[5] Micromégas proceeds to begin his journey, traveling by taking advantage of gravity and "the forces of repulsion and attraction" (a reference endorsing the work of Sir Isaac Newton), and after extensive celestial travels he arrives on Saturn, where he befriends the native population and developed an intimate friendship with the secretary of the Academy of Saturn, a man less than a twentieth of his size (a "dwarf" standing only 6,000 royal feet or 1.95 km tall) and described as being clever but lacking the capacity for true genius.

[4] At the end of their conversation, they decide to take a philosophical journey together, and, in a comedic passage that begins chapter three, the Saturnian's mistress arrives with the intent of preventing her lover's departure.

The Saturnian decides that the planet must be devoid of life, since he had as of yet seen none but Micromégas chastises him, resisting the temptation to make hasty conclusions and using his reason to direct his search.

The Sirian fashions a magnifying glass from a diamond in his necklace measuring 160 royal feet in diameter and spots a tiny speck in the Baltic sea which he discovers is a whale.

[4][5] The seventh and final chapter sees the humans testing the philosophies of Aristotle, Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz and Locke against the travelers' wisdom.

Beginning the deeper conversation, one of the human philosophers explains to the extraterrestrial visitors that Mankind had not found lasting happiness and that, to the contrary, hundreds of thousands of men will go to war against each other for, in the novella's relativization, insignificant quarrels.

The conversation shifts upon the travelers' learning the occupation of their interlocutors towards the scientific prowess of Man, which ends when philosophical questions are asked.

Micromégas then is angry with the arrogance of Mankind and, taking pity on the humans, the Sirian decides to write them a book that will explain everything to them philosophically.

[6] In 1975, Peter Lester Smith weighed in with an article in Modern Philology asserting that Micromégas was in print before 1752, based on a lawsuit filed on May 1, 1752 about an unauthorized reprint of the tale.

[2] Lester found that in some form the novella was in print at least by August 1751, as shown by correspondence between Lefebvre de Beauvray and Pierre-Michel Hennin that mentions Micromégas as a new work in circulation in London, Dresden, and Paris.

[2] Lester believed that Voltaire had handed the manuscript of the tale, among other things, for delivery to one Michel Lambert for publishing by Christoph Heinrich von Ammon.