I may say in passing that the tempers of plants have not been sufficiently studied; and what little opinion we have formed about their dispositions is for the most part ill formed. The sulkiest tree that I know is the silver beech. It never forgives a scratch.—There is a tree in Kensington gardens a little off the west side of the Serpentine with names cut upon it as long ago as 1717 and 1736, which the tree is as little able to forgive and forget as though the injury had been done not ten years since. And the tree is not an aged tree either.
CALONICO. (from chapter v. of alps and sanctuaries.)
Our inventions increase in geometrical ratio. They are like living beings, each one of which may become parent of a dozen others—some good and some ne’er-do-weels; but they differ from animals and vegetables inasmuch as they not only increase in a geometrical ratio, but the period of their gestation decreases in geometrical ratio also. Take this matter of Alpine roads for example. For how many millions of years was there no approach to a road over the St. Gothard, save the untutored watercourses of the Ticino and the Reuss, and the track of the bouquetin or the chamois? For how many more ages after this was there not a mere shepherd’s or huntsman’s path by the river-side—without so much as a log thrown over so as to form a rude bridge? No one would probably have ever thought of making a bridge out of his own unaided imagination, more than any monkey that we know of has done so. But an avalanche or a flood once swept a pine into position and left it there; on this a genius, who was doubtless thought to be doing something very infamous, ventured to make use of it. Another time a pine was found nearly across the stream, but not quite; and not quite, again, in the place where it was wanted. A second genius, to the horror of his fellow-tribesmen—who declared that this
time the world really would come to an end—shifted the pine a few feet so as to bring it across the stream and into the place where it was wanted. This man was the inventor of bridges—his family repudiated him, and he came to a bad end. From this to cutting down the pine and bringing it from some distance is an easy step. To avoid detail, let us come to the old Roman horse-road over the Alps. The time between the shepherd’s path and the Roman road is probably short in comparison with that between the mere chamois track and the first thing that can be called a path of men. From the Roman we go on to the mediæval road with more frequent stone bridges, and from the mediæval to the Napoleonic carriage-road.
The close of the last century and the first quarter of this present one was the great era for the making of carriage-roads. Fifty years have hardly passed, and here we are already in the age of tunnelling and railroads. The first period, from the chamois track to the foot road, was one of millions of years; the second, from the first foot road to the Roman military way, was one of many thousands; the third, from the Roman to the mediæval, was perhaps a thousand; from the mediæval to the Napoleonic, five hundred; from the Napoleonic to the railroad, fifty. What will come next we know not, but it should come within twenty years, and will probably have something to do with electricity.
It follows by an easy process of reasoning that after another couple of hundred years or so, great sweeping changes should be made several times in an hour, or indeed in a second, or fraction of a second, till they pass unnoticed as the revolutions we undergo in the embryonic stages, or are felt simply as vibrations.
This would undoubtedly be the case but for the existence of a friction which interferes between theory and practice. This friction is caused partly by the disturbance of vested interests which every invention involves, and which will be found intolerable when men become millionaires and paupers alternately once a fortnight—living one week in a palace and the next in a workhouse, and having perpetually to be sold up, and then to buy a new house and refurnish, &c.—so that artificial means for stopping inventions will be adopted; and partly by the fact that though all inventions breed in geometrical ratio, yet some multiply more rapidly than others, and the backwardness of one art will impede the forwardness of another. At any rate, so far as I can see, the present is about the only comfortable time for a man to live in, that either ever has been or ever will be. The past was too slow, and the future will be much too fast.
The fact is (but it is so obvious that I am ashamed to say anything about it) that science is rapidly reducing time and space to a very undifferentiated condition. Take lamb: we can get lamb all the year round. This is perpetual spring; but perpetual spring is no spring at all; it is not a season; there are no more seasons, and being no seasons, there is no time. Take rhubarb, again. Rhubarb to the philosopher is the beginning of autumn, if indeed the philosopher can see anything as the beginning of anything. If any one asks why, I suppose the philosopher would say that rhubarb is the beginning of the fruit season, which is clearly autumnal, according to our present classification. From rhubarb to the green gooseberry the step is so small as to require no bridging—with one’s eyes shut, and plenty of cream and sugar, they
are almost indistinguishable—but the gooseberry is quite an autumnal fruit, and only a little earlier than apples and plums, which last are almost winter; clearly, therefore, for scientific purposes rhubarb is autumnal.
As soon as we can find gradations, or a sufficient number of uniting links between two things, they become united or made one thing, and any classification of them must be illusory. Classification is only possible where there is a shock given to the senses by reason of a perceived difference, which, if it is considerable, can be expressed in words. When the world was younger and less experienced, people were shocked at what appeared great differences between living forms; but species, whether of animals or plants, are now seen to be so united, either inferentially or by actual finding of the links, that all classification is felt to be arbitrary. The seasons are like species—they were at one time thought to be clearly marked, and capable of being classified with some approach to satisfaction. It is now seen that they blend either in the present or the past insensibly into one another, much as Mr. Herbert Spencer shows us that geology and astronomy blend into one another, [265] and cannot be classified except by cutting Gordian knots in a way which none but plain sensible people can tolerate. Strictly speaking, there is only one place, one time, one action, and one individual or thing; of this thing or individual each one of us is a part. It is perplexing, but it is philosophy; and modern philosophy, like modern music, is nothing if it is not perplexing.