“If your majesty will permit, we all know that life, and light, and heat come from the sun. The sunlight does not penetrate into your kingdom because the rays of the sun are refracted upon the surface of the earth; but the caloric rays of the sun penetrate through these rocks, otherwise there would be no heat and life, and everything would be cold and dead in this place. Now, as you feel the warmth within your residence, you will easily see that there must be a sun.” “I see nothing,” answered the king. “All that you say may be as you say, but it does not enable me to perceive the sun.” “And would it not be just as well,” I said, “if your majesty would accept my information that there is a sun? If I tell you so, you will know it, and knowledge is power.” But the king would not agree. “I perceive,” he said, “that you tell me that there is a sun; but for all that I do not perceive the sun itself, and cannot eat it or have it deposited in my treasury.” This stubbornness of Bimbam I. irritated me somewhat, and I said-- “All that your majesty says goes to show that the gnomes will have to travel still a long way before they will come up to our standard of science. We, the scientists of the human kingdom, do not need to acquire or possess or even to see anything, much less to eat or absorb it into our own constitution; it is quite sufficient for us to have a theory about it which is believed to be correct. This is what we consider to be real knowledge.” “What a fools’ paradise this must be,” exclaimed the king. “In our country we enjoy that which we are and possess, and care very little about theories and opinions.” While we were engaged in this conversation Cravatu entered, and brought the news that the three dwarfs had returned, and that everything had come out exactly as I predicted; for these imbeciles, not having sense enough to find their way back, had been found in the vicinity of the place where they had been left. All that could be made out by their incoherent speech was that they had seen something, but what that was nobody knew, for they were totally unable to describe it. This fulfilment of my prediction raised me still higher in the estimation of the king, who, seeing that I could foretell future events, looked upon me as a kind of supernatural being, and wanted to be instructed in that art.