A Budget of Paradoxes Volume II Part 23

{258} We conceive that it is We conceive that it is impossible for the Word of impossible for the Word of G.o.d, as written in the book of G.o.d, as correctly read in the nature, and G.o.d's Word written Book of Nature, and the Word in Holy Scripture, to of G.o.d, as truly interpreted contradict one another, out of the Holy Scripture, to however much they may appear contradict one another, to differ. however much they may appear to differ.

We are not forgetful that We are not forgetful that Physical Science is not neither theological complete, but is only in a interpretation nor physical condition of progress, and knowledge is yet complete, but that at present our finite that both are in a condition reason enables us only to see of progress; and that at as through a gla.s.s darkly, present our finite reason enables us only to see both one and the other as through a gla.s.s darkly [the writers of the original declaration have distinctively applied to physical science the phrase by which St. Paul denotes the imperfections of theological vision, which they tacitly a.s.sume to be quite perfect], and we confidently believe, and we confidently believe, that a time will come when the that a time will come when the two records will be seen to two records will be seen to agree in every particular. We agree in every particular. We cannot but deplore that cannot but deplore that Natural Science should be Religion should be looked upon looked upon with suspicion by with suspicion by some and many who do not make a study Science by others, of the of it, merely on account of students of either who do not the unadvised manner in which make a study of the {259} some are placing it in other, merely on account of opposition to Holy Writ. the unadvised manner in which some are placing Religion in opposition to Science, and some are placing Science in opposition to Religion.

We believe that it is the duty We believe that it is the duty of every Scientific Student to of every theological student investigate nature simply for to investigate the Scripture, the purpose of elucidating and of every scientific truth, student to investigate Nature, simply for the purpose of elucidating truth.

and that if he finds that some And if either should find that of his results appear to be in some of his results appear to contradiction to the Written be in contradiction, whether Word, or rather to his own to Scripture or to Nature, or _interpretations_ of it, which rather to his own may be erroneous, he should _interpretation_ of one or the not presumptuously affirm that other, which may be erroneous, his own conclusions must be he should not affirm as with right, and the statements of certainty that his own Scripture wrong; conclusion must be right, and the other interpretation wrong: rather, leave the two side by but should leave the two side side till it shall please G.o.d by side for further inquiry to allow us to see the manner into both, until it shall in which they may be please G.o.d to allow us to reconciled; arrive at the manner in which they may be reconciled.

and, instead of insisting upon In the mean while, instead of the seeming differences insisting, and least of all between Science and the with acrimony or injurious Scriptures, it would be as {260} statements about others, well to rest in faith upon the upon the seeming differences points in which they agree. between Science and the Scriptures, it would be a thousand times better to rest in faith as to our future state, in hope as to our coming knowledge, and in charity as to our present differences.

The distinctness of the fallacies is creditable to the composers, and shows that scientific habits tend to clearness, even to sophistry. Nowhere does it so plainly stand out that the _Written Word_ means the sense in which the accuser takes it, while the sense of the other side is _their interpretation_. The infallible church on one side, arrayed against heretical pravity on the other, is seen in all subjects in which men differ. At school there were various games in which one or another advantage was the right of those who first called for it. In adult argument the same thing is often attempted: we often hear--I cried _Church_ first!

I end with the answer which I myself gave to the application: its revival may possibly save me from a repet.i.tion of the like. If there be anything I hate more than another it is the proposal to place any persons, especially those who allow freedom to me, under any abridgment of their liberty to think, to infer, and to publish. If they break the law, take the law; but do not make the law: [Greek: agoraioi agontai enkaleitosan allelois.][410]

I would rather be asked to take shares in an argyrosteretic company (with limited liability) for breaking into houses by night on fork and spoon errands. I should put aside this proposal with _nothing but laughter_. It was a joke against Sam Rogers[411] that his appearance was very like that of a corpse. The _John Bull_ {261} newspaper--suppose we now say Theodore Hook[412]--averred that when he hailed a coach one night in St. Paul's Churchyard, the jarvey said, "Ho! ho! my man; I'm not going to be taken in that way: go back to your grave!" This is the answer I shall make for the future to any relics of a former time who shall want to call me off the stand for their own purposes. What obligation have I to admit that they belong to our world?

"SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE.

"_The Writ De Haeretico Commiserando._[413]

Nov. 14, 1864.

"This doc.u.ment was sent to me four days ago. It 'solicits the favor'--I thought at first it was a grocer's supplication for tea and sugar patronage--of my signature to expression of 'sincere regret' that some persons unnamed--general warrants are illegal--differ from what I am supposed--by persons whom it does not concern--to hold about Scripture and Science in their real or alleged discrepancies.

"No such favor from me: for three reasons. First, I agree with Sir. J.

Herschel that the solicitation is an intrusion to be publicly repelled.

Secondly, I do _not_ regret that others should differ from me, think what I may: those others are as good as I, and as well able to think, and as much ent.i.tled to their conclusions. Thirdly, even if I did regret, I should be ashamed to put my name to bad chemistry made to do duty for good reasoning.

The declaration is an awkward attempt to saturate sophism with truism; but the sophism is left largely in excess.

{262}

"I owe the inquisitors a grudge for taking down my conceit of myself. For two months I have crowed in my own mind over my friend Sir J. Herschel, fancying that the promoters instinctively knew better than to bring their fallacies before a writer on logic. Ah! my dear Sir John! thought I, if you had shown yourself to be well up in _Barbara Celarent_,[414] and had ever and anon astonished the natives with the distinction between _simpliciter_ and _secundum quid_, no autograph-hunters would have baited a trap with _non sequitur_[415] to catch your signature. What can I say now? I hide my diminished head, diminished by the horns which I have been compelled to draw in.

"Those who make personal solicitation for support to an opinion about religion are bound to know their men. The king had a right to Brother Neale's money, because Brother Neale offered it. Had he put his hand into purse after purse by way of finding out all who were of Brother Neale's mind, he would have been justly met by a rap on the knuckles whenever he missed his mark.

"The kind of test before me is the utmost our time will allow of that inquisition into opinion which has been the curse of Christianity ever since the State took Providence under its protection. The writ _de haeretico commiserando_ is little more than the smell of the empty cask: and those who issue it may represent the old woman with her

"O suavis anima, quale in te dicam bonum Antehac fuisse; tales c.u.m sint reliquiae."[416]

It is no excuse that the illegitimate bantling is a very little one. Its parents may think themselves hardly treated when they are called lineal successors of Tony Fire-the-f.a.ggot: {263} but, degenerate though they be, such is their ancestry. Let every allowance be made for them: but their unholy fire must be trodden out; so long as a spark is left, nothing but fuel is wanted to make a blaze. If this cannot be done, let the flame be confined to theology, though even there it burns with diminished vigor: and let charity, candor, sense, and ridicule, be ready to play upon it whenever there is any chance of its extending to literature and science.

"What would be the consequence if this test-signing absurdity were to grow?

Deep would call unto deep; counter-declaration would answer declaration, each stronger than the one before. The moves would go on like the dispute of two German students, of whom each is bound to a sharper retort on a graduated scale, until at last comes _dummer Junge_![417]--and then they must fight. There is a gentleman in the upper fifteen of the signers of the writ--the hawking of whose names appears to me very bad taste--whom I met in cordial cooperation for many a year at a scientific board. All I knew about his religion was that he, as a clergyman, must in some sense or other receive the 39 Articles:--all that he could know about mine was that I was some kind of heretic, or so reputed. If we had come to signing opposite manifestoes, turn-about, we might have found ourselves in the lowest depths of party discussion at our very council-table. I trust the list of subscribers to the declaration, when it comes to be published, will show that the bulk of those who have really added to our knowledge have seen the thing in its true light.

"The promoters--I say nothing about the subscribers--of the movement will, I trust, not feel aggrieved at the course I have taken or the remarks I have made. Walter Scott says that before we judge Napoleon by the temptation to which he yielded, we ought to remember how much he may have resisted: I invite them to apply this rule to myself; they can have no idea of the feeling with which I {264} contemplate all attempts to repress freedom of inquiry, nor of the loathing with which I recoil from the proposal to be art and part. They have asked me to give a public opinion upon a certain point. It is true that they have had the kindness to tender both the opinion they wish me to form, and the shape in which they would have it appear: I will let them draw me out, but I will not let them take me in. If they will put an asterisk to my name, and this letter to the asterisk, they are welcome to my signature. As I do not expect them to relish this proposal, I will not solicit the favor of its adoption. But they have given a right to think, for they have asked me to think; to publish, for they have asked me to allow them to publish; to blame them, for they have asked me to blame their betters. Should they venture to find fault because my direction of disapproval, publicly given, is half a revolution different from theirs, they will be known as having presented a loaded doc.u.ment at the head of a traveler in the highway of discussion, with--Your signature or your silence!"

THE FLY-LEAF PARADOX.

The paradox being the proposition of something which runs counter to what would generally be thought likely, may present itself in many ways. There is a _fly-leaf paradox_, which puzzled me for many years, until I found a probable solution. I frequently saw, in the blank leaves of old books, learned books, Bibles of a time when a Bible was very costly, etc., the name of an owner who, by the handwriting and spelling, must have been an illiterate person or a child, followed by the date of the book itself.

Accordingly, this uneducated person or young child seemed to be the first owner, which in many cases was not credible. Looking one day at a Barker's[418] Bible of 1599, I saw an {265} inscription in a child's writing, which certainly belonged to a much later date. It was "Martha Taylor, her book, giuen me by Granny Scott to keep for her sake." With this the usual verses, followed by 1599, the date of the book. But it so chanced that the blank page opposite the t.i.tle, on which the above was written, was a verso of the last leaf of a prayer book, which had been bound before the Bible; and on the recto of this leaf was a colophon, with the date 1632. It struck me immediately that uneducated persons and children, having seen dates written under names, and not being quite up in chronology, did frequently finish off with the date of the book, which stared them in the face.

Always write in your books. You may be a silly person--for though your reading my book is rather a contrary presumption, yet it is not conclusive--and your observations may be silly or irrelevant, but you cannot tell what use they may be of long after you are gone where Budgeteers cease from troubling.

I picked up the following book, printed by J. Franklin[419] at Boston, during the period in which his younger brother Benjamin was his apprentice.

And as Benjamin was apprenticed very early, and is recorded as having learned the mechanical art very rapidly, there is some presumption that part of it may be his work, though he was but thirteen at the time. As this set of editions of Hodder[420] (by {266} Mose[421]) is not mentioned, to my knowledge, I give the t.i.tle in full:

"Hodder's Arithmetick: or that necessary art made most easy: Being explained in a way familiar to the capacity of any that desire to learn it in a little time. By James Hodder, Writing-master. The Five and twentieth edition, revised, augmented, and above a thousand faults amended, by Henry Mose, late servant and successor to the author.

Boston: printed by J. Franklin, for S. Phillips, N. b.u.t.tolph, B.

Elliot, D. Henchman, G. Phillips, J. Elliot, and E. Negus, booksellers in Boston, and sold at their shops. 1719."

The book is a very small octavo, the type and execution are creditable, the woodcut at the beginning is clumsy. It is a perfect copy, page for page, of the English editions of Mose's Hodder, of which the one called seventeenth is of London, 1690. There is not a syllable to show that the edition above described might not be of Boston in England. Presumptions, but not very strong ones, might be derived from the name of _Franklin_, and from the large number of booksellers who combined in the undertaking. It chanced, however, that a former owner had made the following note in my copy:

"Wednessday, July y^e 14, 1796, att ten in y^e forenoon we sail^d from Boston, came too twice, once in King Rode, and once in y^e Narrows.

Sail^d by y^e lighthouse in y^e even^g."

{267}

No ordinary map would decide these points: so I had to apply to my friend Sir Francis Beaufort,[422] and the charts at the Admiralty decided immediately for Ma.s.sachusetts.

PARADOXES OF ORTHOGRAPHY AND COMPUTATION.

The French are able paradoxers in their spelling of foreign names. The Abbe Sabatier de Castres,[423] in 1772, gives an account of an imaginary dialogue between Swif, Adisson, Otwai, and Bolingbrocke. I had hoped that this was a thing of former days, like the literal roasting of heretics; but the charity which hopeth all things must hope for disappointments. Looking at a recent work on the history of the popes, I found referred to, in the matter of Urban VIII[424] and Galileo, references to the works of two Englishmen, the Rev. Win Worewel and the Rev. Raden Powen. [Wm. Whewell and Baden Powell].[425]

I must not forget the "moderate computation" paradox. This is the way by which large figures are usually obtained. Anything surprisingly great is got by the "lowest computation," anything as surprisingly small by the "utmost computation"; and these are the two great subdivisions of "moderate computation." In this way we learn that 70,000 persons were executed in one reign, and 150,000 persons {268} burned for witchcraft in one century.

Sometimes this computation is very close. By a card before me it appears that all the Christians, including those dispersed in heathen countries, those of Great Britain and Ireland excepted, are 198,728,000 people, and pay their clergy 8,852,000l. But 6,400,000 people pay the clergy of the Anglo-Irish Establishment 8,896,000l.; and 14,600,000 of other denominations pay 1,024,000l. When I read moderate computations, I always think of Voltaire and the "memoires du fameux eveque de Chiapa, par lesquels il parait qu'il avait egorge, ou brule, ou noye dix millions d'infideles en Amerique pour les convertir. Je crus que cet eveque exaggerait; mais quand on reduisait ces sacrifices a cinq millions de victimes, cela serait encore admirable."[426]

CENTRIFUGAL FORCE.

My Budget has been arranged by authors. This is the only plan, for much of the remark is personal: the peculiarities of the paradoxer are a large part of the interest of the paradox. As to subject-matter, there are points which stand strongly out; the quadrature of the circle, for instance. But there are others which cannot be drawn out so as to be conspicuous in a review of writers: as one instance, I may take the _centrifugal force_.

When I was about nine years old I was taken to hear a course of lectures, given by an itinerant lecturer in a country town, to get as much as I could of the second half of a good, sound, philosophical omniscience. The first half (and sometimes more) comes by nature. To this end I smelt chemicals, learned that they were different kinds of _gin_, saw young wags try to kiss the girls under the excuse of what was called _laughing gas_--which I was sure {269} was not to blame for more than five per cent of the requisite a.s.surance--and so forth. This was all well so far as it went; but there was also the excessive notion of creative power exhibited in the millions of miles of the solar system, of which power I wondered they did not give a still grander idea by expressing the distances in inches. But even this was nothing to the ingenious contrivance of the centrifugal force. "You have heard what I have said of the wonderful centripetal force, by which Divine Wisdom has retained the planets in their orbits round the Sun. But, ladies and gentlemen, it must be clear to you that if there were no other force in action, this centripetal force would draw our earth and the other planets into the Sun, and universal ruin would ensue. To prevent such a catastrophe, the same wisdom has implanted a centrifugal force of the same amount, and directly opposite," etc. I had never heard of Alfonso X of Castile,[427] but I ventured to think that if Divine Wisdom had just let the planets alone it would come to the same thing, with equal and opposite troubles saved. The paradoxers deal largely in speculation conducted upon the above explanation. They provide external agents for what they call the centrifugal force. Some make the sun's rays keep the planets off, without a thought about what would become of our poor eyes if the _push_ of the light which falls on the earth were a counterpoise to all its gravitation. The true explanation cannot be given here, for want of room.

CAMBRIDGE POETS.

Sometimes a person who has a point to carry will a.s.sert a singular fact or prediction for the sake of his point; and {270} this paradox has almost obtained the sole use of the name. Persons who have reputation to care for should beware how they adopt this plan, which now and then eventuates a spanker, as the American editor said. Lord Byron, in "English Bards, etc."

(1809), ridiculing Cambridge poetry, wrote as follows:

"But where fair Isis rolls her purer wave, The partial muse delighted loves to lave; On her green banks a greener wreath she wove, To crown the bards that haunt her cla.s.sic grove; Where Richards[428] wakes a genuine poet's fires, And modern Britons glory in their sires."[429]

There is some account of the Rev. Geo. Richards, Fellow of Oriel and Vicar of Bampton, (M.A. in 1791) in the _Living Authors_ by Watkins[430] and Shoberl[431] (1816). In Rivers's _Living Authors_, of 1798, which is best fitted for citation, as being published before Lord Byron wrote, he is spoken of in high terms. The _Aboriginal Britons_ was an Oxford (special) prize poem, of 1791. Charles Lamb mentions Richards as his school-fellow at Christ's Hospital, "author of the _Aboriginal Britons_, the most spirited of the Oxford Prize Poems: a pale, studious Grecian."

As I never heard of Richards as a poet,[432] I conclude that his fame is defunct, except in what may prove to be a very ambiguous kind of immortality, conferred by Lord Byron. The awkwardness of a case which time has broken down {271} is increased by the eulogist himself adding so powerful a name to the list of Cambridge poets, that his college has placed his statue in the library, more conspicuously than that of Newton in the chapel; and this although the greatness of poetic fame had some serious drawbacks in the moral character of some of his writings. And it will be found on inquiry that Byron, to get his instance against Cambridge, had to go back eighteen years, pa.s.sing over seven intermediate productions, of which he had either never heard, or which he would not cite as waking a genuine poet's fires.

The conclusion seems to be that the _Aboriginal Britons_ is a remarkable youthful production, not equalled by subsequent efforts.