What crowds were collected to see the Irish bottle conjuror[39] get into a quart bottle; but Dr. Desaguliers had prepared the English to think such a condensation of animal particles not impossible. He says, vol. i. p. 5, of his Lectures on Natural Philosophy, “that the nature of things should last, and their natural course continue the same; all the changes made in bodies must arise only from the various separations, new conjunctions, and motions, of these original particles. These must be imagined of an unconceivable smallness, but by the union of them there are made bigger lumps,” &c.
Indeed things are now come to such a lamentable pass, that without either literary or scientific acquirements, mere local knowledge, such as can be obtained from a finger-post, may sometimes prevent us from the full enjoyment of the Boeotian absurdity of our neighbours. What can, at first view, appear a grosser blunder than that of the Irishman who begged a friend to look over his library, to find for him the history of the world before the creation? Yet this anachronism of ideas is not unparalleled; it is matched, though on a more contracted scale, by an inscription on a British finger-post—
“Had you seen these roads before they were made,
You’d lift up your eyes, and bless Marshal Wade!”
There is, however, a rabbi, mentioned by Bayle, who far exceeds both the Irishman and the finger-post. He asserts, that Providence questioned Adam concerning the creation before he was born; and that Adam knew more of the matter than the angels who had laughed at him.
Those who see things in a philosophical light must have observed more frequently than others, that there is in this world a continual recurrence or rotation of ideas, events, and blunders. With his utmost ingenuity, or his utmost absurdity, a man, in modern days, cannot contrive to produce a system for which there is no prototype in antiquity, or to commit a blunder for which there is no precedent. For example: during the late rebellion in Ireland, at the military execution of some wretched rebel, the cord broke, and the criminal, who had been only half hanged, fell to the ground. The Major, who was superintending the execution, exclaimed, “You rascal, if you do that again, I’ll kill you, as sure as you breathe.”
Now this is by no means an original idea. In an old French book, called “La Charlatanerie des Savans,” is the following note:—“D’autres ont proposé et résolu en même tems des questions ridicules; par exemple celle-ci: Devroit-on faire souffrir une seconde fois le même genre de mort à un criminel, qui après avoir eu la tête coupée viendroit à résusciter?”—Finkelth, Praef. ad Observationes Pract. num. 12.
The passionate major, instead of being a mere Irish blunderer, was, without knowing it, a learned casuist; for he was capable of deciding, in one word, a question, which, it seems, had puzzled the understandings of the ablest lawyers of France, or which had appalled their conscientious sensibility.
Alas! there is nothing new under the sun.
“Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.”