A Voyage to the Moon

CHAPTER XII.

Of a Philosophical Entertainment

After I had Proclaimed this, in the five great places of the Town, my Advocate came and reached me his Hand to help me down. I was in great amaze, when after I had Eyed him I found him to be my Spirit; we were an hour in embracing one another: "Come lodge with me," said he, "for if you return to Court, after a Publick Disgrace, you will not be well lookt upon: Nay more, I must tell you, that you would have been still amongst the Apes yonder, as well as the Spaniard your Companion, if I had not in all Companies published the vigour and force of your Wit, and gained from your Enemies the protection of the great Men in your favours." I ceased not to thank him all the way, till we came to his Lodgings; there he entertained me till Suppertime with all the Engines he had set a work to prevail with my Enemies, notwithstanding the most specious pretexts they had used for riding the Mobile,95 to desist from so unjust a Prosecution. But as they came to acquaint us that Supper was upon the Table, he told me that to bear me company that evening he had invited Two Professors of the University of the Town to Sup with him: "I'll make them," said he, "fall upon the Philosophy which they teach in this World, and by that means you shall see my Landlord's Son: He's as Witty a Youth as ever I met with; he would prove another Socrates, if he could use his Parts aright, and not bury in Vice the Graces wherewith God continually visits him, by affecting a Libertinism,96 as he does, out of a Chimerical Ostentation and Affectation of the name of a Wit. I have taken Lodgings here, that I may lay hold on all Opportunities of Instructing him: " He said no more, that he might give me the Liberty to speak, if I had a mind to it; and then made a sign, that they should strip me of my disgraceful Ornaments, in which I still glistered.

The Two Professors, whom we expected, entered just as I was undrest, and we went to sit down to Table, where the Cloth was laid, and where we found the Youth he had mentioned to me, fallen to already. They made him a low Reverence, and treated him with as much respect as a Slave does his Lord. I asked my Spirit the reason of that, who made me answer, that it was because of his Age; seeing in that World, the Aged rendered all kind of Respect and Difference97 to the Young; and which is far more, that the Parents obeyed their Children, so soon as by the Judgment of the Senate of Philosophers they had attained to the Years of Discretion.98

"You are amazed," continued he, "at a Custom so contrary to that of your Country; but it is not all repugnant to Reason: For say, in your Conscience, when a brisk young Man is at his Prime in Imagining, Judging, and Acting, is not he fitter to govern a Family than a Decrepit piece of Threescore Years, dull and doting, whose Imagination is frozen under the Snow of Sixty Winters, who follows no other Guide but what you call the Experience of happy Successes; which yet are no more but the bare effects of Chance, against all the Rules and Oeconomy of humane Prudence? And as for Judgment, he hath but little of that neither, though the people of your World make it the Portion of Old Age: But to undeceive them, they must know, That that which is called Prudence in an Old Man is no more but a panick Apprehension, and a mad Fear of acting any thing where there is danger: So that when he does not run a Risk, wherein a Young Man hath lost himself; it is not that he foresaw the Catastrophe, but because he had not Fire enough to kindle those noble Flashes, which make us dare: Whereas the Boldness of that Young Man was as a pledge of the good Success of his design; because the same Ardour that speeds and facilitates the execution, thrust him upon the undertaking.

"As for Execution, I should wrong your Judgment if I endeavoured to convince it by proofs: You know that Youth alone is proper for Action; and were you not fully perswaded of this, tell me, pray, when you respect a Man of Courage, is it not because he can revenge you on your Enemies or Oppressors? And does any thing, but meer Habit, make you consider99 him, when a Battalion of Seventy Januarys hath frozen his Blood and chilled all the noble Heats that youth is warmed with? When you yield to the Stronger, is it not that he should be obliged to you for a Victory which you cannot Dispute him? Why then should you submit to him, when Laziness hath softened his Muscles, weakened his Arteries, evaporated his Spirits, and suckt the Marrow out of his Bones? If you adore a Woman, is it not because of her Beauty? Why should you then continue your Cringes, when Old Age hath made her a Ghost, which only represents a hideous Picture of Death? In short, when you loved a Witty Man, it was because by the Quickness of his Apprehension he unravelled an intricate Affair, seasoned the choicest Companies with his quaint Sayings, and sounded the depth of Sciences with a single Thought; and do you still honour him, when his worn Organs disappoint his weak Noddle, when he is become dull and uneasy in Company, and when he looks like an aged Fairy100 rather than a rational Man?

"Conclude then from thence, Son, that it is fitter Young Men should govern Families, than Old; and the rather, that according to your own Principles, Hercules, Achilles, Epaminondas, Alexander, and Cæsar, of whom most part died under Fourty Years of Age, could have merited no Honours, as being too Young in your account, though their Youth was the only cause of their Famous Actions; which a more advanced Age would have rendered ineffectual, as wanting that Heat and Promptitude that rendered them so highly successful. But you'll tell me, that all the Laws of your World do carefully enjoin the Respect that is due to Old Men: That's true; but it & as true also, that all who made Laws have been Old Men, who feared that Young Men might justly have dispossessed them of the Authority they had usurped.

"You owe nothing to your mortal Architector, but your Body only; your Soul comes from Heaven, and Chance might have made your Father your Son, as now you are his. Nay, are you sure he hath not hindered you from Inheriting a Crown? Your Spirit left Heaven, perhaps with a design to animate the King of the Romans, in the Womb of the Empress; it casually encountered the Embryo of you by the way, and it may be to shorten its journey, went and lodged there: No, no, God would never have razed your name out of the List of Mankind, though your Father had died a Child. But who knows, whether you might not have been at this day the work of some valiant Captain, that would have associated you to his Glory, as well as to his Estate. So that, perhaps, you are no more indebted to your Father – for the life he hath given you, than you would be to a Pirate who had put you in Chains, because he feeds you: Nay, grant he had begot you a Prince, or King; a Present loses its merit, when it is made without the Option of him who receives it. Cæsar was killed, and so was Cassius too: In the mean time Cassius was obliged to the Slave, from whom he begg'd his Death, but so was not Cæsar to his Murderers, who forced it upon him. Did your Father consult your Will and Pleasure, when he Embraced your Mother? Did he ask you, if you thought fit to see that Age, or to wait for another; if you would be satisfied to be the Son of a Sot, or if you had the Ambition to spring from a Brave Man? Alas, you whom alone the business concerned, were the only Person not consulted in the case. May be then, had you been shut up any where else, than in the Womb of Nature's Ideas, and had your Birth been in your own Opinion, you would have said to the Parca, my dear Lady, take another Spindle in your Hand: I have lain very long in the Bed of Nothing, and I had rather continue an Hundred years still without a Being, than to Be to day, that I may repent of it to morrow: However, Be you must, it was to no purpose for you to whimper and squall to be taken back again to the long and darksome House they drew you out of, they made as if they believed you cryed for the Teat.

"These are the Reasons, at least some of them, my Son, why Parents bear so much respect to their Children: I know very well that I have inclined to the Childrens side more than in justice I ought; and that in favour of them, I have spoken a little against my Conscience. But since I was willing to repress the Pride of some Parents, who insult over the weakness of their little Ones; I have been forced to do as they do who to make a crooked Tree streight bend it to the contrary side, that betwixt two Conversions it may become even: Thus I have made Fathers restore to their Children what they have taken from them, by taking from them a great deal that belonged to them; that so another time they may be content with their own. I know very well also that by this Apology I have offended all Old men: But let them remember, that they were Children before they were Fathers, and Young before they were Old; and that I must needs have spoken a great deal to their advantage, seeing they were not found in a Parsley-bed:101 But, in fine, fall back, fall edge, though my Enemies draw up against my Friends, it will go well enough still with me; for I have obliged all men, and only disobliged but one half."

With that he held his tongue, and our Landlord's Son spoke in this manner: "Give me leave," said he to him, "since by your care I am informed of the Original, History, Customs, and Philosophy, of the World of this little Man; to add something to what you have said; and to prove that Children are not obliged to Parents for their Generation, because their Parents were obliged in Conscience to procreate them.

"The strictest Philosophy of their World acknowledges that it is better to dye, since to dye one must have lived, than not to have had a Being. Now seeing, by not giving a Being to that Nothing, I leave it in a state worse than Death, I am more guilty in not producing, than in killing it. In the mean time, my little Man, thou wouldst think thou hadst committed an unpardonable Parracide, shouldst thou have cut thy Sons throat: It would indeed be an enormous Crime, but it is far more execrable, not to give a Being to that which is capable of receiving it: For that Child whom thou deprivest of life for ever, hath had the satisfaction of having enjoyed it for some time. Besides, we know that it is but deprived of it, but for some ages; but these forty poor little Nothings, which thou mightest have made forty good Souldiers for the King, thou art so malicious as to deny them Life, and lettest them corrupt in thy Reins, to the danger of an Appoplexy, which will stifle thee."

This Philosophy did not at all please me, which made me three or four times shake my head; but our Preceptor held his tongue, because Supper was mad to be gone.

We laid our selves along, then, upon very soft Quilts, covered with large Carpets; and a young man that waited on us, taking the oldest of our Philosophers, led him into a little parlour apart, where my Spirit called to him to come back to us as soon as he had supped.

This humour of eating separately, gave me the curiosity of asking the Cause of it: "He'll not relish," said he, "the steam of Meat, nor yet of Herbs, unless they die of themselves, because he thinks they are sensible of Pain." "I wonder not so much," replied I, "that he abstains from Flesh, and all things that have had a sensitive Life: For in our World the Pythagoreans, and even some holy Anchorites, have followed that Rule; but not to dare, for instance, cut a Cabbage, for fear of hurting it; that seems to me altogether ridiculous." "And for my part," answered my Spirit, "I find a great deal of probability in his Opinion."

"For tell me, Is not that Cabbage you speak of, a Being existent in Nature, as well as you? Is not she the common Mother of you both? Yet the Opinion that Nature is kinder to Mankind, than to Cabbage-kind, tickles and makes us laugh: But seeing she is incapable of Passion, she can neither love nor hate any thing; and were she susceptible of Love, she would rather bestow her affection upon this Cabbage, which you grant cannot offend her, than upon that Man who would destroy her, if it lay in his power.

"And moreover, Man cannot be born Innocent, being a Part of the first Offender: But we know very well, that the first Cabbage did not offend its Creator. If it be said, that we are made after the Image of the Supreme Being, and so is not the Cabbage; grant that to be true; yet by polluting our Soul, wherein we resembled Him, we have effaced that Likeness, seeing nothing is more contrary to God than Sin. If then our Soul be no longer his Image, we resemble him no more in our Feet, Hands, Mouth, Forehead and Ears, than a Cabbage in its Leaves, Flowers, Stalk, Pith, and Head: Do not you really think, that if this poor Plant could speak, when one cuts it, it would not say, 'Dear Brother Man, what have I done to thee that deserves Death? I never grow but in Gardens, and am never to be found in desart places, where I might live in Security: I disdain all other company but thine; and scarcely am I sowed in thy Garden, when to shew thee my Goodwill, I blow, stretch out my Arms to thee; offer thee my Children in Grain; and as a requital for my civility, thou causest my Head to be chopt off.' Thus would a Cabbage discourse, if it could speak.