A SYMPOSIUM--TRANSATLANTIC TENDENCIES--AFTER-DINNER LECTURES--EDUCATION
Trincq est ung mot panomphée, célébré et entendu de toutes
nations, et nous signifie, beuuez. Et ici maintenons que non
rire, ains boyre est le propre de l'homme. Je ne dy boyre
simplement et absolument, car aussy bien boyvent les bestes;
je dy boyre vin bon et fraiz.--Rabelais: 1. v. c. 45.
Some guests remained. Some departed and returned. Among these was Mr.
MacBorrowdale. One day after dinner, on one of his reappearances, Lord
Curryfin said to him--
'Well, Mr. MacBorrowdale, in your recent observations, have you found
anything likely to satisfy Jack of Dover, if he were prosecuting his
inquiry among us?'
_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ Troth, no, my lord. I think, if he were among us,
he would give up the search as hopeless. He found it so in his own day,
and he would find it still more so now. Jack was both merry and wise.
We have less mirth in practice; and we have more wisdom in pretension,
which Jack would not have admitted.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ He would have found it like Juvenal's search for
patriotic virtue, when Catiline was everywhere, and Brutus and Cato were
nowhere.{1}
1 Et Catilinam quocumque in populo videas, quocumque sub
axe: sed nee Brutus erit, Bruti nec avunculus usquam.
--Juv. Sat. xiv. 41-43.
_Lord Curryfin._ Well, among us, if Jack did not find his superior,
or even his equal, he would not have been at a loss for company to his
mind. There is enough mirth for those who choose to enjoy it, and wisdom
too, perhaps as much as he would have cared for. We ought to have more
wisdom, as we have clearly more science.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Science is one thing, and wisdom is another.
Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut
their own fingers. If you look at the results which science has brought
in its train, you will find them to consist almost wholly in elements of
mischief. See how much belongs to the word Explosion alone, of which the
ancients knew nothing. Explosions of powder-mills and powder-magazines;
of coal-gas in mines and in houses; of high-pressure engines in ships
and boats and factories. See the complications and refinements of modes
of destruction, in revolvers and rifles and shells and rockets and
cannon. See collisions and wrecks and every mode of disaster by land and
by sea, resulting chiefly from the insanity for speed, in those who for
the most part have nothing to do at the end of the race, which they run
as if they were so many Mercuries speeding with messages from Jupiter.
Look at our scientific drainage, which turns refuse into poison. Look at
the subsoil of London, whenever it is turned up to the air, converted by
gas leakage into one mass of pestilent blackness, in which no vegetation
can flourish, and above which, with the rapid growth of the ever-growing
nuisance, no living thing will breathe with impunity. Look at our
scientific machinery, which has destroyed domestic manufacture, which
has substituted rottenness for strength in the thing made, and physical
degradation in crowded towns for healthy and comfortable country life
in the makers. The day would fail, if I should attempt to enumerate the
evils which science has inflicted on mankind. I almost think it is the
ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race.
_Lord Curryfin._ You have gone over a wide field, which we might exhaust
a good bin of claret in fully discussing. But surely the facility
of motion over the face of the earth and sea is both pleasant and
profitable. We may now see the world with little expenditure of labour
or time.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ You may be whisked over it, but you do not see
it. You go from one great town to another, where manners and customs
are not even now essentially different, and with this facility of
intercourse become progressively less and less so. The intermediate
country--which you never see, unless there is a show mountain, or
waterfall, or ruin, for which there is a station, and to which you go as
you would to any other exhibition--the intermediate country contains
all that is really worth seeing, to enable you to judge of the various
characteristics of men and the diversified objects of Nature.
_Lord Curryfin._ You can suspend your journey if you please, and see the
intermediate country, if you prefer it.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ But who does prefer it? You travel round the
world by a hand-book, as you do round an exhibition-room by a catalogue.
_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ Not to say that in the intermediate country you are
punished by bad inns and bad wine; of which I confess myself intolerant.
I knew an unfortunate French tourist, who had made the round of
Switzerland, and had but one expression for every stage of his journey:
_Mauvaise auberge!_
_Lord Curryfin._ Well, then, what say you to the electric telegraph, by
which you converse at the distance of thousands of miles? Even across
the Atlantic, as no doubt we shall yet do.
_Mr. Gryll._ Some of us have already heard the doctor's opinion on that
subject.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I have no wish to expedite communication with
the Americans. If we could apply the power of electrical repulsion to
preserve us from ever hearing anything more of them, I should think that
we had for once derived a benefit from science.
_Mr. Gryll._ Your love for the Americans, doctor, seems something like
that of Cicero's friend Marius for the Greeks. He would not take the
nearest road to his villa, because it was called the Greek Road.{1}
Perhaps if your nearest way home were called the American Road, you
would make a circuit to avoid it.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I am happy to say I am not put to the test.
Magnetism, galvanism, electricity, are 'one form of many names.'{2}
Without magnetism we should never have discovered America; to which we
are indebted for nothing but evil; diseases in the worst forms that can
afflict humanity, and slavery in the worst form in which slavery can
cast. The Old World had the sugar-cane and the cotton-plant, though it
did not so misuse them. Then, what good have we got from America? What
good of any kind, from the whole continent and its islands, from the
Esquimaux to Patagonia?
1 Non enim te puto Graecos ludos desiderare: praesertim quum
Graecos ita non âmes, ut ne ad villain quidem tuam via
Grasca ire soleas.--Cicero: Ep. ad Div, vii. i.
2 (Greek phrase)--Æschylus: Prometheus.
_Mr. Gryll._ Newfoundland salt-fish, doctor.
The Rev. Dr. Opindan. That is something, but it does not turn the scale.
_Mr. Gryll._ If they have given us no good, we have given them none.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ We have given them wine and classical
literature; but I am afraid Bacchus and Minerva have equally "Scattered
their bounty upon barren ground."
On the other hand, we have given the red men rum, which has been the
chief instrument of their perdition. On the whole, our intercourse with
America has been little else than an interchange of vices and diseases.
_Lord Curryfin._ Do you count it nothing to have substituted civilised
for savage men?
_The Rev, Dr. Opimian._ Civilised. The word requires definition. But
looking into futurity, it seems to me that the ultimate tendency of the
change is to substitute the worse for the better race; the Negro for the
Red Indian. The Red Indian will not work for a master. No ill-usage will
make him. Herein he is the noblest specimen of humanity that ever walked
the earth. Therefore, the white man exterminates his race. But the time
will come when by mere force of numbers the black race will predominate,
and exterminate the white. And thus the worse race will be substituted
for the better, even as it is in St. Domingo, where the Negro has taken
the place of the Caraib. The change is clearly for the worse.
_Lord Curryfin._ You imply that in the meantime the white race is better
than the red.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I leave that as an open question. But I hold,
as some have done before me, that the human mind degenerates in America,
and that the superiority, such as it is, of the white race, is only kept
up by intercourse with Europe. Look at the atrocities in their ships.
Look at their Congress and their Courts of Justice; debaters in the
first; suitors, even advocates, sometimes judges, in the second,
settling their arguments with pistol and dagger. Look at their
extensions of slavery, and their revivals of the slave-trade, now
covertly, soon to be openly. If it were possible that the two worlds
could be absolutely dissevered for a century, I think a new Columbus
would find nothing in America but savages.
_Lord Curryfin._ You look at America, doctor, through your hatred of
slavery. You must remember that we introduced it when they were our
colonists. It is not so easily got rid of. Its abolition by France
exterminated the white race in St. Domingo, as the white race had
exterminated the red. Its abolition by England ruined our West Indian
colonies.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Yes, in conjunction with the direct
encouragement of foreign slave labour, given by our friends of liberty
under the pretext of free trade. It is a mockery to keep up a squadron
for suppressing the slave-trade on the one hand, while, on the other
hand, we encourage it to an extent that counteracts in a tenfold
degree the apparent power of suppression. It is a clear case of false
pretension.
_Mr. Gryll._ You know, doctor, the Old World had slavery throughout its
entire extent; under the Patriarchs, the Greeks, the Romans; everywhere
in short. Cicero thought our island not likely to produce anything worth
having, excepting slaves;{1} and of those none skilled, as some slaves
were, in letters and music, but all utterly destitute of both. And in
the Old World the slaves were of the same race with the masters. The
Negroes are an inferior race, not fit, I am afraid, for anything else.
1 Etiam illud jam cognitum est, neque argenti scripulum esse
ullum in ilia insula, neque ullam spem praedae, nisi ex
mancipiis: ex quibus nullos puto te literis aut musicis
eruditos expectare.--Cicero: ad Atticum, iv. 16.
A hope is expressed by Pomponius Mela, 1. iii, c. 6 (he
wrote under Claudius), that, by the success of the Roman
arms, the island and its savage inhabitants would soon be
better known. It is amusing enough to peruse such passages
in the midst of London.--Gibbon: c. i.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Not fit, perhaps, for anything else belonging
to what we call civilised life. Very fit to live on little, and wear
nothing, in Africa; where it would have been a blessing to themselves
and the rest of the world if they had been left unmolested; if they
had had a Friar Bacon to surround their entire continent with a wall of
brass.
_Mr. Falconer._ I am not sure, doctor, that in many instances, even yet,
the white slavery of our factories is not worse than the black slavery
of America. We have done much to amend it, and shall do more. Still,
much remains to be done.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimiun._ And will be done, I hope and believe. The
Americans do nothing to amend their system. On the contrary, they do all
they can to make bad worse. Whatever excuse there may be for maintaining
slavery where it exists, there can be none for extending it into new
territories; none for reviving the African slave-trade. These are the
crying sins of America. Our white slavery, so far as it goes, is so far
worse, that it is the degradation of a better race. But if it be not
redressed, as I trust it will be, it will work out its own retribution.
And so it is of all the oppressions that are done under the sun. Though
all men but the red men will work for a master, they will not fight for
an oppressor in the day of his need. Thus gigantic empires have crumbled
into dust at the first touch of an invader's footstep. For petty, as
for great oppressions, there is a day of retribution growing out of
themselves. It is often long in coming. _Ut sit magna, tamen eerie lenla
ira Deoruni est._{1} But it comes.
Raro anteccdentem scelestum
Deseruit pede poena claudo.{2}
1 The anger of the Gods, though great, is slow.
2 The foot of Punishment, though lame,
O'ertakes at last preceding Wrong.
_Lord Curryfin._ I will not say, doctor, 'I've seen, and sure I ought
to know.' But I have been in America, and I have found there, what many
others will testify, a very numerous class of persons who hold opinions
very like your own: persons who altogether keep aloof from public
life, because they consider it abandoned to the rabble; but who are
as refined, as enlightened, as full of sympathy for all that tends to
justice and liberty, as any whom you may most approve amongst ourselves.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Of that I have no doubt But I look to public
acts and public men.
_Lord Curryfin._ I should much like to know what Mr. MacBorrowdale
thinks of all this.
_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ Troth, my lord, I think we have strayed far away
from the good company we began with. We have lost sight of Jack of
Dover. But the discussion had one bright feature. It did not interfere
with, it rather promoted, the circulation of the bottle: for every man
who spoke pushed it on with as much energy as he spoke with, and those
who were silent swallowed the wine and the opinion together, as if they
relished them both.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ So far, discussion may find favour. In my own
experience I have found it very absorbent of claret. But I do not think
it otherwise an incongruity after dinner, provided it be carried on,
as our disquisitions have always been, with frankness and good humour.
Consider how much instruction has been conveyed to us in the form of
conversations at banquet, by Plato and Xenophon and Plutarch. I read
nothing with more pleasure than their _Symposia_: to say nothing of
Athenaeus, whose work is one long banquet.
_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ Nay, I do not object to conversation on any
subject. I object to after-dinner lectures. I have had some unfortunate
experiences. I have found what began in conversation end in a lecture. I
have, on different occasions, met several men, who were in that respect
all alike. Once started they never stopped. The rest of the good
company, or rather the rest which without them would have been good
company, was no company. No one could get in a word. They went on with
one unvarying stream of monotonous desolating sound. This makes me
tremble when a discussion begins. I sit in fear of a lecture.
_Lord Curryfin._ Well, you and I have lectured, but never after dinner.
We do it when we have promised it, and when those who are present expect
it. After dinner, I agree with you, it is the most doleful blight that
can fall on human enjoyment.
_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ I will give you one or two examples of these
postprandial inflictions. One was a great Indian reformer. He did not
open his mouth till he had had about a bottle and a half of wine. Then
he burst on us with a declamation on all that was wrong in India,
and its remedy. He began in the Punjab, travelled to Calcutta, went
southward, got into the Temple of Juggernaut, went southward again, and
after holding forth for more than an hour, paused for a moment. The man
who sate next him attempted to speak: but the orator clapped him on the
arm, and said: 'Excuse me: now I come to Madras.' On which his neighbour
jumped up and vanished. Another went on in the same way about currency.
His first hour's talking carried him just through the Restriction Act of
ninety-seven. As we had then more than half-a-century before us, I took
my departure. But these were two whom topography and chronology would
have brought to a close. The bore of all bores was the third. His
subject had no beginning, middle, nor end. It was education. Never
was such a journey through the desert of mind: the Great Sahara of
intellect. The very recollection makes me thirsty.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ If all the nonsense which, in the last quarter
of a century, has been talked on all other subjects were thrown into one
scale, and all that has been talked on the subject of education alone
were thrown into the other, I think the latter would preponderate.
_Lord Curryfin._ We have had through the whole period some fine
specimens of nonsense on other subjects: for instance, with a single
exception, political economy.
_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ I understand your lordship's politeness as
excepting the present company. You need not except me. I am 'free to
confess,' as they say 'in another place,' that I have talked a great
deal of nonsense on that subject myself.
_Lord Curryfin._ Then, we have had latterly a mighty mass on the
purification of the Thames.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Allowing full weight to the two last-named
ingredients, they are not more than a counterpoise to Competitive
Examination, which is also a recent exotic belonging to education.
_Lord Curryfin._ Patronage, it used to be alleged, considered only the
fitness of the place for the man, not the fitness of the man for the
place. It was desirable to reverse this.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ True: but--
'dum vitant stulli vitium, in contraria curruni.' {1}
1 When fools would from one vice take flight. They rush into
its opposite.--Hor. Sal. i. 2, 24.
Questions which can only be answered by the parrotings of a memory
crammed to disease with all sorts of heterogeneous diet can form no test
of genius, taste, judgment, or natural capacity. Competitive Examination
takes for its _norma_: 'It is better to learn many things ill than
one thing well'; or rather: 'It is better to learn to gabble about
everything than to understand anything.' This is not the way to discover
the wood of which Mercuries are made. I have been told that this
precious scheme has been borrowed from China: a pretty fountain-head for
moral and political improvement: and if so, I may say, after Petronius:
'This windy and monstrous loquacity has lately found its way to us
from Asia, and like a pestilential star has blighted the minds of youth
otherwise rising to greatness.'{1}
1 Nuper ventosa isthaec et enormis loquacitas Athenas ex
Asia commigravit, animosque juvenum, ad magna surgentes,
veluti pestilenti quodam sidere afflavit.
_Lord Curryfin._ There is something to be said on behalf of applying the
same tests, addressing the same questions, to everybody.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I shall be glad to hear what can be said on that
behalf.
Lord Curryfin (after a pause). 'Mass,' as the second grave-digger says
in _Hamlet_, 'I cannot tell.'
A chorus of laughter dissolved the sitting.