The desire to prove great men wrong is one of the crank's most frequent and powerful incentives. The name of Newton is the greatest in the history of science: how flattering to one's self it must be, then, to prove him a fool! In eccentric literature the books against Newton are legion. Here is a title: "David and Goliath, or an Attempt to prove that the Newtonian System of Astronomy is directly opposed to the Scriptures. By William Lander, Mere, Wilts, 1833." And here is De Morgan's terse summary of the book: "Newton is Goliath; Mr. Lander is David. David took five pebbles; Mr. Lander takes five arguments. He expects opposition; for Paul and Jesus both met with it."
There are few subjects over which cranks are more painfully exercised than the figure of the earth, and its relations to heavenly bodies. Aristotle proved that the earth is a globe; Copernicus showed that it is one of a system of planets revolving about the sun; Newton explained the dynamics of this system. But at length came a certain John Hampden, who with dauntless breast maintained that all this is wrong! His pamphlet was prudently dedicated "to the unprofessional public and the common sense men of Europe and America;" he knew that it could find no favor with bigoted men of science. This Hampden, like his great namesake, is nothing if not bold. "The Newtonian or Copernican theory," he tells us, "from the first hour of its invention, has never dared to submit to an appeal to facts!" Again, "Defenders it never had; and no threats, no taunts or exposure, will ever rouse the energies of a single champion." In other words, astronomers do not waste their time in noticing Mr. Hampden's taunts and threats. Why is this so? His next sentence reminds us that "cowardice always accompanies conscious guilt." He goes on to tell us the true state of the case: "The earth, as it came from the hands of its Almighty Creator, is a motionless Plane, based and built upon foundations which the Word of God expressly declares cannot be searched out or discovered.... The stars are hardly bigger than the gas jets which light our streets, and, if they could be made to change places with them, no astronomer could detect the difference." The North Pole is the centre of the flat earth, and its extreme southern limit is not a South Pole, but a circle 30,000 miles in circumference. Night is caused by the sun passing behind a layer of clouds 7000 miles thick. It is not gravitation which makes a river run down hill, but the impetus of the water behind pressing on the water before. Is not this delicious? As for Newton, poor fellow, he "lived in a superstitious age and district; he was educated among an illiterate peasantry." This is like the way in which the Baconizing cranks dispose of Shakespeare. So zealous was Mr. Hampden that in 1876 he began publishing a periodical called "The Truth Seeker's Oracle." Similar views were set forth by one Samuel Rowbotham, who wrote under the name of "Parallax," and by a William Carpenter, whose pamphlet, "One Hundred Proofs that the Earth is not a Globe" (Baltimore, 1885), is quite a curiosity; for example, Proof 33: "If the earth were a globe, people—except those on top—would certainly have to be fastened to its surface by some means or other;... but as we know that we simply walk on its surface, without any other aid than that which is necessary for locomotion on a plane, it follows that we have herein a conclusive proof that Earth is not a globe." Since Mr. Carpenter understands the matter so thoroughly, can we wonder at the earnestness with which he rebukes the late Richard Proctor? "Mr. Proctor, we charge you that, whilst you teach the theory of the earth's rotundity, you know that it is a plane!"
More original than Messrs. Hampden and Carpenter are the writers who maintain that the earth is hollow, and supports a teeming population in its interior. Early in the present century this idea came with the force of a revelation to the mind of Captain John Cleves Symmes, a retired army officer engaged in trade at St. Louis. In 1818 he issued a circular, of which the following is an abridgment: "To all the world I declare the earth is hollow and habitable within; containing a number of solid concentric spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles twelve or sixteen degrees. I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will support and aid me in the undertaking.... My terms are [Hear, Messrs. Quay and Platt! and give ear, O Tammany!] the patronage of this and the new worlds.... I select Dr. S. L. Mitchell, Sir H. Davy, and Baron Alexander von Humboldt as my protectors. I ask one hundred brave companions, well equipped, to start from Siberia, in the fall season, with reindeer and sleighs, on the ice of the frozen sea. I engage we find a warm and rich land, stocked with thrifty vegetables and animals, if not men, on reaching one degree northward of latitude 82°. We will return in the succeeding spring."
This circular was sent by mail to men of science, colleges, learned societies, legislatures, and municipal bodies, all over the United States and Europe; for when it comes to postage, your crank seems always to have unlimited funds at his disposal. At Paris, the distinguished traveller, Count Volney, doubtless with a significant shrug, presented the precious document to the Academy of Sciences, by which it was mirthfully laid upon the table. Nowhere did learned men take it seriously; it was generally set down as a rather stupid hoax. But, nothing daunted by such treatment, the worthy Symmes began giving lectures on the subject, and succeeded in making some impression upon an uninstructed public. In 1824 his audience at Hamilton, Ohio, at the close of a lecture, "resolved, that we esteem Symmes' Theory of the Earth deserving of serious examination and worthy of the attention of the American people." At a theatre in Cincinnati, a benefit was given for the proposed polar expedition, and verses were recited suitable to the occasion:—
"Has not Columbia one aspiring son
By whom the unfading laurel may be won?
Yes! history's pen may yet inscribe the name
Of Symmes to grace her future scroll of fame."
The captain's petitions to Congress, however, praying for ships and men, were heartlessly laid on the table, and nothing was left him but to keep on crying in the wilderness, which he did until his death in 1829. In the cemetery at Hamilton, the freestone monument over his grave, placed there by his son, Americus Symmes, is surmounted with a hollow globe, open at the poles.
Half a century later the son published a pamphlet,[47] in which he gave a somewhat detailed exposition of his father's notions. From this we learn that the interior world is well lighted; for the sun's rays, passing through "the dense cold air of the verges" (that is, the circular edge of the big polar hole), are powerfully refracted, and after getting inside they are forthwith reflected from one concave surface to another, with the result that the whole interior is illuminated with a light equal to 3600 times that of the full moon. We learn, too, that the famous Swedish geographer, Norpensjould (semper sic!), after passing the magnetic pole, found a timbered country with large rivers and abundant animal life. Afterward one Captain Wiggins visited this country, where he found flax and wheat, highly magnetic iron ore, and rich mines of copper and gold. The trees are as big as any in California; hides, wool, tallow, ivory, and furs abound. The inhabitants are very tall, with Roman noses, and speak Hebrew. Yes, echoes Captain Tuttle, an old whaler, who also has visited this new country, they speak Hebrew, and are a smart people. "Would it not be logical," writes Americus, "to think that this was one of the lost tribes of Israel? for we read in the Bible that they went up the Euphrates to the north and dwelt in a land where man never dwelt before." Just so; evidently, Messrs. "Norpensjould," Wiggins, and Tuttle sailed "across the verge" and into the interior country, the concave world, which shall henceforth be known as Symmzonia! The book ends with the triumphant query, "Where were those explorers if not in the Hollow of the Earth, and would they not have come out at the South Pole if they had continued on their course?"
It is sad to have such positive conclusions disputed, but even in eccentric lore the doctors are found to disagree. Scarcely had Americus put forth his revised edition, when a pamphlet entitled "The Inner World," by Frederick Culmer, was published at Salt Lake City (1886). Its chapters have resounding titles: "I. The Universal Vacuity of Centres; II. The Polar Orifices of the Earth; III. The Alleged Northwest Passage and Symmes' Hole." We are told that although the polar orifices have diameters of about a thousand miles each, nevertheless, in spite of Wiggins and Tuttle, "there is no passage to the inner world on the north of America;" on the contrary, it must be sought within the antarctic circle. But Mr. Culmer would discourage rash attempts at exploration, and believes that "no man will be able to plant the standard of his country on any land in that region worth one dime to himself or any one else at present." For this gloomy outlook we must try to console ourselves with the knowledge that Mr. Culmer has detected the true explanation of the Aurora Borealis: "It is the sun's rays shining on a placid interior ocean and reflecting upon the outer atmosphere."
A favourite occupation of cranks is the discovery of hidden meanings in things. Whether we are to say that the passionate quest of the occult has been prolific in mental disturbances, or whether we had better say that persons with ill-balanced minds take especial delight in the search for the occult, the practical result is about the same. The impelling motive is not very different from that of the circle-squarers; it is pleasing to one's self-love to feel that one discerns things to which all other people are blind. Hence the number of mare's-nests that have been complacently stared into by learned donkeys is legion. Mere erudition is no sure safeguard against the subtle forms which the temptation takes on, as we may see from the ingenuity that has been wasted on the Great Pyramid. In 1864, Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, published his book entitled "Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid," and afterward followed it with other similar books. Whatever may have been the original complexion of this gentleman's mind, it was not such as to prevent his attaining distinction and achieving usefulness as a practical astronomer. But the pyramids were too much for his mental equilibrium. As De Morgan kindly puts it, "his work on Egypt is paradox of a very high order, backed by a great quantity of useful labour, the results of which will be made available by those who do not receive the paradoxes."