In the biographies of the Seven Sages of Greece, some interesting incidents have escaped even the discursive and vigilant erudition of Bayle. All of these worthies, in fact, being original members and perpetual vice-presidents of the Fogie Club, they were, naturally, as prosy octogenarians as the amber of history ever preserved for the admiration of posterity. But Thales of Miletus we imagine to have easily outstripped his six compeers in soporific garrulity; because an author whose name, while it would be Greek to the illiterate, is sufficiently familiar, without being mentioned, to the scholar, and who flourished long enough after the people of whom he speaks to give weight to his statements, has particularly recorded, that the Ionic philosopher was universally called by his friends, behind his back, “Old Hygrostroma.” This euphonical and distinctive epithet we have discovered, by dint of deep study, to mean, very literally, “Old Wet-Blanket.” Assigning an equal value to ancient and modern phraseology, the portrait of the Milesian, so characterised, wears an ugly aspect. Our own martyrdom, under the relentless persecutions of his legitimate successors, concentrates, by an instinctive process of mental association, all their worst features in the single physiognomy of their prototype. How many luxuriant posies of fancy and humour, ready to burst into brilliant blossom, have irrecoverably drooped—how many
“Fair occasions, gone for ever by,”
of refreshing a laborious day by the evening carnival of nonsense—how many glorious “high jinks,” infandum renovare dolorem, have been stifled—beneath the dank suffocation of this water-kelpy of social enjoyment! It is proper, therefore, in order to be just, to ascertain whether the stigma which Thales carried about with him can be traced to the same causes which hang similar labels round the necks of men in our own day, or whether a term of reproach or of ridicule may not here, as in many other instances, have been widely diverted from, or excessively aggravated in, its original signification.
Now, it happened that the mind of the wise man was filled by a crotchet, which absorbed all other ideas. He announced to the world that water is the primal element, the essence, the seed, the embryo of all matter. Every thing, throughout the whole area of the universe, however ponderous or substantial, however complex or varied, was not merely evolved from the liquid laboratory, but was actually part and parcel of the radical fluid itself. Earth and fire, the azure heaven and the golden stars, marble and brass, birds and beasts, fruits and flowers, ay, men and women, were dew-drops, in different phases of configuration, and different stages of condensation. Such a doctrine, inculcated with endless iteration and intolerable prolixity, could not but exhaust the patience of the gay and dissipated Ionians, whose habits, we know, were far from being circumscribed by the rules and regulations of a total abstinence society. And although, even when the topic had become nauseously stale, a little hilarity might be excited by the old gentleman falling easily into the trap, and answering in harmony with his favourite theory, when tauntingly asked, if the glowing forms before him, whose witchery of grace had passed into a proverb, were indeed emanations from the muddy Mæander; or if the neighbouring Latmus, where
“the moon sleeps with Endymion,
“And would not be wak’d,”
was no more than a pitcherful of the Ægean; or if the pyramids, whose altitude he had measured for the wondering priests of Isis, were but bubbles of the Nile. Still the echo of the merriment thus provoked was faint and feeble beside the vociferous uproar which shook the voluptuous chambers when young Anaximander, in whom Thales fondly thought he saw a disciple, ere yet the shadow of his deluded master had glided over the threshold, filled a ruddy bumper to the brim, and dashed down with a shout his libation to Bacchus, in thankfulness that at last they were rid of “Hygrostroma.” Flesh and blood could not bear for ever “the dreadful noise of water in their ears;” and so, most deservedly and fitly, Thales got the name of “Wet-Blanket,” and bequeathed it, we regret to acknowledge, to an infinite line of descendants, who, in dealing with other themes, daily and hourly, after their own fashion, stabilitate and eclipse his renown.
From the days of Thales, which may be fixed, according to the nicest calculations, about four-and-twenty hundred years ago, water was generally understood to have found its level. Occasionally, no doubt, it made vigorous spurts to revindicate its prominency, but never mounted to the alarming flood-mark which it had reached in the Ionic philosophy. It certainly has had little reason to complain of the position from which it cannot be displaced. Covering entirely three-fifths of the surface of the globe, few are the specks of land, and these few shunned by man, where its influence is not paramount. Permeating the vast economy of nature through its grandest and its minutest ramifications; nursing from its myriad fountains and reservoirs the vitality of creation; affecting and controlling the salubrity of climates, the purity and temperature of atmospheres, the fertility of soils; moistening the parched lips, and requickening the energies of vegetation; bearing all the necessaries and all the luxuries of life, all that industry can furnish or opulence procure, into the centre of immense continents, and up to the doors of populous cities; generating, with the help of a strong ally, the most gigantic power which human ingenuity has ever tamed to the uses, and comforts, and improvements of mankind; rolling the rampart of its sleepless tides round the shores and the independence of mighty empires, and stretching out its broad waters as the highway of amicable intercourse between all nations, this colossal and beneficent element needs not to aspire higher than the eminence where it must be raised by such a contemplation of its virtues and its strength. Regarding it, however, with a homelier eye, we cannot conceal our opinion that too many men, women, and children, have underrated its serviceable qualities in connexion with their personal and domestic welfare. Nor shall our observations, desultory as they may be, conclude without some serious reflections on this subject, applicable to our own country and our own times; for even in the relaxing warmth and idlesse of autumn, when nothing very grave is very palatable, we must coax our friends to swallow a thin slice of instruction along with our jests and their grouse. But in the mean time, casting a rapid glance from the Ionian era, whence we started, downwards to the present century, over the aquatic propensities which have distinguished successive generations in the intervening ages, it can scarcely be affirmed with truth that the efficacy of water, as an useful, agreeable, and a sanative boon from Providence to man, has been neglected and despised. The Greeks, the Romans, and the Orientals require no justification. Their bathing, shampooing, and anointing have survived the downfall of thrones and the extinction of dynasties. And if the inhabitants of less benign regions, who must sometimes smash the ice in their tubs before commencing a lavation, do not evince the same headlong predilection for continual immersion and ceaseless ablution as do their kindred of the genial South and blazing East, we confess that their apology seems to us to be remarkably clear and satisfactory. What do we think of Scotland?—is a query from which a sensitive patriotism, perhaps, might shrink. It does not abash us at all. All ducklings do not plunge into the pond or the stream exactly at the same age—one exhibiting, in this respect, a rash precocity, while another will for a long time obstinately refuse to acknowledge that
“Her march is on the mountain wave,
Her home is on the deep.”
Had Caledonia been as tardy as she is alleged to have been in the practice of scrupulous cleanliness, we should easily have found good reasons for defending and palliating her procrastination. But the charge against her is absolutely a vulgar error—a popular delusion—a senseless clamour. Take the country. Is it likely that the national poet, who knew the customs and dispositions of our peasantry, being one of them himself, intimately and practically, would have enumerated among the dearest reminiscences of childhood, that
“We twa hae paidl’t i’ the burn
Frae mornin’ sun till dine,”