Among the paradoxers are some of the theologians who in their own organs of
the press venture to criticise science. These may hold their ground when
they confine themselves to the geology of long past periods and to general
cosmogony: for it is the tug of Greek against Greek; and both sides deal
much in what is grand when called _hypothesis_, petty when called
_supposition_. And very often they are not conspicuous when they venture
upon things within knowledge; {317} wrong, but not quite wrong enough for a
Budget of Paradoxes. One case, however, is destined to live, as an instance
of a school which finds writers, editors, and readers. The double stars
have been seen from the seventeenth century, and diligently observed by
many from the time of Wm. Herschel, who first devoted continuous attention
to them. The year 1836 was that of a remarkable triumph of astronomical
prediction. The theory of gravitation had been applied to the motion of
binary stars about each other, in elliptic orbits, and in that year the two
stars of [gamma] Virginis, as had been predicted should happen within a few
years of that time--for years are small quantities in such long
revolutions--the two stars came to their nearest: in fact, they appeared to
be one as much with the telescope as without it. This remarkable
turning-point of the history of a long and widely-known branch of astronomy
was followed by an article in the _Church of England Quarterly Review_ for
April 1837, written against the Useful Knowledge Society. The notion that
there are any such things as double stars is (p. 460) implied to be
imposture or delusion, as in the following extract. I suspect that I myself
am the _Sidrophel_, and that my companion to the maps of the stars, written
for the Society and published in 1836, is the work to which the writer
refers:
"We have forgotten the name of that Sidrophel who lately discovered that
the fixed stars were not single stars, but appear in the heavens like soles
at Billingsgate, in pairs; while a second astronomer, under the influence
of that competition in trade which the political economists tell us is so
advantageous to the public, professes to show us, through his superior
telescope, that the apparently single stars are really three. Before such
wondrous mandarins of science, how continually must _homunculi_ like
ourselves keep in the background, lest we come between the wind and their
nobility."
If the _homunculus_ who wrote this be still above ground, {318} how
devoutly must he hope he may be able to keep in the background! But the
chief blame falls on the editor. The title of the article is:
"The new school of superficial pantology; a speech intended to be delivered
before a defunct Mechanics' Institute. By Swallow Swift, late M.P. for the
Borough of Cockney-Cloud, Witsbury: reprinted Balloon Island, Bubble year,
month _Ventose_. Long live Charlatan!"
As a rule, orthodox theologians should avoid humor, a weapon which all
history shows to be very difficult to employ in favor of establishment, and
which, nine times out of ten, leaves its wielder fighting on the side of
heterodoxy. Theological argument, when not enlivened by bigotry, is seldom
worse than narcotic: but theological fun, when not covert heresy, is almost
always sialagogue. The article in question is a craze, which no editor
should have admitted, except after severe inspection by qualified persons.
The author of this wit committed a mistake which occurs now and then in old
satire, the confusion between himself and the party aimed at. He ought to
be reviewing this fictitious book, but every now and then the article
becomes the book itself; not by quotation, but by the writer forgetting
that _he_ is not Mr. Swallow Swift, but his reviewer. In fact he and Mr. S.
Swift had each had a dose of the _Devil's Elixir_. A novel so called,
published about forty years ago, proceeds upon a legend of this kind. If
two parties both drink of the elixir, their identities get curiously
intermingled; each turns up in the character of the other throughout the
three volumes, without having his ideas clear as to whether he be himself
or the other. There is a similar confusion in the answer made to the famous
_Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_:[687] it is headed _Lamentationes Obscurorum
Virorum_.[688] {319} This is not a retort of the writer, throwing back the
imputation: the obscure men who had been satirized are themselves made, by
name, to wince under the disapprobation which the Pope had expressed at the
satire upon themselves.
Of course the book here reviewed is a transparent forgery. But I do not
know how often it may have happened that the book, in the journals which
always put a title at the head, may have been written after the review.
About the year 1830 a friend showed me the proof of an article of his on
the malt tax, for the next number of the _Edinburgh Review_. Nothing was
wanting except the title of the book reviewed; I asked what it was. He sat
down, and wrote as follows at the head, "The Maltster's Guide (pp. 124),"
and said that would do as well as anything.
But I myself, it will be remarked, have employed such humor as I can
command "in favor of establishment." What it is worth I am not to judge; as
usual in such cases, those who are of my cabal pronounce it good, but
cyclometers and other paradoxers either call it very poor, or commend it as
sheer buffoonery. Be it one or the other, I observe that all the effective
ridicule is, in this subject, on the side of establishment. This is partly
due to the difficulty of quizzing plain and sober demonstration; but so
much, if not more, to the ignorance of the paradoxers. For that which
cannot be _ridiculed_, can be _turned into ridicule_ by those who know how.
But by the time a person is deep enough in _negative_ quantities, and
_impossible_ quantities, to be able to satirize them, he is caught, and
being inclined to become a _user_, shrinks from being an _abuser_. Imagine
a person with a gift of ridicule, and knowledge enough, trying his hand on
the junction of the assertions which he will find in various books of
algebra. First, that a negative quantity has no logarithm; secondly, that a
{320} negative quantity has no square root; thirdly, that the first
non-existent is to the second as the circumference of a circle to its
diameter. One great reason of the allowance of such unsound modes of
expression is the confidence felt by the writers that [root]-1 and log(-1)
will make their way, however inaccurately described. I heartily wish that
the cyclometers had knowledge enough to attack the weak points of
algebraical diction: they would soon work a beneficial change.[689]