Moon -- Fiction; Science fiction, French -- Translations into English; Space flight to the moon -- Fiction
"I' faith;" replied he, "when you have said all you can, I cannot at
all comprehend that Infinitude." "Good now," replied I to him, "do
you comprehend the Nothing that is beyond it? Not at all. For when
you think of that _Nothing_, you imagine it at least to be like Wind
or Air, and that is a Being: But if you conceive not an _Infinite_ in
general, you comprehend it at least in particulars; seeing it is not
difficult to fancy to our selves, beyond the Earth, Air, and Fire which
we see, other Air, and other Earth, and other Fire. Now Infinitude
is nothing else but a boundless Series of all these. But if you ask
me, How these Worlds have been made, seeing Holy Scripture speaks
only of one that God made? My answer is, That I have no more to say:
For to oblige me to give a Reason for every thing that comes into my
Imagination, is to stop my Mouth, and make me confess that in things of
that nature my Reason shall always stoop to Faith."
He ingeniously[8] acknowledged to me that his Question was to be
censured, but bid me pursue my notion: So that I went on, and told
him, That all the other Worlds, which are not seen, or but imperfectly
believed, are no more but the Scum that purges out of the Suns. For how
could these great Fires subsist without some matter, that served them
for Fewel? Now as the Fire drives from it the Ashes that would stifle
it, or the Gold in a Crucible separates from the Marcasite[9] and
Dross, and is refined to the highest Standard; nay, and as our Stomack
discharges it self by vomit, of the Crudities that oppress it; even
so these Suns daily evacuate, and reject the Remains of matter that
might incommode their Fire: But when they have wholly consumed that
matter which entertains[10] them; you are not to doubt, but they spread
themselves abroad on all sides to seek for fresh Fewel, and fasten upon
the Worlds which heretofore they have made, and particularly upon those
that are nearest: Then these great Fires, reconcocting all the Bodies,
will as formerly force them out again, Pell-mell, from all parts; and
being by little and little purified, they'll begin to serve for Suns to
other little Worlds, which they procreate by driving them out of their
Spheres: And that without doubt, made the _Pythagoreans_ foretel the
universal Conflagration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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