The following question is more difficult, and involves free-will to all who
answer--"Which you please." If the northern hemisphere were land, and all
the southern hemisphere water, ought we to call the northern hemisphere an
island, or the southern hemisphere a lake? Both the questions would be good
exercises for paradoxers who must be kept employed, like Michael
Scott's[17] devils. The wizard {39} knew nothing about squaring the circle,
etc., so he set them to make ropes out of sea sand, which puzzled them.
Stupid devils; much of our glass is sea sand, and it makes beautiful
thread. Had Michael set them to square the circle or to find a perpetual
motion, he would have done his work much better. But all this is
conjecture: who knows that I have not hit on the very plan he adopted?
Perhaps the whole race of paradoxers on hopeless subjects are Michael's
subordinates, condemned to transmigration after transmigration, until their
task is done.
The above was not a bad guess. A little after the time when the famous
Pascal papers[18] were produced, I came into possession of a correspondence
which, but for these papers, I should have held too incredible to be put
before the world. But when one sheep leaps the ditch, another will follow:
so I gave the following account in the _Athenaeum_ of October 5, 1867:
"The recorded story is that Michael Scott, being bound by contract to
produce perpetual employment for a number of young demons, was worried out
of his life in inventing jobs for them, until at last he set them to make
ropes out of sea sand, which they never could do. We have obtained a very
curious correspondence between the wizard Michael and his demon-slaves; but
we do not feel at liberty to say how it came into our hands. We much regret
that we did not receive it in time for the British Association. It appears
that the story, true as far as it goes, was never finished. The demons
easily conquered the rope difficulty, by the simple process of making the
sand into glass, and spinning the glass into thread, which they twisted.
Michael, thoroughly disconcerted, hit upon the plan of setting some to {40}
square the circle, others to find the perpetual motion, etc. He commanded
each of them to transmigrate from one human body into another, until their
tasks were done. This explains the whole succession of cyclometers, and all
the heroes of the Budget. Some of this correspondence is very recent; it is
much blotted, and we are not quite sure of its meaning: it is full of
figurative allusions to driving something illegible down a steep into the
sea. It looks like a humble petition to be allowed some diversion in the
intervals of transmigration; and the answer is--