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Article A FRENCH NOVELIST OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. ← Page 11 of 12 →
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A French Novelist Of The Seventeenth Century.
an earth ; when , having fulfilled the conditions of his sentence , he was restored to liberty , and permitted to travel through the lunar regions , accompanied by the Socratic demon . ' Various Avere the sights they saAv , and the comments which they elicited from both parties , but especially from Bergerac , who was someAvhat discomfited to find that his favourite theories
became sadly shaken by his practical experience ; ancl that he was occasionally compelled to admit that the inhabitants of Luna were not quite so mad on many points as sundry of his friends in the nether Avorld . Among other things Avhich struck him as extraordinary , he remarked , that ivhen the Lunarians were engaged in wartwo armies were never suffered
, to go into action until it had been clearly ascertained that their strength was precisely equal , and that , in the contest , might could not overcome right ; an arrangement winch probably tended more than any other would have clone to preserve the common peace . Then , again , the construction of their cities struck him as singularly rational . In the sedentary towns
, where the inhabitants , having established themselves for a permanency , were satisfied to live and die without seeking for a change , the houses were built upon a principle which enabled their tenants during bad weather , intense cold , or high winds ,
by means of powerful screws to sink them beneath the level of the soil , ancl thus protect themselves and then- property from danger ; while the moving cities were constructed on wheels , and each separate tenement provided with sails and belloivs , to impel it in whatever direction its owners desired to emigrate , at the change of the season . For a while he Avas embarrassed
on discovering that there were no sundials in the country ; but he soon became convinced that they were not needed , as all the inhabitants made so perfect a dial of their teeth , that Avhen they wished to know the hour , the shadow of their noses falling upon them at once decided the question . At first Bergerac had felt inclined to despise a people who
were ignorant of the uses of a host of objects without which human beings would be helpless ; but he gradually recanted his error , as he became convinced that these were mere superfluities , indicating rather moral helplessness than ingenuity ; but that to ivhich he coulcl not so easily reconcile himself was the fact thatin their hilosophical controversieshe was generally
, p , worsted by the Lunarians , ivho laughed at his prejudices , and treated him like a schoolboy , while he was moreover reluctantly compelled to admit his inferiority . At length , however , he grew weary of his singular existence , and began to pine for home . He according applied for his
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
A French Novelist Of The Seventeenth Century.
an earth ; when , having fulfilled the conditions of his sentence , he was restored to liberty , and permitted to travel through the lunar regions , accompanied by the Socratic demon . ' Various Avere the sights they saAv , and the comments which they elicited from both parties , but especially from Bergerac , who was someAvhat discomfited to find that his favourite theories
became sadly shaken by his practical experience ; ancl that he was occasionally compelled to admit that the inhabitants of Luna were not quite so mad on many points as sundry of his friends in the nether Avorld . Among other things Avhich struck him as extraordinary , he remarked , that ivhen the Lunarians were engaged in wartwo armies were never suffered
, to go into action until it had been clearly ascertained that their strength was precisely equal , and that , in the contest , might could not overcome right ; an arrangement winch probably tended more than any other would have clone to preserve the common peace . Then , again , the construction of their cities struck him as singularly rational . In the sedentary towns
, where the inhabitants , having established themselves for a permanency , were satisfied to live and die without seeking for a change , the houses were built upon a principle which enabled their tenants during bad weather , intense cold , or high winds ,
by means of powerful screws to sink them beneath the level of the soil , ancl thus protect themselves and then- property from danger ; while the moving cities were constructed on wheels , and each separate tenement provided with sails and belloivs , to impel it in whatever direction its owners desired to emigrate , at the change of the season . For a while he Avas embarrassed
on discovering that there were no sundials in the country ; but he soon became convinced that they were not needed , as all the inhabitants made so perfect a dial of their teeth , that Avhen they wished to know the hour , the shadow of their noses falling upon them at once decided the question . At first Bergerac had felt inclined to despise a people who
were ignorant of the uses of a host of objects without which human beings would be helpless ; but he gradually recanted his error , as he became convinced that these were mere superfluities , indicating rather moral helplessness than ingenuity ; but that to ivhich he coulcl not so easily reconcile himself was the fact thatin their hilosophical controversieshe was generally
, p , worsted by the Lunarians , ivho laughed at his prejudices , and treated him like a schoolboy , while he was moreover reluctantly compelled to admit his inferiority . At length , however , he grew weary of his singular existence , and began to pine for home . He according applied for his