Part 21

Some time after the Remora had retired we approached the field of battle and the old man, having covered his hands with the earth on which it had walked as a preservative against burns, picked up the Salamander's corpse.

"With this animal's body", said he, "I shall need no fire in my kitchen; for as long as it is hung on the jack it will roast and boil everything I put on the hearth. As for the eyes, I shall keep them carefully; if they were cleansed from the shadows of death you would take them for two little suns. In our world the ancients knew how to make use of them; they called them Perpetual Lamps and they were only hung in the pompous sepulchres of illustrious persons. In excavating certain of these famous tombs our moderns have met with some of them, but broke them in their ignorant curiosity by thinking to discover behind the broken membranes the fire they had seen shining through."

The old man continued to walk and I followed him, listening to the marvels he told me. Now, as touching the combat, I must not forget the conversation we had concerning the Ice-Animal:

"I do not think", said he, "that you have ever seen a Remora[77]; for these fishes never rise to the surface of the water and hardly ever leave the Northern Ocean. But doubtless you have seen certain animals which to some extent might be said to be of their species. I told you a little while ago that the sea about the pole is filled with Remoræ, who cast their fry on the mud like other fishes. You must know that this seed, the extract of their whole mass, contains all its cold so eminently that if a ship sails over it, the vessel contracts one or several worms which become birds, whose cold blood causes them to be placed in the order of fishes, although they have wings; and therefore the Holy Father, who knows their origin, does not forbid them to be eaten in Lent. They are what you call barnacle-geese."[78]

[Footnote 77: Probably not!]

[Footnote 78: Or "Scoters"; the text has "Maquereuses".]

I continued walking with no other purpose than that of following him, so delighted at having found a man that I dared not take my eyes from him, I was so afraid of losing him.

"Young mortal", said he, "(for I see you have not yet, like me, paid that tribute we all owe to Nature), as soon as I saw you I recognised in your face something which makes one anxious to pursue the acquaintance. If I am not mistaken, from the circumstances of your body's conformation you must be French, and a native of Paris. That town is the place where I ended my misfortunes after having carried them through all Europe.

"I am called Campanella and I am a Calabrian by birth. Since I came to the Sun I have spent my time in visiting the countries of this great globe to discover their wonders. It is divided into kingdoms, republics, states and principalities, like the Earth. Thus the quadrupeds, the birds, the plants, the stones, all have their own states; and although some of them do not allow animals of a different species to enter, particularly men, whom, above all, the birds hate with a deadly hatred, I can travel everywhere without running any risk, because a philosopher's soul is composed of particles much finer than the instruments they would use to torment him. Happily I was in the province of the trees when the Salamander's disturbances began; those great thunder-claps, you must have heard as well as I, guided me to their battlefield, where you arrived a moment afterwards. For the rest, I am returning to the province of philosophers...."

"What", said I, "are there philosophers in the Sun, too?"

"There are, indeed", replied the good man, "yes, they are the principal inhabitants of the Sun and the very same who so fill the mouth of fame in your world. You may soon converse with them, if you have the courage to follow me; for I hope to set foot in their town before three days have passed. I do not suppose you can conceive in what manner these great geniuses were transported here?"

"No, indeed", I exclaimed, "have so many other people had their eyes closed hitherto not to have found the way? Or after death do we fall into the hands of an Examiner of Spirits who, according to our capacity, grants or refuses us rights of citizenship in the Sun?"

"Nothing of the kind", replied the old man, "souls come to join this mass of light by a principle of similarity; for this world is formed of nothing but the spirits of all who die in the surrounding orbs, such as Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

"Thus, as soon as a plant, a beast, a man, expire, their souls rise to its sphere, just as you see a candle flame fly there in a point, in spite of the soot which holds its feet. Now, when all these souls are united to the source of the day and purged of the gross matter which impeded them, they exercise functions far more noble than those of growing, feeling and reasoning; they are used to form the blood and vital spirits of the Sun, that vast and perfect animal. And therefore you should not doubt that the Sun works intellectually much more perfectly than you, since it is by means of the heat of a million of these rectified souls (whereof its own is an elixir, since it knows the secret of life), that it infuses into the matter of your world the power of procreation, renders bodies capable of consciousness and, in short, is visible and makes all things visible.

"I have now to explain to you why the souls of philosophers are not essentially joined to the mass of the Sun like those of other men.

"There are three orders of spirits in all the planets, that is in the little worlds which move around this one.

"The grossest merely serve to repair the Sun's mass. The subtle insinuate themselves in the place of its rays; but those of philosophers, having acquired nothing impure during their exile, arrive complete to inhabit the sphere of day. Now, they do not become like others an integral part of its mass, because the matter which composes them at the point of their begetting is so exactly mingled that nothing can separate it; like the matter which forms gold, diamonds and the stars, whose parts are so closely mingled and intertwined, the strongest dissolvent could not loosen their embrace.

"Now the souls of philosophers are in respect to other souls what gold, diamonds and the stars are in respect to other bodies, and Epicurus in the Sun is the same Epicurus who formerly lived on the Earth."

The pleasure I received in listening to this man shortened the road for me and I often led the conversation expressly towards learned and curious matters, upon which I solicited his thought for my better instruction. And truly I have never seen kindness so great as his; for although through the agility of his substance he could have reached the kingdom of philosophers by himself in a very few days, he preferred to delay with me rather than to abandon me in those vast solitudes.

However, he was in a hurry; for I remember I asked him why he was returning before he had visited all the regions of that great world and he replied that he was obliged to interrupt his voyage, because of his impatience to see one of his friends, who had recently arrived. From subsequent parts of his talk I perceived that this friend was that famous philosopher of our time, Monsieur Descartes, and that he was only hastening to join him.

When I asked him in what esteem he held his _Physics_, he replied that we should only read it with that respect we listen to the pronouncement of Oracles.

"The science of natural things", he added, "like other sciences, is forced to preoccupy our judgment with axioms it does not prove; but the principles of his are simple and so natural that, once granted, there are no others which more necessarily satisfy all appearances."

At this point I could not prevent myself from interrupting:

"But", said I, "it seems to me that this philosopher has always denied a void; and yet, although he was an Epicurean, in order to have the honour of giving a principle to the principles of Epicurus, that is to atoms, he established for the beginning of things a chaos of wholly solid matter, which God divided into an innumerable number of little squares, to each of which He imparted different movements. Now, he maintains that these cubes by rubbing against each other have become ground down into particles of all kinds of shapes; but how can he conceive that these square pieces could have begun to move separately without admitting that a void was formed between their angles? Must there not necessarily have been a void in those spaces which the angles of these squares were compelled to leave in order to move? And then, since these squares only occupied a certain space before moving, could they be changed into a circle without occupying in their circumference as much space? Geometry teaches us that this cannot be, that therefore half of this space must have remained void, since there were not enough atoms to fill it."

My philosopher replied that Monsieur Descartes would explain it himself and that since he was born as obliging as philosophical he would certainly be delighted to find in this world a mortal man to enlighten him on a hundred doubts, which the surprise of death had forced him to leave on the Earth from which he had departed[79]; that for his part he did not think there was so much difficulty in replying to it according to those principles which I had only examined as far as the weakness of my mind permitted me, "Because", said he, "the works of this great man are so full and so subtle that to understand them demands an attention which calls for the soul of a true and consummate philosopher; for which reason there is not a philosopher in the Sun but has veneration for him, to such an extent that no one would contest his occupying the first rank, did not his modesty cause him to shun it.

[Footnote 79: Descartes died 1650, which dates this part of _The Sun_.]

"To lighten the fatigue which the length of the way might bring you, we will discuss this matter according to his principles, which are assuredly so clear and seem to satisfy everything so well through the admirable light of this great genius, that it seems as if he took part in the lovely and magnificent structure of this universe.

"You remember he says our understanding is finite; and since matter is divisible to infinity it is past doubt that this is one of the things our understanding can neither comprehend nor imagine and is indeed too far above it for it to explain.

"But, although this cannot be perceived by the senses, we do not fail to conceive that this happens, through the knowledge we have of matter; and we should not, he says, hesitate to order our judgment on things whereof we conceive. Indeed can we imagine the way in which the soul acts upon the body? Yet that truth cannot be denied nor doubted; while it is a much greater absurdity to attribute to void an extension which is a property belonging to the body of space, seeing that here the idea of nothing is confounded with that of being and qualities are attributed to that which can produce nothing and cannot be the author of anything. But, poor mortal, I feel that these speculations tire you, because, as that excellent man says, 'You have never taken the trouble to purify your mind from the mass of your body, and because you have rendered it so lazy that it will no longer perform any of its functions without the help of the senses.'"

I was about to reply when he touched my arm to point out to me a valley of marvellous beauty.

"Do you perceive", said he, "that incline by which we are about to descend? It is as if the crests of the surrounding hills were expressly crowned with trees to invite passers-by to rest in the coolness of their shade.

"At the foot of one of those hills the Lake of Sleep has its source; it is made of the fluid of five springs alone. If it did not mingle with the three rivers and thicken their waters with its weight no animal in our world could sleep."

I cannot express the impatience I felt to question him about these three rivers, which I had never heard of before. But I was contented by his promising me that I should see everything.

We soon reached the valley and almost at the same time the carpet which borders this great lake.

"Truly", said Campanella, "you are fortunate to behold all the marvels of this world before you die; it is well for the inhabitants of your globe to have produced a man who can inform them of the Sun's marvels since without you they were in danger of living in gross ignorance and of enjoying a hundred agreeable things without knowing whence they come; for it is not to be imagined what liberalities the Sun pours upon all your little globes; this valley alone scatters an infinite number of gifts through all the universe, without which you could not live nor even see the light of day. It seems to me that to have seen this country is sufficient to make you admit that the Sun is your Father and the Author of all things.[80] The five rivulets which debouch here flow only fifteen or sixteen hours; and yet when they arrive they seem so tired they can scarcely move; but they show their weariness in very different ways. Sight narrows as it approaches the Pool of Sleep; Hearing as it debouches grows confused, wanders and is lost in the mud; Smell creates a murmur like that of a man snoring; Taste, deadened from the way, becomes wholly insipid, and Touch, formerly so powerful that it harboured all its companions, is reduced to hiding its dwelling-place. The Nymph of Peace, who lives in the midst of the Lake, receives her guests with open arms, lays them in her bed, and indulges them with such delicacy that she herself takes the trouble to cradle them to put them to sleep. Some time after they have been mingled in this vast round pond they are seen to divide again at the other end into five rivulets, which, as they leave, take up again the names they abandoned on entering. But the most impatient of the party (who worry their companions to set out again) are Hearing and Touch; as for the three others they wait for these two to arouse them, and Taste especially always lags behind the others.[81]

[Footnote 80: This idea is a favourite with Cyrano. It is, of course, a commonplace now.]

[Footnote 81: This is rather in the spirit of Mlle de Scudéry's _Carte de Tendre_, but _Clélie_ was not published until 1654.]

"The black concave of a grotto arches over the Lake of Sleep. Quantities of tortoises walk slowly on the bank; a thousand poppy flowers reflected in the water give it the power of putting to sleep; for fifty leagues round even the marmots come to drink of it and the whisper of the stream is so delightful that it seems to rustle over the pebbles in measure and to compose a sleepy music."

The wise Campanella no doubt saw that I should be affected by it to some extent and therefore advised me to increase my pace. I should have obeyed him, but the charms of this water had so enveloped my reason that I retained scarce enough to understand these last words:

"Sleep, then, sleep, and I will leave you; the dreams one has here are so perfect that some day you will be glad to remember what you are about to dream. I will amuse myself by visiting the rarities of the place and then I will rejoin you."

I do not think he spoke any more, or else the fumes of sleep had already placed me in a state where I was incapable of hearkening to him.

I was in the midst of the wisest and best conceived dream imaginable, when my philosopher awakened me. I will relate it to you later on, when it will not interrupt the thread of my discourse, for it is very important for you to know it, so that you may understand with what liberty the mind of an inhabitant of the Sun acts, while his senses are imprisoned by sleep.[82] For my part I think that this Lake exhales an air which has the property of purifying completely the mind from the embarrassment of the senses; for nothing is presented to your thought by it which does not seem to perfect and instruct you; for which reason I have the greatest respect in the world for those philosophers called Dreamers, whom our ignorant people mock at.

[Footnote 82: We never get this dream.]

I opened my eyes with a start. It seems to me I heard him say:

"Mortal, you have slept enough; rise up, if you wish to see a rarity which would never even be imagined in your world. For an hour since I left you, in order not to disturb your repose, I have been walking alongside the five streams, which flow out of the Pool of Sleep. You may imagine how attentively I have observed them all; they bear the names of the five Senses and flow very close together. Sight seems a forked tube filled with powdered diamonds and little mirrors, which steal and restore the images of everything that comes near, and in its course it circles the Kingdom of the lynxes; Hearing is similarly double, it turns in as many windings as a maze and in the most hollow concaves of its bed can be heard an echo of every noise which sounds about it; I am very much deceived if I did not see foxes cleaning their ears beside it; Smell appears like the two preceding streams divided into two little hidden channels under a single arch; from everything it meets it extracts something invisible from which it composes a thousand kinds of smell, which occupy the place of water in it; on the banks of this stream may be seen many dogs purifying their noses; Taste flows in spurts, which usually only occur three or four times a day, and even then a large coral sluice-gate must be lifted up and underneath that a number of other very small ones, which are made of ivory; its fluid resembles saliva. But as to the fifth, the stream of Touch, it is so vast and so deep that it surrounds all its sisters, even lying full length in their bed, and its thick moisture is scattered far around on lawns completely green with sensitive plants.

"Now you must know that I was admiring, frozen with admiration, the mysterious turnings of all these streams when, as I walked on, I reached the place where they flow into the three rivers. But follow me, you will understand the arrangement of all these things far better by seeing them."

So potent a promise woke me completely; I held out my arm to him and we walked by the same way he had taken along the embankment which retained the five streams, each in its channel.

At the end of about a _stadium_ something as shining as a lake reached our eyes. The wise Campanella had no sooner perceived it than he said to me:

"At last, my son, we are approaching. I see the three rivers distinctly."

At this news I felt myself transported with such an ardour that I felt as if I had become an eagle. I flew rather than walked, and rushed all about, with so eager a curiosity, that in less than an hour my guide and I had observed all that you are about to hear.

Three large rivers water the brilliant plains of this kindling world: the first and the widest is called Memory; the second, narrower but deeper, Imagination; the third, smaller than the others, is called Judgment.

On the banks of Memory there is heard night and day the importunate calling of Jays, Parrots, Magpies, Starlings, Linnets, Finches, and birds of all kinds, which twitter what they have learned. At night they say nothing, because they are then occupied in drinking the thick vapour exhaled from these aquatic places. But their feeble stomachs digest it so ill that in the morning when they think they have converted it into their own substance it is seen to flow from their bills as pure as if it were in the river. The water of this river seems viscous and flows noisily; the echoes formed in its caverns repeat its speech more than a thousand times; it engenders certain monsters, whose faces are like the face of Woman. Others yet more furious are seen with square horny heads very similar to those of our Pedants. These do nothing but exclaim, and yet say nothing but what they have heard other people say.

The river of Imagination flows more gently; its light brilliant fluid sparkles on all sides; when one looks at this water composed of a torrent of damp sparks they seem to observe no certain order as they fly along. When I had observed it more attentively I took notice that the humour that flowed in its bed was pure potable gold and its foam oil of talc. The fishes it breeds are Remoræ, Sirens, and Salamanders; instead of gravel there are to be found those pebbles of which Pliny speaks, which make one heavy when touched on one side and light when applied on the other side. I noticed others again, of which Gyges had a ring, which renders invisible; but above all a large number of philosopher's stones glittered in its sands. On its banks were numerous fruit-trees, principally those found by Mohammed in Paradise; the branches swarmed with phœnixes, and I noticed seedlings of that fruit-tree whence Discord plucked the apple she cast at the feet of the three Goddesses; they had grafted on it shoots from the garden of the Hesperides. Each of these two wide rivers separated into an infinity of interlacing arms; and I observed that when a large stream of Memory approached a smaller one of Imagination the former immediately exterminated the latter; but on the contrary, if the stream of Imagination were larger, it dried up that of Memory. Now, since these three streams always flow side by side, either in their main channel or in their branches, wherever Memory is strong, Imagination diminishes, and the one increases as the other sinks.

Near at hand the river of Judgment flows incredibly slowly; its channel is deep, its fluid seems cold, and when scattered on anything dries instead of moistens. In the mud of its bed grow plants of Hellebore,[83] whose roots spreading out in long filaments purify the water of its mouth. It nourishes serpents, and a million elephants repose on the soft grass which carpets its banks; like its two cousins it splits into an infinity of little branches; it increases as it flows and although it always gains ground turns and returns upon itself eternally.

[Footnote 83: "Black hellebore, that most renowned plant, and famous purger of melancholy, which all antiquity so much used and admired...." Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_.]

The whole Sun is watered with the moisture of these three rivers; it serves to dilute the burning atoms of those who die in this great world; but this deserves to be treated more at length.

The life of animals in the Sun is very long; they only die by a natural death, which never occurs until the end of seven or eight thousand years, when from the continuous excesses of mind to which their fiery temperament inclines them, the order of their matter grows confused; for as soon as Nature feels in a body that more time is needed to repair the ruins of its being than to compose a new one, she tends to dissolve it; so that from day to day the animal is seen, not to rot, but to fall into particles like red ashes.