Library Notes

by A. P. Russell

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand. What they are most ready to talk upon, if they knew just a little more about, they would be dumb; or would at least betray in some degree what John Buncle calls "the decencies of ignorance." We are told that shortly after the shock of the famous earthquake at Talcahuano, a great wave was seen from the distance of three or four miles, approaching in the middle of the bay with a smooth outline; but along the shore it tore up cottages and trees, as it swept onward with irresistible force. At the head of the bay it broke in a fearful line of white breakers, which rushed up to a height of twenty-three vertical feet above the highest spring-tides. The lower orders in Talcahuano thought that the earthquake was caused by some old Indian women, witches, who, two years before, being offended, stopped the volcano of Antuco!

Bishop Latimer says that "Master More was once sent in commission into Kent, to help to try out, if it might be, what was the cause of Goodwin Sands, and the shelf that stopped up Sandwich Haven. Among others, came in before him an old man with a white head, and one that was thought to be little less than one hundred years old. Quoth Master More, How say you in this matter? What think you to be the cause of these shelves and flats that stop up Sandwich Haven? Forsooth, quoth he, I am an old man. I think that Tenterden-steeple is the cause of Goodwin Sands; for I am an old man, sir, quoth he, and I may remember the building of Tenterden-steeple, and I may remember when there was no steeple at all there. And before that Tenterden-steeple was in building, there was no manner of speaking of any flats or sands that stopped the haven, and therefore I think that Tenterden-steeple is the cause of the destroying and decay of Sandwich Haven!" (The centenarian's reply crystallized at once into a proverb and synonym for popular ignorance; but what if the old man had in his mind the half of the story omitted by Latimer—that the obnoxious steeple had been built by a bishop with fifty thousand pounds appropriated to build a breakwater!)

The fox that Darwin tells us about in his Voyage was literally lost in the presence of wonders. "In the evening," says the naturalist, "we reached the island of San Pedro. In doubling the point, two of the officers landed, to take a round of angles with the theodolite. A fox of a kind said to be peculiar on the island, and very rare in it, was sitting on the rocks. He was so intently absorbed in watching the work of the officers, that I was able, by quietly walking up behind, to knock him on the head with my geological hammer!"

"We on this globe," said Voltaire, speaking of the slender acquaintance of Europe with the Chinese Empire, "we on this globe are like insects in a garden—those who live on an oak seldom meet those who pass their short lives on an ash." "We are poor, silly animals," says Horace Walpole; "we live for an instant upon a particle of a boundless universe, and are much like a butterfly that should argue about the nature of the seasons, and what creates their vicissitudes, and does not exist itself to see an annual revolution of them." When Dr. Livingstone returned from Africa, after a stay of sixteen years as a missionary, he was induced to bring with him an intelligent and affectionate native, Sekwebu, who had been of great service to him. When they parted from their friends at Kilemane, the sea on the bar was frightful, even to the seamen. This was the first time Sekwebu had seen the sea. As the terrible breakers broke over them, he asked, wonderingly, "Is this the way you go? Is this the way you go?" exclaiming, "What a strange country is this—all water together!"

At sea, a person's eye being six feet above the surface of the water, his horizon is only two miles and four fifths distant; yet his tongue will as freely wag of the world as if it were all spinning under his eye. We freely discuss the ignorance of those we believe to be less intelligent than ourselves, never thinking that we are the cause of like amusement to those who are more intelligent than we are. Fewer laugh with us than at us. The grades are so many that contrast is more natural than comparison. Unfortunately, too, it is only in the descent that we can see, and that but a little way. We know it is up, up, that we would go, but the rounds of the ladder are but vaguely visible. But a small part, indeed, we perceive of the prodigious sweep from the lowest ignorance to possible intelligence. Happily, credulity fills the empty spaces, and, setting itself up for original wisdom, satisfies us with ourselves and ours. Thackeray, in one of his best novels, thus satirically screams out one of its uses: "Oh, Mr. Pendennis! if Nature had not made that provision for each sex in the credulity of the other, which sees good qualities where none exist, good looks in donkeys' ears, wit in their numskulls, and music in their bray, there would not have been near so much marrying and giving in marriage as now obtains, and as is necessary for the due propagation and continuance of the noble race to which we belong!" "I desire to die," said Horace Walpole, "when I have nobody left to laugh with me. I have never yet seen, or heard, anything serious that was not ridiculous.... Oh! we are ridiculous animals; and if angels have any fun in them, how we must divert them."

"I had taken, when a child," says Crabb Robinson, "a great fancy to the Book of Revelation; and I have heard that I asked our minister to preach from that book, because it was my favorite. 'And why is it your favorite, Henry?' 'Because it is so pretty and easy to understand!'"

Robert Robinson, a witty and distinguished clergyman in the last century, was addressed by a grave brother, "Friend, I never heard you preach on the Trinity." "Oh, I intend to do so," was the reply, "as soon as ever I understand it!"

This recalls the rebuke of a clergyman to a young man, who said he would believe nothing which he could not understand. "Then, young man, your creed will be the shortest of any man's I know."

John Foster's observations upon an atheist you remember,—"one of the most daring beings in the creation, a contemner of God, who explodes his laws by denying his existence. If you were so unacquainted with mankind that this character might be announced to you as a rare or singular phenomenon, your conjectures, till you saw and heard the man, at the nature and the extent of the discipline through which he must have advanced, would be led toward something extraordinary. And you might think that the term of that discipline must have been very long; since a quick train of impressions, a short series of mental gradations, within the little space of a few months and years, would not seem enough to have matured such an awful heroism. Surely the creature that thus lifts his voice, and defies all invisible power within the possibilities of infinity, challenging whatever unknown being may hear him, was not as yesterday a little child, that would tremble and cry at the approach of a diminutive reptile. But indeed it is heroism no longer, if he knows there is no God. The wonder then turns on the great process by which a man could grow to the immense intelligence that can know that there is no God. What ages and what lights are requisite for this attainment! This intelligence involves the very attributes of the Divinity, while a God is denied. For unless this man is omnipresent, unless he is at this moment in every place in the universe, he cannot know but there may be in some place manifestations of a Deity by which even he would be overpowered. If he does not know absolutely every agent in the universe, the one that he does not know may be God. If he is not in absolute possession of all the propositions that constitute universal truth, the one which he wants may be, that there is a God. If he does not know everything that has been done in the immeasurable ages that are past, some things may have been done by a God. Thus, unless he knows all things, that is, precludes another Deity by being one himself, he cannot know that the Being whose existence he rejects does not exist. And yet a man of ordinary age and intelligence may present himself to you with the avowal of being thus distinguished from the crowd!"

"I had one just flogging," says Coleridge. "When I was about thirteen I went to a shoemaker and begged him to take me as his apprentice. He, being an honest man, immediately brought me to Bowyer, [the head-master at the charity-school] who got into a great rage, knocked me down, and even pushed Crispin rudely out of the room. Bowyer asked me why I had made myself such a fool? to which I answered that I had a great desire to be a shoemaker, and that I hated the thought of being a clergyman. 'Why so?' said he. 'Because, to tell you the truth, sir,' said I, 'I am an infidel!' For this, without more ado, Bowyer flogged me,—wisely, as I think,—soundly, as I know. Any whining or sermonizing would have gratified my vanity, and confirmed me in my absurdity; as it was, I was laughed at and got heartily ashamed of my folly." At a supper-table, when Cottle was present, Coleridge spoke of the unutterable horror he felt, when a son of Holcroft, (the atheist,) a boy eight years of age, came up to him and said, "There is no God."