Terrestrial life is precarious since it is at the mercy of atmospherical circumstances. Animals that have not a very high temperature are destined to expend their strength in a perpetual labour of adaptation. If the original heat had increased instead of diminishing, the termites and the ants would perhaps be two great nations, sharing between them the empire of the world, and man would be one of their preys. But you discovered the art of fire and raised yourself above all other animals. Fire, in giving you a constant summer, also gave you leisure. Thence your civilisations, proud daughters of idleness, who deny their mother. It is from idleness that everything has been born among men. From the year in which one of your ancestors was able to pass the winter beside his fire, date the arts, the sciences, games, love, all delights. Leisure is indeed the greatest and the most beautiful of man's conquests. But, though you have known how to conquer, though you have known how to create, you have scarcely ever known how to use your conquests or your creations. After conquering leisure, you disdained it, and slaves, ashamed of the inactivity of their domesticated hands, set themselves to preach among you the sanctity of labour. Poor madmen! And are you not already on the way to spoil woman? Have you not already succeeded in insinuating into her heart the shameful principles of Jewish morality? Have you not resolved, in your narrow masculine pride, to undo the work of your ancestors and to reduce to the position of mean and lesser men these creatures who used to dominate you with all their beauty and with all their tenderness? You educate them; you teach them the useless stupidities that make your own brains ugly; soon you will forbid them ornament, you will forbid them love, you will forbid them to make you happy! But I will take up this discourse later. It is a digression due to your curiosity. We were speaking of Micromegas. Well, I am, if you will, Micromegas, reduced to our human proportions. No more than he have I absolute power over men; I cannot even crush them, like that Titan, in absent-mindedness or in pleasure. I have scarcely any power over men: I can, when I strongly wish it, insinuate into them some few of my ideas. It is this that men have called my incarnations. I have never become incarnate. My own flesh, almost immortal, and almost incorruptible, suffices me. I Almost.... HE The gods are born and die, so my father has told me. I have not seen one die, I have not seen one born. But I was born, since I have a father and a mother. I Your mother Mary.... HE