Ordinarily, the aim of the paradoxers is to achieve renown by doing what n.o.body ever did. Hence the fascination exercised upon them by those apparently simple problems which already in ancient times were recognized as "old stickers," the quadrature of the circle, the trisection of angles, and the duplicature of the cube. The ancients found these geometric problems insolvable, though it was left for modern algebra to point out the reason, namely, that no quant.i.ties can be geometrically constructed from given quant.i.ties, except such as can be formed from them algebraically by the solution of quadratic equations; if the algebraic solution comes as the root of a cubic or biquadratic equation, it cannot be constructed by geometry. Against this hopeless wall the crowd of paradoxers will doubtless continue to break their heads until the millennium dawns.
Sometimes, however, our crank has a practical end in view, as in the numerous attempts to discover "perpetual motion," or, in other words, to invent a machine out of which you can get indefinitely more energy than you put in. It is not strange that many thousands of dollars have been wasted in this effort to recover Aladdin"s lost lamp. The notorious Keely motor is but one of a host of contrivances born and bred of cra.s.s ignorance of the alphabet of dynamics. But perpetual motion is not the only form a.s.sumed by wealth-seeking crankery. In 1861 a Captain Roblin, of Normandy, having ascertained to his own satisfaction, from the prolonged study of the zodiac of Denderah, the sites of sundry gold-mines, came forward with proposals for a joint stock company to dig and be rich. The labours of Herr Johannes von Gumpach were of a more philanthropic turn. He published in 1861 a pamphlet ent.i.tled "A Million"s Worth of Property and Five Hundred Lives annually lost at Sea by the Theory of Gravitation. A Letter on the True Figure of the Earth, addressed to the Astronomer Royal." Next year this pamphlet grew into a stout volume. It maintained that a great many shipwrecks were occasioned by errors of navigation due to an erroneous conception of the shape of the earth. Since Newton"s time, it has been supposed to be flattened at the poles, whereas the amiable Gumpach calls upon his fellow-creatures to take notice that it is elongated, and to mend their ways accordingly.
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 t.i.tle: "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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mference. Night is caused by the sun pa.s.sing 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 superst.i.tious 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. Mitch.e.l.l, 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 lat.i.tude 82. We will return in the succeeding spring."
This circular was sent by mail to men of science, colleges, learned societies, legislatures, and munic.i.p.al 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 doc.u.ment 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 pet.i.tions 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, pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sing 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 ent.i.tled "The Inner World," by Frederick Culmer, was published at Salt Lake City (1886). Its chapters have resounding t.i.tles: "I. The Universal Vacuity of Centres; II. The Polar Orifices of the Earth; III. The Alleged Northwest Pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sionate 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 ent.i.tled "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 quant.i.ty of useful labour, the results of which will be made available by those who do not receive the paradoxes."
The pyramidal tombs of Egyptian kings were an evolution in stone or brick from the tumulus of earth which in prehistoric ages was heaped over the body of the war chief. They are objects of rare dignity and interest, not only from their immense size, but from sundry peculiarities in their construction. In their orientation great care was taken, though usually with imperfect success. Their sides face the four cardinal points, and the descending entry-way forms a kind of telescope, from the bottom of which an observer, sixty centuries ago, could look out at what was then the polestar. These and other features of the pyramids are no doubt connected with Egyptian religion, and may very likely have subserved astrological purposes. But what say the pyramid cranks, or "pyramidalists," as they have been called?
According to them, the builders of the Great Pyramid were supernaturally instructed, probably by Melchizedek, King of Salem. Thus they were enabled to place it in lat.i.tude 30 N.; to make its four sides face the cardinal points; to adopt the sacred cubit, or one twenty millionth part of the earth"s polar axis, as their unit of length; "and to make the side of the square base equal to just so many of these sacred cubits as there are days and parts of a day in a year. They were further by supernatural help enabled to square the circle, and symbolized their victory over this problem by making the pyramid"s height bear to the perimeter of the base the ratio which the radius of a circle bears to the circ.u.mference."[48] In like manner, by immediate divine revelation, the builders of the pyramid were instructed as to the exact shape and density of the earth, the sun"s distance, the precession of the equinoxes, etc., so that their figures on all these subjects were more accurate than any that modern science has obtained, and these figures they built into the pyramid. They also built into it the divinely revealed and everlasting standards of "length, area, capacity, weight, density, heat, time, and money," and finally they wrought into its structure the precise date at which the millennium is to begin. All this valuable information, handed down directly from heaven, was thus securely bottled up in the Great Pyramid for six thousand years or so, awaiting the auspicious day when Mr. Piazzi Smyth should come and draw the cork. Why so much knowledge should have been bestowed upon the architects of King Cheops, only to be concealed from posterity, is a pertinent question; and one may also ask, why was it worth while to bring a Piazzi Smyth into the world to reveal it, since plodding human reason had after all by slow degrees discovered every bit of it, except the date of the millennium? Why, moreover, did the revelation thus elaborately buried in or about B. C. 4000 come just abreast of the scientific knowledge of A. D. 1864, and there stop short? Is it credible that old Melchizedek knew nothing about the telephone, or the Roentgen ray, or the cholera bacillus? Our pyramidalists should be more enterprising, and elicit from their venerable fetish some useful hints as to wireless telegraphy, or the ventilation of Pullman cars, or the purification of Pennsylvania politics. Perhaps the last-named problem might vie in difficulty with squaring the circle!
The lucubrations of Piazzi Smyth, like those of Miss Delia Bacon, called into existence a considerable quant.i.ty of eccentric literature. For example, there is Skinner"s "Key to the Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery in the Source of Measures originating the British Inch and the Ancient Cubit,"
published in Cincinnati in 1875, a tall octavo of 324 pages, bristling with diagrams and decimals, Hebrew words and logarithms. The book begins by getting the circle neatly squared, and then goes on to aver that sundry crosses, including the Christian cross, are an emblematic display of the origin of measures. The "mound-builders" come in for a share of the author"s attention; for the mounds are "alike Typhonic emblems with the pyramid of Egypt and with Hebrew symbols." A Typhonic emblem relates to Typhon, the "lord of sepulture," whose Egyptian representative was the crocodile, as his Hebrew representative was the hog; "exemplified in the Christian books by the devil leaving the man and pa.s.sing into the herd of swine, which thereupon rushed into the sea, another emblem of Typhon." Yet another such emblem is a mound in Ohio which simulates the contour of an alligator. A certain Aztec pyramid, described by Humboldt, has 318 niches, apparently in allusion to the days of the old Mexican civil calendar. Mr. Skinner sees in this numeral the value of Pi, and furthermore informs us that 318 is the Gnostic symbol for Christ, as well as the number of Abraham"s trained servants. Frequent use of it is made in the Great Pyramid; for example, multiplied by six it gives the height of the king"s chamber, and multiplied by two it gives half the base side of that apartment. Our author then puts the pyramid into a sphere, and after this feat it is an easy transition to Noah"s flood, the zodiac, and modern ritualism. Of similar purport, though more concise than this octavo, is Dr. Watson Quinby"s "Solomon"s Seal, a Key to the Pyramid," published at Wilmington, Delaware, in 1880. From this little book we learn that "in the early days of the world some one measured the earth, and found its diameter, in round numbers, to be 41,569,000 feet, or 498,828,000 inches;" also that "Vishnu means Fish-Nuh, Noah-the-Fish, in allusion to his sojourn in the ark."
Moreover, the Inst.i.tutes of Manu were written by Noah, since Maha-Nuh = Great-Noah! With equal felicity, Rev. Edward Dingle (in his "The Balance of Physics, the Square of the Circle, and the Earth"s True Solar and Lunar Distances," London, 1885, pp. 246) declares that "my success, let it be held what it may, was secured by cleaving to the Mosaic initiation of the Sabbatic number for my radius." At the end of his book Mr.
Dingle exclaims: "To the Lord be all thanksgiving, who has kept my intellect and the directing of its thoughts sound, while seeking to deliver his word from the exulting shouts of his enemies and the seducers of mankind!"
From these grotesque rigmaroles it is not a long step to the lucubrations of the writers in whose bonnets the bee of prophecy has buzzed until they have come to fancy themselves skilled interpreters.
There is apt to be the same droll mixing of arithmetic with history that we find among the pyramid cranks, and to the performance of such antics the book of Daniel and the Apocalypse present irresistible temptations.
In my library days, I never used to pick up a commentary on either of those books without looking for some of the stigmata or witch-marks of crankery. Many a feeble intellect has been toppled over by that shining image, with head of gold and feet of iron and clay, which Nebuchadnezzar beheld in a dream. For example, let us take a few sentences from "Emmanuel: An Original and Exhaustive Commentary on Creation and Providence Alike. By an Octogenarian Layman," London, 1883, pp. 420: "Upwards of thirty years ago, a fancy for chronological research, fostered by boundless leisure and a competent facility in mental calculation, riveted my attention on the metallic image, in the vague hope of symmetrizing the four sections of the collective emblem with the successive dominations of the individual empires. Failing in so shadowy an aspiration, I seemed to be more than compensated by detecting an ident.i.ty of duration, equally pregnant and positive, between the gold and the silver and the bra.s.s and the iron taken together on the one hand, and the mountain that was to crush them all to powder on the other,--the former aggregate being a.s.sumed to stretch from Nebuchadnezzar"s succession in 606 B. C. to the dethronement of Augustulus in 476 A. D., and the latter again from the epoch just specified to Elizabeth"s purgation of the Sanctuary in 1558." Having thus taken two equal periods of 1082 years, our Octogenarian proceeds to break them up (Heaven knows why!) each into four periods of 68, 204, 269, and 541 years. Then we are treated to the following equations:--
68 = 2 34 204 = 6 34 269 = 5 34 + 3 33 541 = 13 34 + 3 33
Hence, "with such a fulcrum as the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, and such a lever as the span of the Victim"s sublunary humiliation, was I too rash in aiming at a result infinitely grander than Archimedes"s speculative displacement of the earth?"
That eminent mathematician, Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch, used to say that sometimes, when Laplace pa.s.sed from one equation to the next with an "evidently," he would find a week"s study necessary to cross the abyss which the transcendent mind of the master traversed in a single leap. I fancy that more than a week would be needed to fathom the Octogenarian"s "hence," and it would by no means be worth while to go through so much and get so little. After a few pages of the Octogenarian, we are prepared to hear that in 1750 one Henry Sullamar squared the circle by the number of the Beast with seven heads and ten horns; and that in 1753 a certain French officer, M. de Causans, "cut a circular piece of turf, squared it, and deduced original sin and the Trinity."[49]
The reader is doubtless by this time weary of so much tomfoolery; but as it is needful, for the due comprehension of crankery and its crotchets, that he should by and by have still more of it, I will give him a moment"s relief while I tell of a little game with which De Morgan and Whewell once amused themselves. The task was to make a sentence which should contain all the letters of the alphabet, and each only once. "No one," says De Morgan, "has done it with _v_ and _j_ treated as consonants; but _you_ and _I_ can do it" (_u_ and _i_: oh, monstrous pun!). Dr. Whewell got only separate words, and failed to make a sentence: _phiz_, _styx_, _wrong_, _buck_, _flame_, _quid_. Very pretty, but De Morgan beat him out of sight with this weird sentiment; _I, quartz pyx, who fling muck beds!_ Well, what in the world can that mean?
"I long thought that no human being could say it under any circ.u.mstances. At last I happened to be reading a religious writer--as he thought himself--who threw aspersions on his opponents thick and threefold. Heyday! came into my head, this fellow flings muck beds: he must be a quartz pyx. And then I remembered that a pyx is a sacred vessel, and quartz is a hard stone, as hard as the heart of a religious foe-curser. So that the line is the motto of the ferocious sectarian, who turns his religious vessels into mud-holders for the benefit of those who will not see what he sees."[50]
I cite this drollery to show the world-wide difference between the playful nonsense of the wise man and the strenuous nonsense of the monomaniac; in this little _cabbala alphabetica_, moreover, a great deal of the cabalistic lore which c.u.mbers library shelves is neatly satirized.
As already observed, my rule was never to put into the cla.s.s of eccentric literature any books save such as seemed to have emanated from diseased brains. To hold and absurd belief, to write in its defense, to shape one"s career in accordance with it, is no proof of an unsound mind. Of the hundreds of enthusiasts who spent their lives in quest of the philosopher"s stone, many were doubtless cranks; but many were able thinkers who made the best use they could of the scientific resources of the time. Wrong ways must often be tried before the right way can be found. Even the early circle-squarers cannot fairly be charged with crankery; they sinned against no light that was accessible to them. But anybody who to-day should advertise a recipe for turning base metals into gold would meet with a chill welcome from chemists. He would speedily be posted as a quack, though doubtless many weak heads would be turned by him. It is the perverse sinning against light that is one of the most abiding features of crankery, and from this point of view such a book as "Coin"s Financial School" has many claims for admission to the limbo of eccentric literature.
About seventy years ago, one John Ranking published in London a volume ent.i.tled "Historical Researches on the Conquest of Peru, Mexico, Bogota, Natchez, and Talomeco,[51] in the Thirteenth Century, by the Mongols, accompanied with Elephants." It is well known that in 1281 the Mongols, after conquering pretty much everything from the Carpathian Mountains and the river Euphrates to the Yellow Sea, invaded j.a.pan. A typhoon dispersed their fleet; and their army of more than 100,000 men, cut off from its communications, was completely annihilated by the j.a.panese. But Mr. Ranking believed that this wholesale destruction was a fiction of the chroniclers. He maintained that most of the army escaped in a new fleet and crossed the Pacific Ocean, taking with them a host of elephants, with the aid of which they made extensive conquests in America and founded kingdoms in Mexico and Peru. The widespread fossil remains of the American mastodon he took to be the bones of these Mongolian elephants. Now, this is an extremely wild theory, unsound and untenable in every particular, but it does not bring Mr. Ranking"s book within the cla.s.s of eccentric literature. The author was deficient in scholarship and in critical judgment, but he was not daft.
A very different verdict must be rendered in the case of Mr. Edwin Johnson"s book, called "The Rise of Christendom," published in London in 1890, an octavo of 500 pages. According to Mr. Johnson, the rise of Christendom began in the twelfth century of our era, and it was preceded by two centuries of Hebrew religion, which started in Moslem Spain!
First came Islam, then Judaism, then Christianity. The genesis of both the latter was connected with that revolt against Islam which we call the Crusades. What we suppose to be the history of Israel, as well as that of the first eleven Christian centuries, is a gigantic lie, concocted in the thirteenth century by the monks of St. Basil and St.
Benedict. The Roman emperors knew nothing of Christianity, and the multifarious allusions to it in ancient writers were all explained by Mr. Johnson as fraudulent interpolations. As for the Greek and Latin fathers, they never existed. "The excellent stylist, who writes under the name of Lactantius, not earlier than the fourteenth century;" "the Augustinian of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, who writes the romantic Confessions,"--such is the airy way in which the matter is disposed of. As for the New Testament, "it is not yet clear whether the book was first written in Latin or in Greek." This reminds me of something once said by Rev. Robert Taylor, a crazy clergyman who in 1821 suffered imprisonment for blasphemy, and came to be known as the Devil"s Chaplain. Taylor declared that for the book of Revelation there was no Greek original at all, but Erasmus wrote it in Switzerland, in the year 1516. The audience, or part of it, probably took Taylor"s word as sufficient; and in like manner not a syllable of proof is alleged for Mr. Johnson"s prodigious a.s.sertions. From cover to cover, there is no trace of a consciousness that proof is needed; it is simply, Thus saith Edwin Johnson. The man who can write such a book is surely incapable of making a valid will.
Another acute phase of insanity is exemplified in Nason"s "History of the Prehistoric Ages, written by the Ancient Historic Band of Spirits"
(Chicago, 1880). This is a mediumistic affair. The ancient band consists of four-and-twenty spirits, the eldest of whom occupied a material body 46,000 years ago, and the youngest 3000 years ago. They dictated to Mr.
Nason the narrative, which begins with the origin of the solar system and comes down to Romulus and Remus, betraying on every page the preternatural dullness and ignorance so characteristic of all the spirits with whom mediums have dealings.
Concerning the Bacon-Shakespeare lunacy a word must suffice. As I have shown in a previous essay, the doubt concerning the authorship of Shakespeare"s plays was in part a reaction against the extravagances of doting commentators; but in its original form it was simply an insane freak. The unfortunate lady who gave it currency belonged to a distinguished Connecticut family, and the story of her malady is a sad one. At the age of eight-and-forty she died in the asylum at Hartford, two years after the publication of her book, "The Philosophy of Shakespeare"s Plays Unfolded." The suggestion of her ill.u.s.trious namesake, and perhaps kinsman, as the author of Shakespeare"s works, was a clear instance of the megalomania which is a well-known symptom of paranoia; and her book has all the hazy incoherence that is so quickly recognizable in the writings of the insane. A friend of mine once asked me if I did not find it hard to catch her meaning. "Meaning!" I exclaimed, "there"s none to catch." Among the books of her followers are all degrees of eccentricity. That of Nathaniel Holmes stands upon the threshold of the limbo; while as for Ignatius Donnelly, all his works belong in its darkest recesses.
The considerations which would lead one to consign a book to that limbo are often complex. There is Miss Marie Brown"s book, "The Icelandic Discoverers of America; or, Honour to whom Honour is Due." In maintaining that Columbus knew all about the voyages of the Northmen to Vinland, and was helped thereby in finding his way to the Bahamas, there is nothing necessarily eccentric. Professor Rasmus Anderson has defended that thesis in a book which is able and scholarly, a book which every reader must treat with respect, even though he may not find its arguments convincing. But when Miss Brown declares that the papacy has been partner in a conspiracy for depriving the Scandinavians of the credit due them as discoverers of America, and a.s.sures us that this is a matter in which the interests of civil and religious liberty are at stake, one begins to taste the queer flavour; and, taking this in connection with the atmosphere of rage which pervades the book, one feels inclined to place it in the limbo. For example: "What but Catholic genius, the genius for deceit, for trickery, for secrecy, for wicked and diabolical machinations, could have pursued such a system of fraud for centuries as the one now being exposed! What but Catholic genius, a prolific genius for evil, would have attempted to rob the Nors.e.m.e.n of their fame,... and to foist a miserable Italian adventurer and upstart upon Americans as the true candidate for these posthumous honours,--the man or saint to whom they are to do homage, and through this homage allow the Church of Rome to slip the yoke of spiritual subjection over their necks!"
A shrill note of anger is sometimes the sure ear-mark of a book from Queer Street. Anger is, indeed, a kind of transient mania, and eccentric literature is apt to be written in high dudgeon. When you take up a pamphlet by "Vindex," and read the t.i.tle, "A Box on Both Ears to the Powers that ought not to be at Washington," you may be prepared to find incoherency. I once catalogued an edition of Plutarch"s little essay on Superst.i.tion, and was about to let it go on its way, along with ordinary Greek books, when my eye happened to fall upon the last sentence of the editor"s preface: "I terminate this my Preface by consigning all Greek Scholars to the special care of Beelzebub." "Oho!" I thought, "there"s a cloven foot here; perhaps, if we explore further, we may get a whiff of brimstone." And it was so.
It thus appears that the topics treated in eccentric literature are numerous and manifold. Not only, moreover, has this department its vigorous prose-writers; it has also its inspired poets. Witness the following lines from the volume ent.i.tled "Eucleia" (Salem, 1861):--
"Hark, hear that distant boo-oo-oo, As, walking by moonlight, He whistles, instructing Carlo To be still, and not bite."
But even this lofty flight of inspiration is out-flown by Mr. John Landis, who was limner and draughtsman as well as poet. In his "Treatise on Magnifying G.o.d" (New York, 1843) he gives us an engraved portrait of himself surrounded by ministering angels, and accompanies it by an ode to himself, one verse of which will suffice:--
"With Messrs. Milton, Watts, and Wesley, Familiar thy Name will e"er be.
Of America"s Poets thou Stand"st on the foremost list now; On the pinions of fame does shine, _Landis!_ brightened by ev"ry line, From thy poetic pen in rhyme, Thy name descends to the end of time."
Immortality of fame is something desired by many, but attained by few.
Physical immortality is something which has. .h.i.therto been supposed to be inexorably denied to human beings. The phrase "All men are mortal"
figures in textbooks of logic as the truest of truisms. But we have lately been a.s.sured that this is a mistake. It is only an induction based upon simple enumeration, and the first man who escapes death will disprove it. So, at least, I was told by a very downright person who called on me some years ago with a huge parcel of ma.n.u.script, for which he wanted me to find him a publisher. He had been cruelly snubbed and ill-used, but truth would surely prevail over bigotry, as in Galileo"s case. I took his address and let him leave his ma.n.u.script. Its recipe for physical immortality, diluted through 600 foolscap pages, was simply to learn how to go without food! Usually such a regimen will kill you by the fifth day, but if, at that critical moment, while at the point of death, you make one heroic effort and stay alive, why, then you will have overcome the King of Terrors once for all. I returned the gentleman"s ma.n.u.script with a polite note, regretting that his line of research was so remote from those to which I was accustomed that I could not give him intelligent aid.
On one of the beautiful hills of Petersham, near the centre of Ma.s.sachusetts, there dwelt a few years since a small religious community of persons who believed that they were destined to escape death. Not science, but faith, had won for them this boon. They believed that the third person of the Trinity was incarnated in their leader or high priest, Father Howland. This community, I believe, came from Rhode Island about forty years ago, and at the height of its prosperity may have numbered twenty-five or thirty men and women. Their establishment consisted of one large mansard-roofed house, with barns and sheds and a good-sized farm. Their housekeeping was tidy, and they put up apple-sauce. They maintained that the eighteen and a half centuries of the so-called Christian era have really been the dispensation of John the Baptist, and that the true Christian era was ushered in by the Holy Ghost in the person of Father Howland, through believing in whom Christians might attain to eternal life on this planet. They had their Sabbath on Sat.u.r.day, and worked in the fields on Sunday; and they made sundry distinctions between clean and unclean foods, based upon their slender understanding of the Old Testament.
For a few years these worthy people enjoyed the simple rural life on their pleasant hillside without having their dream of immortality rudely tested. When one member fell ill and died, and was presently followed by another, it was easy to dispose of such cases by a.s.serting that the deceased were not true believers; they were black sheep, hypocrites, pretenders, whited sepulchres, and their deaths had purified the flock.
But the next one to die was Father Howland himself. On a warm summer day of 1874, as he was driving in his buggy over a steep mountain road, the horse shied so violently as to throw out the venerable sage against a wood-pile, whereupon sundry loose logs fell upon his head and shoulders, inflicting fatal wounds. Then a note of consternation mingled with the genuine mourning of the little community. It was a perplexing providence. About twelve months afterward I made my first visit to these people, in company with my friend Dr. William James and five carriage-loads of city folk who were spending the summer at Petersham.
It was a Sat.u.r.day morning, and all the worshippers were in their best clothes. They received us with a quiet but cordial welcome, and showed us into a s.p.a.cious parlour that was simply brilliant with cheerfulness.
Its west windows looked down upon a vast and varied landscape, with rich pastures, smiling cornfields, and long stretches of pine forest covering range upon range of hills moulded in forms of exquisite beauty. Beyond the foreground of delicate yellow and soft green tints the eye rested upon the sombre green of the woodland, and behind it all came the rich purple of the distant hills, fitfully checkered with shadows from the golden clouds. Here and there gleamed the white church spires of some secluded hamlet, while on the horizon, seventy miles distant, arose the lofty peak of old Greylock. Thence to Mount Grace, in one huge sweep, the entire breadth of Vermont was displayed, a wilderness of pale-blue summits blending with the sky; and over all, and part of it all, was the radiant glory of the September sunshine.
"Truly," said I to one of the brethren, a man of saintly face, "if you are expecting to dwell forever upon the earth, you could not have chosen a more inspiring and delightful spot." "Yes, indeed," he replied, "it seems too beautiful to leave." The topic which agitated the little community was thus brought up for discussion, and, except for a brief prayer, the ordinary Sabbath exercises were set aside for this purpose.
All these people seemed polite and gentle in manner; their simple-mindedness was noticeable, and their ignorance was abysmal, though I believe they could all read the Bible and do a little writing and arithmetic. In the facial expression of every one I thought I could see something that betrayed more or less of a lapse from complete sanity. Only one of the whole number showed any sense of humour, a keen-eyed old woman, yclept Sister Caroline, who could argue neatly and make quaint retorts. She and the man of saintly face were the only interesting personalities; the rest were but soulless clods.
It soon appeared that the belief in terrestrial immortality had not yet been seriously shaken by Father Howland"s demise. There were some curious incipient symptoms of a resurrection myth. Their leader"s death had been heralded by signs and portents. One aged brother, while taking his afternoon nap in a rocking-chair, fell forward upon the floor, bringing down the chair upon his back; and at that identical moment another brother rushed in from the garden, exclaiming, "I have seen with these eyes the glory of the Lord revealed!" Evidently, the fall of the rocking-chair prefigured the fall of the wood-pile, and the moment of Howland"s fatal injury was the moment of his glorification. Then it was remembered by Sister Caroline and others that he had lately foretold his apparent death, and declared that it was to be only an appearance.
"Though I shall seem to be dead, it will only be for a little while, and then I shall return to you."
The morning"s conversation made it clear that these simple folk were unanimous in believing that the completion of Father Howland"s work demanded his presence for a short time in the other world, and that he would within a few more weeks or months return to them. It seemed to Dr.
James and myself that the conditions were favourable to the sudden growth of a belief in his resurrection, and for some time after that visit we half expected to hear that one or more of the household had seen him. In this, however, we were disappointed. I suspect that its mental soil may, after all, have been too barren for such a growth.