A Budget of Paradoxes Volume I Part 21

A new Theory of the Earth and of planetary motion; in which it is demonstrated that the Sun is vicegerent of his own system. Norwich, 1825, 12mo.

The a.n.a.lyzation of the writings of the Jews, so far as they are found to have any connection with the sublime science of astronomy. [This is pp. 97-180 of some other work, being all I have seen.]

These works are all by Sampson Arnold Mackey,[588] for whom see _Notes and Queries_, 1st S. viii. 468, 565, ix. 89, 179. Had it not been for actual quotations given by one correspondent only (1st S. viii. 565), that journal would have handed him down as a man of some real learning. An extraordinary man he certainly was: it is not one illiterate shoemaker in a thousand who could work upon such a singular ma.s.s of Sanskrit and Greek words, without showing {257} evidence of being able to read a line in any language but his own, or to spell that correctly. He was an uneducated G.o.dfrey Higgins.[589]

A few extracts will put this in a strong light: one for history of science, one for astronomy, and one for philology:

"Sir Isaac Newton was of opinion that 'the atmosphere of the earth was the sensory of G.o.d; by which he was enabled to see quite round the earth:'

which proves that Sir Isaac had no idea that G.o.d could see through the earth.

"Sir Richard [Phillips] has given the most rational explanation of the cause of the earth's elliptical orbit that I have ever seen in print. It is because the earth presents its watery hemisphere to the sun at one time and that of solid land the other; but why has he made his Oxonian astonished at the coincidence? It is what I taught in my attic twelve years before.

"Again, admitting that the Eloim were powerful and intelligent beings that managed these things, we would accuse _them_ of being the authors of all the sufferings of Chrisna. And as they and the constellation of Leo were below the horizon, and consequently cut off from the end of the zodiac, there were but eleven constellations of the zodiac to be seen; the three at the end were wanted, but those three would be accused of bringing Chrisna into the troubles which at last ended in his death. All this would be expressed in the Eastern language by saying that Chrisna was persecuted by those Judoth Ishcarioth!!!!! [the five notes of exclamation are the author's]. But the astronomy of those distant ages, when the sun was at the south pole in winter, would leave five of those Decans cut off from our view, in the lat.i.tude of twenty-eight degrees; hence Chrisna died of {258} wounds from five Decans, but the whole five may be included in Judoth Ishcarioth! for the phrase means 'the men that are wanted at the extreme parts.' Ishcarioth is a compound of _ish_, a man, and _carat_ wanted or taken away, and oth the plural termination, more ancient than _im_...."

I might show at length how Michael is the sun, and the D'-ev-'l in French Di-ob-al, also 'L-evi-ath-an--the evi being the radical part both of d_evi_l and l_evi_athan--is the Nile, which the sun dried up for Moses to pa.s.s: a battle celebrated by Jude. Also how _Moses_, the same name as _Muses_, is from _mesha_, drawn out of the water, "and hence we called our land which is saved from the water by the name of _marsh_." But it will be of more use to collect the character of S. A. M. from such correspondents of _Notes and Queries_ as have written after superficial examination. Great astronomical and philological attainments, much ability and learning; had evidently read and studied deeply; remarkable for the originality of his views upon the very abstruse subject of mythological astronomy, in which he exhibited great sagacity. Certainly his views were _original_; but their sagacity, if it be allowable to copy his own mode of etymologizing, is of an _ori-gin-ale_ cast, resembling that of a person who puts to his mouth liquors both distilled and fermented.

A KANTESIAN JEWELER.

Principles of the Kantesian, or transcendental philosophy. By Thomas Wirgman.[590] London, 1824, 8vo.

Mr. Wirgman's mind was somewhat attuned to psychology; but he was cracky and vagarious. He had been a fashionable jeweler in St. James's Street, no doubt the son or grandson of Wirgman at "the well-known toy-shop in {259} St. James's Street," where Sam Johnson smartened himself with silver buckles. (Boswell, _aet._ 69). He would not have the ridiculous large ones in fashion; and he would give no more than a guinea a pair; such, says Boswell, in Italics, were the _principles_ of the business: and I think this may be the first place in which the philosophical word was brought down from heaven to mix with men. However this may be, _my_ Wirgman sold snuff-boxes, among other things, and fifty years ago a fashionable snuff-boxer would be under inducement, if not positively obliged, to have a stock with very objectionable pictures. So it happened that Wirgman--by reason of a trifle too much candor--came under the notice of the _Suppression_ Society, and ran considerable risk. Mr. Brougham was his counsel; and managed to get him acquitted. Years and years after this, when Mr. Brougham was deep in the formation of the London University (now University College), Mr. Wirgman called on him. "What now?" said Mr. B.

with his most sarcastic look--a very perfect thing of its kind--"you're in a sc.r.a.pe again, I suppose!" "No! indeed!" said W., "my present object is to ask your interest for the chair of Moral Philosophy in the new University!"

He had taken up Kant!

Mr. Wirgman, an itinerant paradoxer, called on me in 1831: he came to convert me. "I a.s.sure you," said he, "I am nothing but an old brute of a jeweler;" and his eye and manner were of the extreme of jocosity, as good in their way, as the satire of his former counsel. I mention him as one of that cla.s.s who go away quite satisfied that they have wrought conviction.

"Now," said he, "I'll make it clear to you! Suppose a number of gold-fishes in a gla.s.s bowl,--you understand? Well! I come with my cigar and go puff, puff, puff, over the bowl, until there is a little cloud of smoke: now, tell me, what will the gold-fishes say to that?" "I should imagine," said I, "That they would not know what to make of it." "By Jove! you're a Kantian;" said he, and with this and the like, he left me, vowing that {260} it was delightful to talk to so intelligent a person. The greatest compliment Wirgman ever received was from James Mill, who used to say he did not _understand_ Kant. That such a man as Mill should think this worth saying is a feather in the cap of the jocose jeweler.

Some of my readers will stare at my supposing that Boswell may have been the first down-bringer of the word _principles_ into common life; the best answer will be a prior instance of the word as true vernacular; it has never happened to me to notice one. Many words have very common uses which are not old. Take the following from Nichols (_Anecd._ ix. 263): "Lord Thurlow presents his best respects to Mr. and Mrs. Thicknesse, and a.s.sures them that he knows of no cause to complain of any part of Mr. Thicknesse's carriage; least of all the circ.u.mstance of sending the head to Ormond Street." Surely Mr. T. had lent Lord T. a satisfactory carriage with a movable head, and the above is a polite answer to inquiries. Not a bit of it! _carriage_ is here _conduct_, and the _head_ is a _bust_. The vehicles of the rich, at the time, were coaches, chariots, chaises, etc., never carriages, which were rather _carts_. Gibbon has the word for baggage-wagons. In Jane Austen's novels the word carriage is established.

WALSH'S DELUSIONS.

_John Walsh_,[591] of Cork (1786-1847). This discoverer has had the honor of a biography from Professor Boole, who, at my request, collected information about him on the scene of his labors. It is in the _Philosophical Magazine_ for November, 1851, and will, I hope, be transferred to some biographical collection where it may find a larger cla.s.s of readers. It is the best biography of a single hero of the kind that I know. Mr. Walsh introduced himself to me, {261} as he did to many others, in the anterowlandian days of the Post-office; his unpaid letters were double, treble, &c. They contained his pamphlets, and cost their weight in silver: all have the name of the author, and all are in octavo or in quarto letter-form: most are in four pages, and all dated from Cork. I have the following by me:

The Geometric Base, 1825.--The theory of plane angles. 1827.--Three Letters to Dr. Francis Sadleir. 1838.--The invention of polar geometry.

By Irelandus. 1839.--The theory of partial functions. Letter to Lord Brougham. 1839.--On the invention of polar geometry. 1839.--Letter to the Editor of the Edinburgh Review. 1840.--Irish Manufacture. A new method of tangents. 1841.--The normal diameter in curves. 1843.--Letter to Sir R. Peel. 1845.--[Hints that Government should compel the introduction of Walsh's Geometry into Universities.]--Solution of Equations of the higher orders. 1845.

Besides these, there is a _Metalogia_, and I know not how many others.

Mr. Boole,[592] who has taken the moral and social features of Walsh's delusions from the commiserating point of view, which makes ridicule out of place, has been obliged to treat Walsh as Scott's Alan Fairford treated his client Peter Peebles; namely, keep the scarecrow out of court while the case was argued. My plan requires me to bring him in: and when he comes in at the door, pity and sympathy fly out at the window. Let the reader remember that he was not an ignoramus in mathematics: he might have won his spurs if he could have first served as an esquire. Though so illiterate that even in Ireland he never picked up anything more Latin than _Irelandus_, he was a very pretty mathematician spoiled in the making by intense self-opinion.

This is part of a private letter to me at the back of a page of print: I had never addressed a word to him:

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"There are no limits in mathematics, and those that a.s.sert there are, are infinite ruffians, ignorant, lying blackguards. There is no differential calculus, no Taylor's theorem, no calculus of variations, &c. in mathematics. There is no quackery whatever in mathematics; no % equal to anything. What sheer ignorant blackguardism that!

"In mechanics the parallelogram of forces is quackery, and is dangerous; for nothing is at rest, or in uniform, or in rectilinear motion, in the universe. Variable motion is an essential property of matter. Laplace's demonstration of the parallelogram of forces is a begging of the question; and the attempts of them all to show that the difference of twenty minutes between the sidereal and actual revolution of the earth round the sun arises from the tugging of the Sun and Moon at the pot-belly of the earth, without being sure even that the earth has a pot-belly at all, is perfect quackery. The said difference arising from and demonstrating the revolution of the Sun itself round some distant center."

In the letter to Lord Brougham we read as follows:

"I ask the Royal Society of London, I ask the Saxon crew of that crazy hulk, where is the dogma of their philosophic G.o.d now?... When the Royal Society of London, and the Academy of Sciences of Paris, shall have read this memorandum, how will they appear? Like two cur dogs in the paws of the n.o.blest beast of the forest.... Just as this note was going to press, a volume lately published by you was put into my hands, wherein you attempt to defend the fluxions and _Principia_ of Newton. Man! what are you about?

You come forward now with your special pleading, and fraught with national prejudice, to defend, like the philosopher Gra.s.si,[593] the persecutor of Galileo, principles {263} and reasoning which, unless you are actually insane, or an ignorant quack in mathematics, you know are mathematically false. What a moral lesson this for the students of the University of London from its head! Man! demonstrate corollary 3, in this note, by the lying dogma of Newton, or turn your thoughts to something you understand.

"WALSH IRELANDUS."

Mr. Walsh--honor to his memory--once had the consideration to save me postage by addressing a pamphlet under cover to a Member of Parliament, with an explanatory letter. In that letter he gives a candid opinion of himself:

(1838.) "Mr. Walsh takes leave to send the enclosed corrected copy to Mr.

Hutton as one of the Council of the University of London, and to save postage for the Professor of Mathematics there. He will find in it geometry more deep and subtle, and at the same time more simple and elegant, than it was ever contemplated human genius could invent."

He then proceeds to set forth that a certain "tomfoolery lemma," with its "tomfoolery" superstructure, "never had existence outside the shallow brains of its inventor," Euclid. He then proceeds thus:

"The same spirit that animated those philosophers who sent Galileo to the Inquisition animates all the philosophers of the present day without exception. If anything can free them from the yoke of error, it is the [Walsh] problem of double tangence. But free them it will, how deeply soever they may be sunk into mental slavery--and G.o.d knows that is deeply enough; and they bear it with an admirable grace; for none bear slavery with a better grace than tyrants. The lads must adopt my theory.... It will be a sad reverse for all our great professors to be compelled to become schoolboys in their gray years. But the sore scratch is to be compelled, as they had before been compelled one thousand years ago, to have recourse to Ireland for instruction." {264}

The following "Impromptu" is no doubt by Walsh himself: he was more of a poet than of an astronomer:

"Through ages unfriended, With sophistry blended, Deep science in Chaos had slept; Its limits were fettered, Its voters unlettered, Its students in movements but crept.

Till, despite of great foes, Great WALSH first arose, And with logical might did unravel Those mazes of knowledge, Ne'er known in a college, Though sought for with unceasing travail.

With cheers we now hail him, May success never fail him, In Polar Geometrical mining; Till his foes be as tamed As his works are far-famed For true philosophic refining."

Walsh's system is, that all mathematics and physics are wrong: there is hardly one proposition in Euclid which is demonstrated. His example ought to warn all who rely on their own evidence to their own success. He was not, properly speaking, insane; he only spoke his mind more freely than many others of his cla.s.s. The poor fellow died in the Cork union, during the famine. He had lived a happy life, contemplating his own perfections, like Brahma on the lotus-leaf.[594]

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GROWTH OF FREEDOM OF OPINION.

The year 1825 brings me to about the middle of my _Athenaeum_ list: that is, so far as mere number of names mentioned is concerned. Freedom of opinion, beyond a doubt, is gaining ground, for good or for evil, according to what the speaker happens to think: admission of authority is no longer made in the old way. If we take soul-cure and body-cure, divinity and medicine, it is manifest that a change has come over us. Time was when it was enough that dose or dogma should be certified by "Il a ete ordonne, Monsieur, il a ete ordonne,"[595] as the apothecary said when he wanted to operate upon poor de Porceaugnac. Very much changed: but whether for good or for evil does not now matter; the question is, whether contempt of _demonstration_ such as our paradoxers show has augmented with the rejection of _dogmatic authority_. It ought to be just the other way: for the worship of reason is the system on which, if we trust them, the deniers of guidance ground their plan of life. The following attempt at an experiment on this point is the best which I can make; and, so far as I know, the first that ever was made.

Say that my list of paradoxers divides in 1825: this of itself proves nothing, because so many of the earlier books are lost, or not likely to be come at. It would be a fearful rate of increase which would make the number of paradoxes since 1825 equal to the whole number before that date. Let us turn now to another collection of mine, arithmetical books, of which I have published a list. The two collections are similarly circ.u.mstanced as to new and old books; the paradoxes had no care given to the collection of either; the arithmetical books equal care to both. The list of arithmetical books, published in 1847, divides at 1735; the paradoxes, up to 1863, divide at 1825. If we take the process which is most against the distinction, and allow every year {266} from 1847 to 1863 to add a year to 1735, we should say that the arithmetical writers divide at 1751. This rough process may serve, with sufficient certainty, to show that the proportion of paradoxes to books of sober demonstration is on the increase; and probably, quite as much as the proportion of heterodoxes to books of orthodox adherence. So that divinity and medicine may say to geometry, Don't _you_ sneer: if rationalism, h.o.m.oeopathy, and their congeners are on the rise among us, your enemies are increasing quite as fast. But geometry replies--Dear friends, content yourselves with the rational inference that the rise of heterodoxy within your pales is not conclusive against you, taken alone; for it rises at the same time within mine. Store within your garners the precious argument that you are not proved wrong by increase of dissent; because there is increase of dissent against exact science. But do not therefore _even_ yourselves to me: remember that you, Dame Divinity, have inflicted every kind of penalty, from the stake to the stocks, in aid of your reasoning; remember that you, Mother Medicine, have not many years ago applied to Parliament for increase of forcible hindrance of antipharmacopoeal drenches, pills, and powders. Who ever heard of my asking the legislature to fine blundering circle-squarers? Remember that the D in dogma is the D in decay; but the D in demonstration is the D in durability.

THE STATUS OF MEDICINE.

I have known a medical man--a young one--who was seriously of the opinion that the country ought to be divided into medical parishes, with a pract.i.tioner appointed to each, and a penalty for calling in any but the inc.u.mbent curer. How should people know how to choose? The hair-dressers once pet.i.tioned Parliament for an act to compel people to wear wigs. My own opinion is of the opposite extreme, as in the following letter (_Examiner_, April 5, 1856); which, to my surprise, I saw reprinted in a medical journal, as a {267} plan not absolutely to be rejected. I am perfectly satisfied that it would greatly promote true medical orthodoxy, the predominance of well educated thinkers, and the development of their desirable differences.

"SIR. The Medical Bill and the medical question generally is one on which experience would teach, if people would be taught.

"The great soul question took three hundred years to settle: the little body question might be settled in thirty years, if the decisions in the former question were studied.

"Time was when the State believed, as honestly as ever it believed anything, that it _might_, _could_, and _should_ find out the true doctrine for the poor ignorant community; to which, like a worthy honest state, it added _would_. Accordingly, by the a.s.sistance of the Church, which undertook the physic, the surgery, and the pharmacy of sound doctrine all by itself, it sent forth its legally qualified teachers into every parish, and woe to the man who called in any other. They burnt that man, they whipped him, they imprisoned him, they did everything but what was Christian to him, all for his soul's health and the amendment of his excesses.