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 assertions. 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 illustrious
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 assures 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 Norsemen 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 title, "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
Superstition, 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 entitled "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 God" (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 hitherto 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 assured 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 manuscript, 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 manuscript. 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 manuscript 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
Massachusetts, 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 Saturday, 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 asserting 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 Saturday morning, and all the worshippers were in their best
clothes. They received us with a quiet but cordial welcome, and showed
us into a spacious 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.
Seven years elapsed before my second and last visit to these worthy
people. In the mean time a large addition had been made to the principal
house, nearly doubling its capacity; and I was told that the community
had been legally incorporated under the Hebrew title of Adoni-shomo, or
"The Lord is there." One would naturally infer that the membership had
increased, but the true explanation was very different. On a Saturday
afternoon in the summer of 1882, in company with fifteen friends, I
visited the community. Our reception this time was something more than
polite; there was a noticeable warmth of welcome about it. We were
ushered into one of the newly built rooms,--a long chapel, with seats on
either side and a reading-desk at one end. All the women, both hosts and
guests, took their seats on one side, all the men on the other. A
whisper from my neighbour informed me that the community was reduced to
twelve persons: thus the guests outnumbered the hosts. The high priest,
Father Richards, a venerable man of ruddy hue, with enormous beard as
white as snow, stood by the reading-desk, and in broken tones gave
thanks to God, while abundant tears coursed down his cheeks. Now, he
said, at last the word of the Lord was fulfilled. Two or three years ago
the word had come that they must build a chapel and add to their
living-rooms, for they were about to receive a large accession of new
converts. So--just think of it, gentle reader, in the last quarter of
this skeptical century--there was faith enough on that rugged
mountain-side to put three or four thousand dollars, earned with pork
and apple-sauce, into solid masonry and timber-work! And now at last,
said Father Richards, in the arrival of this goodly company the word of
the Lord was fulfilled! It seemed cruel to disturb such jubilant
assurance, but we soon found that we need not worry ourselves on that
score. The old man's faith was a rock on which unwelcome facts were
quickly wrecked. Though we took pains to make it clear that we had only
come for a visit, it was equally clear to him that we were to be
converted that very afternoon, and would soon come to abide with the
Adoni-shomo.
Then Sister Caroline, stepping forward, made a long metaphysical
harangue, at the close of which she walked up one side of the room and
down the other, taking each person by the hand and saying to each a few
words. When she came to me she suddenly broke out with a stream of
gibberish, and went on for five mortal minutes, pouring it forth as
glibly as if it had been her mother tongue. After the meeting had broken
up, I was informed that this "speaking with tongues" was not uncommon
with the Adoni-shomo. A wicked wag in our party then asked Sister
Caroline if she knew what language it was in which she had addressed me.
"No, sir," she replied, "nor do I know the meaning of what I said: I
only uttered what the Lord put into my mouth." "Well," said this
graceless scoffer, with face as sober as a deacon's, "I am thoroughly
familiar with Hebrew, and I recognized at once the very dialect of
Galilee as spoken when our Saviour was on the earth!" At this, I need
hardly add, Sister Caroline was highly pleased.
By this time there had been so many deaths that induction by simple
enumeration was getting to be too much for the Adoni-shomo. They were
beginning to realize the old Scotchman's conception of the elect: "Eh,
Jamie! hoo mony d'ye thank there be of the elact noo alive on earth?"
"Eh! mabbee a doozen." "Hoot, mon, nae sae mony as thot!" We found our
worthy hosts less willing than of old to discuss their doctrine of
terrestrial immortality, and there were symptoms of a tendency to give
it a Pickwickian construction. Since that day, their little community
has vanished, and its glorious landscape knows it no more.
It is a pity that before the end it should not have had a visit from Mr.
Hyland C. Kirk, whose book on "The Possibility of Not Dying" was
published in New York in 1883. In this book the philosophic
plausibleness of the opinion that a time will come when we shall no
longer need to shuffle off this mortal coil is argued at some length,
but the question as to how this is to happen is ignored. Mr. Isaac
Jennings, in his "Tree of Life" (1867), thinks it can be accomplished by
total abstinence from "alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, animal food,
spices, and caraway." This is sufficiently specific; but Mr. Kirk's
treatment of the question is so hazy as to suggest the suspicion that he
has nothing to offer us.
I once knew such a case of a delusion without any theory, or, if you
please, the grin without the Cheshire cat. In the course of a lecturing
journey, some thirty years ago, I was approached by a refined and
cultivated gentleman, who imparted to me in strict confidence and with
much modesty of manner the fact that he had arrived at a complete
refutation of the undulatory theory of light! To ask him for some
statement of his own theory was but ordinary courtesy; but whenever we
arrived at this point--which happened perhaps half a dozen times--he
would put on a smile of mystery and decline to pursue the subject. I
assured him that he need have no fear of my stealing his thunder, for I
had not the requisite knowledge; but he grew more darkly mysterious than
ever, and said that the time for him to speak had not yet come.
A few months later, this gentleman, whom I will designate as Mr.
Flighty, appeared in Cambridge, and came to my desk in the college
library. Distress was written in his face. He had called upon Professor
Silliman and other professors in Eastern colleges, and had been shabbily
treated. Nobody had shown him any politeness except Professor Youmans,
in whom he believed he had found a convert. "Ah!" I exclaimed, "then you
told him your theory; perhaps the time has come when you can tell it to
me." But no; again came the subtle smile, and he began to descant upon
the persecution of Galileo, a favourite topic with cranks of all sorts.
He asked me for some of the best books on the undulatory theory, and I
gave him Cauchy, whereat he stood aghast, and said the book was full of
mathematics which he could not read; but he would like to see Newton's
Opticks, for that book did not uphold the undulatory theory. "Oh!" said
I, "then are you falling back on the corpuscular theory?" "No, indeed;
mine is neither the one nor the other," and again came the Sibylline
smile. As I went for the book, I found Professor Lovering in the alcove,
halfway up a tall ladder. "Hallo!" said I _sotto voce_. "There is a man
in here who has upset the undulatory theory of light; do you want to see
him?" "Heavens, no! Can't you inveigle him into some dark corner while I
run away?" "Don't worry," I replied,--"make yourself comfortable; I'll
keep him from you." So I lured Mr. Flighty into a discourse on the
bigotry of scientific folk, while Old Joe, whose fears were not so
easily allayed, soon stealthily emerged from his alcove and hurried from
the hall.
The next time that I happened to be in New York, chatting with Youmans
at the Century Club, I alluded to Mr. Flighty, who believed he had made
a convert of him.
"Ay, ay," rejoined Youmans, "and he said the same of you."
"Indeed! Well, I suspected as much. Unless you drive a crank from the
room with cuffs and jeers, he is sure to think you agree with him. I do
not yet know what Mr. Flighty's theory is."
"Nor I," said Youmans.
"Do you believe he has any theory at all?"
"Not a bit of it. He is a madman, and his belief that he has a theory is
simply the form which his delusion takes."
"Exactly so," I said; and so it proved. Severe business troubles had
wrecked Mr. Flighty's mind, and it was not long before we heard that he
had killed himself in a fit of acute mania.
My story must not end with such a gruesome affair. Out of the many queer
people I have known, let me mention one who is associated with pleasant
memories of childhood and youth. This man was no charlatan, but a
learned naturalist, of solid and genuine scientific attainments, who
came to be a little daft in his old age. Dr. Joseph Barratt, whose life
extended over three fourths of the present century, was born in England.
He was at one time a pupil of Cuvier, and cherished his memory with the
idolatrous affection which that wonderful man seems always to have
inspired. Dr. Barratt, as a physician practising in Middletown,
Connecticut, is one of the earliest figures in my memory,--a quaint and
lovable figure. His attainments in botany and comparative anatomy were
extensive; he was more or less of a geologist, and well read withal in
history and general literature, besides being a fair linguist. Though
eminently susceptible of the tender passion, he never married; he was
neither a householder nor an autocrat of the breakfast table, but dwelt
hermit-like in a queer snuggery over somebody's shop. His working-room
was a rare sight; so much confusion has not been seen since this fair
world weltered in its primeval chaos. With its cases of mineral and
botanical specimens, stuffed birds and skeletons galore; with its
beetles and spiders mounted on pins, its brains of divers creatures in
jars of alcohol, its weird retorts and crucibles, its microscopes and
surgeon's tools, its shelves of mysterious liquids in vials, its slabs
of Portland sandstone bearing footprints of Triassic dinosaurs, and near
the door a grim pterodactyl keeping guard over all, it might have been
the necromancing den of a Sidrophel. Maps and crayon sketches, mingled
with femurs and vertebræ, sprawled over tables and sofas and cumbered
the chairs, till there was scarcely a place to sit down, while
everywhere in direst helter-skelter yawned and toppled the books. And
such books! There I first browsed in Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Lamarck
and Blainville, and passed enchanted hours with the "Règne Animal." The
doctor was a courtly gentleman of the old stripe, and never did he clear
a chair for me without an apology, saying that he only awaited a
leisure day to put all things in strictest order. Dear soul! that day
never came.