Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds

by M. de Fontenelle

I did not venture to give any opinions on the inhabitants of the different worlds, since they must have been entirely chimerical; I have endeavoured to express all that might reasonably be imagined, and even the conjectures that are added are not without foundation. Truth and fiction are in some measure blended, but always so as to be distinguishable from each other: I do not undertake to justify such a composition; the union of philosophy and amusement is the chief aim of this work, but I know not whether I have adopted the right method.

It only remains for me now to address one class of persons; they are perhaps the most difficult to satisfy, not because my reasoning is inconclusive, but because they feel themselves privileged to disregard the best arguments: I am speaking of scrupulous people who may imagine religion is endangered by placing inhabitants any where but on the earth. I respect even an excessive scrupulosity when it arises from piety, nor would I willingly hurt the feelings of any one from whom I differed: but by rectifying a little error of the imagination we shall find that this objection cannot affect my system of giving inhabitants to an infinite number of worlds. When you are told that the moon is peopled, you immediately figure to yourself men like ourselves, and then a variety of theological difficulties occur. The posterity of Adam cannot have colonized the moon; therefore the inhabitants of that planet are not descendants of our first parents; now it would be a difficult point in theology to account for the existence of men who had any other ancestor. No more need be said; every imaginable difficulty is included in this, and the expressions that would be necessary for a more full explanation are too worthy of reverence to be employed in a work containing so little of the serious as this. The objection then turns on the existence of men in the moon, but it is the objectors themselves who talk of men as its inhabitants; I have asserted no such thing: I say there are inhabitants, and I likewise say they may not at all resemble us. What are they then?—I have never seen them; I do not speak from acquaintance with them.

Do not consider it a subterfuge, to rid myself of the objection, when I affirm that the moon is not peopled by men; you will see that according to the idea I entertain of the endless diversity of the works of nature, it is impossible such beings as we, should be placed there. This opinion is supported throughout the book, and it is an opinion which no philosopher can deny: I think, therefore, on this ground, the following conversations will be objected to only by those who have never read them. But will this consideration suffice to deliver me from the fear of censure? No; it rather gives me cause to apprehend objections from every side.

FONTENELLE.

CONVERSATIONS
ON THE
PLURALITY OF WORLDS.

TO MR. L——.

You desire me, dear Sir, to give you a particular account of the manner in which my time has been spent whilst at the Marchioness of G—'s[3] in the country. To obey your injunctions strictly, I shall be obliged to fill a volume, and what is still more formidable, a volume of philosophy.