one hundred and fourteen years before it can perform this journey. Let all this not frighten you, Lucilius; I will tell you more. The distance of Saturn from the earth is at least ten times as great as the sunʼs is; that is, no less than nine hundred millions of miles, and the stone would be above eleven hundred and forty years in falling down from Saturn to the earth.[882]

Now, by this altitude of Saturn, exert your imagination, if you can, and conceive the immensity of its daily course; the circle which Saturn describes is above eighteen hundred millions of miles diameter, and consequently above fifty-four hundred millions of miles in circumference; so that a race-horse, if supposed to run thirty miles an hour, must be twenty thousand five hundred and forty-eight years in going this round.

Lucilius, I have not said all that can be said on the miracles of this visible world; or, to use the expression you sometimes use, on the wonders of chance, which alone you affirm to be the primary cause of all things, and which is still more wonderful in its operations than you imagine. Learn what chance is, and allow yourself to become acquainted with all the power of your God.

Do you know that the distance of the sun from the earth, which is ninety millions of miles, and that of Saturn, which is nine hundred millions of miles, if compared to that of the other stars, is so inconsiderable, that comparison is an improper term when mentioning such distances; for, indeed, what proportion is there between anything that can be measured, whatever its extent may be, and that which is beyond all mensuration? The height of a star cannot be known; it is, if I may say so, immensurable;[883] all angles, sines, and paralaxes are of no use for this problem.[884] Should a man observe a fixed star at Paris, and another in Japan, the two lines which would reach from their eyes to that star, would make no angle at all, but be confounded together, and converge into one and the same line, so inconsiderable is the space of the whole earth in comparison to that distance; but the stars have this in common with Saturn and the sun; therefore I shall say something more. If two astronomers should stand, the one on the earth and the other on the sun, and from thence should observe a star at the same time, the two visual rays of these two astronomers would not form a sensible angle; but in order that you may conceive the same thing another way, imagine a man to be placed on one of these stars, and then this sun, this earth, and the ninety millions of miles that are between them would seem to him but as a dot. This has been proved.

Nor is the distance known between any two stars, however close they appear to one another. You would think, if you judge by mere ocular demonstration, that the Pleiades almost touch one another. There is a star which seems to rest on one of the stars forming the tail of the Great Bear; you can hardly, with the mere eye, discern that part of the heavens which divides them; they make together, as it were, but one double star; yet, if the most skilful astronomers cannot, with all their art, find out the distance between these stars, how far asunder must two stars be which appear remote from each other, and how much farther yet the two polar stars.[885] How prodigiously long must be that line which reaches from one to another! How immense the circle of which this line is the diameter! And how can we fathom what cannot be fathomed, and represent to ourselves the volume of the globe, of which this circle is but a section? Shall we still wonder that these stars, of such immensurable size, seem no larger to us than so many sparks? Shall we not rather admire that from such a height the least appearance of them should reach our eye, and that they can be discerned at all? And, indeed, the quantity of stars which escape our vision is countless. It is true, we limit the number of the stars, but that is only of stars visible to us, for how should we number those we cannot see; those, for example, which constitute the Milky Way,—that luminous tract, which, on a clear night, can be observed in the sky from north to south,—and which, by their immensurable height, cannot be distinguished individually by our optics, and at most produce but a white mark in that part of the heavens where they are placed?[886]

Behold, then, the earth on which we tread, suspended like a grain of sand in the air; an almost infinite number of fiery globes, the vastness of whose bulk confounds my imagination, and whose height exceeds the reach of my conceptions, all perpetually revolving round this grain of sand, have been for above six thousand years, and are still, daily crossing the wide, the immense space of the heavens. Do you desire another system no less amazing? The earth itself is carried round the sun, which is the centre of the universe, with inconceivable velocity.[887] Methinks I see the motion of all these globes, the orderly march of these prodigious bodies; no disorder, no deflection, no collision, ever happens; should but the smallest of them happen to deviate and meet the earth, what would become of this earth? But, on the contrary, all keep their respective positions, remain in the order prescribed for them; and this, with respect to us, is performed so silently, that no oneʼs hearing is acute enough to hear them move, and that ordinary people know not that there are such bodies. How wonderfully are the works of chance! Could intelligence itself have surpassed this? Only one thing. Lucilius, troubles me. These vast bodies are all so constant and exact in their various courses and revolutions, and in their relations to each other, that a little animal, confined to a corner of that wide space which is called the world, from his observations on them, has contrived an exact and infallible method of foretelling in what degree of their respective courses every one of these stars will be two thousand, four thousand, nay, twenty thousand years hence. This is my scruple, Lucilius. If these stars by chance follow such invariable rules, what is order, what are rules?

Nay, I will ask you what is chance? Is it a body? Is it a spirit? Is it a being distinguished from all other beings, having a peculiar existence or dwelling in any place; or, rather, is it not a mode or fashion of being? When a ball rolls against a stone, we are apt to say it is a chance; but is it anything more than an accidental hitting of these bodies one against another? If, by this chance, or this knock, the ball changes its straight course into an oblique one; if its motion from direct becomes reflected; if it ceases to roll on its axis, but winds and whirls about like a top, shall I from thence infer that motion in general proceeds in this ball from this same chance? Shall I not rather apprehend that the ball owes it to itself, or to the impulse of the arm which delivered it? Or, because the circular motions of the wheels of a clock are determined one by the other, in their degrees of swiftness, shall I be less anxious to find out what may be the cause of these several motions; whether it lies in the wheels themselves, or is derived from the moving force of a weight which sets them in motion? But neither these wheels nor this ball could produce this motion in themselves, nor do they owe it to their own nature, if they can be deprived of it, without changing this very nature; it is, therefore, likely they are moved extraneously and by some power not inherent to them. And as for the celestial bodies, if they should be deprived of their motion, would their nature then be altered, and would they cease being bodies? I cannot believe they would. Yet they move, and as they move not of themselves, nor by their own nature, it behoves us, Lucilius, to examine whether there is not some principle, not inherent to them, which causes this motion. Whatever you may find it, I call it God.