reckon those two men among the vulgar? They have good understandings, said I; but they never reason. Grave reasoners, who are austere people, would not hesitate to place them in that class. They however take their revenge by ridiculing the reasoners. We should if possible accommodate ourselves to persons of both characters; it would have been better to speak jestingly of the planetary inhabitants to such men as your two friends, since they are accustomed to pleasantry, than to enter on an argument, for which they have no talents. You would have retained their good opinion without depriving the planets of a single inhabitant. Would you have meanly sacrificed the truth? answered she. Where is your conscience? I must own, I replied, I have not much zeal for truths of this nature; I would readily forbear to maintain them if it suited my convenience. The cause which prevents people from believing the planets to be inhabited is, that they appear to them only bodies placed in the heavens to give light, instead of globes consisting of meadows and fruitful countries. We readily believe that meadows and fields are inhabited, but it is thought ridiculous to assert that mere luminous bodies are. 'Tis in vain that reason informs us of fields in the planets; reason comes too late, the first coup-d'œil has impressed our minds before-hand, and this impression is not willingly parted with. The planets, 'tis said, are only luminous bodies; what sort of inhabitants then can they have? Our imaginations do not enable us to distinguish their figures, therefore it is the shortest way to deny their existence. Would you require me, for the sake of establishing the idea of these inhabitants, whose interest cannot be very dear to me, to attack all the powers of the senses and the imagination? Such an enterprize would demand a vast deal of courage. Men are not easily persuaded to see through their reason, rather than their eyes. Some few persons are rational enough to believe, after a thousand proofs have been given them, that the planets are worlds like ours, but they do not believe it in the same way they would do, if they had not seen them apparently so different; they always recur to the first idea they had formed, and can never wholly divest themselves of it. These people seem to _condescend_ to our opinion, and only patronize it from a love of singularity.