Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds

by M. de Fontenelle

[49] Or even two hundred thousand times.

Do I mistake, cried the Marchioness, or do I see your drift? Are you not going to say "the fixed stars are all suns: our sun is the centre of a vortex which turns around him; why should not each fixed star be also the centre of a vortex, turning round it? Our sun enlightens planets; why should not every fixed star likewise enlighten planets?" I need make no other answer, replied I, than Phœdrus made to Enone: thou hast named it.

But, rejoined she, you are making the universe so unbounded that I feel lost in it; I don't know where I am, not what I'm about. What! are they all vortices heaped in confusion on one another? Is every fixed star the centre of a vortex, as large perhaps as ours?[50] The amazing space comprehending our sun and planets is but a little portion of the universe? An equal space, occupied by each of these vortices? The thought is fearful; overwhelming! For my part, said I, I think it very pleasing. Were the sky only a blue arch to which the stars were fixed, the universe would seem narrow and confined; there would not be room to breathe: now that we attribute an infinitely greater extent and depth to this blue firmament, by dividing it into thousands of vortices, I seem to be more at liberty; to live in a freer air; and nature appears with astonishingly encreased magnificence. Creation is boundless in treasures; lavish in endowments. How grand the idea of this immense number of vortices, the middle of each occupied by a sun, encompassed with planets which turn around him! The inhabitants of one of these numberless vortices, on every side behold the suns of surrounding vortices, although the planets belonging to them are invisible, as the light they receive from their suns cannot penetrate beyond their own vortex.

[50] That may be the case, but we have no proof that there are planets turning round these stars.

You are directing my eye, answered she, to an interminable perspective. I see, plainly enough, the inhabitants of the earth; then you enable me to discover, with somewhat less clearness, those of the moon and other planets contained in our vortex. After all that you require me to view the people that dwell in planets belonging to other vortices. I must confess they are so much in the back ground that with all my efforts they are scarcely perceptible to me. In short do they not seem almost annihilated by the very expression you are obliged to make use of in describing them? You must call them the inhabitants of one of the planets, contained in one, out of the infinity of vortices. Surely the very idea of ourselves is as nothing when such a description is applied to us, when we are thus lost amongst millions of worlds. For my part, the earth begins to diminish into such a speck, that in future I shall hardly consider any object worthy of eager pursuit. Surely people, who form unnumbered schemes of aggrandizement, who are wearing themselves out in following up projects of ambition, are ignorant of the vortices. I think my augmentation of knowledge will encrease my idleness, and when I am reproached for being indolent I shall reply, Ah! if you knew the history of the fixed stars! Alexander could not have been acquainted with it, answered I; for a certain author, who believes that the moon is inhabited, tells us very seriously that it was impossible for Aristotle to avoid receiving so rational an opinion, (could Aristotle be ignorant of any truth?) but that he never disclosed it for fear of displeasing Alexander, who would have been miserable to hear of a world that he could not subjugate. There would have been a still greater reason for keeping the vortices of the fixed stars a secret; if any body in those days had known them, they would not have thought of ingratiating themselves with the monarch by talking of them. It is unfortunate that I who am acquainted with the system should not be able to reap any benefit from it. According to your reasoning it will only be an antidote to the disquietudes of ambition; that is not my malady. The weakness I am most addicted to is an excessive admiration of beauty, and I fear the vortices will have no power to assist me in overcoming it. The immense number of worlds destroys the grandeur of this, but it does not lessen the charms of a fine pair of eyes or a beautiful mouth, they retain their power in spite of all the worlds that can be created.

Love is a strange thing, said she, laughing; it escapes every corrective; there is no system that can abate its influence. But answer me seriously; have you sufficient reason for believing this system? To me it appears to rest on an uncertain foundation. A fixed star is of a luminous nature like the sun, therefore you say it must, like the sun, be a centre to a vortex containing planets which travel round the sun. Now, is that a necessary consequence?

Listen, madam, I replied; we are so naturally disposed to mingle the follies of gallantry with our gravest discussions, that mathematical reasoning partakes of the nature of love. Grant ever so little to a lover, and presently you are forced to grant him a great deal more, and so on till you don't know how to stop. In like manner admit any principle a mathematician proposes, he then draws a consequence which you are obliged to admit, and from that consequence another, and thus before you are aware he carries you so far that on a sudden you wonder where you have got to: these two characters always take more than you mean to give them. You must own that when two things are similar in all that I know of them, I may reasonably think them similar in what I am unacquainted with in respect to them. From that principle I draw the conclusion of the moon being inhabited because she resembled the earth; and the other planets, because they resemble the moon. And because the fixed stars bear a resemblance to our sun, I attribute to them all that he possesses. You have already made too many concessions to draw back, you must go on; do it therefore with a good grace. But, said she, in admitting this resemblance between the fixed stars and our sun, we must suppose that the inhabitants of another great vortex see it as a little fixed star, visible only during their nights.

That is indisputable, I replied. Our sun is so near to us in comparison of the suns belonging to other vortices that his light must be incomparably stronger to us than to them. When he is risen we can discern no other heavenly body: so, in another vortex, another sun eclipses ours, and permits it to appear only at night, with all the other suns, then visible. With them, fixed to the blue firmament, our sun forms a part of some imaginary figure. As to the planets that go round him, as they are not seen at so great a distance, they are not so much as thought of. Thus all the suns are daily luminaries to their own vortex, and nightly ones to all the other vortices. Each reigns alone in his own system; elsewhere, is but one of a great number. Nevertheless, do not these worlds differ from each other in a thousand instances, notwithstanding this equality? for a general resemblance does not exclude a vast number of dissimilarities.

Surely, answered I: but the difficulty is to find them out. For ought we know one vortex may have more planets revolving round its sun, another fewer. In one there are subaltern planets, turning round the principal planets; in another they may be all alike. Here they all collect round their sun in a circle, beyond which is an empty space which extends to the neighbouring vortices; in other parts of the universe they may have their orbits at the extremities of their vortex whilst the centre is left empty. And very likely there are some vortices without any planets; others, whose suns, not being in the centre, have a circular revolution, carrying their planets along with them; others, again, whose planets may rise and set with regard to their sun according to the change of that equilibrium which keeps them suspended—What would you have more? Surely here is enough for a person who has never been beyond one vortex.

All that is nothing, she replied, for the number of worlds. What you have been imagining would suffice but for five or six, instead of millions.