“Tell me,” says Micromegas, an inhabitant of one of the planets of the Dog Star, to the secretary of the Academy of Sciences in the planet Saturn, at which he had recently arrived in a journey through the heavens,--“Tell me, how many senses have the men on your globe?”--I quote, as perhaps the name has already informed you from an ingenious philosophic romance of Voltaire, who, from various allusions in the work, has evidently had Fontenelle, the illustrious secretary of the French Academy of Sciences, in view, in the picture which he gives of the Saturnian secretary.--“We have seventy-two senses,” answered the academician, “and we are, every day, complaining of the smallness of the number. Our imagination goes far beyond our wants. What are seventy-two senses! and how pitiful a boundary, even for beings with such limited perceptions, to be cooped up within our ring, and our five moons! In spite of our curiosity, and in spite of as many passions as can result from six dozen of senses, we find our hours hang very heavily on our hands, and can always find time enough for yawning.”--“I can very well believe it,” says Micromegas, “for, in our globe, we have very near _one thousand_ senses; and yet, with all these, we feel continually a sort of listless inquietude and vague desire, which are forever telling us that we are nothing, and that there are beings infinitely nearer perfection. I have travelled a good deal in the universe. I have seen many classes of mortals far beneath us, and many as much superior; but I have never had the good fortune to find any, who had not always more desires than real necessities to occupy their life.--And, pray, how long may you Saturnians live with your few senses?” continued the Sirian.--“Ah! but a very short time, indeed!” said the little man of Saturn, with a sigh.--“It is the same with us,” said the traveller; “we are forever complaining of the shortness of life. It must be an universal law of nature.”--“Alas!” said the Saturnian, “we live only five hundred great revolutions of the sun (which is pretty much about fifteen thousand years of our counting.) You see well, that this is to die almost the moment one is born. Our existence is a point--our duration an instant--our globe an atom. Scarcely have we begun to pick up a little knowledge, when death rushes in upon us, before we can have acquired any thing like experience. As for me, I cannot venture even to think of any project. I feel myself but like a drop of water in the ocean; and, especially now, when I look to you and to myself, I really feel quite ashamed of the ridiculous appearance which I make in the universe.”