The Consolidator; or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the MoonDefoe, Daniel
Science
The Consolidator; or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon
Defoe, Daniel
Fantasy fiction; Interplanetary voyages -- Fiction; Moon -- Fiction; Political fiction; Satire
Here too I find Glasses for the Second Sight, as our Old Women call
it. This Second Sight has been often pretended to in Our Regions, and
some Famous Old Wives have told us, they can see Death, the Soul,
Futurity, and the Neighbourhood of them, in the Countenance: By this
wonderful Art, these good People unfold strange Mysteries, as under
some Irrecoverable Disease, to foretell Death; under Hypocondriack
Melancholy, to presage Trouble of Mind; in pining Youth, to predict
Contagious Love; and an Hundred other Infallibilities, which never
fail to be true as soon as ever they come to pass, and are all
grounded upon the same Infallibility, by which a Shepherd may always
know when any one of his Sheep is Rotten, viz. when he shakes himself
to pieces.
But all this Guess and Uncertainty is a Trifle, to the vast
Discoveries of these Explicatory Optick-Glasses; for here are seen
the Nature and Consequences of Secret Mysteries: Here are read
strange Mysteries relating to Predestination, Eternal Decrees, and
the like: Here 'tis plainly prov'd, That Predestination is, in spight
of all Enthusiastick Pretences, so intirely committed into Man's
Power, that whoever pleases to hang himself to Day, won't Live till
to Morrow: no, though Forty Predestination Prophets were to tell him,
His time was not yet come. There abstruse Points are commonly and
solemnly Discuss'd here; and these People are such Hereticks, that
they say God's Decrees are all subservient to the means of his
Providence; That what we call Providence is a subjecting all things
to the great Chain of Causes and Consequences, by which that one
Grand Decree, That all Effects shall Obey, without reserve to their
proper moving Causes, supercedes all subsequent Doctrines, or
pretended Decrees, or Predestination in the World: That by this Rule,
he that will kill himself, GOD, Nature, Providence, or Decree, will
not be concern'd to hinder him, but he shall Die; any Decrees,
Predestination, or Fore-Knowledge of Infinite Power, to the contrary
in any wise, notwithstanding that it is in a Man's Power to throw
himself into the Water, and be Drown'd; and to kill another Man, and
he shall Die, and to say, God appointed it, is to make him the Author
of Murther, and to injure the Murtherer in putting him to Death for
what he could not help doing.
All these things are received Truths here, and no doubt would be so
every where else, if the Eyes of Reason were opened to the Testimony
of Nature, or if they had the helps of these most Incomparable
Glasses.
Some pretended, by the help of these Second-sight Glasses, to see the
common Periods of Life; and Others said, they could see a great way
beyond the leap in the Dark: I confess, all I could see of the first
was, that holding up the Glass against the Sea, I plainly saw, as it
were on the edge of the Horizon, these Words,
The Verge of Life and Death is here.
'Tis best to know where 'tis, but not how far.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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