"Do not waste your time," someone responded, "they are working towards ruin quickly enough. Know that after ten years only one hundredth of these scoundrels will be here. Know that even if they have not drawn swords, hunger, fatigue, or intemperance will overtake them. Furthermore, it is not they that should be punished, it is those sedentary barbarians who from the depths of their offices order, while they are digesting their last meal, the massacre of a million men, and who subsequently give solemn thanks to God." The voyager was moved with pity for the small human race, where he was discovering such surprising contrasts. "Since you are amongst the small number of wise men," he told these sirs, "and since apparently you do not kill anyone for money, tell me, I beg of you, what occupies your time." "We dissect flies," said the philosopher, "we measure lines, we gather figures; we agree with each other on two or three points that we do not understand." It suddenly took the Sirian and the Saturnian's fancy to question these thinking atoms, to learn what it was they agreed on. "What do you measure," said the Saturnian, "from the Dog Star to the great star of the Gemini?" They responded all at once, "thirty-two and a half degrees." "What do you measure from here to the moon?" "60 radii of the Earth even." "How much does your air weigh?" He thought he had caught them[3], but they all told him that air weighed around 900 times less than an identical volume of the purest water, and 19,000 times less than a gold ducat. The little dwarf from Saturn, surprised at their responses, was tempted to accuse of witchcraft the same people he had refused a soul fifteen minutes earlier. [3] The edition I believe to be original reads "put them off" in place of "caught them." Finally Micromegas said to them, "Since you know what is exterior to you so well, you must know what is interior even better. Tell me what your soul is, and how you form ideas." The philosophers spoke all at once as before, but they were of different views. The oldest cited Aristotle, another pronounced the name of Descartes; this one here, Malebranche; another Leibnitz; another Locke. An old peripatetic spoke up with confidence: "The soul is an entelechy, and a reason gives it the power to be what it is." This is what Aristotle expressly declares, page 633 of the Louvre edition. He cited the passage[4]. [4] Here is the passage such as it is transcribed in the edition dated 1750: "Entele'xeia' tis esi kai' lo'gos toû dy'namin e'xontos toude' ei'nai." This passage of Aristotle, _On the Soul_, book II, chapter II, is translated thusly by Casaubon: _Anima quaedam perfectio et actus ac ratio est quod potentiam habet ut ejusmodi sit_. B. "I do not understand Greek very well," said the giant. "Neither do I," said the philosophical mite. "Why then," the Sirian retorted, "are you citing some man named Aristotle in the Greek?"