Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/46

28 could not subsist, we reckon in all three hundred, such as extent, impenetrability, motion, gravitation, divisibility, et cætera."

"That small number," replied the traveller, "probably answers the views of the Creator on this your narrow sphere. I adore His wisdom in all His works. I see infinite variety, but everywhere proportion. Your globe is small, so are the inhabitants. You have few sensations, because your matter is endued with few properties. These are the works of unerring providence. Of what color does your sun appear when accurately examined?"

"Of a yellowish white," answered the Saturnian, "and in separating one of his rays we find it contains seven colors."

"Our sun," said the Sirian, "is of a reddish hue, and we have no less than thirty-nine original colors. Among all the suns I have seen there is no sort of resemblance, and in this sphere of yours there is not one face like another."

After divers questions of this nature he asked how many substances, essentially different, they counted in the world of Saturn, and understood that they numbered but thirty, such as God, space, matter, beings endowed with sense and extension, beings that have extension, sense, and reflection; thinking beings who have no extension; those that are penetrable; those that are impenetrable, and also all others. But this Saturnian philosopher was prodigiously astonished when the Sirian told him they