Micromegas

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Voltaire. Micromegas

CHAPTER I. Voyage of an inhabitant of the Sirius star to the planet Saturn

CHAPTER II. Conversation between the inhabitant of Sirius and that of Saturn

CHAPTER III. Voyage of the two inhabitants of Sirius and Saturn

CHAPTER IV. What happened on planet Earth

CHAPTER V. Experiments and reasonings of the two voyagers

CHAPTER VI. What happened to them among men

CHAPTER VII. Conversation with the men

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On one of the planets that orbits the star named Sirius there lived a spirited young man, who I had the honor of meeting on the last voyage he made to our little ant hill. He was called Micromegas1, a fitting name for anyone so great. He was eight leagues tall, or 24,000 geometric paces of five feet each.

Certain geometers2, always of use to the public, will immediately take up their pens, and will find that since Mr. Micromegas, inhabitant of the country of Sirius, is 24,000 paces tall, which is equivalent to 20,000 feet, and since we citizens of the earth are hardly five feet tall, and our sphere 9,000 leagues around; they will find, I say, that it is absolutely necessary that the sphere that produced him was 21,600,000 times greater in circumference than our little Earth. Nothing in nature is simpler or more orderly. The sovereign states of Germany or Italy, which one can traverse in a half hour, compared to the empires of Turkey, Moscow, or China, are only feeble reflections of the prodigious differences that nature has placed in all beings.

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"I do not want to be pleased," answered the voyager. "I want to be taught. Tell me how many senses the men of your planet have."

"We only have 72," said the academic, "and we always complain about it. Our imagination surpasses our needs. We find that with our 72 senses, our ring, our five moons, we are too restricted; and in spite of all our curiosity and the fairly large number of passions that result from our 72 senses, we have plenty of time to get bored."

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