A Century of Science and Other Essays Part 8

The causes of this growth of Cambridge might be treated, had we s.p.a.ce for it, under three heads. Our city has grown because of its proximity to Boston; it has grown by reason of its flourishing manufactures; and it has grown with the growth of the University. That Cambridge should have shared in the general prosperity of this whole suburban region is but natural. But persons at a distance are apt to show surprise when we speak of it as a manufacturing city. This feature in our development belongs to the period subsequent to 1846, and has much to do with the growth of the eastern portions of Cambridge, where the combined facilities for railroad and water communication have been peculiarly favourable to manufactures. In the early part of this century, the gla.s.sworks at East Cambridge, which have since departed, were somewhat famous, considerable manufactures of soap and leather had been begun, and cars and wagons were made here. At the present time some of our chief manufactures are of engine boilers and various kinds of machinery, of which the annual product exceeds $2,000,000. Among the industries which produce in yearly value more than $1,000,000 may be mentioned printing and publishing, musical instruments (especially pianos and organs), furniture, clothing, carpenter's work, soap and candles, biscuit-baking; while among those that produce $500,000 or more are carriage-making and wheelwright's work, plumbing and plumber's materials, bricks and tiles, and confectionery. Not only our own new Harvard Bridge, but most of the steel railway bridges in New England, have been built in Cambridge. We supply a considerable part of the world with hydraulic engines; the United States Navy comes here for its pumps, and our pumping machines may be seen at work in Honolulu, in Sydney, in St. Petersburg. In the dimensions of its pork-packing industry, Cambridge comes next after Chicago and Kansas City. In 1842 all the fish-netting used in America was made in England; to-day it is chiefly made in East Cambridge, which also furnishes the twine prized by disciples of Izaak Walton in many parts of the world. Last year the potteries on Walden Street turned out seven million flower-pots. Such facts as these bear witness to the unusual facilities of our city, where coal can be taken and freight can be shipped at the very door of the factory, where taxes and insurance are not burdensome and the fire department is unsurpa.s.sed for efficiency, where skilled labour is easy to get because good workmen find life comfortable and attractive, with excellent sanitary conditions and unrivalled means of free education, even to the Latin School and the Manual Training School. It is well said, in one of the reports in our semi-centennial volume, that "to Cambridge herself, as much as to any other one thing, is the success of all her manufacturing enterprises due, and all agree in acknowledging it."

Among Cambridge industries, two may be mentioned as especially characteristic and famous. Of the printing establishments now existing, not many can be more venerable than our University Press, of which we have spoken as beginning in 1639. Of the wise and genial founder of the Riverside Press--who once was mayor of our city, and whose memory we love and revere--it may be said that few men of recent times have had a higher conception of bookmaking as one of the fine arts. These two inst.i.tutions have set a lofty standard for the Athenaeum Press, which has lately come to bear them company. The past half century has seen Cambridge come into the foremost rank among the few publishing centres of the world, where books are printed with faultless accuracy and artistic taste.

The visitor to Cambridge from Brookline, as he leaves the bridge at Brookline Street, comes upon a pleasant dwelling house, with a private observatory, and hard by it a plain brick building. That is the shop of Alvan Clark & Sons, who have carried the art of telescope-making to a height never reached before. There have been made the most powerful refracting telescopes in the world, and one of the firm, more than thirty years ago, himself acquired fame as an astronomer for his discovery of the companion of Sirius.

From this quiet nook in the Port one's thoughts naturally turn to the Harvard Observatory, which in those days the two Bonds made famous for their accurate methods of research, their discoveries relating to the planet Saturn, and their share in the application of photography to telescopic observation. The honourable position then taken by the Observatory has been since maintained; but as we note this, we find ourselves brought to the consideration of the University and its last half century of growth. And here my remarks cannot help taking the form, to some extent, of personal reminiscences.

When I first came to Old Cambridge, in 1860, it still had much of the village look, which it has since been fast losing. Pretty much all the s.p.a.ces now covered by street after street of wooden "Queen Anne" houses, in such proximity as to make one instinctively look for the whereabouts of the nearest fire alarm, were then open, smiling fields. The old house where the Shepard Church stands was rural enough for the Berkshire Hills; and on the site of Austin Hall, in the doorway of a homestead built in 1710, one might pause for a cosy chat with the venerable and courtly Royal Morse, whose personal recollections went back into the eighteenth century. The trees on the common were the merest saplings, but an elm of mighty sweep, whose loss one must regret, shaded the whole of Harvard Square. Horse cars came and went on week days, but on Sunday he who would visit Boston must either walk or take an omnibus, in which riding was a penance severe enough to atone for the sin. "Blue Laws" in the University were in full force; the student who spent his Sundays at home in Boston must bring out a certificate showing that he had attended divine service twice; no discretion was allowed the parents.

College athletics were in their infancy, as the little gymnasium still standing serves to remind us. There were rowing matches, but baseball had not come upon the scene, and football had just been summarily suppressed. The first college exercise in which I took part was the burial of the football, with solemn rites, in a corner of this Delta. On Cla.s.s Day there was no need for closing the yard; there was room enough for all, and groups of youths and maidens in light summer dress, dancing on the green before Holworthy, made a charming picture, like that of an ancient May Day in merry England, save for the broiling heat.

The examination days which followed were more searching than at other American colleges. The courses of study were on the whole better arranged than elsewhere, but during the first half of the course everything was prescribed, and in the last half the elective system played but a subordinate part. The system of examinations did not extend to the Law School, where a simple residence of three terms ent.i.tled a student to receive the bachelor's degree. The library at Gore Hall had less than one fifth of its present volumes, with no catalogue accessible to the public, while one small table accommodated all the readers. For laboratory work the facilities were meagre, and very little was done. We all studied a book of chemistry; how many of us ever really looked at such things as manganese or antimony? For the student of biology the provision was better, for the Botanic Garden was very helpful, and in the autumn of 1860 was opened the first section of our glorious Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Here one is naturally led to the reflection that in that day of small things, as some might call it, there were spiritual influences operative at Harvard which more than made up for shortcomings in material equipment. There is a kind of human presence, all too rare in this world, which is in itself a stimulus and an education worth more than all the scholastic artifices that the wit of man has devised; for in the mere contact with it one's mind is trained and widened as if by enchantment. Such a human presence in Cambridge was Louis Aga.s.siz. Can one ever forget that beaming face as he used to come strolling across the yard, with lighted cigar, in serene obliviousness of the University statutes? Scarcely had one pa.s.sed him, when one might exchange a pleasant word with Asa Gray, or descry in some arching vista the picturesque figures of Sophocles or Peirce, or, turning up Brattle Street, encounter, with a thrill of pleasure not untinged with awe, Longfellow and Lowell walking side by side. In such wise are the streets and lawns of our city hallowed by the human presences that once graced them; and few are the things to be had for which one would exchange the memories of those days!

My cla.s.s of 1863, with 120 members, was the largest that had been graduated here. It would have been larger but for the Civil War, and a period followed with cla.s.ses of less than 100 members,--a sad commentary upon the times. Boundless possibilities of valuable achievement must be sacrificed to secure the supreme end, that the commonwealth should not suffer harm. How n.o.bly Harvard responded to the demand is recorded upon the solemn tablets in this Memorial Hall. For those who are inclined to dally with the thought that war is something that may be undertaken lightly and with frolicsome heart, this sacred precinct and the monument on yonder common have their lesson that may well be pondered.

The vast growth of our country since the Civil War has been attended with the creation of new universities and the enlargement of the old ones to such an extent as to show that the demand for higher education more than keeps pace with the increase of population. The last graduating cla.s.s in our Quinquennial Catalogue numbered 350 members. The University contains more than 3000 students.[29] The increase in number of instructors, in courses of instruction, in laboratories and museums, in facilities and appliances of every sort, has wrought changes like those in a fairy tale. The Annual Catalogue is getting to be as multifarious as Bradshaws Guide, and a trained intellect is required to read it. The little college of half a century ago has bloomed forth as one of the worlds foremost universities. Such things can come from great opportunities wielded and made the most of by clearness of vision and administrative capacity.

To this growth of the University must be added the most happy inception and growth of Radcliffe College, marking as it does the maturing of a new era in the education of women. We may well wish for Radcliffe a career as n.o.ble and as useful as that of Harvard, and I doubt not that such is in store for it. A word must be said of the Episcopal Theological School, based upon ideas as sound and broad as Christianity; and of the New-Church Theological School, more recently founded. We must hail such indications of the tendency toward making our Cambridge the centre for the untrammelled study of the most vital problems that can occupy the human mind.

But the day we are celebrating is a civic, not a university occasion, and I must dwell no longer upon academic themes. We are signalizing the anniversary of the change which we once made from government by town meeting to city government. Have we a good reason for celebrating that change? Has our career as a civic community been worthy of approval? In answering this question, I shall not undertake to sum up the story of our public schools and library; our hospital and charity organizations; the excellent and harmonious work of our churches, Protestant and Catholic; our Prospect Union, warmly to be commended; our arrangements for water supply and sewage; and our admirable park system (in which we may express a hope that Elmwood will be included). This interesting and suggestive story may be read in the semi-centennial volume, "The Cambridge of Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Six," just issued from the Riverside Press. It is an enlivening story of progress, but like every story it has a moral, and I am going to pa.s.s over details and make straight for that moral. Americans are a bragging race because they have enjoyed immense opportunities, and are apt to forget that the true merit lies, not in the opportunity, but in the use we make of it. Much gratifying progress can be achieved in spite of the worst sort of blundering and sinning on the part of governments. The greater part, indeed, of human progress within historic times has been thus achieved.

A good deal of the progress of which Americans are wont to boast has been thus achieved. Now the moral of our story is closely concerned with the fact that in the city of Cambridge such has not been the case. Our city government has from the outset been upright, intelligent, and helpful. We are satisfied with it. We do not wish to change it. In this respect the experience of Cambridge is very different from that of many other American cities. The government of our cities is acknowledged to be a problem of rare difficulty, so that it has begun to seem a natural line of promotion for a successful mayor to elect him governor, and then to send him to the White House! In some cities one finds people inclined to give up the problem as insoluble. I was lately a.s.sured by a gentleman in a city which I will not name, but more than a thousand miles from here, that the only cure for the acc.u.mulated wrongs of that community would be an occasional _coup d'etat_, with the ma.s.sacre of all the city officers. So the last word of our boasted progress, when it comes to munic.i.p.al government, is declared to be the Oriental idea of "despotism tempered by a.s.sa.s.sination"! Now to what cause or causes are we to ascribe the contrast between Cambridge and the cities that are so wretchedly governed? The answer is, that in Cambridge we keep city government clear of politics, we do not mix up munic.i.p.al questions with national questions. If I may repeat what I have said elsewhere, "since the object of a munic.i.p.al election is simply to secure an upright and efficient munic.i.p.al government, to elect a city magistrate because he is a Republican or a Democrat is about as sensible as to elect him because he believes in h.o.m.opathy or has a taste for chrysanthemums." Upon this plain and obvious principle of common sense our city has acted, on the whole with remarkable success, during its half century of munic.i.p.al existence. The results we see all about us, and the example may be commended as an object lesson to all who are interested in the most vital work that can occupy the mind of an American,--the work of elevating the moral tone of public life. For it is neither wealth, nor power, nor cunning, nor craft that exalts a nation, but righteousness and the fear of the Lord.

_May, 1896._

XI

A HARVEST OF IRISH FOLK-LORE

Since the days when Castren made his arduous journeys of linguistic exploration in Siberia, or when the brothers Grimm collected their rich treasures of folk-lore from the lips of German peasants, an active quest of vocables and myths has been conducted with much zeal and energy in nearly all parts of the world. We have tales, proverbs, fragments of verse, superst.i.tious beliefs and usages, from Greenland, from the southern Pacific, from the mountaineers of Thibet and the freedmen upon Georgia plantations. We follow astute Reynard to the land of the Hottentots, and find the ubiquitous Jack planting his beanstalk among the Dog-Rib Indians. At the same time, the nooks and corners of Europe have been ransacked with bountiful results; so that whereas our grandfathers, in speculating about the opinions and mental habits of people in low stages of culture, were dealing with a subject about which they knew almost nothing, on the other hand, our chief difficulty to-day is in shaping and managing the enormous ma.s.s of data which keen and patient inquirers have collected. It is well that this work has been carried so far in our time, for modern habits of thought are fast exterminating the Old World fancies. Railroad, newspaper, and telegraphic bulletin of prices are carrying everything before them. The peasant's quaint dialect and his fascinating myth tales are disappearing along with his picturesque dress; and savages, such of them as do not succ.u.mb to fire-water, are fast taking on the airs and manners of civilized folk. It is high time to be gathering in all the primitive lore we can find, before the men and women in whose minds it is still a living reality have all pa.s.sed from the scene.

The collection of Irish myth stories lately published by Mr. Jeremiah Curtin[30] is the result of a myth-hunting visit which the author made in Ireland in 1887, and is one of the most interesting and valuable contributions to the study of folk-lore that have been made for many years. "All the tales in my collection," says Mr. Curtin, "of which those printed in this volume form but a part, were taken down from the mouths of men who, with one or two exceptions, spoke only Gaelic, or but little English, and that imperfectly. These men belong to a group of persons all of whom are well advanced in years, and some very old; with them will pa.s.s away the majority of the story-tellers of Ireland, unless new interest in the ancient language and lore of the country is roused.

"For years previous to my visit of 1887 I was not without hope of finding some myth tales in a good state of preservation. I was led to entertain this hope by indications in the few Irish stories already published, and by certain tales and beliefs that I had taken down myself from old Irish persons in the United States. Still, during the earlier part of my visit in Ireland, I was greatly afraid that the best myth materials had perished. Inquiries as to who might be in possession of these old stories seemed fruitless for a considerable time. The persons whom I met that were capable of reading the Gaelic language had never collected stories, and could refer only in a general way to the districts in which the ancient language was still living. All that was left was to seek out the old people for whom Gaelic is the every-day speech, and trust to fortune to find the story-tellers."

Thus Mr. Curtin was led to explore the counties of Kerry, Galway, and Donegal. "Comforting myself with the Russian proverb that 'game runs to meet the hunter,' I set out on my pilgrimage, giving more prominence to the study and investigation of Gaelic, which, though one of the two objects of my visit, was not the first. In this way I thought to come more surely upon men who had myth tales in their minds than if I went directly seeking for them. I was not disappointed, for in all my journeyings I did not meet a single person who knew a myth tale or an old story who was not fond of Gaelic, and specially expert in the use of it, while I found very few story-tellers from whom a myth tale could be obtained unless in the Gaelic language; and in no case have I found a story in the possession of a man or woman who knew only English."

There is something so interesting in this fact, and so pathetic in the explanation of it, that we are tempted to quote further: "Since all mental training in Ireland is directed by powers both foreign and hostile to everything Gaelic, the moment a man leaves the sphere of that cla.s.s which uses Gaelic as an every-day language, and which clings to the ancient ideas of the people, everything which he left behind seems to him valueless, senseless, and vulgar; consequently he takes no care to retain it, either in whole or in part. Hence the clean sweep of myth tales in one part of the country,--the greater part, occupied by a majority of the people; while they are still preserved in other and remoter districts, inhabited by men who, for the scholar and the student of mankind, are by far the most interesting in Ireland."

The fate of the Gaelic language has, indeed, been peculiarly sad. In various parts of Europe, and especially among the western Slavs, the native tongues have been to some extent displaced by the speech of conquering peoples; yet it is only in Erin that, within modern times, a "language of Aryan stock has been driven first from public use, and then dropped from the worship of G.o.d and the life of the fireside." Hence, while in many parts of Europe the ancient tales live on, often with their incidents more or less dislocated and their significance quite blurred, on the other hand, in English-speaking Ireland they have been cleared away "as a forest is felled by the axe."

Nevertheless, in the regions where Irish myths have been preserved, they have been remarkably well preserved, and bear unmistakable marks of their vast antiquity. One very noticeable feature in these myths is the definiteness and precision of detail with which the personages and their fields of action are brought before us. This is a characteristic of mythologies which are, comparatively speaking, intact; and, as Mr.

Curtin observes, it is to be seen in the myths of the American Indians.

As long as a mythology remains intact it "puts its imprint on the whole region to which it belongs." Every rock, every spring, is the scene of some definite incident; every hill has its mythical people, who are as real to the narrators as the flesh-and-blood population which one finds there. In this whole world of belief and sentiment there is the vigour of fresh life, and the country is literally enchanted ground. But when, through the invasion of alien peoples, there is a mingling and conflict of sacred stories, and new groups of ideas and a.s.sociations have partly displaced the old ones, so that only the argument or general statement of the ancient myth is retained, and perhaps even that but partially, then "all precision and details with reference to persons and places vanish; they become indefinite; are in some kingdom, some place,--nowhere in particular." There is this vagueness in the folk-tales of eastern and central Europe as contrasted with those of Ireland. "Where there was or where there was not," says the Magyar, "there was in the world;" or, if the Russian hero goes anywhere, it is simply across forty-nine kingdoms, etc.; "but in the Irish tales he is always a person of known condition in a specified place" (for example, "There was a blacksmith in Dunkenealy, beyond Killybegs," etc., page 244).

As to the antiquity and the primitive character of Mr. Curtin's stories an experienced observer can entertain no doubt. His book is certainly the most considerable achievement in the field of Gaelic mythology since the publication, thirty years ago, of Campbell's "Tales of the West Highlands;" and it does for the folk-lore of Ireland what Asbjornsen and Moe's collection (the English translation of which is commonly, and with some injustice, known by the name of the translator as Dasent's "Norse Tales") did for the folk-lore of Norway. This is, of course, very high praise, but we do not believe it will be called extravagant by any competent scholar who reads Mr. Curtin's book. The stories have evidently been reduced to writing with most scrupulous and loving fidelity. In turning the Gaelic into English some of the characteristic Hibernian phrases and constructions of our language have been employed, and this has been done with such perfect good taste that the effect upon the ear is like that of a refined and delicate brogue.

The mythical material in the stories is largely that with which the student of Aryan folk-lore is familiar. We have variants of Cinderella, the swan maidens, the giant who had no heart in his body, the cloak of darkness, the sword of light, the magic steed which overtakes the wind before and outstrips the wind behind; the pot of plenty, from which one may eat forever, and the cup that is never drained; the hero who performs impossible tasks, and wooes maidens whose beauty hardly relieves their treacherous cruelty: "I must tell you now that three hundred king's sons, lacking one, have come to ask for my daughter, and in the garden behind my castle are three hundred iron spikes, and every spike of them but one is covered with the head of a king's son who couldn't do what my daughter wanted of him, and I'm greatly in dread that your own head will be put on the one spike that is left uncovered."

The princess in this story--Shaking-Head--is such a wretch, not a bit better than Queen Labe in the "Arabian Nights," that one marvels at the hero for marrying her at last, instead of slicing off her head with his two-handed sword of darkness, and placing it on the three-hundredth spike. But moral as well as physical probabilities are often overstrained in this deliciously riotous realm of folk-lore.

Along with much material that is common to the Aryan world there is some that is peculiar to Ireland, while the Irish atmosphere is over everything. The stories of Fin Macc.u.mhail (p.r.o.nounced MacCool) and the Fenians of Erin are full of grotesque incident and inimitable drollery.

Fin and his redoubtable dog Bran, the one-eyed Gruagach, the hero Diarmuid, the old hag with the life-giving ointment, the weird hand of Mal MacMulcan, and the cowherd that was son of the king of Alban make a charming series of pictures. Among Fin's followers there is a certain Conan Maol, "who never had a good word in his mouth for any man," and for whom no man had a good word. This counterpart of Thersites, as Mr.

Curtin tells us, figures as conspicuously in North American as in Aryan myths. Conan was always at Fin's side, and advising him to mischief.

Once it had like to have gone hard with Conan. The Fenians had been inveigled into an enchanted castle, and could not rise from their chairs till two of Fin's sons had gone and beheaded three kings in the north of Erin, and put their blood into three goblets, and come back and rubbed the blood on the chairs. Conan had no chair, but was sitting on the floor, with his back to the wall, and just before they came to him the last drop of blood gave out. The Fenians were hurrying past without minding the mischief-maker, when, upon his earnest appeal, Diarmuid "took him by one hand, and Goll MacMornee by the other, and, pulling with all their might, tore him from the wall and the floor. But if they did, he left all the skin of his back, from his head to his heels, on the floor and the wall behind him. But when they were going home through the hills of Tralee, they found a sheep on the way, killed it, and clapped the skin on Conan. The sheepskin grew to his body; and he was so well and strong that they sheared him every year, and got wool enough from his back to make flannel and frieze for the Fenians of Erin ever after." This is a favourite incident, and recurs in the story of the laughing Gruagach. In most of the Fenian stories the fighting is brisk and incessant. It is quite a Donnybrook fair. Everybody kills everybody else, and then some toothless old woman comes along and rubs a magic salve on them, when, all in a minute, up they pop, and go at it again.

One of the quaintest conceits, and a pretty one withal, is that of Tir na n-Og, the Land of Youth, the life-giving region just beneath the ground, whence mysteriously spring the st.u.r.dy trees, the soft green gra.s.s, and the bright flowers. The journey thither is not long; sometimes the hero just pulls up a root and dives down through the hole into the blessed Tir na n-Og,--as primitive a bit of folk-lore as one could wish to find! A lovely country, of course, was that land of sprouting life, and some queer customs did they have there. The mode of "running for office" was especially worthy of mention. Once in seven years all the champions and best men "met at the front of the palace, and ran to the top of a hill two miles distant. On the top of that hill was a chair, and the man that sat first in the chair was king of Tir na n-Og for the next seven years." This method enabled them to dispense with nominating conventions and campaign lies, but not with intrigue and sorcery, as we find in the droll story of Oisin (or Ossian), which concludes the Fenian series.

The story of the Fisherman's Son and the Gruagach of Tricks is substantially the same with the famous story of Farmer Weathersky, in the Norse collection translated by Sir George Dasent. Gruagach (accented on the first syllable) means "the hairy one," and, as Mr. Curtin cautiously observes, "we are more likely to be justified in finding a solar agent concealed in the person of the laughing Gruagach or the Gruagach of Tricks than in many of the sun myths put forth by some modern writers." He reminds one of Hermes and of Proteus, and in the wonderful changes at the end of the story we have, as in Farmer Weathersky, a variant of the catastrophe in the story of the Second Royal Mendicant in the "Arabian Nights;" but the Irishman gives us a touch of humour that is quite his own. The Gruagach and his eleven artful sons are chasing the fisherman's son through water and air, and various forms of fish and bird are a.s.sumed, until at length the fisherman's son, in the shape of a swallow, hovers over the summerhouse where the daughter of the king of Erin is sitting. Weary with the chase, the swallow becomes a ring, and falls into the girl's lap; it takes her fancy, and she puts it on her finger. Then the twelve pursuers change from hawks into handsome men, and entertain the king in his castle with music and games, until he asks them what in the world he can give them.

All they want, says the old Gruagach, is the ring which he once lost, and which is now on the princess's finger. Of course, says the king, if his daughter has got the ring, she must give it to its owner. But the ring, overhearing all this, speaks to the princess, and tells her what to do. She gets a gallon of wheat grains and three gallons of the strongest _potheen_ that was ever brewed in Ireland, and she mixes them together in an open barrel before the fire. Then her father calls her and asks for the ring; and when she finds that her protests are of no avail, and she must give up, she throws it into the fire. "That moment the eleven brothers made eleven pairs of tongs of themselves; their father, the old Gruagach, was the twelfth pair. The twelve jumped into the fire to know in what spark of it would they find the old fisherman's son; and they were a long time working and searching through the fire, when out flew a spark, and into the barrel. The twelve made themselves men, turned over the barrel, and spilled the wheat on the floor. Then in a twinkling they were twelve c.o.c.ks strutting around. They fell to, and picked away at the wheat, to know which one would find the fisherman's son. Soon one dropped on one side, and a second on the opposite side, until all twelve were lying drunk from the wheat."

One seems to see the gleam in the corner of the eye and the pucker in the Gaelic visage of the old narrator. To be sure, it was the wheat. It couldn't have been the mountain dew; it never is. Well, when things had come to this pa.s.s, the spark that was the fisherman's son just turned into a fox, and with one smart bite he took the head off the old Gruagach, and the eleven other boozy c.o.c.ks he finished with eleven other bites. Then he made himself the handsomest man in Erin, and married the princess and succeeded to the crown.

There is a breezy freshness about these tales, which will make the book a welcome addition to young people's libraries. It is safe to predict for it an enviable success. In the next edition there ought to be an index, and we wish the author need not feel it necessary to be so sparing with his own notes and comments. His brief Introduction is so charming, from its weight of sense and beauty of expression, that one would gladly hear more from the author himself. It is to be hoped that the book lately published is the forerunner of many.

_August, 1890._

XII

GUESSING AT HALF AND MULTIPLYING BY TWO

"The small philosopher is a great character in New England. His fundamental rule of logical procedure is to guess at the half and multiply by two. [Applause.]"[31] It is [in 1880] only two or three years since the philosopher from whom this text is quoted was himself a great character in New England, inasmuch as he could give a lecture once every week, in one of the largest halls of New England's princ.i.p.al city, and could entertain his audience of two or three thousand people with discussions of the most vast and abstruse themes of science and metaphysics. The success with which he entertained his audience is carefully chronicled for us in the volumes made up from the reports of his lectures, in which parenthetical notes of "laughter," "applause,"

or "sensation" occur as frequently as in ordinary newspaper reports of stump speeches or humorous convivial harangues. As a social phenomenon this career of the Rev. Joseph Cook possesses considerable interest,--enough, at any rate, to justify a brief inquiry as to his "fundamental rule of procedure."

Among the wise and witty sayings of the ancients with which our children are puzzled and edified in the first dozen pages of the Greek Reader, there is a caustic remark attributed to Phokion, on the occasion of being very loudly applauded by the populace. "Dear me," said the old statesman, "can it be that I have been making a fool of myself?" So, when three thousand people are made to laugh and clap their hands over statements about the origin of species or the anatomy of the nervous system, the first impulse of any scientific inquirer of ordinary sagacity and experience is to ask in what meretricious fashion these sober topics can have been treated, in order to have produced such a result. The inference may be cynical, but is none the less likely to be sound. In the present case, one does not need to read far in the published reports of these lectures to see that the fundamental rule of procedure is something very different from any of the rules by which truth is wooed and won by scientific inquirers. Among Mill's comprehensive canons of logical method one might search in vain for a specimen of the method employed by Mr. Cook. Of the temper of mind, indeed, in which scientific inquiries are conducted, he has no more conception than Laura Bridgman could have of Pompeian red or a chord of the minor ninth. The process of holding one's judgment in suspense over a complicated problem, of patiently gathering and weighing the evidence on either side, of subjecting one's own first-formed hypotheses to repeated verification, of clearly comprehending and fairly stating opposing views, of setting forth one's conclusions at last, guardedly and with a distinct consciousness of the conditions under which they are tenable,--all this sort of thing is quite foreign to Mr. Cook's nature.

To him a scientific thesis is simply a statement over which it is possible to get up a fight. The gamec.o.c.k is his totem; to him the bones of the vertebrate subkingdom are only so many bones of contention, and the sponge is interesting chiefly as an emblem which is never, on any account, to be thrown up. He talks accordingly of scientific men lying in wait for Mr. Darwin, ready to pounce on him like a tiger on its prey; he is very fond of exhibiting what he calls the "strategic point" of a scientific book or theory; and altogether his att.i.tude is bellicose to a degree that is as unbecoming in a preacher of the gospel as it is out of place in a discussion of scientific questions. His favourite method of dealing with a scientific writer is to quote from him all sorts of detached statements and inferences, and, without the slightest regard to the writer's general system of opinions or habits of thought, to praise or vituperate the detached statements according to some principle which it is not always easy for the reader to discover, but which has always doubtless some reference to their supposed bearings upon the peculiar kind of orthodoxy of which Mr. Cook appears as the champion. There are some writers whom he thinks it necessary always to scold or vilify, no matter what they say. If they happen to say something which ought to be quite satisfactory to any reasonable person of "orthodox" opinions, Mr.

Cook either accuses them of insincerity or represents them as making "concessions."

This last device, I am sorry to be obliged to add, is not an uncommon one with theological controversialists, when their zeal runs away with them. When a man makes a statement which expresses his deepest convictions, there is no easier way of seeming to knock away the platform on which he stands than to quote his statement, and describe it as something which he has reluctantly "conceded." In dealing with the princ.i.p.al writers on evolution, Mr. Cook is continually found resorting to this cheap device. For example, when Professor Tyndall declares that "if a right-hand spiral movement of the particles of the brain could be shown to occur in love, and a left-hand spiral movement in hate, we should be as far off as ever from understanding the connection of this physical motion with the spiritual manifestations,"--when Professor Tyndall declares this, he simply a.s.serts what is a cardinal proposition with the group of English philosophers to which he belongs. With Professor Huxley, as well as with Mr. Spencer, it is a fundamental proposition that psychical phenomena cannot possibly be interpreted in terms of matter and motion, and this proposition they have at various times set forth and defended. In the chapter on Matter and Spirit, in my work on "Cosmic Philosophy," I have fully expounded this point, and have further ill.u.s.trated it in "The Unseen World." With the conclusions there set forth the remark of Professor Tyndall thoroughly agrees, and it does so because all these expressions of opinion and all these arguments are part and parcel of a coherent system of anti-materialistic thought adopted[32] by the English school of evolutionists. Yet when Mr. Cook quotes Professor Tyndall's remark, he does it in this wise: "It is notorious that even Tyndall _concedes_," etc., etc.

By proceeding in this way, Mr. Cook finds it easy to make out a formidable array of what he calls "the concessions of evolutionists." He first gives the audience a crude impression of some sort of theory of evolution, such as no scientific thinker ever dreamed of; or, to speak more accurately, he plays upon the crude impression already half formed in the average mind of his audience, and which he evidently shares himself. The _average_ notion of the doctrine of evolution, possessed in common by an audience big enough to fill Tremont Temple, would no doubt seem to Darwin or to Spencer something quite fearful and wonderful.

Playing with this sort of crude material, Mr. Cook puts together a series of numbered propositions, which remind one of those interminable auction catalogues of Walt Whitman, which some of our British cousins, more ardent than discriminating, mistake for a truly American species of inspired verse. In this long catena of statements, almost everything is easily seen to disagree with the crude general impression to which the speaker appeals, and almost everything is accordingly set down as a "concession." And as the audience go out after the lecture, they doubtless ask one another, in amazed whispers, how it is that sensible men who make so many "concessions" can find it in their hearts to maintain the doctrine of evolution at all!

Sometimes Mr. Cook goes even farther than this, and, in the very act of quoting an author's declared opinions, expressly refuses to give him credit for them. Thus he has the hardihood to say: "Even Herbert Spencer, _who would be very glad to prove the opposite_,[33] says, in his Biology, 'The proximate chemical principles or chemical units--alb.u.men, fibrine, gelatine, or the hypothetical proteine substance--cannot possess the property of forming the endlessly varied structures of animal forms.'" Mr. Cook here lays claim to a knowledge of his author's innermost thoughts and wishes which is quite remarkable.

For a fit parallel one would have to cite the instance of the German who flogged his son for profanity, though the boy had not opened his mouth.

"You d.i.n.ks tamn," exclaimed the irate father, "and I vips you for dat!"

As there are some writers whom Mr. Cook thinks it always necessary to vituperate, no matter what they say, so there are others whom he finds it convenient to quote, as foils to the former, and to mention with praise on all occasions, though it is difficult to a.s.sign the reasons for this preference, except on the hypothesis that the lecturer has an implicit faith in the simple and confiding nature of his audience.

Before giving these lectures Mr. Cook had studied awhile in Germany, and his citations of German writers show how far he deems it safe to presume on New England's ignorance of what the Fatherland thinks. It is nice to have such a learned country as Germany at one's disposal to hurl at the heads of people whose "outlook in philosophy does not reach beyond the Straits of Dover;" it saves a great deal of troublesome argument, and still more painful examination of facts. This English opinion is all very well, you know, but it comes from a philosopher "whose star is just touching the western pines," and a German professor whom I am about to quote, whose book I "hold in my hand," and "whose star is in the ascendant," does not agree with it. All this is extremely neat and convincing, apparently, to the crowd in Tremont Temple. With all Germany at his disposal, however, it must be acknowledged that our lecturer makes a very sparing use of his resources. He quotes Helmholtz and Wundt every now and then with warm approval, though wherein they should be found any more acceptable to the orthodox world than Tyndall and Spencer it is not easy to see, save that the ill repute of German free thinkers takes somewhat longer to get diffused in New England than the ill repute of English free thinkers.