arrives, before we get any experience. As for me, I do not dare make any plans. I see myself as a drop of water in an immense ocean. I am ashamed, most of all before you, of how ridiculously I figure in this world." 

 Micromegas replied, "If you were not a philosopher, I would fear burdening you by telling you that our lifespan is 700 times longer than yours; but you know very well when it is necessary to return your body to the elements, and reanimate nature in another form, which we call death. When this moment of metamorphosis comes, to have lived an eternity or to have lived a day amounts to precisely the same thing. I have been to countries where they live a thousand times longer than we do, and they also die. But people everywhere have the good sense to know their role and to thank the Author of nature. He has scattered across this universe a profusion of varieties with a kind of admirable uniformity. For example, all the thinking beings are different, and all resemble one another in the gift of thought and desire. Matter is extended everywhere, but has different properties on each planet. How many diverse properties do you count in yours?" 

 "If you mean those properties," said the Saturnian, "without which we believe that the planet could not subsist as it is, we count 300 of them, like extension, impenetrability, mobility, gravity, divisibility, and the rest." 

 "Apparently," replied the voyager, "this small number suffices for what the Creator had in store for your dwelling. I admire his wisdom in everything; I see differences everywhere, but also proportion. Your planet is small, your inhabitants are as well. You have few sensations; your matter has few properties; all this is the work of Providence. What color is your sun upon examination?" 

 "A very yellowish white," said the Saturnian. "And when we divide one of its rays, we find that it contains seven colors." 

 "Our sun strains at red," said the Sirian, "and we have 39 primary colors. There is no one sun, among those that I have gotten close to that resembles it, just as there is no one face among you that is identical to the others." 

 After numerous questions of this nature, he learned how many essentially different substances are found on Saturn. He learned that there were only about thirty, like God, space, matter, the beings with extension that sense, the beings with extension that sense and think, the thinking beings that have no extension; those that are penetrable, those that are not, and the rest. The Sirian, whose home contained 300 and who 

 Prev. P 7/20 next