Among the gnomes

by Franz Hartmann

“Oh, do please!” cried the princess, embracing me in the exuberance of her joy.

“First of all,” I said, “you must learn the rules of logic, syntax and induction, illation, postulation, assumption and inference. You must learn to doubt everything you see and feel, and deny all you hear. Never believe anything unless you already know all the whys and wherefores, and never take anything for granted unless it comes from an authority which you believe to be respectable, and which is recognised as such by the crowd. Deny everything that you do not understand, consider everybody a liar until he has irrefutably proved his veracity; never let anybody get the advantage of you by showing yourself to him such as you are, and never do anything without getting a personal profit.”

I stopped, because I saw that these maxims were all gibberish to the princess, and that she did not understand what I said; but I resolved to try my best to instruct her, and to bring intellectual culture among the gnomes.

During these happy days, and while waiting for the return of the three imbeciles, I highly enjoyed the novelty of my situation. My liberty was not restricted, and I had ample opportunity for studying the character and the habits of the gnomes, in which occupation I was liberally aided by the princess. Arm in arm we wandered or floated through the villages, visited the mines and observed the gnomes at their labour, and I was astonished at the untold amount of treasures in the Untersberg, the existence of which is little suspected.

The gnomes on the whole were at that time an unsophisticated lot; because, owing to their simple nature, a gnome could only think one thought at a time. They were therefore not given to reasoning and argumentation, and lived fully contented. In fact, they were rather deficient in intellectuality, but in spite of that, or perhaps on account of it, they had a great deal of spiritual power. Falsehood, lying, hypocrisy, scheming, and wilful deception were unknown to them, and as stated above, they always meant what they said, and took it for granted that everyone except a hobgoblin or spook meant what his words implied; nor would it have been possible for a gnome to tell a wilful lie without experiencing therefrom immediately a detrimental effect upon his constitution; for as it was the light of truth that made them luminous, the telling of a falsehood, or even the thinking of one, would have immediately diminished the amount of his or her luminosity, which would have at once become visible to the rest; or it might have extinguished their light for ever. Thus they were, by the necessity of their nature, always open and sincere, and followed their impulses for good or evil without being guided by the reasoning intellect. Whatever was done by them was done in good faith, even if it was foolish; there never was any malicious intent.

Being capable of perceiving the truth directly and without reasoning, by the power of pure reason or instinct, they could solve the most difficult mathematical problems by merely looking at the final result, and nearly every one of them could thus have made a fortune among us by giving exhibitions of his power as a mathematical phenomenon, without the least knowledge of mathematics; but they could not even make the smallest calculation or draw any inferences from given factors. They knew what they knew because they perceived it, and there was no guessing about what they saw.

I found them to be exceedingly impressible by my thoughts and emotions. I often amused myself with the lower orders of gnomes by making them act out what I thought. When I, for instance, imagined myself to be afraid of them, they would become immediately afraid of me and run away. When I became angry at them, they became angry at me, even if I said not a word nor showed it by my manners. I think that if I had secretly determined to kill a gnome, he would have unknowingly followed the impulse and killed me. This made me think of the story of Burkhart of Tollenstein, and that perhaps many suicides may be thus due to the ire aroused in those semi-intelligent forces of nature which we find objectified in the kingdom of gnomes.

There was one class of gnomes called Pigmies, whose office it was to direct the currents of vital electricity in the earth to all places where the roots of the plants that grew upon the surface required it. This they did while they were in their disembodied state, when each of them was, so to say, like a magnetic current; but whenever they assumed corporeal forms they were very small, and perhaps for this reason they had a dislike against appearing in corporeal bodies, and did so only for the purpose of taking food, or for some other object which required material organs. They were composed of some substantial but bodiless active force, which they could cause to crystallise into a nucleus of latent energy. In such a condition they were very lazy; but when liberated they were very active. They were strong, and it was surprising to see what an amount of active force could be developed from a comparatively insignificant spark of energy.

Next, there were the Vulcani, who were principally occupied with mineral life, having in their charge the growth and transformation of metals. Their substance consisted of a certain force for which we have no name, but which might be called an electro-magnetic fire. By an exercise of their will they were able to send a current of such vital electricity into a mineral vein, and cause gold and silver, iron and copper, to grow; for it is a sign of short-sightedness if one believes that metals have no life and do not grow, because their growth is not so rapid and perceptible as that of the plants.

Then there were the Cubitali, and the substance of which they were formed was a kind of explosive force, which means that they could contract their fluidic bodies and expand them very rapidly, when the quick expansion caused a kind of explosion with a destructive effect. Whenever they assumed a form they were about two feet high, well built, and showing great muscular strength. They were, so to say, the hard-working class, and their principal occupation was the blasting of air and the cutting of rocks; and, in spite of their robust appearance, they had a great deal of artistic talent, as was proved by the products of their labour that could be seen in the palace of the king.