TURNING AIR INTO WATER.
It has not yet been done; but the following telegrams, received on the 9th and 16th of April, 1883, from Cracow, by the Paris Academy of Sciences, show that chemists have come very near doing it. “Oxygen completely liquefied; the liquid colorless like carbonic acid.” “Nitrogen liquefied by explosion; liquid colorless.” Thus the two elements that make up atmospheric air have actually been liquefied, the successful operator being a Pole, Wroblewski, who had worked in the laboratory of the French chemist, Cailletet, learnt his processes, copied his apparatus, and then, while Cailletet, who owns a great iron-foundry down in Burgundy, was looking after his furnaces, went off to Poland, and quietly finished what his master had for years been trying after. Hence heart-burnings, of which more anon, when we have followed the chase up to the point where Cailletet took it up. I use this hunting metaphor, for the liquefaction of gases has been for modern chemists a continual chase, as exciting as the search for the philosopher’s stone was to the old alchemists.
Less than two hundred and fifty years ago, no one knew anything about gas of any kind. Pascal was among the first who guessed that air was “matter” like other things, and therefore pressed on the earth’s surface with a weight proportioned to its height. Torricelli had made a similar guess two years before, in 1645. But Pascal proved that these guesses were true by carrying a barometer to the top of the Puy de Dôme near Clermont. Three years after, Otto von Guerecke invented the air-pump, and showed at Magdeburg his grand experiment—eight horses pulling each way, unable to detach the two hemispheres of a big globe out of which the air had been pumped. Then Mariotte in France, and Boyle in England, formulated the “Law,” which the French call Mariotte’s, the English Boyle’s, that gases are compressible, and that their bulk diminishes in proportion to the pressure. But electricity with its wonders threw pneumatics into the background; and, till Faraday, nothing was done in the way of verifying Boyle’s Law except by Van Marum, a Haarlem chemist, who, happening to try whether the Law applied to gaseous ammonia, was astonished to find that under a pressure of six atmospheres that gas was suddenly changed into a colorless liquid. On Van Marum’s experiment Lavoisier based his famous generalisation that all bodies will take any of the three forms, solid, fluid, gaseous, according to the temperature to which they are subjected—i.e., that the densest rock is only a solidified vapor, and the lightest gas only a vaporised solid. Nothing came of it, however, till that wonderful bookbinder’s apprentice, Faraday, happened to read Mrs. Marcet’s Conversations while he was stitching it for binding, and thereby had his mind opened; and, managing to hear some of Sir H. Davy’s lectures, wrote such a good digest of them, accompanied by such a touching letter—”Do free me from a trade that I hate, and let me be your bottle-washer”—that the good-hearted Cornishman took the poor blacksmith’s son, then twenty-one years old, after eight years of book-stitching, and made him his assistant, “keeping him in his place,” nevertheless, which, for an assistant in those days, meant feeding with the servants, except by special invitation.
This was in 1823, and next year Faraday had liquefied chlorine, and soon did the same for a dozen more gases, among them protoxide of nitrogen, to liquefy which, at a temperature of fifty degrees Fahrenheit, was needed a pressure of sixty atmospheres—sixty times the pressure of the air—i.e., nine hundred pounds on every square inch. Why, the strongest boilers, with all their thickness of iron, their rivets, their careful hammering of every plate to guard against weak places, are only calculated to stand about ten atmospheres; no wonder then that Faraday, with nothing but thick glass tubes, had thirteen explosions, and that a fellow-experimenter was killed while repeating one of his experiments. However, he gave out his “Law,” that any gas may be liquefied if you put pressure enough on it. That “if” would have left matters much where they were had not Bussy, in 1824, argued: “Liquid is the middle state between gaseous and solid. Cold turns liquids into solids; therefore, probably cold will turn gases into liquids.” He proved this for sulphurous acid, by simply plunging a bottle of it in salt and ice; and it is by combining the two, cold and pressure, that all subsequent results have been attained. How to produce cold, then, became the problem; and one way is by making steam. You cannot get steam without borrowing heat from something. Water boils at two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit, and then you may go on heating and heating till one thousand degrees more heat have been absorbed before steam is formed. The thermometer, meanwhile, never rises above two hundred and twelve degrees, all this extra heat becoming what is called latent, and is probably employed in keeping asunder the particles which when closer together form water. The greater the expansive force, the more heat becomes latent or used up in this way. This explains the paradox that, while the steam from a kettle-spout scalds you, you may put your hand with impunity into the jet discharged from a high-pressure engine. The high-pressure steam, expanding rapidly when it gets out of confinement, uses up all its heat (makes it all “latent”) in keeping its particles distinct. It is the same with all other vapors: in expanding they absorb heat, and, therefore, produce cold; and, therefore, as many substances turn into steam at far lower temperatures than water does, this principle of “latent heat,” invented by Black, and, after long rejection, accepted by chemists, has been very helpful in the liquefying of gases by producing cold.
The simplest ice-machine is a hermetically-sealed bottle connected with an air-pump. Exhaust the air, and the water begins to boil and to grow cold. As the air is drawn off, the water begins to freeze; and if—by an ingenious device—the steam that it generates is absorbed into a reservoir of sulphuric acid, or any other substance which has a great affinity for watery vapor, a good quantity of ice is obtained. This is the practical use of liquefying gases; naturally, they all boil at temperatures much below that of the air, in which they exist in the vaporised state that follows after boiling. Take, therefore, your liquefied gas; let it boil and give off its steam. This steam, absorbing by its expansion all the surrounding heat, may be used to make ice, to cool beer-cellars, to keep meat fresh all the way from New Zealand, or—as has been largely done at Suez—to cool the air in tropical countries. Put pressure enough on your gas to turn it into a liquid state, at the same time carrying away by a stream of water the heat that it gives off in liquefying. Let this liquid gas into a “refrigerator,” where it boils and steams, and draws out the heat; and then by a sucking-pump drive it again into the compressor, and let the same process go on ad infinitum, no fresh material being needed, nothing, in fact, but the working of the pump. Sulphurous acid is a favorite gas, ammonia is another; and—besides the above practical uses—they have been employed in a number of startling experiments.
Perhaps the strangest of these is getting a bar of ice out of a red-hot platinum crucible. The object of using platinum is simply to resist the intense heat of the furnace in which the crucible is placed. Pour in sulphurous acid and then fill up with water. The cold raised by vaporising the acid is so intense that the water will freeze into a solid mass. Indeed, the temperature sometimes goes down to more than eighty degrees below freezing. A still more striking experiment is that resulting from the liquefying of nitrous oxide—protoxide of nitrogen, or laughing-gas. This gas needs, as was said, great pressure to liquefy it at an ordinary temperature. At freezing point only a pressure of thirty atmospheres is needed to liquefy it. It then boils if exposed to the air, radiating cold—or, rather, absorbing heat—till it falls to a temperature low enough to freeze mercury. But it still, wonderful to say, retains the property which, alone of all the gases, it shares with oxygen—of increasing combustion. A match that is almost extinguished burns up again quite brightly when thrust into a bag of ordinary laughing-gas; while a bit of charcoal, with scarcely a spark left in it, glows to the intensest white heat when brought in contact with this same gas in its liquid form, so that you have the charcoal at, say, two thousand degrees Fahrenheit, and the gas at some one hundred and fifty degrees below zero. Carbonic acid gas is just the opposite of nitrous oxide, in that it quenches fire and destroys life; but, when liquefied, it develops a like intense cold. Liquefy it and collect it under pressure, in strong cast-iron vessels, and then suddenly open a tap and allow the vapor to escape. In expanding, it grows so cold—or, strictly speaking, absorbs, makes latent, so much heat—that it produces a temperature low enough to turn it into fog and then into frozen fog, or snow. This snow can be gathered in iron vessels, and mixed with either it forms the strongest freezing mixture known, turning mercury into something like lead, so that you can beat the frozen metal with wooden mallets and can mould it into medals and such-like.
Amid these and such-like curious experiments, we must not forget the “Law” that the state of a substance depends on its temperature—solid when it is frozen hard enough, liquid under sufficient pressure, gaseous when free from pressure and at a sufficiently high temperature. But though first Faraday, and then the various inventors of refrigerating-machines—Carré, Tellier, Natterer, Thilorier—succeeded in liquefying so many gases, hydrogen and the two elements of the atmosphere resisted all efforts. By plunging oxygen in the sea, to the depth of a league, it was subjected to a pressure of four hundred atmospheres, but there was no sign of liquefaction. Again, Berthelot fastened a tube, strong and very narrow, and full of air, to a bulb filled with mercury. The mercury was heated until its expansion subjected the air to a pressure of seven hundred and eighty atmospheres—all that the glass could stand—but the air remained unchanged. Cailletet managed to get one thousand pressures by pumping mercury down a long, flexible steel tube upon a very strong vessel, full of air; but nothing came of it, except the bursting of the vessel, nor was there any more satisfactory result in the case of hydrogen.
One result, at any rate, was established—that there is no law of compression like that named after Boyle or Mariotte, but that every gas behaves in a way of its own, without reference to any of the others, each having its own “critical point” of temperature, at which, under a certain pressure, it is neither liquid nor gaseous, but on the border-land between the two, and will remain in this condition so long as the temperature remains the same. Hence, air being just in this state of gaseo-liquid, the first step towards liquefying it must be to lower its temperature, and so get rid of its vapor by increasing its density. The plan adopted, both by Cailletet in Paris, and by Raoul Pictet (heir of a great scientific name) in Geneva, was to lower the temperature by letting off high-pressure steam. This had been so successful in the case of carbonic acid gas as to turn the vapor into snow; and in 1877 Cailletet pumped oxygen into a glass tube, until the pressure was equal to three hundred atmospheres. He then cooled it to four degrees Fahrenheit below zero, and, opening a valve, let out a jet of gaseous vapor, which, while expanding, caused intense cold, lowering the temperature some three hundred degrees, and turning the jet of vapor into fog. Here, then, was a partial liquefaction, and the same was effected in the case of nitrogen. Pictet did much the same thing. Having set up at Geneva a great ice-works (his refrigerating agency being sulphurous acid in a boiling state), he had all the necessary apparatus, and was able to subject oxygen to a pressure of three hundred and twenty atmospheres, and by means of carbonic acid boiling in vacuo, to cool the vessel containing it down to more than two hundred degrees Fahrenheit below zero. He could not watch the condition in which the gas was; but it was probably liquefied, for, when a valve was suddenly opened, it began to bubble furiously, and rushed out in the form of steam. Pictet thought he had also succeeded in liquefying hydrogen, the foggy vapor of the jet being of a steely grey color; for hydrogen has long been suspected to be a metal, of which water is an oxide, and hydrochloric acid a chloride. Nay, some solid fragments came out with the jet of vapor, and fell like small shot on the floor, and at first the sanguine experimenter thought he had actually solidified the lightest of all known substances. This, however, was a mistake; it was some portion of his apparatus which had got melted. Neither had the liquefaction of oxygen or nitrogen been actually witnessed, though the result had been seen in the jet of foggy vapor.
Cailletet was on the point of trying his experiment over again in vacuo, so as to get a lower temperature, when the telegrams from Wroblewski showed that the Pole had got the start of him. Along with a colleague, Obszewski, Cailletet’s disloyal pupil set ethylene boiling in vacuo, and so brought the temperature down to two hundred and seventy degrees Fahrenheit below zero. This was the lowest point yet reached, and it was enough to turn oxygen into a liquid a little less dense than water, having its “critical point” at about one hundred and sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit below zero. A few days after, nitrogen was liquefied by the same pair of experimenters, under greater atmospheric pressure at a somewhat higher temperature.
The next thing is to naturally ask: What is the use of all this? That remains to be proved. The most unlikely chemical truths have often brought about immense practical results. All that we can as yet say is, that there is now no exception to the law that matter of all kinds is capable of taking the three forms, solid, aqueous, gaseous.
The French savans are not content with saying this. They are very indignant at Wroblewski stealing Cailletet’s crown just as it was going to be placed on the Frenchman’s head. It was sharp practice, for all that a scientific discoverer has to look to is the fame which he wins among men. The Academy took no notice of the interloping Poles, but awarded to Cailletet the Lacaze Prize, their secretary, M. Dumas, then lying sick at Cannes, expressing their opinion in the last letter he ever wrote. “It is Cailletet’s apparatus,” says M. Dumas, “which enabled the others to do what he was on the point of accomplishing. He, therefore, deserves the credit of invention; the others are merely clever and successful manipulators. What has been done is a great fact in the history of science, and it will link the name of Cailletet with those of Lavoisier and Faraday,” So far M. Dumas, who might, one fancies, have said something for Pictet, only a fortnight behind Cailletet in the experiment which practically liquefied oxygen. His case is quite different from Wroblewski’s, for he and Cailletet had been working quite independently, just as Leverrier and Adams had been when both discovered the new planet Neptune. Such coincidences so often happen when the minds of men are turned to the same subject. Well, the scientific world is satisfied now that the elements of air can be liquefied; but I want to see the air itself liquefied, as what it is—a mechanical, not a chemical compound. For from such liquefaction, one foresees a great many useful results. You might carry your air about with you to the bottom of mines or up in balloons; you might even, perhaps, store up enough by-and-by to last for a voyage to the moon.—All the Year Round.
[THE HEALTH AND LONGEVITY OF THE JEWS.]
BY P. KIRKPATRICK PICARD, M.D., M.R.C.S.
In these days, when sanitation claims a large share of attention, and when questions relating to the public health are canvassed and discussed on all sides, it may be of service to ask what lessons are to be learned from the diet, habits, and customs of the Jews. It is not generally known that their health and longevity are superior to those of other races, a fact which has been noted by careful observers from early times in this and other countries. An experiment, extending over thousands of years, has been made as to the sanitary value of certain laws in the Mosaic code. The test has been applied in the most rigid way, and if it had failed at any period in their eventful history, their name alone, like that of the Assyrian and Babylonian, would have remained to testify to their existence as a nation. The three deadly enemies of mankind—war, famine, and pestilence—have at times been let loose upon them. They have stood firm as a rock against the crushing power of oppression, when exercised at the call of political or religious antipathy. They have been pursued with relentless persecution, from city to city, and from one country to another, in the name of our holy religion. Restricted as to their trade, singled out to bear the burden of special taxation, confined in the most miserable and unhealthy quarters of the towns where they were permitted to dwell, living in the constant fear of robbery without redress, of violence without succor, of poverty without relief, of assaults against their persons, honor, and religion without hope of protection; in spite of woe after woe coming upon them, like the waves of a pitiless sea, they have not been broken to pieces and swallowed up, leaving not a wreck behind. No other race has had the fiery trials that they have gone through, yet, like the three Hebrew youths in the furnace, the smell of fire is not found on them. To-day their bodily vigor is unequalled, and their moral and mental qualities are unsurpassed.
How has it happened that, after being compassed about for centuries with so many troubles, they have at the present time all the requisites that go to form a great nation, and are, in numbers, energy, and resources, on a level with their forefathers in the grandest period of their history? It is not enough to say that all this has come to pass according to the will of God, and that their continued existence is owing to His intervention on their behalf. No doubt it is a miracle in the sense that it is contrary to all human experience, for no other nation has lived through such perilous times of hardship and privation. But as it was in the wilderness so it has been in all their wanderings down the stream of time; the miracle was supplemented by the use of means, without which God’s purpose regarding them would have failed. The blessing of long life and health, promised to them by the mouth of Moses, has not been withheld. Several texts might be quoted, but one will suffice. In Deuteronomy iv. 40, we read, “Thou shall keep therefore his statutes, and his commandments, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth, which the Lord thy God giveth thee, for ever.” With a promise so rich with blessing, conditional on their obedience, they have through all the ages been monuments of God’s faithfulness, and are to this day in the enjoyment of its advantages.
The following statistics, for which I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. A. Cohen, who has collected them from different sources, will serve to prove their superiority in respect of health and longevity. In the town of Fürth, according to Mayer, the average duration of life amongst the Christians was 26 years, and amongst the Jews 37 years. During the first five years of childhood the Christian death-rate was 14 per cent. and the Jewish was 10 per cent. The same proportion of deaths, it is said, exists in London. Neufville has found that in Frankfort the Jews live eleven years longer than the Christians, and that of those who reach the age of 70 years 13 are Christians and 27 are Jews. In Prussia, from 1822 to 1840, it has been ascertained that the Jewish population increased by 3-1/2 per cent. more than the Christian, there being 1 birth in 28 of the Jews to 1 in 25 of the Christians, and 1 death in 40 of the Jews to 1 in 34 of the Christians.
These data are sufficient to verify the statement that the Jews are endowed with better health and greater longevity than Christians. It will therefore be inferred that some peculiarity exists which gives them more power of resisting disease, and renders them less susceptible to its influence. In virtue of this property their constitution readily accommodates itself to the demands of a climate which may be too severe for other non-indigenous races. Take as an example the statistics of the town of Algiers in 1856. Crebassa gives the following particulars—Of Europeans there were 1,234 births and 1,553 deaths; of Mussulmans 331 births and 514 deaths; of Jews 211 births and 187 deaths. These numbers afford a remarkable illustration of the “survival of the fittest.”
Their unusual freedom from disease of particular kinds has been often noticed, and amounts nearly to immunity from certain prevalent maladies, such as those of the scrofulous and tuberculous type, which are answerable for about a fifth of the total mortality. Their comparative safety in the midst of destructive epidemics has often been the subject of comment, and was formerly used as evidence against them, on the malicious charge of disseminating disease. At the present day, and in consonance with the spirit of the age, the matter has come within the scope of the scientific inquirer, with the view of ascertaining the cause of this exceptional condition.
A peculiarity of this sort must lie in the nature of things in the distinctive character of their food, habits, and customs. Their more or less strict adherence to the requirements of the Mosaic law, and to the interpretation of it given in the Talmud, are familiar to all who come in contact with them. To this code we must therefore look for an explanation of the facts under review; and here it may be stated that no prominence is given to one set of laws over another. They all begin with the formula, “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,” thus making no difference in point of importance between the laws of worship and those of health. These latter, therefore, carried with them the sanctions of religion, and were as much a matter of obligation as any other religious duty. It will thus be easily seen how the interweaving of the several laws relating to health and worship had the effect of giving equal permanence to both, so that as long as the one was observed the other would be in force. Though many of the details might appear arbitrary, a fuller knowledge of sanitary science has revealed a meaning not recorded in the sacred text. Moses, who was versed in all the learning of the Egyptians, was evidently acquainted with the laws of health, which he embodied in his code under divine direction. Those who are firm believers in the inspiration of the Scriptures will have no difficulty in believing that principles, given by God for the preservation of the health of the Israelite in olden times, and to which he is still obedient with great apparent benefit, are likely to be beneficial in their effect on the general community. Truths of this kind are like the laws of nature, universally applicable. They never grow old by lapse of time or effete by force of circumstances.
This part of the Mosaic code is mainly concerned with details relating to food, cleanliness, the prevention of disease, and the disinfection of diseased persons and things. The Jews observe in eating flesh-food the great primary law, which was given to Noah after the Flood (Gen. ix. 4): “But the flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat,” It was enforced in the Mosaic dispensation (Lev. xvii. 10), under the penalty of being cut off for disobedience, and in the Christian era was confirmed at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts xv. 20), when the Apostle James, as president, gave sentence that the Gentiles who are turned to God should abstain from blood. To this day the animal (whether beast or bird) is killed with a sharp knife in such a way that the large blood vessels in the neck discharge the blood most freely, and so drain the flesh to the utmost extent possible, and as an additional precaution the veins, which in certain places are difficult to empty, are removed before the part can be used as food; so that it would appear every needful measure is adopted to prevent the ingestion of the forbidden fluid. On this account game that is shot is not eaten by the orthodox Jew, as the blood is retained by that mode of death.
Before the slain animal is pronounced kosher, or fit for food, a careful search is made by experts for any evidence of disease. These men have to satisfy the Shechita Board, which takes cognisance of these matters, that they have a competent knowledge of morbid structures before being authorised to affix the official seal, without which no meat is considered wholesome. That this practice is far from being unnecessary may be gathered from the fact that in a recent half-yearly report presented to the board the following particulars occur:—Oxen slain, 12,473, kosher, 7,649; calves slain, 2,146, kosher, 1,569; sheep slain, 23,022, kosher, 14,580. These numbers show that out of 37 beasts slain 14 were rejected as unsound, and not allowed to be eaten by the Jew. The less-favored Christian, not being under such dietary restrictions, would have no hesitation in buying and consuming this condemned meat. It is even alleged that a larger proportion of diseased animals than is here stated is exposed for sale in the Metropolitan Meat Market, and used as food by purchasers of all classes. Whether this be so or not, the fact remains that the Jewish portion of the community have the sole benefit of arrangements specially designed for the maintenance of health. This state of things demands urgent attention, and has surely a claim prior to many other subjects which occupy the time of our legislators.
The Mosaic law, in forbidding the use of blood as food, gives as the reason that the blood is the life. It follows, therefore, if the animal be unhealthy its blood may be regarded as unhealthy. But as the blood may be diseased without external or even internal evidence such as is open to common observation, the total prohibition of it obviates the risk that might otherwise be incurred.
Modern science has discovered in the circulation of diseased animals microscopic organisms of different forms, each characteristic of some particular disease. They are parasitic in their nature, growing and multiplying in the living being, though they are capable of preserving their vitality outside the body. Some, like the bacillus, which is supposed to cause tuberculosis, may even be dried without losing their vital properties, and on entering the system be able to produce the disease proper to them. Others will develop in dead organic substances, but increase more abundantly in living structures. They are very plentiful in the atmosphere of certain localities, and settling on exposed wounded surfaces, or finding their way into the lungs and effecting a lodgment in the blood and tissues, they generate, each after its kind, specific infective diseases. When the blood becomes impregnated by any special organism, a drop may suffice to propagate the disease by inoculation in another animal. The mode of entrance of these morbid germs may be by inhalation, by inoculation, and by the ingestion of poisonous particles with the food. Any person living in unhygienic circumstances, and whose system is from any cause in a condition suited for the reception of these organisms, cannot safely eat meat which may contain them in the blood. In the splenic fever of cattle, for instance, which is communicable to man, these germs are exceedingly numerous, and the same may be said of the other specific febrile diseases. Eventually there is a deposit of morbid material in the tissues, where the process of development goes on till a great change in the once healthy structures is effected.
With the light derived from recent investigation we are able to understand the wisdom and foresight of the Mosaic injunction as well as appreciate its supreme importance. The Jew, like the Christian, is exposed to the inroads of disease when he breathes an infected atmosphere and eats tainted food, provided he is susceptible at the time to the morbific influence, but he is protected by a dietary rule at the point where the Christian is in danger. The Jew who conforms to the law of Moses in this particular must have a better chance of escaping the ravages of epidemics than those who are not bound by these restrictions. This hygienic maxim goes far to explain the comparative freedom of the Jewish race from the large class of blood diseases.
The examination of the carcass is also necessary with the view of determining the sound or unsound condition of the meat. At one time it was doubted that the complaints from which animals suffer could be communicated by eating their flesh, but the evidence of eminent authorities has definitely settled the question. Such bovine diseases as the several varieties of anthrax, the foot and mouth disease, and especially tuberculosis, are now believed to be transmissible through ingested meat. It has been proved that the pig fed with tuberculous flesh becomes itself tuberculous, and the inference is fair that man might acquire the disease if subjected to the same ordeal. This last disease is very common amongst animals, and is now recognised as identical with that which is so fatal to the human race. It is considered highly probable that the widespread mortality caused by this malady is due in a great degree to the consumption of the milk and meat of tuberculous animals. That the milk supply should be contaminated is a very serious affair for the young, who are chiefly fed on it. The regular inspection of all dairies by skilled officials is imperatively necessary to ward off a terrible and growing evil; just as a similar inspection of slaughter-houses is demanded in the interests of the meat-eating portion of the community.
Temperance is a noteworthy feature in the habits of the Jews. Their moderation in the use of alcoholic drinks is deserving of the highest commendation. Very rarely are they rendered unfit for business by over-indulgence in this debasing vice. In no class of Jewish society is excessive drinking practised. The poorest, in their persons, families, and homes, present a marked contrast to their Christian neighbors in the same social position. The stamp on the drunkard’s face is very seldom seen on the countenance of a Jew. He is not to be found at the bar of a public-house, or hanging idly about its doors with drunken associates. His house is more attractive by reason of the thrift that forms the groundwork of his character. Domestic broils, so common an incident in the life of the hard-drinking poor, are most unusual. When work is entrusted to him insobriety does not interfere with the due and proper performance of it, hence his industry meets with its reward in the improvement of his circumstances. This habit of temperance amid abounding drunkenness, more or less excessive, is probably one of the causes of the protection afforded to him during the prevalence of some epidemic diseases, such as typhus, cholera, and other infectious fevers. His comparative freedom from the ravages of these terrible complaints has been chronicled by observers, both mediæval and modern, and is now a subject of common remark. The latest instance of this immunity is furnished by the records of the deaths from cholera in the south of France, where it is affirmed that out of a considerable Jewish population in the infected districts only seven fell victims to the disease, a fact which ought to receive more than a passing notice in the interests of humanity.
Another point that may be mentioned is the provision made by the Jewish Board of Guardians for the indigent poor. It has been said that no known Jew is allowed to die in a workhouse. When poverty, or sickness involving the loss of his livelihood, occurs, charity steps in and bestows the help which places him above want, and tides him over his bodily or pecuniary distress. The mother is also seasonably provided with medical and other comforts when her pressing need is greatest. In this way they are saved from the diseases incidental to lack of food, and after an attack of illness are sooner restored to health than the majority of the poor, who linger on in a state of convalescence little better than the ailment itself, and often sink into permanent bad health from the scanty supply of the necessary nourishment which their exhausted frames require.
In enumerating the causes which have made the Jewish people so strong and vigorous, particular mention must be made of their observance of the Sabbath. This day was appointed for the double purpose of securing a set portion of time for the worship of God, and of affording rest to the body wearied with its six days’ labors. The secularising of this holy day in the history of the French nation has demonstrated the need of a day of rest and the wisdom of its institution by a merciful Creator, even before there was a man to till the ground. Obedience to this primeval law, renewed amid the thunders of Sinai, and repeated on many subsequent occasions by Moses and the prophets, is still held by the Jews to be as strictly binding on them as any other religious obligation. Of the physical blessings derivable from keeping the Sabbath day they have had the benefit for many long centuries when other nations were sunk in heathenism and ignorant of the divine ordinance made to lighten their labors and recruit their strength. In Christian countries where the Sunday is kept sacred, or observed as a holiday, another day of rest in addition to their own Sabbath is obtained, thus fortifying them against the crushing toil and nervous strain of modern life. The loss accruing from this enforced abstinence from business worries is more than counter-balanced by the gain in nerve power with which periodical cessation from any harassing employment is compensated. This is doubtless one of the factors which have helped to invigorate both mind and body, and to develop in them those high qualities for which they are justly distinguished.
To sum up—the longevity of the Jew is an acknowledged fact. In his surroundings he is on a par with his Christian neighbor. If the locality in which he dwells is unhealthy, he also suffers, but to a less degree. If the climate is ungenial, its influence tells on him too, but with less injurious effect. His vigorous health enables him to resist the onset of disease to which others succumb. These advantages are for the most part owing to his food, his temperate habits, and the care taken of him in sickness and poverty. No doubt he is specially fortunate in inheriting a constitution which has been built up by attention, for many centuries, to hygienic details. His meat is drained of blood, so that by that means morbid germs are not likely to be conveyed into his system. It is also most carefully inspected so as to prevent the consumption of what is unsound, hence his comparative immunity from scrofulous and tuberculous forms of disease.
How can the benefits which the Jews enjoy be shared by other races? In regard to food, whatever prejudice may stand in the way of draining the blood from the animal, it ought surely to be done when there is the least suspicion of unhealthy symptoms; but there can be no doubt about the urgent necessity for a strict supervision of our meat markets, so as to prevent the sale of diseased food. Legislation ought to make such regulations as will render impossible the continuance of an evil which, by oversight or otherwise, is dangerous to the general health. Temperance is a virtue within the reach of everybody, and is now widely practised by all classes, and the gain in improved health will soon be apparent in the lessening of ailments due to drunkenness. Charity is as much the duty of the Christian as of the Jew, and it is a dishonor to the Master whom the former professes to serve if he shuts up his bowels of compassion when the poor, who have always claims upon him, call in vain for the needed help. They ought never to be allowed to languish in sickness and poverty till the friendly hand of death brings a grateful relief to all their troubles.
The Bible is regarded by some scientists as an old-fashioned book; but its teaching in relation to hygiene, even they will confess, has not become antiquated. It must be credited with having anticipated and recorded for our instruction and profit doctrines which are now accepted as beyond dispute in this department of knowledge. In the Mosaic law are preserved sanitary rules, the habitual observance of which by the Jew, from generation to generation, has made him superior to all other races in respect of health and longevity.—Leisure Hour.
[THE HITTITES.][26]
BY ISAAC TAYLOR.
The reconstruction, from newly exhumed monuments, of the history of the East, has been the great work of the present century. The startling revelations arising from the decipherment of the Egyptian records were followed by results, still more surprising, afforded by the buried cities of Assyria and Babylonia, and by glimpses into the prehistoric life of Greece obtained from the excavations of Dr. Schliemann on the sites of Troy and Mycenæ. If any one will take the trouble to look into such a book as Rollin’s “Ancient History,” and compare it with Duncker’s “History of Antiquity,” or with the useful series of little volumes published by the Christian Knowledge Society under the title of “Ancient History from the Monuments,” it will be possible to estimate the completeness of the reconstruction of our knowledge. Thus the legendary story of Sesostris, as recorded by Herodotus, has given place to the authentic history of the reigns of the conquering monarchs of the New Empire, Thothmes III., Seti I., and Rameses II., while the Greek romance of Sardanapalus is replaced by the contemporary annals of Assurbanipal; and, more wonderful than all, we discover that Semiramis herself was no mortal Queen of Babylon, but the celestial Queen of the Heavenly Host, the planet Venus, the morning star as she journeys from her eastern realm, the evening star as she passes onward to the west in search of her lost spouse the sun, and to be identified with the Babylonian goddess Istar, the Ashtaroth of the Bible, whose rationalized myth was handed down by Ctesias as sober history.
To these marvellous reconstructions another of hardly less interest and importance must now be added. The most notable archæological achievement of the last ten years has been the recovery and installation of the Hittite Empire as one of the earliest and most powerful of the great Oriental monarchies. Dr. Wright, in the opportune volume whose title stands at the head of this notice, has established a claim to have rescued from probable destruction some of the most important Hittite inscriptions; to have been the first to suggest the Hittite origin of the inscribed stones from Hamath whose discovery in 1872 excited so much speculation; and has now added to our obligations by placing before the world in a convenient form nearly the whole of the available materials bearing on the question of Hittite history and civilization.
Our readers will probably remember a signed article on the Hittites, from the pen of Dr. Wright, which appeared in this Review in 1882. This article has been expanded by its author into a goodly volume, and has been enriched with considerable additions of new and valuable material which bring it well up to the present standard of knowledge. Among these additions are facsimiles of the principal Hittite inscriptions, most of which have already appeared in the transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, and are now revised by Mr. Rylands; while Sir C. Wilson and Captain Conder have contributed a useful map indicating the sites where Hittite monuments have been found; and Professor Sayce adds a valuable appendix containing the results of his latest researches as to the decipherment of the Hittite script.
Till within the last twenty years all men had been used to think of the Hittites as an obscure Canaanitish tribe, of much the same importance as the Hivites or the Perizzites, with whom it was the custom to class them. It is true that if read between the lines, as we are now able to read it, the Biblical narrative indicated that while other Canaanitish tribes were of small power and importance, and were soon exterminated or absorbed into the Hebrew nationality, the Hittites stood on altogether another footing. The Hittites are the first and the last of these tribes to appear on the scene. As early as the time of Abraham we find them lords of the soil at Hebron; and in the time of Solomon, and even of Elisha, they are a mighty people, inhabiting a region to the north of Palestine, and distinguished by the possession of numerous war chariots, then the chief sign of military power. Though we are now able to perceive that this is the true signification of the references to them in the old Testament, yet it was from the newly recovered monuments of Egypt and Assyria that the facts were actually gleaned, and it was shown that for more than a thousand years the Hittite power was comparable to that of Assyria and Egypt.
It is only by slow degrees that this result has been established. The first light came from Abusimbel, in Nubia, midway between the first and second cataracts of the Nile, where Rameses II., the most magnificent of the Egyptian kings, at a time when the Hebrews were still toiling in Egyptian bondage, caused a vast precipice of rock to be carved into a stupendous temple-cave, to whose walls he committed the annals of his reign and the records of his distant campaigns. On one of the walls of this temple is pictured a splendid battle scene, occupying a space of 57 feet by 24, and containing upwards of 1100 figures. This represents, as we learn from the hieroglyphic explanation, the great battle of Kadesh, fought with the “vile people of the Kheta”—a battle which also forms the theme of the poem of Pentaur, the oldest epic in the world, still extant in a papyrus now preserved in the British Museum. In spite of the grandiloquent boasts of these records, we gather that the battle was indecisive; that Rameses had to retire from the siege of Kadesh, narrowly escaping with his life; the campaign being ended by the conclusion of a treaty on equal terms with the King of the Kheta—a treaty which was followed a year later, by the espousal by Rameses of a daughter of the hostile king.
About twenty years ago it was suggested by De Rougé that this powerful nation of the Kheta might probably be identified with the Khittim, or Hittites, of the Old Testament; and this conclusion, though never accepted by some eminent Egyptologists, such as Chabas and Ebers, gradually won its way into favor, and has been recently confirmed by Captain Conder’s identification of the site of Kadesh, where the battle depicted on the wall at Abusimbel was fought. From other inscriptions we learn that for five hundred years the Kheta resisted with varying success the attacks of the terrible conquerors of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, their power remaining to the last substantially unshaken. The story is now taken up by the Assyrian records, which prove that from the time of Sargon of Accad—who must be assigned to the nineteenth century B.C., if not to a much earlier period—down to the reigns of Tiglath Pileser I. (B.C., 1130), and for four hundred years afterwards, till the reigns of Assur-nazir-pal and Shalmanezer II., the Khatti of Hamath and Carchemish were the most formidable opponents of the rising power of Assyria, their resistance being only brought to a close by the defeat of their King Pisiris, and the capture of Carchemish, their capital, in 717 B.C., by Sargon II., the king who also destroyed the monarchy of Israel by the capture of Samaria.
It seemed strange that no monuments should have been discovered belonging to a people powerful enough to withstand for twelve centuries the assaults of Egypt and Assyria. At last, in 1872, certain inscriptions from Hamath on the Orontes, in a hieroglyphic picture-writing of a hitherto unknown character, were published in Burton and Drake’s “Unexplored Syria.” Dr. Wright, in 1874, published an article in “The British and Foreign Evangelical Review,” suggesting that these monuments were in reality records of the Hittite race. This conjecture, though much ridiculed at the time, has gradually fought its way to universal acceptance, mainly owing to the skilful advocacy of Professor Sayce, who, in ignorance of Dr. Wright’s suggestion, arrived independently at the same conclusion, and shortly afterwards identified a monument at Karabel, near Ephesus, described by Herodotus as a figure of Sesostris, as the effigy of a Hittite king. Subsequent discoveries of Hittite monuments in other parts of Asia Minor, taken in conjunction with the Biblical notices, and the Egyptian and Assyrian records, prove that at some remote period a great Hittite empire must have extended from Hebron to the Black Sea, and from the Euphrates to the Ægean; while it is now generally admitted that, to some extent, the art, the science, and the religion of prehistoric Greece must have been derived ultimately from Babylon, having been transmitted, first to the Hittite city of Carchemish, and thence to Lydia, through the Hittite realm in Asia Minor. It is now believed by many scholars of repute that the Ephesian Artemis must be identified with the great Hittite goddess Atargatis, and ultimately with the Babylonian Istar; that the Niobe of Homer, whose effigy may still be seen on Mount Sipylus, near Smyrna, was an image of Atargatis, whose armed priestesses gave rise to the Greek legend of the Amazons, a nation of female warriors; that the Euboic silver standard was based upon the mina of Carchemish; and that in all probability the characters found on Trojan whorls by Schliemann, as well as certain anomalous letters in the Lycian alphabet, and even the mysterious Cypriote syllabary itself were simply cursive forms descended from the Hittite hieroglyphs used in the inscriptions on the pseudo-Niobe and the pseudo-Sesostris in Lydia, and pictured on the stones obtained by Dr. Wright from Hamath, and by Mr. George Smith from Carchemish.
The arguments by which scholars have been led to these conclusions, together with the existing materials on which future researches must be based, have been collected by Dr. Wright in a handy volume, which we have great pleasure in heartily commending to all students of Biblical archæology as a substantial contribution to our knowledge.
When the Turks permit the mounds at Kadesh and Carchemish, which conceal the ruined palaces and temples of the Hittite capitals, to be systematically explored, and when the Hittite writing shall be completely deciphered, we may anticipate a revelation of the earliest history of the world not inferior, possibly, in interest and importance, to those astonishing discoveries which have made known to this generation the buried secrets of Babylon, Nineveh, and Troy.—British Quarterly Review.
[AUTOMATIC WRITING, OR THE RATIONALE OF PLANCHETTE.]
BY FREDERICK W. H. MYERS.
Among all the changes which are taking place in our conceptions of various parts of the universe, there is none more profound, or at first sight more disquieting, than the change which, at the touch of Science, is stealing over our conception of ourselves. For each of us seems to be no longer a sovereign state but a federal union; the kingdom of our mind is insensibly dissolving into a republic. Instead of the ens rationale of the schoolmen, protected from irreverent treatment by its metaphysical abstraction; instead of Descartes’ impalpable soul, seated bravely in its pineal gland, and ruling from that tiny fortress body and brain alike, we have physiologist and psychologist uniting in pulling us to pieces,—in analyzing into their sensory elements our loftiest ideas,—in tracing the diseases of memory, volition, intelligence, which gradually distort us past recognition,—in showing how one may become in a moment a different person altogether, by passing through a fit of somnambulism, or receiving a smart blow on the head. Our past self, with its stores of registered experience, continually revived in memory, seems to be held to resemble a too self-conscious phonograph, which should enjoy an agreeable sense of mental effort as its handle turned, and should preface its inevitable repetitions by some triumphant allusion to its own acumen. Our present self, this inward medley of sensations and desires, is likened to that mass of creeping things which is termed an “animal colony,”—a myriad rudimentary consciousnesses, which acquire a sort of corporate unity because one end of the amalgam has to go first and find the way.
Or one may say that the old view started from the sane mind as the normal, permanent, definite entity from which insanity was the unaccountable aberration; while in the new view it is rather sanity which needs to be accounted for; since the moral and physical being of each of us is built up from incoördination and incoherence, and the microcosm of man is but a micro-chaos held in some semblance of order by a lax and swaying hand, the wild team which a Phaeton is driving, and which must needs soon plunge into the sea. Theories like this are naturally distasteful to those who care for the dignity of man. And such readers may perhaps turn aside in impatience when I say that much of this paper will be occupied by some reasons for my belief that this analysis of human consciousness must be carried further still; that we must face the idea of concurrent streams of being, flowing alongside but unmingled within us, and with either of which our active consciousness may, under appropriate circumstances, be identified. Many people have heard, for instance, of Dr. Azam’s patient, Félida X., who passes at irregular intervals from one apparent personality into another, memory and character changing suddenly as she enters her first or her second state of being. Such cases as hers I believe to be but extreme examples of an alternation which is capable of being evoked in all of us, and which in some slight measure is going on in us every day. Our cerebral focus (to use a metaphor) often shifts slightly, and is capable of shifting far. Or let me compare my active consciousness to a steam-tug, and the ideas and memories which I summon into the field of attention to the barges which the tug tows after it. Then the concurrent streams of my being are like Arve and Rhone, contiguous but hardly mingling their blue and yellow waves. I tug my barges down the Rhone, my consciousness is a blue consciousness, but the tail barge swings into the Arve and back again, and brings traces of the potential yellow consciousness back into the blue. In Félida’s case tug and barges and all swerve suddenly from one stream into the other; the blue consciousness becomes the yellow in a moment and altogether. Transitions may be varied in a hundred ways, and it may happen that the life-streams mix together, and that there is a memory of all.
Moreover, there seems no reason to assume that our active consciousness is necessarily altogether superior to the consciousnesses which are at present secondary, or potential only. We may rather hold that super-conscious may be quite as legitimate a term as sub-conscious, and instead of regarding our consciousness (as is commonly done) as a threshold in our being, above which ideas and sensations must rise if we wish to cognize them, we may prefer to regard it as a segment of our being, into which ideas and sensations may enter either from below or from above; say a thermometric tube, marking ordinary temperatures, but so arranged that water may not only rise into it, by expansion, from the bottom, but also fall into it, by condensation, from the top.
Strange and extravagant as this doctrine may seem, I shall hope to show some ground for it in the present paper. I shall hope, at least, to show not only that our unconscious may interact with our conscious mental action in a more definite and tangible manner than is usually supposed, but also that this unconscious mental action may actually manifest the existence of a capital and cardinal faculty of which the conscious mind of the same persons at the same time is wholly devoid.
For the sake of brevity I shall select one alone out of many forms of unconscious action which may, if rightly scrutinized, afford a glimpse into the recesses of our being.[27]
I shall take automatic writing; and I shall try, by a few examples from among the many which lie before me, to show the operation, first, of unconscious cerebral action of the already recognized kind, but much more complex and definite than is commonly supposed to be discernible in waking persons; and, secondly, of telepathic action,—of the transference, that is to say, of thoughts or ideas from the conscious or unconscious mind of one person to the conscious or unconscious mind of another person, from whence they emerge in the shape of automatically written words or sentences.
I shall be able to cover a corner only of a vast and unexplored field. I venture to think that the phenomena of automatic writing will before long claim the best attention of the physiological psychologist. They have been long neglected, and I can only conjecture that this neglect is due to the eagerness with which certain spiritualists have claimed such writings as the work of Shakespeare, Byron, and other improbable persons. The message given has too often fallen below the known grammatical level of those eminent authors, and the laugh thus raised has drowned the far more instructive question as to whence in reality the automatic rubbish came. Yet surely to decline to investigate “planchette” because “the trail of Katie King is over it all,” is very much as though one refused to analyse the meteorite at Ephesus because the town-clerk cried loudly that it was “an image which fell down from Jupiter.”
Automatic writing in its simplest form is merely a variety of the tricks of unconscious action to which, in excited moments, we are all of us prone. The surplus nervous energy escapes along some habitual channel—movements of the hand, for instance, are continued or initiated; and among such hand-movements—drumming of tunes, piano-playing, drawing, and the like—writing naturally holds a prominent place. There is incipient graphic automatism when the nervous student scribbles Greek words on the margin of the paper on which he is striving to produce a copy of iambics. If the paper be suddenly withdrawn he will have no notion what he has written. And more, the words written will sometimes be imaginary words, which have needed some faint unconscious choice in order to preserve a look of real words in their arrangement of letters. A complete graphic automatism is seen in various morbid states. A man attacked by a slight epileptiform seizure while in the act of writing will sometimes continue to write a few sentences unconsciously, which, although probably nonsensical, will often be correct in spelling and grammar. Again, in the case of certain cerebral troubles, the patient will write the wrong word—say, “table” for “chair;”—or at least some meaningless sequence of letters, in which, however, each letter is properly formed. In each of these cases, therefore, there is graphic automatism. And they incidentally show that to write words in a sudden state of unconsciousness, or to write words against one’s will, is not necessarily a proof that any intelligence is at work besides one’s own.
Still further; in spontaneous somnambulism, the patient will often write long letters or essays. Sometimes these are incoherent, like a dream; sometimes they are on the level of his waking productions; sometimes they even seem to rise above it. They may contain at any rate ingenious manipulations of data known to his waking brain, as where a baffling mathematical problem is solved during sleep.
From the natural or spontaneous cases of graphic automatism let us pass on to the induced or experimental cases. I will give first a singular transitional instance, where there is no voluntary muscular action, but yet a previous exercise of expectant attention is necessary to secure the result.
My friend Mr. A., who is much interested in mental problems, has practised introspection with assiduity and care. He finds that if he fixes his attention on some given word, and then allows his hand to rest laxly in the writing attitude, his hand presently writes the word without any conscious volition of his own; the sensation being as though the hand were moved by some power other than himself. This happens whether his eyes are open or shut, so that the gaze is not necessary to fix the attention. If he wills not to write, he can remove his hand and avert the action. But if he chooses a movement simpler than writing, for instance, if he holds out his open hand and strongly imagines that it will close, a kind of spasm ensues, and the hand closes, even though he exert all his voluntary force to keep it open.
It is manifest how analogous these actions are to much which in bygone times has been classed as possession. Mr. A. has the very sensation of being possessed,—moved from within by some agency which overrules his volition, and yet we can hardly doubt that it is merely his unconscious influencing his conscious life. The act of attention, so to say, has stamped the idea of the projected movement so strongly on his brain that the movement works itself out automatically, in spite of subsequent efforts to prevent it. The best parallel will be the case of a promise made during the hypnotic trance, which the subject is irresistibly impelled to fulfil on waking.[28] From this curious transitional case we pass on to cases where no idea of the words written has passed through the writer’s consciousness. It is not easy to make quite sure that this is the case, and the modus operandi needs some consideration.
First we have to find an automatic writer. Perhaps one person in a hundred possesses this tendency; that is, if he sits for half an hour on a dozen evenings, amid quiet surroundings and in an expectant frame of mind, with his hand on pencil or planchette, he will begin to write words which he has not consciously thought of. But if he sees the words as he writes them he will unavoidably guess at what is coming, and spoil the spontaneous flow. Some persons can avoid this by reading a book while they write, and so keeping eyes and thoughts away from the message.[29] Another plan is to use a planchette; which is no occult instrument, but simply a thin piece of board supported on two castors, and on a third leg consisting of a pencil which just touches the paper. A planchette has two advantages over the ordinary pencil; namely, that a slighter impulse will start it, and that it is easier to write (or rather scrawl) without seeing or feeling what you are writing. These precautions, of course, are for the operator’s own satisfaction; they are no proof to other people that he is not writing the words intentionally. That can only be proved to others if he writes facts demonstrably unknown to his conscious self; as in the telepathic cases to which we shall come further on. But as yet I am only giving fresh examples of a kind of mental action which physiology already recognizes: examples, moreover, which any reader who will take the requisite trouble can probably reproduce, either in his own person or in the person of some trusted friend.
I lately requested a lady whom I knew to be a careful observer, but who was quite unfamiliar with this subject, to try whether she could write with a pencil or planchette, and report to me the result. Her experience may stand as typical.
“I have tried the planchette,” she writes, “and I get writing, certainly not done by my hand consciously; but it is nonsense, such as Mebew. I tried holding a pencil, and all I got was mm or rererere, then for hours together I got this: Celen, Celen. Whether the first letter was C or L I could never make out. Then I got I Celen. I was disgusted, and took a book and read while I held the pencil. Then I got Helen. Now note this fact: I never make H like that (like I and C juxtaposed); I make it thus: (like a printed H). I then saw that the thing I read as I Celen was Helen, my name. For days I had only Celen, and never for one moment expected it meant what it did.”
Now this case suggests several curious analogies. First, there is an analogy with those cases of double consciousness where the patient in the “second state” has to learn to write anew. He learns more rapidly than he learnt as a child, because the necessary adjustments do already exist in his brain, although he cannot use them in the normal manner. So here, too, the hidden other self was learning to write, but learnt more rapidly than a child learns, inasmuch as the process was now but the transference of an organized memory from one stream of the inner being to another. But, secondly, we must observe (and now I am referring to many other cases besides the case cited) that the hidden self does not learn to write just as a child learns, but rather by passing through the stages first of atactic, then of amnemonic agraphy. That is to say, first, the pencil scrawls vaguely, like the patient who cannot form a single letter; then it writes the wrong letters or the wrong words, like the patient who writes blunderingly, or chooses the letters JICMNOS for James Simmonds, JASPENOS for James Pascoe, &c.; ultimately it writes correctly, though very likely (as here, and in a case of Dr. Macnish’s) the handwriting of the secondary self[30] (if I may suggest a needed term) is different from the handwriting of the primary.
Once more: the constant repetition of the same word (which I have seen to continue with automatic writers even for months) is more characteristic of aphasia than of agraphy. And we may just remark in passing that vocal automatism presents the same analysis with morbid aphasia which graphic automatism presents with morbid agraphy. When the enthusiasts in Irving’s church first yelled vaguely, then shouted some meaningless words many hundred times, and then gave a “trance-address,” their secondary self (I may suggest) was attaining articulate speech through just the stages through which an aphasic patient will sometimes pass.[31] The parallel is at least a curious one; and if the theory which traces the automatic speech of aphasic patients to the right (or less-used) cerebral hemisphere be confirmed, a singular light might be thrown on the locus of the second self.
But I must pass on to one more case of automatic writing, a case which I select as marking the furthest limit to which, so far as I am at present aware, pure unconscious cerebration in the waking state can go. Mr. A., whom I have already mentioned, is not usually able to get any automatic writing except (as described above) of a word on which his attention has been previously fixed. But at one period of his life, when his brain was much excited by over-study, he found that if he held a pencil and wrote questions the pencil would, in a feeble scrawling hand, quite unlike his own, write answers which he could in nowise foresee. Moreover, as will be seen, he was not only unable to foresee these answers, he was sometimes unable even to comprehend them. Many of them were anagrams—transpositions of letters which he had to puzzle over before he could get at their meaning. This makes, of course, the main importance of the case; this proof of the concurrent action of a secondary self so entirely dissociated from the primary consciousness that the questioner is almost baffled by his own automatic replies. The matter of the replies is on the usual level of automatic messages, which are apt to resemble the conversations of a capricious dream. The interest of this form of self-interrogation certainly does not lie in the wisdom of the oracle received.
“The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the devil they got there.”
I abridge Mr. A.’s account, and give the answers in italics.
“‘What is it,’ said Mr. A., ‘that now moves my pen?’ Religion. ‘What is religion?’ Worship. Here arose a difficulty. Although I did not expect either of these answers, yet, when the first few letters had been written, I expected the remainder of the word. This might vitiate the result. But now, as if the intelligent wished to prove by the manner of answering, that the answer could be due to it alone, and in no part to mere expediency, my next question received a singular reply. ‘Worship of what?’ Wbwbwbwb. ‘What is the meaning of wb?’ Win, buy. ‘What?’ Knowledge. On the second day the first question was—‘What is man?’ Flise. My pen was at first very violently agitated, which had not been the case on the first day. It was quite a minute before it wrote as above. On the analogy of wb I proceeded: ‘What does F stand for?’ Fesi. ‘L?’ ‘;Le.’ ‘I?’ ‘;Ivy.’ ‘S?’ Sir. ‘E?’ Eye. ‘Is Fesi le ivy, sir, eye, an anagram?’ Yes. ‘How many words in the answer?’ Four.”
Mr. A. was unable to shift these letters into an intelligible sentence, and began again on the third day with the same question:
“‘What is man?’ Tefi, Hasl, Esble, Lies. ‘Is this an anagram?’ Yes. ‘How many words in the answer?’ Five. ‘Must I interpret it myself?’ Try. Presently I got out, Life is the less able. Next I tried the previous anagram, and at last obtained Every life is yes.”
Other anagrams also were given, as wfvs yoitet (Testify! vow!); ieb; iov ogf wle (I go, vow belief!); and in reply to the question, “How shall I believe?” neb 16 vbliy ev 86 e earf ee (Believe by fear even! 1866). How unlikely it is that all this was due to mere accident may be seen by any one who will take letters (the vowels and consonants roughly proportioned to the frequency of their actual use), and try to make up a series of handfuls completely into words possessing any grammatical coherence or intelligible meaning. Now in Mr. A.’s case all the professed anagrams were real anagrams (with one error of i for e); some of the sentences were real answers to the questions; and not even the absurdest sentences were wholly meaningless. In the two first given, for instance, Mr. A. was inclined to trace a reference to books lately read; the second sentence alluding to such doctrines as that “Death solves mysteries which life cannot unlock;” the first to Spinoza’s tenet that all existence is affirmation of the Deity. We seem therefore to see the secondary self struggling to express abstract thought with much the same kind of incoherence with which we have elsewhere seen it struggle to express some concrete symbol. To revert to our former parallel, we may say that “Every life is yes” bears something the same relation to a thought of Spinoza’s which the letters JICMNOS bear to the name James Simmonds.
Let us consider, then, how far we have got. Mr. A. (on the view here taken) is communing with his second self, with another focus of cerebral activity within his own brain. And I imagine this other focus of personality to be capable of exhibiting about as much intelligence as one exhibits in an ordinary dream. Mr. A. awake is addressing Mr. A. asleep; and the first replies, Religion, Worship, &c., are very much the kind of answer that one gets if one addresses a man who is partially comatose, or muttering in broken slumber. Such a man will make brief replies which show at least that the words of the question are caught, though perhaps not its meaning. In the next place, the answer wb must, I think, as Mr. A. suggests, be taken as an attempt to prove independent action, a confused inchoate response to the writer’s fear that his waking self might be suggesting the words written. The same trick of language—abbreviation by initial letters, occurs on the second day again; and this kind of continuity of character, which automatic messages often exhibit, has been sometimes taken to indicate the persisting presence of an extraneous mind. But perhaps its true parallel may be found in the well-known cases of intermittent memory, where a person repeatedly subjected to certain abnormal states, as somnambulism or the hypnotic trance, carries on from one access into another a chain of recollections of which his ordinary self knows nothing.
In Mr. A.’s case, however, some persons might think that the proof of an independent intelligence went much further than this; for his hand wrote anagrams which his waking brain took an hour or more to unriddle. And certainly there could hardly be a clearer proof that the answers did not pass through the writer’s primary consciousness; that they proceeded, if from himself at all, from a secondary self such as I have been describing. But further than this we surely need not go. The answers contain no unknown facts, no new materials, and there seems no reason à priori why the dream-self should not puzzle the waking self; why its fantastic combinations of old elements of memory should not need some pains to unravel. I may perhaps be permitted to quote in illustration a recent dream of my own, to which I doubt not that some of my readers can supply parallel instances. I dreamt that I saw written in gold on a chapel wall some Greek hexameters, which, I was told, were the work of an eminent living scholar. I gazed at them with much respect, but dim comprehension, and succeeded in carrying back into waking memory the bulk of one line:—ὁ μὲν κατὰ γᾶν θαλερὸν κύσε δακνόμενον πῦρ. On waking, it needed some little thought to show me that κατὰ γᾶν was a solecism for ὑπὸ γᾶν, revived from early boyhood, and that the line meant: “He indeed beneath the earth embraced the ever-burning, biting fire.” Further reflection reminded me that I had lately been asked to apply to the Professor in question for an inscription to be placed over the tomb of a common acquaintance. The matter had dropped, and I had not thought of it again. But here, I cannot doubt, was my inner self’s prevision of that unwritten epitaph; although the drift of it certainly showed less tact and fine feeling than my scholarly friend would have exhibited on such an occasion.
Now just in this same way, as it seems to me, Mr. A.’s inner self retraced the familiar path of one of his childish amusements, and mystified the waking man with the puzzles of the boy. It may be that the unconscious self moves more readily than the conscious along these old-established and stable mnemonic tracks, that we constantly retrace our early memories without knowing it, and that when some recollection seems to have left us it has only passed into a storehouse from which we can no longer summon it at will.
But we have not yet done with Mr. A.’s experiences. Yielding to the suggestion that these anagrams were the work of some intelligence without him, he placed himself in the mental attitude of colloquy with some unknown being. Note the result:
“Who art thou? Clelia. Thou art a woman? Yes. Hast thou ever lived upon the earth? No. Wilt thou? Yes. When? Six years. Wherefore dost thou speak with me? E if Clelia el.”
There is a disappointing ambiguity about this last very simple anagram, which may mean “I Clelia feel,” or, “I Clelia flee.”
But mark what has happened. Mr. A. has created and is talking to a personage in his own dream. In other words, his secondary self has produced in his primary self the illusion that there is a separate intelligence at work; and this illusion of the primary self reacts on the secondary, as the words which we whisper back to the muttering dreamer influence the course of a dream which we cannot follow. The fact, therefore, of Clelia’s apparent personality and unexpected rejoinders do not so much as suggest any need to look outside Mr. A’s mind for her origin. The figures in our own ordinary dreams say things which startle and even shock us; nay, these shadows sometimes even defy our attempts at analyzing them away. On the rare occasions, so brief and precious, when one dreams and knows it is a dream, I always endeavor to get at my dream-personages and test their independence of character by a few suitable inquiries. Unfortunately they invariably vanish under my perhaps too hasty interrogation. But a shrewd Northumbrian lately told me the following dream, unique in his experience, and over which he had often pondered.
“I was walking in my dream,” he said, “in a Newcastle street, when suddenly I knew so clearly that it was a dream, that I thought I would find out what the folk in my dream thought of themselves. I saw three foundrymen sitting at a yard door. I went up and said to all three: ‘Are you conscious of a real objective existence?’ Two of the men stared and laughed at me. But the man in the middle stretched out his two hands to his two mates and said, ‘Feel that,’ They said, ‘We do feel you,’ Then he held out his hand to me, and I told him that I felt it solid and warm; then he said: ‘Well, sir, my mates feel that I am a real man of flesh and blood, and you feel it, and I feel it. What more would you have?’ Now I had not formed any notion of what this man was going to say. And I could not answer him, and I awoke.”
Now I take this self-assertive dream-foundry-man to be the exact analogue of Clelia. Let us now see whether anything of Clelia survived the excited hour which begat her.
“On the fourth day,” says Mr. A., “I began my questioning in the same exalted mood, but to my surprise did not get the same answer. ‘Wherefore,’ I asked, ‘dost thou speak with me?’ (The answer was a wavy line, denoting repetition, and meaning.—‘Wherefore dost thou speak with me?’) ‘Do I answer myself?’ Yes. ‘Is Clelia here?’ No. ‘Who is it, then, now here?’ Nobody. ‘Does Clelia exist?’ No. ‘With whom did I speak yesterday?’ No one. ‘Do souls exist in another world?’ Mb. ‘What does mb mean? ’May be.”
And this was all the revelation which our inquirer got. Some further anagrams were given, but Clelia came no more. Such indeed, on the view here set forth, was the natural conclusion. The dream passed through its stages, and faded at last away.
I have heard of a piece of French statuary entitled “Jeune homme caressant sa Chimère.” Clelia, could the sculptor have caught her, might have been his fittest model; what else could he have found at once so intimate and so fugitive, discerned so elusively without us, and yet with such a root within?
I might mention many other strange varieties of graphic automatism; as reversed script, so written as to be read in a mirror;[32] alternating styles of handwriting, symbolic arabesque, and the like. But I must hasten on to the object towards which I am mainly tending, which is to show, not so much the influence exercised by a man’s own mind on itself as the influence exercised by one man’s mind on another’s. We have been watching, so to say, the psychic wave as it washed up deep-sea products on the open shore. But the interest will be keener still if we find that wave washing up the products of some far-off clime; if we discover that there has been a profound current with no surface trace—a current propagated by an unimagined impulse, and obeying laws as yet unknown.
The psychical phenomenon here alluded to is that for which I have suggested the name Telepathy; the transference of ideas or sensations from one conscious or unconscious mind to another, without the agency of any of the recognized organs of sense.
Our first task in the investigation of this influence has naturally been to assure ourselves of the transmission of thought between two persons, both of them in normal condition; the agent, conscious of the thought which he wishes to transmit, the percipient, conscious of the thought as he receives it.
The “Proceedings” of the Society for Psychical Research must for a long time be largely occupied with experiments of this definite kind. But, of course, if such an influence truly exists, its manifestations are not likely to be confined to the transference of a name or a cypher, a card or a diagram, from one man’s field of mental vision to another’s, by deliberate effort and as a preconcerted experiment. If Telepathy be anything at all, it involves one of the profoundest laws of mind, and, like other important laws, may be expected to operate in many unlooked for ways, and to be at the root of many scattered phenomena, inexplicable before. Especially must we watch for traces of it wherever unconscious mental action is concerned. For the telepathic impact, we may fairly conjecture, may often be a stimulus so gentle as to need some concentration or exaltation in the percipient’s mind, or at least some inhibition of competing stimuli, in order to enable him to realize it in consciousness at all. And in fact (as we have shown or are prepared to show), almost every abnormal mental condition (consistent with sanity) as yet investigated yields some indication of telepathic action.
Telepathy, I venture to maintain, is an occasional phenomenon in somnambulism and in the hypnotic state; it is one of the obscure causes which generate hallucinations; it enters into dream and into delirium; and it often rises to its maximum of vividness in the swoon that ends in death.
In accordance with analogy, therefore, we may expect to find that automatic writing—this new glimpse into our deep-sea world—will afford us some fresh proof of currents which set obscurely towards us from the depths of minds other than our own. And we find, I believe, that this is so. Had space permitted it, I should have liked to detail some transitional cases, to have shown by what gradual steps we discover that it is not always one man’s intelligence alone which is concerned in the message given, that an infusion of facts known to some spectator only may mingle in the general tenor which the writer’s mind supplies. Especially I should have wished to describe some attempts at this kind of thought-transference attended with only slight or partial success. For the mind justly hesitates to give credence to a palmary group of experiments unless it has been prepared for them by following some series of gradual suggestions and approximate endeavor.
But the case which I am about to relate, although a culminant, is not an isolated one in the life-history of the persons concerned. The Rev. P. H. Newnham, Rector of Maker, Devonport, experienced an even more striking instance of thought-transference with Mrs. Newnham, some forty years ago, before their marriage; and during subsequent years there has been frequent and unmistakable transmission of thought from husband to wife of an involuntary kind, although it was only in the year 1871 that they succeeded in getting the ideas transferred by intentional effort.
Mr. Newnham’s communication consists of a copy of entries in a note-book made during eight months in 1871, at the actual moments of experiment. Mrs. Newnham independently corroborates the account. The entries had previously been shown to a few personal friends, but had never been used, and were not meant to be used, for any literary purpose. Mr. Newnham has kindly placed them at my disposal, from a belief that they may serve to elucidate important truth.
“Being desirous,” says the first entry in Mr. Newnham’s note-book, “of investigating accurately the phenomena of ‘planchette,’ myself and my wife have agreed to carry out a series of systematic experiments, in order to ascertain the conditions under which the instrument is able to work. To this end the following rules are strictly observed:
“1. The question to be asked is written down before the planchette is set in motion. This question, as a rule, is not known to the operator. [The few cases were the question was known to Mrs. Newnham are specially marked in the note-book, and are none of them cited here.]
“2. Whenever an evasive, or other, answer is returned, necessitating one or more new questions to be put before a clear answer can be obtained, the operator is not to be made aware of any of these questions, or even of the general subject to which they allude, until the final answer has been obtained.
“My wife,” adds Mr. Newnham, “always sat at a small low table, in a low chair, leaning backwards. I sat about eight feet distant, at a rather high table, and with my back towards her while writing down the questions. It was absolutely impossible that any gesture or play of feature on my part could have been visible or intelligible to her. As a rule she kept her eyes shut; but never became in the slightest degree hypnotic, or even naturally drowsy.
“Under these conditions we carried on experiments for about eight months, and I have 309 questions and answers recorded in my note-book, spread over this time. But the experiments were found very exhaustive of nerve power, and as my wife’s health was delicate, and the fact of thought-transmission had been abundantly proved, we thought it best to abandon the pursuit.
“The planchette began to move instantly with my wife. The answer was often half written before I had completed the question.
“On finding that it would write easily, I asked three simple questions, which were known to the operator, then three others unknown to her, relating to my own private concerns. All six having been instantly answered in a manner to show complete intelligence, I proceeded to ask:
“(7) Write down the lowest temperature here this week. Answer: 8. Now, this reply at once arrested my interest. The actual lowest temperature had been 7·6°, so that 8 was the nearest whole degree; but my wife said at once that, if she had been asked the question, she would have written 7, and not 8; as she had forgotten the decimal, but remembered my having said that the temperature had been down to 7 something,
“I simply quote this as a good instance, at the very outset, of perfect transmission of thought, coupled with a perfectly independent reply; the answer being correct in itself, but different from the impression on the conscious intelligence of both parties.
“Naturally, our first desire was to see if we could obtain any information concerning the nature of the intelligence which was operating through the planchette, and of the method by which it produced the written results. We repeated questions on this subject again and again, and I will copy down the principal questions and answers in this connection.
“(13) Is it the operator’s brain or some external force that moves the planchette? Answer ‘brain’ or ‘force.’ Will.
“(14) Is it the will of a living person, or of an immaterial spirit distinct from that person? Answer ‘person’ or ‘spirit.’ Wife.
“(15) Give first the wife’s Christian name; then my favorite name for her. (This was accurately done.)
“(27) What is your own name? Only you.
“(28) We are not quite sure of the meaning of the answer. Explain. Wife.
“The subject was resumed on a later day.
“(118) But does no one tell wife what to write? if so, who? Spirit.
“(119) Whose spirit? Wife’s brain.
“(120) But how does wife’s brain know masonic secrets? Wife’s spirit unconsciously guides.
“(190) Why are you not always influenced by what I think? Wife knows sometimes what you think. (191) How does wife know it? When her brain is excited, and has not been much tried before. (192) But by what means are my thoughts conveyed to her brain? Electrobiology. (193) What is electrobiology? No one knows. (194) But do not you know? No, wife does not know.
“My object,” says Mr. Newnham, “in quoting this large number of questions and replies [many of them omitted here] has been not merely to show the instantaneous and unfailing transmission of thought from questioner to operator, but more especially to call attention to a remarkable character of the answers given. These answers, consistent and invariable in their tenor from first to last, did not correspond with the opinion or expectation of either myself or my wife. Something which takes the appearance of a source of intelligence distinct from the conscious intelligence of either of us was clearly perceptible from the very first. Assuming, at the outset, that if her source of percipience could grasp my question, it would be equally willing to reply in accordance with my request, in questions (13) (14) I suggested the form of answer; but of this not the slightest notice was taken. Neither myself nor my wife had ever taken part in any form of (so-called) ‘spiritual’ manifestations before this time; nor had we any decided opinion as to the agency by which phenomena of this kind were brought about. But for such answers as those numbered (14), (27), (144), (192), (194), we were both of us totally unprepared; and I may add that, so far as we were prepossessed by any opinion whatever, these replies were distinctly opposed to such opinions. In a word, it is simply impossible that these replies should have been either suggested, or composed, by the conscious intelligence of either of us.”
Mr. Newnham obtained some curious results by questioning “planchette”, on Masonic archæology—a subject which he had long studied, but of which Mrs. Newnham knew nothing. It is to be observed, moreover, that throughout the experiments Mrs. Newnham “was quite unable to follow the motions of the planchette. Often she only touched it with a single finger; but even with all her fingers resting on the board she never had the slightest idea of what words were being traced out,” In this case, therefore, we have Mrs. Newnham ignorant at once of all three points:—of what was the question asked; of what the true answer would have been; and of what answer was actually being written. Under these circumstances the answer showed a mixture—
(1) Of true Masonic facts, as known to Mr. Newnham;
(2) Of Masonic theories, known to him, but held by him to be erroneous;
(3) Of ignorance, sometimes, avowed, sometimes endeavoring to conceal itself by subterfuge.
I give an example:—
“(166) Of what language is the first syllable of the Great Triple R. A. word? Don’t know. (167) Yes, you do. What are the three languages of which the word is composed? Greek, Egypt, Syriac. First syllable (correctly given), rest unknown. (168) Write the syllable which is Syriac. (First Syllable correctly written.) (174) Write down the word itself. (First three and last two letters were written correctly, but four incorrect letters, partly borrowed from another word of the same degree, came in the middle.) (176) Why do you write a word of which I know nothing? Wife tried hard to catch the word, but could not quite catch it.”
So far the answers, though imperfect, honestly admit their imperfection. There is nothing which a second self of Mrs. Newnham’s, with a certain amount of access to Mr. Newnham’s mind, might not furnish. But I must give one instance of another class of replies—replies which seem to wish to conceal ignorance and to elude exact inquiry.
“(182) Write out the prayer used at the advancement of a Mark Master Mason. Almighty Ruler of the Universe and Architect of all worlds, we beseech Thee to accept this our brother whom we have this day received into the most honorable company of Mark Master Masons. Grant him to be a worthy member of our brotherhood; and may he be in his own person a perfect mirror of all Masonic virtues. Grant that all our doings may be to Thy honor and glory, and to the welfare of all mankind.
“This prayer was written off instantaneously and very rapidly. For the benefit of those who are not members of the craft, I may say that no prayer in the slightest degree resembling it is made use of in the Ritual of any Masonic degree; and yet it contains more than one strictly accurate technicality connected with the degree of Mark Mason. My wife has never seen any Masonic prayers, whether in ‘Carlile’ or any other real or spurious Ritual of the Masonic Order.”
There was so much of this kind of untruthful evasion, and it was so unlike anything in Mrs. Newnham’s character, that observers less sober-minded would assuredly have fancied that some Puck or sprite was intervening with a “third intelligence” compounded of aimless cunning and childish jest. But Mr. Newnham inclines to a view fully in accordance with that which this paper has throughout suggested.
“Is this third intelligence,” he says, “analogous to the ‘dual state,’ the existence of which, in a few extreme and most interesting cases, is now well established? Is there a latent potentiality of a ‘dual state’ existing in every brain? and are the few very striking phenomena which have as yet been noticed and published only the exceptional developments of a state which is inherent in most or in all brains?”
And alluding to a theory, which has at different times been much discussed, of the more or less independent action of the two cerebral hemispheres, he asks:—
“May not the untrained half of the organ of mind, even in the most pure and truthful characters, be capable of manifesting tendencies like the hysterical girl’s, and of producing at all events the appearance of moral deficiencies which are totally foreign to the well-trained and disciplined portion of the brain which is ordinarily made use of?”
In this place, however, it will be enough to say that the real cause for surprise would have been if our secondary self had not exhibited a character in some way different from that which we recognize as our own. Whatever other factors may enter into a man’s character, two of the most important are undoubtedly his store of memories and his cænesthesia, or the sum of the obscure sensations of his whole physical structure. When either of these is suddenly altered, character changes too—a change for an example of which we need scarcely look further than our recollection of the moral obliquities and incoherences of an ordinary dream. Our personality may be dyed throughout with the same color, but the apparent tint will vary with the contexture of each absorptive element within. And not graphic automatism only, but other forms of muscular and vocal automatism must be examined and compared before we can form even an empirical conception of that hidden agency, which is ourselves, though we know it not. In the meantime I shall, I think, be held to have shown that, in the vast majority of cases where spiritualists are prone to refer automatic writing to some unseen intelligence, there is really no valid ground for such an ascription. I am, indeed, aware that some cases of a different kind are alleged to exist—cases where automatic writing has communicated facts demonstrably not known to the writer or to any one present. How far these cases can satisfy the very rigorous scrutiny to which they ought obviously to be subjected is a question which I may perhaps find some other opportunity of discussing.
But for the present our inquiry must pause here. Two distinct arguments have been attempted in this paper: the first of them in accordance with recognized physiological science, though with some novelty of its own; the second lying altogether beyond what the consensus of authorities at present admits. For, first, an attempt has been made to show that the unconscious mental action which is admittedly going on within us may manifest itself through graphic automatism with a degree of complexity hitherto little suspected, so that a man may actually hold a written colloquy with his own waking and responsive dream; and, secondly, reason has been given for believing that automatic writing may sometimes reply to questions which the writer does not see, and mention facts which the writer does not know, the knowledge of those questions or those facts being apparently derived by telepathic communication from the conscious or unconscious mind of another person.
Startling as this conclusion is, it will not be novel to those who have followed the cognate experiments on other forms of thought-transference detailed in the “Proceedings” of the Society for Psychical Research.[33] And be it noted that our formula, “Mind can influence mind independently of the recognized organs of sense,” has been again and again foreshadowed by illustrious thinkers in the past. It is, for instance, but a more generalized expression of Cuvier’s dictum, “that a communication can under certain circumstances be established between the nervous systems of two persons.” Such communication, indeed, like other mental phenomena, may be presumed to have a neural as well as a psychical aspect; and if we prefer to use the word mind rather than brain, it is because the mental side is that which primarily presents itself for investigation, and in such a matter it is well to avoid even the semblance of theory until we have established fact.
Before concluding, let us return for a moment to the popular apprehensions to which my opening paragraphs referred. Has not some reason been shown for thinking that these fears were premature? that they sprang from too ready an assumption that all the discoveries of psycho-physics would reveal us as smaller and more explicable things, and that the analysis of man’s personality would end in analysing man away? It is not, on the other hand, at least possible that this analysis may reveal also faculties of unlooked-for range, and powers which our conscious self was not aware of possessing? A generation ago there were many who resented the supposition that man had sprung from the ape. But on reflection most of us have discerned that this repugnance came rather from pride than wisdom; and that with the race, as with the individual, there is more true hope for him who has risen by education from the beggar-boy than for him who has fallen by transgression from the prince. And now once more it seems possible that a more searching analysis of our mental constitution may reveal to us not a straitened and materialized, but a developing and expanding view of the “powers that lie folded up in man.” Our best hope, perhaps, should be drawn from our potentialities rather than our perfections; and the doubt whether we are our full selves already may suggest that our true subjective unity may wait to be realized elsewhere.—Contemporary Review.
[SCIENTIFIC VERSUS BUCOLIC VIVISECTION.]
BY JAMES COTTER MORISON.
To judge from appearances, we are threatened with a new agitation against vivisection. The recent controversy carried on in the columns of the Times revealed an amount of heat on the subject which can hardly fail to find some new mode of motion on the platform, or even in Parliament. It is evident that passions of no common fervor have been kindled, at least, in one party to the controversy, and efforts will probably be made to work the public mind up to a similar temperature. The few observations which follow are intended to have, if possible, a contrary effect. The question of vivisection should not be beyond the possibility of a rational discussion. When antagonism, so fierce and uncompromising, exists as in the present case, the presumption is that the disputants argue from incompatible principles. Neither side convinces or even seriously discomposes the other, because they are not agreed as to the ultimate criteria of the debate.
It is evident that the first and most important point to be decided, is: “What is the just and moral attitude of man towards the lower animals?” or to put the question in another form: “What are the rights of animals as against man?” Till these questions are answered with some approach to definiteness, we clearly shall float about in vague generalities. Formerly, animals had no rights; they have very few now in some parts of the East. Man exercised his power and cruelty upon them with little or no blame from the mass of his fellows. The improved sentiment in this respect is one of the best proofs of progress that we have to show. Cruelty to animals is not only punished by law, but reprobated, we may believe—in spite of occasional brutalities—by general public opinion. The point on which precision is required is, how far this reformed sentiment is to extend? Does it allow us to use animals (even to the extent of eating them) for our own purposes, on the condition of treating them well on the whole, of not inflicting upon them unnecessary pain; or should it logically lead to complete abstention from meddling with them at all, from interfering with their liberty, from making them work for us, and supplying by their bodies a chief article of our food? Only the extreme sect of vegetarians maintains this latter view, and with vegetarians we are not for the moment concerned; and I am not aware that even vegetarians oppose the labor of animals for the uses of man. Now, what I would wish to point out is, that if we do allow the use of animals by man, it is a practical impossibility to prevent the occasional, or even the frequent infliction of great pain and suffering upon them, at times amounting to cruelty; that if the infliction of cruelty is a valid argument against the practice of vivisection, it is a valid argument against a number of other practices, which nevertheless go unchallenged. The general public has a right to ask the opponents of vivisection why they are so peremptory in denouncing one, and relatively a small form of cruelty, while they are silent and passive in reference to other and much more common forms. We want to know the reason of what appears a very great and palpable inconsistency. We could understand people who said, “You have no more right to enslave, kill, and eat animals than men; à fortiori, you may not vivisect them.” But it is not easy to see how those who do not object, apparently, to the numberless cruel usages to which the domesticated animals are inevitably subjected by our enslavement of them, yet pass these all by and fix their eyes exclusively on one minute form of cruelty, singling that out for exclusive obloquy and reprobation. Miss Cobbe (Times, Jan. 6) says, “The whole practice (of vivisection) starts from a wrong view of the use of the lower animals, and of their relations to us.” That may be very true, but I question if Miss Cobbe had sufficiently considered the number of “practices” which her principles should lead her to pronounce as equally starting from a wrong view of the use of the lower animals, and of their relation to us.
It is clear that the anti-vivisectionists are resolute in refusing the challenge repeatedly made to them, either to denounce the cruelties of sport or to hold their peace about the cruelties of vivisection. One sees the shrewdness but hardly the consistency or the courage of their policy in this respect. Sport is a time-honored institution, the amusement of the “fine old English gentleman,” most respectable, conservative, and connected with the landed interest; hostility to it shows that you are a low radical fellow, quite remote from the feeling of good society. Sport is therefore let alone. The lingering agony and death of the wounded birds, the anguish of the coursed hare, the misery of the hunted fox, even when not aggravated by the veritable auto da fé of smoking or burning him out if he has taken to earth, the abominable cruelty of rabbit traps; these forms of cruelty and “torture,” inasmuch as their sole object is the amusement of our idle classes, do not move the indignant compassion of the anti-vivisectionist. The sportsman may steal a horse when the biologist may not look over a hedge. The constant cruelty to horses by ill-fitting harness, over-loading, and over-driving must distress every human mind. A tight collar which presses on the windpipe and makes breathing a repeated pain must in its daily and hourly accumulation produce an amount of suffering which few vivisectionists could equal if they tried. Look at the forelegs of cab horses, especially of the four-wheelers on night service, and mark their knees “over,” as it is called, which means seriously diseased joint, probably never moved without pain. The efforts of horses to keep their feet in “greasy” weather on the wood pavement are horrible to witness. To such a nervous animal as the horse the fear of falling is a very painful emotion; yet hundreds of omnibuses tear along at express speed every morning and evening, with loads which only the pluck of the animals enables them to draw, and not a step of the journey between the City and the West End is probably made without the presence of this painful emotion. Every day, in some part of the route, a horse falls. Then occurs one of the most repulsive incidents of the London streets, the gaping crowd of idlers, through which is heard the unfailing prescription to “sit on his head,” promptly carried out by some officious rough, who has no scruples as to the “relations of the lower animals to us.” Again, in war the sufferings and consumption of animals is simply frightful. Field-officers—some of whom, it appears, are opposed to vivisection—are generally rather proud, or they used to be, of having horses “shot under them.” But this cannot occur without considerable torture to the horses. The number of camels which slipped and “split up” in the Afghan war has been variously stated between ten and fifteen thousand. In either case animal suffering must have been on a colossal scale. Now the point one would like to see cleared up is, why this almost boundless field of animal suffering is ignored and the relatively minute amount of it produced in the dissecting-rooms of biologists so loudly denounced.
But what I wish particularly to call attention to is the practice of vivisection as exercised by our graziers and breeders all over the country on tens of thousands of animals yearly, by an operation always involving great pain and occasional death. In a review intended for general circulation the operation I refer to cannot be described in detail, but every one will understand the allusion made. It is performed on horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, and fowls. With regard to the horses the object is to make them docile and manageable. The eminent Veterinary-Surgeon Youatt, in his book on the Horse (chap. xv.), speaks of it as often performed “with haste, carelessness, and brutality:” but even he is of opinion “that the old method of preventing hæmorrhage by temporary pressure of the vessels while they are seared with a hot iron must not perhaps be abandoned.” He objects strongly to a “practice of some farmers,” who, by means of a ligature obtain their end, but “not until the animal has suffered sadly,” and adds that inflammation and death frequently ensue.
With regard to cattle, sheep, and pigs, the object of the operation is to hasten growth, to increase size, and to improve the flavor of the meat. The mutton, beef, and pork on which we feed are, with rare exceptions, the flesh of animals who have been submitted to the painful operation in question. In the case of the female pig the corresponding operation is particularly severe; while as to fowls, the pain inflicted was so excruciating in the opinion of an illustrious young physiologist, whom science still mourns, that he on principle abstained from eating the flesh of the capon.
Now there is no doubt that here we have vivisection in its most extensive and harsh form. More animals are subjected to it in one year than have been vivisected by biologists in half-a-century. It need not be said that anæsthetics are not used, and if they were or could be they would not assuage the suffering which follows the operation. It will surely be only prudent for the opponents of scientific vivisection to inform us why they are passive and silent with regard to bucolic vivisection. They declare that knowledge obtained by the torture of animals is impure, unholy, and vitiated at its source, and they reject it with many expressions of scorn. What do they say to their daily food which is obtained by the same means? They live by the results of vivisection on the largest scale—the food they eat—and they spend a good portion of their lives thus sustained in denouncing vivisection on the smallest scale because it only produces knowledge. It is true that they are not particular to conceal their suspicion that the knowledge claimed to be derived from vivisection is an imposture and a sham. Do they not, by the inconsistencies here briefly alluded to, their hostility to alleged knowledge, and their devotion to very substantial beef and mutton, the one and the other the products of vivisection, expose themselves to a suspicion better founded than that which they allow themselves to express? They question the value of vivisection, may not the single-mindedness of their hostility to it be questioned with better ground? Biology is now the frontier science exposed for obvious reasons to the odium theologicum in a marked degree. The havoc it has made among cherished religious opinions amply accounts for the dislike which it excites. But it is difficult to attack. On the other hand, an outcry that its methods are cruel, immoral, and revolting may serve as a useful diversion, and even give it a welcome check. The Puritans, it was remarked, objected to bear-baiting, not because it hurt the bear, but because it pleased the men. May we not say that vivisection is opposed, not because it is painful to animals, but because it tends to the advancement of science?
The question recurs, What is our proper relation to the lower animals? May we use them? If so, abuse and cruelty will inevitably occur. May we not use them? Then our civilisation and daily life must be revolutionised to a degree not suggested or easy to conceive.—Fortnightly Review.
[NOTES ON POPULAR ENGLISH.]
BY THE LATE ISAAC TODHUNTER.
I have from time to time recorded such examples of language as struck me for inaccuracy or any other peculiarity; but lately the pressure of other engagements has prevented me from continuing my collection, and has compelled me to renounce the design once entertained of using them for the foundation of a systematic essay. The present article contains a small selection from my store, and may be of interest to all who value accuracy and clearness. It is only necessary to say that the examples are not fabricated: all are taken from writers of good repute, and notes of the original places have been preserved, though it has not been thought necessary to encumber these pages with references. The italics have been supplied in those cases where they are used.
One of the most obvious peculiarities at present to be noticed is the use of the word if when there is nothing really conditional in the sentence. Thus we read: “If the Prussian plan of operations was faulty the movements of the Crown Prince’s army were in a high degree excellent.” The writer does not really mean what his words seem to imply, that the excellence was contingent on the fault: he simply means to make two independent statements. As another example we have: “Yet he never founded a family; if his two daughters carried his name and blood into the families of the Herreras and the Zuñigos, his two sons died before him.” Here again the two events which are connected by the conditional if are really quite independent. Other examples follow: “If it be true that Paris is an American’s paradise, symptoms are not wanting that there are Parisians who cast a longing look towards the institutions of the United States.” “If M. Stanilas Julien has taken up his position in the Celestial Empire, M. Léon de Rosny seems to have selected the neighboring country of Japan for his own special province.” “But those who are much engaged in public affairs cannot always be honest, and if this is not an excuse, it is at least a fact.” “But if a Cambridge man was to be appointed, Mr.—— is a ripe scholar and a good parish priest, and I rejoice that a place very dear to me should have fallen into such good hands.”
Other examples, differing in some respects from those already given, concur in exhibiting a strange use of the word if. Thus we read: “If the late rumors of dissension in the Cabinet had been well founded, the retirement of half his colleagues would not have weakened Mr. Gladstone’s hold on the House of Commons.” The conditional proposition intended is probably this: if half his colleagues were to retire, Mr. Gladstone’s hold on the House of Commons would not be weakened. “If a big book is a big evil, the Bijou Gazetteer of the World ought to stand at the summit of excellence. It is the tiniest geographical directory we have ever seen.” This is quite illogical: if a big book is a big evil, it does not follow that a little book is a great good. “If in the main I have adhered to the English version, it has been from the conviction that our translators were in the right.” It is rather difficult to see what is the precise opinion here expressed as to our translators; whether an absolute or contingent approval is intended. “If you think it worth your while to inspect the school from the outside, that is for yourself to decide upon.” The decision is not contingent on the thinking it worth while: they are identical. For the last example we take this: “... but if it does not retard his return to office it can hardly accelerate it.” The meaning is, “This speech cannot accelerate and may retard Mr. Disraeli’s return to office.” The triple occurrence of it is very awkward.
An error not uncommon in the present day is the blending of two different constructions in one sentence. The grammars of our childhood used to condemn such a sentence as this: “He was more beloved but not so much admired as Cynthio.” The former part of the sentence requires to be followed by than, and not by as. The following are recent examples:—“The little farmer [in France] has no greater enjoyments, if so many, as the English laborer.” “I find public-school boys generally more fluent, and as superficial as boys educated elsewhere.” “Mallet, for instance, records his delight and wonder at the Alps and the descent into Italy in terms quite as warm, if much less profuse, as those of the most impressible modern tourist.” An awkward construction, almost as bad as a fault, is seen in the following sentence:—“Messrs.—— having secured the co-operation of some of the most eminent professors of, and writers on, the various branches of science....”
A very favorite practice is that of changing a word where there is no corresponding change of meaning. Take the following example from a voluminous historian:—“Huge pinnacles of bare rock shoot up into the azure firmament, and forests overspread their sides, in which the scarlet rhododendrons sixty feet in height are surmounted by trees two hundred feet in elevation.” In a passage of this kind it may be of little consequence whether a word is retained or changed; but for any purpose where precision is valuable it is nearly as bad to use two words in one sense as one word in two senses. Let us take some other examples. We read in the usual channels of information that “Mr. Gladstone has issued invitations for a full-dress Parliamentary dinner, and Lord Granville has issued invitations for a full-dress Parliamentary banquet.” Again we read: “The Government proposes to divide the occupiers of land into four categories;” and almost immediately after we have “the second class comprehends ...”: so that we see the grand word category merely stands for class. Again: “This morning the Czar drove alone through the Thiergarten, and on his return received Field-Marshals Wrangel and Moltke, as well as many other general officers, and then gave audience to numerous visitors. Towards noon the Emperor Alexander, accompanied by the Russian Grand Dukes, paid a visit....” “Mr. Ayrton, according to Nature, has accepted Dr. Hooker’s explanation of the letter to Mr. Gladstone’s secretary, at which the First Commissioner of Works took umbrage, so that the dispute is at an end.” I may remark that Mr. Ayrton is identical with the First Commissioner of Works. A writer recently in a sketch of travels spoke of a “Turkish gentleman with his innumerable wives,” and soon after said that she “never saw him address any of his multifarious wives.” One of the illustrated periodicals gave a picture of an event in recent French history, entitled, “The National Guards Firing on the People.” Here the change from national to people slightly conceals the strange contradiction of guardians firing on those whom they ought to guard.
Let us now take one example in which a word is repeated, but in a rather different sense: “The Grand Duke of Baden sat next to the Emperor William, the Imperial Crown Prince of Germany next to the Grand Duke. Next came the other princely personages.” The word next is used in the last instance in not quite the same sense as in the former two instances; for all the princely personages could not sit in contact with the Crown Prince.
A class of examples may be found in which there is an obvious incongruity between two of the words which occur. Thus, “We are more than doubtful;” that is, we are more than full of doubts: this is obviously impossible. Then we read of “a man of more than doubtful sanity.” Again we read of “a more than questionable statement”: this is I suppose a very harsh elliptical construction for such a sentence as “a statement to which we might apply an epithet more condemnatory than questionable.” So also we read “a more unobjectionable character.” Again: “Let the Second Chamber be composed of elected members, and their utility will be more than halved.” To take the half of anything is to perform a definite operation, which is not susceptible of more or less. Again: “The singular and almost excessive impartiality and power of appreciation.” It is impossible to conceive of excessive impartiality. Other recent examples of these impossible combinations are, “more faultless,” “less indisputable.” “The high antiquity of the narrative cannot reasonably be doubted, and almost as little its ultimate Apostolic origin.” The ultimate origin, that is the last beginning, of anything seems a contradiction. The common phrase bad health seems of the same character; it is almost equivalent to unsound soundness or to unprosperous prosperity. In a passage already quoted, we read that the Czar “gave audience to numerous visitors,” and in a similar manner a very distinguished lecturer speaks of making experiments “visible to a large audience.” It would seem from the last instance that our language wants a word to denote a mass of people collected not so much to hear an address as to see what are called experiments. Perhaps if our savage forefathers had enjoyed the advantages of courses of scientific lectures, the vocabulary would be supplied with the missing word.
Talented is a vile barbarism which Coleridge indignantly denounced: there is no verb to talent from which such a participle could be deduced. Perhaps this imaginary word is not common at the present; though I am sorry to see from my notes that it still finds favor with classical scholars. It was used some time since by a well-known professor, just as he was about to emigrate to America; so it may have been merely evidence that he was rendering himself familiar with the language of his adopted country.
Ignore is a very popular and a very bad word. As there is no good authority for it, the meaning is naturally uncertain. It seems to fluctuate between wilfully concealing something and unintentionally omitting something, and this vagueness renders it a convenient tool for an unscrupulous orator or writer.
The word lengthened is often used instead of long. Thus we read that such and such an orator made a lengthened speech, when the intended meaning is that he made a long speech. The word lengthened has its appropriate meaning. Thus, after a ship has been built by the Admiralty, it is sometimes cut into two and a piece inserted: this operation, very reprehensible doubtless on financial grounds, is correctly described as lengthening the ship. It will be obvious on consideration that lengthened is not synonymous with long. Protracted and prolonged are also often used instead of long; though perhaps with less decided impropriety than lengthened.
A very common phrase with controversial writers is, “we shrewdly suspect.” This is equivalent to, “we acutely suspect.” The cleverness of the suspicion should, however, be attributed to the writers by other people, and not by themselves.
The simple word but is often used when it is difficult to see any shade of opposition or contrast such as we naturally expect. Thus we read: “There were several candidates, but the choice fell upon—— of Trinity College.” Another account of the same transaction was expressed thus: “It was understood that there were several candidates; the election fell, however, upon—— of Trinity College.”
The word mistaken is curious as being constantly used in a sense directly contrary to that which, according to its formation, it ought to have. Thus: “He is often mistaken, but never trivial and insipid.” “He is often mistaken” ought to mean that other people often mistake him; just as “he is often misunderstood” means that people often misunderstand him. But the writer of the above sentence intends to say that “He often makes mistakes.” It would be well if we could get rid of this anomalous use of the word mistaken. I suppose that wrong or erroneous would always suffice. But I must admit that good writers do employ mistaken in the sense which seems contrary to analogy; for example, Dugald Stewart does so, and also a distinguished leading philosopher whose style shows decided traces of Dugald Stewart’s influence.
I shall be thought hypercritical perhaps if I object to the use of sanction as a verb; but it seems to be a comparatively modern innovation. I must, however, admit that it is used by the two distinguished writers to whom I alluded with respect to the word mistaken. Recently some religious services in London were asserted by the promoters to be under the sanction of three bishops; almost immediately afterwards letters appeared from the three bishops in which they qualified the amount of their approbation: rather curiously all three used sanction as a verb. The theology of the bishops might be the sounder, but as to accuracy of language I think the inferior clergy had the advantage. By an obvious association I may say that if any words of mine could reach episcopal ears, I should like to ask why a first charge is called a primary charge, for it does not appear that this mode of expression is continued. We have, I think, second, third, and so on, instead of secondary, tertiary, and so on, to distinguish the subsequent charges.
Very eminent authors will probably always claim liberty and indulge in peculiarities; and it would be ungrateful to be censorious on those who have permanently enriched our literature. We must, then, allow an eminent historian to use the word cult for worship or superstition; so that he tells us of an indecent cult when he means an unseemly false religion. So, too, we must allow another eminent historian to introduce a foreign idiom, and speak of a man of pronounced opinions.
One or two of our popular writers on scientific subjects are fond of frequently introducing the word bizarre; surely some English equivalent might be substituted with advantage. The author of an anonymous academical paper a few years since was discovered by a slight peculiarity—namely, the use of the word ones, if there be such a word: this occurred in certain productions to which the author had affixed his name, and so the same phenomenon in the unacknowledged paper betrayed the origin which had been concealed.
A curious want of critical tact was displayed some years since by a reviewer of great influence. Macaulay, in his Life of Atterbury, speaking of Atterbury’s daughter, says that her great wish was to see her papa before she died. The reviewer condemned the use of what he called the mawkish word papa. Macaulay, of course, was right; he used the daughter’s own word, and any person who consults the original account will see that accuracy would have been sacrificed by substituting father. Surely the reviewer ought to have had sufficient respect for Macaulay’s reading and memory to hesitate before pronouncing an off-hand censure.
Cobbett justly blamed the practice of putting “&c.” to save the trouble of completing a sentence properly. In mathematical writings this symbol may be tolerated because it generally involves no ambiguity, but is used merely as an abbreviation the meaning of which is obvious from the context. But in other works there is frequently no clue to guide us in affixing a meaning to the symbol, and we can only interpret its presence as a sign that something has been omitted. The following is an example: “It describes a portion of Hellenic philosophy: it dwells upon eminent individuals, inquiring, theorising, reasoning, confuting, &c., as contrasted with those collective political and social manifestations which form the matter of history....”
The examples of confusion of metaphor ascribed to the late Lord Castlereagh are so absurd that it might have been thought impossible to rival them. Nevertheless the following, though in somewhat quieter style, seems to me to approach very nearly to the best of those that were spoken by Castlereagh or forged for him by Mackintosh. A recent Cabinet Minister described the error of an Indian official in these words: “He remained too long under the influence of the views which he had imbibed from the Board.” To imbibe a view seems strange, but to imbibe anything from a Board must be very difficult. I may observe that the phrase of Castlereagh’s which is now best known, seems to suffer from misquotation: we usually have, “an ignorant impatience of taxation”; but the original form appears to have been, “an ignorant impatience of the relaxation of taxation.”
The following sentence is from a voluminous historian: “The decline of the material comforts of the working classes, from the effects of the Revolution, had been incessant, and had now reached an alarming height.” It is possible to ascend to an alarming height, but it is surely difficult to decline to an alarming height.
“Nothing could be more one-sided than the point of view adopted by the speakers.” It is very strange to speak of a point as having a side; and then how can one-sided admit of comparison? A thing either has one side or it has not: there cannot be degrees in one-sidedness. However, even mathematicians do not always manage the word point correctly. In a modern valuable work we read of “a more extended point of view,” though we know that a point does not admit of extension. This curious phrase is also to be found in two eminent French writers, Bailly and D’Alembert. I suppose that what is meant is, a point which commands a more extended view. “Froschammer wishes to approach the subject from a philosophical standpoint.” It is impossible to stand and yet to approach. Either he should survey the subject from a stand-point, or approach it from a starting-point.
“The most scientific of our Continental theologians have returned back again to the relations and ramifications of the old paths.” Here paths and ramifications do not correspond; nor is it obvious what the relations of paths are. Then returned back again seems to involve superfluity; either returned or turned back again would have been better.
A large school had lately fallen into difficulties owing to internal dissensions; in the report of a council on the subject it was stated that measures had been taken to introduce more harmony and good feelings. The word introduce suggests the idea that harmony and good feeling could be laid on like water or gas by proper mechanical adjustment, or could be supplied like first-class furniture by a London upholsterer.
An orator speaking of the uselessness of a dean said that “he wastes his sweetness on the desert air, and stands like an engine upon a siding.” This is a strange combination of metaphors.
The following example is curious as showing how an awkward metaphor has been carried out: “In the face of such assertions what is the puzzled spectator to do.” The contrary proceeding is much more common, namely to drop a metaphor prematurely or to change it. For instance: “Physics and metaphysics, physiology and psychology, thus become united, and the study of man passes from the uncertain light of mere opinion to the region of science.” Here region corresponds very badly with uncertain light.
Metaphors and similes require to be employed with great care, at least by those who value taste and accuracy. I hope I may be allowed to give one example of a more serious kind than those hitherto supplied. The words like lost sheep which occur at the commencement of our Liturgy always seem to me singularly objectionable, and for two reasons. In the first place, illustrations being intended to unfold our meaning are appropriate in explanation and instruction, but not in religious confession. And in the second place the illustration as used by ourselves is not accurate; for the condition of a lost sheep does not necessarily suggest that conscious lapse from rectitude which is the essence of human transgression.
A passage has been quoted with approbation by more than one critic from the late Professor Conington’s translation of Horace, in which the following line occurs:—
“After life’s endless babble they sleep well.”
Now the word endless here is extremely awkward; for if the babble never ends, how can anything come after it?
To digress for a moment, I may observe that this line gives a good illustration of the process by which what is called Latin verse is often constructed. Every person sees that the line is formed out of Shakespeare’s “after life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.” The ingenuity of the transference may be admired, but it seems to me that it is easy to give more than a due amount of admiration; and, as the instance shows, the adaptation may issue in something bordering on the absurd. As an example in Latin versification, take the following. Every one who has not quite forgotten his schoolboy days remembers the line in Virgil ending with non imitabile fulmen. A good scholar, prematurely lost to his college and university, having for an exercise to translate into Latin the passage in Milton relating to the moon’s peerless light finished a line with non imitabile lumen. One can hardly wonder at the tendency to overvalue such felicitous appropriation.
The language of the shop and the market must not be expected to be very exact: we may be content to be amused by some of its peculiarities. I cannot say that I have seen the statement which is said to have appeared in the following form: “Dead pigs are looking up.” We find very frequently advertised, “Digestive biscuits”—perhaps digestible biscuits are meant. In a catalogue of books an Encyclopædia of Mental Science is advertised; and after the names of the authors we read, “invaluable, 5s. 6d.”: this is a curious explanation of invaluable.
The title of a book recently advertised is, Thoughts for those who are Thoughtful. It might seem superfluous, not to say impossible, to supply thoughts to those who are already full of thought.
The word limited is at present very popular in the domain of commerce. Thus we read, “Although the space given to us was limited.” This we can readily suppose; for in a finite building there cannot be unlimited space. Booksellers can perhaps say, without impropriety, that a “limited number will be printed,” as this may only imply that the type will be broken up; but they sometimes tell us that “a limited number was printed,” and this is an obvious truism.
Some pills used to be advertised for the use of the “possessor of pains in the back,” the advertisement being accompanied with a large picture representing the unhappy capitalist tormented by his property.
Pronouns, which are troublesome to all writers of English, are especially embarrassing to the authors of prospectuses and advertisements. A wine company return thanks to their friends, “and, at the same time, they would assure them that it is their constant study not only to find improvements for their convenience....” Observe how the pronouns oscillate in their application between the company and their friends.
In selecting titles of books there is room for improvement. Thus, a Quarterly Journal is not uncommon; the words strictly are suggestive of a Quarterly Daily publication. I remember, some years since, observing a notice that a certain obscure society proposed to celebrate its triennial anniversary.
In one of the theological newspapers a clergyman seeking a curacy states as an exposition of his theological position, “Views Prayer-book.” I should hope that this would not be a specimen of the ordinary literary style of the applicant. The advertisements in the same periodical exhibit occasionally a very unpleasant blending of religious and secular elements. Take two examples—“Needle-woman wanted. She must be a communicant, have a long character, and be a good dressmaker and milliner.” “Pretty furnished cottage to let, with good garden, etc. Rent moderate. Church work valued. Weekly celebrations. Near rail. Good fishing.”
A few words may be given to same popular misquotations. “The last infirmity of noble minds” is perpetually occurring. Milton wrote mind not minds. It may be said that he means minds; but the only evidence seems to be that it is difficult to affix any other sense to mind than making it equivalent to minds: this scarcely convinces me, though I admit the difficulty.
“He that runs may read” is often supposed to be a quotation from the Bible: the words really are “he may run that readeth,” and it is not certain that the sense conveyed by the popular misquotation is correct.
A proverb which correctly runs thus: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” is often quoted in the far less expressive form, “Hell is paved with good intentions.”
“Knowledge is power” is frequently attributed to Bacon, in spite of Lord Lytton’s challenge that the words cannot be found in Bacon’s writings.
“The style is the man” is frequently attributed to Buffon, although it has been pointed out that Buffon said something very different; namely, that “the style is of the man,” that is, “the style proceeds from the man.” It is some satisfaction to find that Frenchmen themselves do not leave us the monopoly of this error; it will be found in Arago; see his Works, vol. iii. p. 560. A common proverb frequently quoted is, “The exception proves the rule;” and it seems universally assumed that proves here means establishes or demonstrates. It is perhaps more likely that proves here means tests or tries, as in the injunction, “Prove all things.” [The proverb in full runs: Exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis.]
The words nihil tetigit quod non ornavit are perpetually offered as a supposed quotation from Dr. Johnson’s epitaph on Goldsmith. Johnson wrote—
“Qui nullum fere scribendi genus
Non tetigit,
Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.”
It has been said that there is a doubt as to the propriety of the word tetigit, and that contigit would have been better.
It seems impossible to prevent writers from using cui bono? in the unclassical sense. The correct meaning is known to be of this nature: suppose that a crime has been committed; then inquire who has gained by the crime—cui bono? for obviously there is a probability that the person benefited was the criminal. The usual sense implied by the quotation is this: What is the good? the question being applied to whatever is for the moment the object of depreciation. Those who use the words incorrectly may, however, shelter themselves under the great name of Leibnitz, for he takes them in the popular sense: see his works, vol. v., p. 206.
A very favorite quotation consists of the words “laudator temporis acti;” but it should be remembered that it seems very doubtful if these words by themselves would form correct Latin; the se puero which Horace puts after them are required.
There is a story, resting on no good authority, that Plato testified to the importance of geometry by writing over his door, “Let no one enter who is not a geometer.” The first word is often given incorrectly, when the Greek words are quoted, the wrong form of the negative being taken. I was surprised to see this blunder about two years since in a weekly review of very high pretensions.
It is very difficult in many cases to understand precisely what is attributed to another writer when his opinions are cited in some indirect way. For example, a newspaper critic finishes a paragraph in these words: “unless, indeed, as the Pall Mall Gazette has said that it is immoral to attempt any cure at all.” The doubt here is as to what is the statement of the Pall Mall Gazette. It seems to be this: it is immoral to attempt any cure at all. But from other considerations foreign to the precise language of the critic, it seemed probable that the statement of the Pall Mall Gazette was, unless, indeed, it is immoral to attempt any cure at all.
There is a certain vague formula which, though not intended for a quotation, occurs so frequently as to demand notice. Take for example—“... the sciences of logic and ethics, according to the partition of Lord Bacon, are far more extensive than we are accustomed to consider them.” No precise meaning is conveyed, because we do not know what is the amount of extension we are accustomed to ascribe to the sciences named. Again: “Our knowledge of Bacon’s method is much less complete than it is commonly supposed to be.” Here again we do not know what is the standard of common supposition. There is another awkwardness here in the words less complete: it is obvious that complete does not admit of degrees.
Let us close these slight notes with very few specimens of happy expressions.
The Times, commenting on the slovenly composition of the Queen’s Speeches to Parliament, proposed the cause of the fact as a fit subject for the investigation of our professional thinkers. The phrase suggests a delicate reproof to those who assume for themselves the title of thinker, implying that any person may engage in this occupation just as he might, if he pleased, become a dentist, or a stock-broker, or a civil engineer. The word thinker is very common as a name of respect in the works of a modern distinguished philosopher. I am afraid, however, that it is employed by him principally as synonymous with a Comtist.
The Times, in advocating the claims of a literary man for a pension, said, “he has constructed several useful school-books.” The word construct suggests with great neatness the nature of the process by which school-books are sometimes evolved, implying the presence of the bricklayer and mason rather than of the architect.
[Dr. Todhunter might have added feature to the list of words abusively used by newspaper writers. In one number of a magazine two examples occur: “A feature which had been well taken up by local and other manufacturers was the exhibition of honey in various applied forms.” “A new feature in the social arrangements of the Central Radical Club took place the other evening.”]—Macmillan’s Magazine.