A PHILOSOPHY THAT IS BOTTOMED ON SOMETHING SUBSTANTIAL—SOME REASONS
PLAINLY PRESENTED, AND CAVILLING OBJECTIONS PUT TO FLIGHT BY A CHARGE
OF LOGICAL BAYONETS.
Dr. Reasono was quite as reasonable, in the personal embellishments of
his lyceum, as any public lecturer I remember to have seen, who was
required to execute his functions in the presence of ladies. If I say
that his coat had been brushed, his tail newly curled, and that his air
was a little more than usually “solemnized,” as Captain Poke described
it in a decent whisper, I believe all will be said that is either
necessary or true. He placed himself behind a foot-stool, which served
as a table, smoothed its covering a little with his paws, and at once
proceeded to business. It may be well to add that he lectured without
notes, and, as the subject did not immediately call for experiments,
without any apparatus.
Waving his tail towards the different parts of the room in which his
audience were seated, the philosopher commenced.
“As the present occasion, my hearers,” he said, “is one of those
accidental calls upon science, to which all belonging to the academies
are liable, and does not demand more than the heads of our thesis to be
explained, I shall not dig into the roots of the subject, but limit
myself to such general remarks as may serve to furnish the outlines of
our philosophy, natural, moral, and political—”
“How, sir,” I cried, “have you a political as well as a moral
philosophy?”
“Beyond a question; and a very useful philosophy it is. No interests
require more philosophy than those connected with politics. To
resume—our philosophy, natural, moral and political, reserving most of
the propositions, demonstrations, and corollaries, for greater leisure,
and a more advanced state of information in the class. Prescribing to
myself these salutary limits, therefore, I shall begin only with
nature.
“Nature is a term that we use to express the pervading and governing
principle of created things. It is known both as a generic and a
specific term, signifying in the former character the elements and
combinations of omnipotence, as applied to matter in general, and in
the latter its particular subdivisions, in connection with matter in
its infinite varieties. It is moreover subdivided into its physical and
moral attributes, which admit also of the two grand distinctions just
named. Thus, when we say nature, in the abstract, meaning physically,
we should be understood as alluding to those general, uniform,
absolute, consistent, and beautiful laws, which control and render
harmonious, as a great whole, the entire action, affinities, and
destinies of the universe; and when we say nature in the speciality, we
would be understood to speak of the nature of a rock, of a tree, of
air, fire, water, and land. Again, in alluding to a moral nature in the
abstract, we mean sin, and its weaknesses, its attractions, its
deformities-in a word, its totality; while, on the other hand, when we
use the term, in this sense, under the limits of a speciality, we
confine its signification to the particular shades of natural qualities
that mark the precise object named. Let us illustrate our positions by
a few brief examples.
“When we say ‘Oh nature, how art thou glorious, sublime,
instructive!’—we mean that her laws emanate from a power of infinite
intelligence and perfection; and when we say ‘Oh nature, how art thou
frail, vain and insufficient!’ we mean that she is, after all, but a
secondary quality, inferior to that which brought her into existence,
for definite, limited, and, doubtless, useful purposes. In these
examples we treat the principle in the abstract.
“The examples of nature in the speciality will be more familiar, and,
although in no degree more true, will be better understood by the
generality of my auditors. Especial nature, in the physical
signification, is apparent to the senses, and is betrayed in the
outward forms of things, through their force, magnitude, substance, and
proportions, and, in its more mysterious properties, to examination, by
their laws, harmony, and action. Especial moral nature is denoted in
the different propensities, capacities, and conduct of the different
classes of all moral beings. In this latter sense we have monikin
nature, dog nature, horse nature, hog nature, human nature—”
“Permit me, Dr. Reasono,” I interrupted, “to inquire if, by this
classification, you intend to convey more than may be understood by the
accidental arrangement of your examples?”
“Purely the latter, I do assure you, Sir John.”
“And do you admit the great distinctions of animal and vegetable
natures?”
“Our academies are divided on this point. One school contends that all
living nature is to be embraced in a great comprehensive genus, while
another admits of the distinctions you have named. I am of the latter
opinion, inclining to the belief that nature herself has drawn the line
between the two classes, by bestowing on one the double gift of the
moral and physical nature, and by withdrawing the former from the
other. The existence of the moral nature is denoted by the presence of
the will. The academy of Leaphigh has made an elaborate classification
of all the known animals, of which the sponge is at the bottom of the
list, and the monikin at the top!”
“Sponges are commonly uppermost,” growled Noah.
“Sir,” said I, with a disagreeable rising at the throat, “am I to
understand that your savans account man an animal in a middle state
between a sponge and a monkey?”
“Really, Sir John, this warmth is quite unsuited to philosophical
discussion—if you continue to indulge in it, I shall find myself
compelled to postpone the lecture.”
At this rebuke I made a successful effort to restrain myself, although
my esprit de corps nearly choked me. Intimating, as well as I could, a
change of purpose, Dr. Reasono, who had stood suspended over his table
with an air of doubt, waved his tail, and proceeded:—
“Sponges, oysters, crabs, sturgeons, clams, toads, snakes, lizards,
skunks, opossums, ant-eaters, baboons, negroes, wood-chucks, lions,
Esquimaux, sloths, hogs, Hottentots, ourang-outangs, men and monikins,
are, beyond a question, all animals. The only disputed point among us
is, whether they are all of the same genus, forming varieties or
species, or whether they are to be divided into the three great
families of the improvables, the unimprovables, and the retrogressives.
They who maintain that we form but one great family, reason by certain
conspicuous analogies, that serve as so many links to unite the great
chain of the animal world. Taking man as a centre, for instance, they
show that this creature possesses, in common with every other creature,
some observable property. Thus, man is, in one particular, like a
sponge; in another, he is like an oyster; a hog is like a man; the
skunk has one peculiarity of a man; the ourang-outang another; the
sloth another—”
“King!”
“And so on, to the end of the chapter. This school of philosophers,
while it has been very ingeniously supported, is not, however, the one
most in favor just at this moment in the academy of Leaphigh—”
“Just at this moment, Doctor!”
“Certainly, sir. Do you not know that truths, physical as well as
moral, undergo their revolutions, the same as all created nature? The
academy has paid great attention to this subject; and it issues
annually an almanac, in which the different phases, the revolutions,
the periods, the eclipses, whether partial or total, the distances from
the centre of light, the apogee and perigee of all the more prominent
truths, are calculated with singular accuracy; and by the aid of which
the cautious are enabled to keep themselves, as near as possible,
within the bounds of reason. We deem this effort of the monikin mind as
the sublimest of all its inventions, and as furnishing the strongest
known evidence of its near approach to the consummation of our earthly
destiny. This is not the place to dwell on that particular point of our
philosophy, however; and, for the present, we will postpone the
subject.”
“Yet you will permit me, Dr. Reasono, in virtue of clause 1, article 5,
protocol No. 1 (which protocol, if not absolutely adopted, must be
supposed to contain the spirit of that which was), to inquire whether
the calculations of the revolutions of truth, do not lead to dangerous
moral extravagances, ruinous speculations in ideas, and serve to
unsettle society?”
The philosopher withdrew a moment with my Lord Chatterino, to consult
whether it would be prudent to admit of the validity of protocol No. 1,
even in this indirect manner; whereupon it was decided between them,
that, as such admission would lay open all the vexatious questions that
had just been so happily disposed of, clause 1 of article 5 having a
direct connection with clause 2; clauses 1 and 2 forming the whole
article; and the said article 5, in its entirety, forming an integral
portion of the whole instrument; and the doctrine of constructions,
enjoining that instruments are to be construed like wills, by their
general, and not by their especial tendencies, it would be dangerous to
the objects of the interview to allow the application to be granted.
But, reserving a protest against the concession being interpreted into
a precedent, it might be well to concede that as an act of courtesy,
which was denied as a right. Hereupon, Dr. Reasono informed me that
these calculations of the revolutions of truth DID lead to certain
moral extravagances, and in many instances to ruinous speculations in
ideas; that the academy of Leaphigh, and, so far as his information
extended, the academy of every other country, had found the subject of
truth, more particularly moral truth, the one of all others the most
difficult to manage, the most likely to be abused, and the most
dangerous to promulgate. I was moreover promised, at a future day, some
illustrations of this branch of the subject.
“To pursue the more regular thread of my lecture,” continued Dr.
Reasono, when he had politely made this little digression, “we now
divide these portions of the created world into animated and vegetable
nature; the former is again divided into the improvable, and the
unimprovable, and the retrogressive. The improvable embraces all those
species which are marching, by slow, progressive, but immutable
mutations, towards the perfection of terrestrial life, or to that last,
elevated, and sublime condition of mortality, in which the material
makes its final struggle with the immaterial—mind with matter. The
improvable class of animals, agreeably to the monikin dogmas, commences
with those species in which matter has the most unequivocal ascendency,
and terminates with those in which mind is as near perfection as this
mortal coil will allow. We hold that mind and matter, in that
mysterious union which connects the spiritual with the physical being,
commence in the medium state, undergoing, not, as some men have
pretended, transmigrations of the soul only, but such gradual and
imperceptible changes of both soul and body, as have peopled the world
with so many wonderful beings—wonderful, mentally and physically; and
all of which (meaning all of the improvable class) are no more than
animals of the same great genus, on the high road of tendencies, who
are advancing towards the last stage of improvement, previously to
their final translation to another planet, and a new existence.
“The retrogressive class is composed of those specimens which, owing to
their destiny, take a false direction; which, instead of tending to the
immaterial, tend to the material; which gradually become more and more
under the influence of matter, until, by a succession of physical
translations, the will is eventually lost, and they become incorporated
with the earth itself. Under this last transformation, these purely
materialized beings are chemically analyzed in the great laboratory of
nature, and their component parts are separated; thus the bones become
rocks, the flesh earth, the spirits air, the blood water, the gristle
clay and the ashes of the will are converted into the element of fire.
In this class we enumerate whales, elephants, hippopotami, and divers
other brutes, which visibly exhibit accumulations of matter that must
speedily triumph over the less material portions of their natures.”
“And yet, Doctor, there are facts that militate against the theory; the
elephant, for instance, is accounted one of the most intelligent of all
the quadrupeds.”
“A mere false demonstration, sir. Nature delights in these little
equivocations; thus, we have false suns, false rainbows, false
prophets, false vision, and even false philosophy. There are entire
races of both our species, too, as the Congo and the Esquimaux, for
yours, and baboons and the common monkeys, that inhabit various parts
of the world possessed by the human species, for ours, which are mere
shadows of the forms and qualities that properly distinguish the animal
in its state of protection.”
“How, sir! are you not, then, of the same family as all the other
monkeys that we see hopping and skipping about the streets?”
“No more, sir, than you are of the same family as the flat-nosed,
thick-lipped, low-browed, ink-skinned negro, or the squalid,
passionless, brutalized Esquimaux. I have said that nature delights in
vagaries; and all these are no more than some of her mystifications. Of
this class is the elephant, who, while verging nearest to pure
materialism, makes a deceptive parade of the quality he is fast losing.
Instances of this species of playing trumps, if I may so express it,
are common in all classes of beings. How often, for instance, do men,
just as they are about to fail, make a parade of wealth, women seem
obdurate an hour before they capitulate, and diplomatists call Heaven
to be a witness of their resolutions to the contrary, the day before
they sign and seal! In the case of the elephant, however, there is a
slight exception to the general rule, which is founded on an
extraordinary struggle between mind and matter, the former making an
effort that is unusual, and which may be said to form an exception to
the ordinary warfare between these two principles, as it is commonly
conducted in the retrogressive class of animals. The most infallible
sign of the triumph of mind over matter, is in the development of the
tail—”
“King!”
“Of the tail, Dr. Reasono?”
“By all means, sir—that seat of reason, the tail! Pray, Sir John, what
other portion of our frames did you imagine was indicative of
intellect?”
“Among men, Dr. Reasono, it is commonly thought the head is the more
honorable member, and, of late, we have made analytical maps of this
part of our physical formation, by which it is pretended to know the
breadth and length of a moral quality, no less than its boundaries.”
“You have made the best use of your materials, such as they were, and I
dare say the map in question, all things considered, is a very clever
performance. But in the complication and abstruseness of this very
moral chart (one of which I perceive standing on your mantelpiece), you
may learn the confusion which still reigns over the human intellect.
Now, in regarding us, you can understand the very converse of your
dilemma. How much easier, for instance, is it to take a yard-stick, and
by a simple admeasurement of a tail, come to a sound, obvious and
incontrovertible conclusion as to the extent of the intellect of the
specimen, than by the complicated, contradictory, self-balancing and
questionable process to which you are reduced! Were there only this
fact, it would abundantly establish the higher moral condition of the
monikinrace, as it is compared with that of man.”
“Dr. Reasono, am I to understand that the monikin family seriously
entertain a position so extravagant as this; that a monkey is a
creature more intellectual and more highly civilized than man?”
“Seriously, good Sir John! Why you are the first respectable person it
has been my fortune to meet, who has even affected to doubt the fact.
It is well known that both belong to the improvable class of animals,
and that monkeys, as you are pleased to term us, were once men, with
all their passions, weaknesses, inconsistencies, mode of philosophy,
unsound ethics, frailties, incongruities and subserviency to matter;
that they passed into the monikin state by degrees, and that large
divisions of them are constantly evaporating into the immaterial world,
completely spiritualized and free from the dross of flesh. I do not
mean in what is called death—for that is no more than an occasional
deposit of matter to be resumed in a new aspect, and with a nearer
approach to the grand results (whether of the improvable or of the
retrogressive classes)—but those final mutations which transfer us to
another planet, to enjoy a higher state of being, and leaving us always
on the high road towards final excellence.”
“All this is very ingenious, sir; but before you can persuade me into
the belief that man is an animal inferior to a monkey, Dr. Reasono, you
will allow me to say that you must prove it.”
“Ay, ay, or me, either,” put in Captain Poke, waspishly.
“Were I to cite my proofs, gentlemen,” continued the philosopher, whose
spirit appeared to be much less moved by our doubts than ours were by
his position—“I should in the first place refer you to history. All the
monikin writers are agreed in recording the gradual translation of the
species from the human family—”
“This may do very well, sir, for the latitude of Leaphigh, but permit
me to say that no human historian, from Moses down to Buffon, has ever
taken such a view of our respective races. There is not a word in any
of all these writers on the subject.”
“How should there be, sir? History is not a prediction, but a record of
the past. Their silence is so much negative proof in our favor. Does
Tacitus, for instance, speak of the French revolution? Is not Herodotus
silent on the subject of the independence of the American continent?—or
do any of the Greek and Roman writers give us the annals of
Stunin’tun—a city whose foundations were most probably laid some time
after the commencement of the Christian era? It is morally impossible
that men or monikins can faithfully relate events that have never
happened; and as it has never yet happened to any man, who is still a
man, to be translated to the monikin state of being, it follows, as a
necessary consequence, that he can know nothing about it. If you want
historical proof, therefore, of what I say, you must search the monikin
annals for evidence. There it is to be found with an infinity of
curious details; and I trust the time is not far distant, when I shall
have great pleasure in pointing out to you some of the most approved
chapters of our best writers on this subject. But we are not confined
to the testimony of history, in establishing our condition to be of the
secondary formation. The internal evidence is triumphant; we appeal to
our simplicity, our philosophy, the state of the arts among us, in
short, to all those concurrent proofs which are dependent on the
highest possible state of civilization. In addition to this, we have
the infallible testimony which is to be derived from the development of
our tails. Our system of caudology is, in itself, a triumphant proof of
the high improvement of the monikin reason.”
“Do I comprehend you aright, Dr. Reasono, when I understand your system
of caudology, or tailology, to render it into the vernacular, to
dogmatize on the possibility that the seat of reason in man, which
to-day is certainly in his brains, can ever descend into a tail?”
“If you deem development, improvement and simplification a descent,
beyond a question, sir. But your figure is a bad one, Sir John; for
ocular demonstration is before you, that a monikin can carry his tail
as high as a man can possibly carry his head. Our species, in this
sense, is morally nicked; and it costs us no effort to be on a level
with human kings. We hold, with you, that the brain is the seat of
reason, while the animal is in what we call the human probation, but
that it is a reason undeveloped, imperfect, and confused; cased, as it
were, in an envelope unsuited to its functions; but that, as it
gradually oozes out of this straitened receptable towards the base of
the animal, it acquires solidity, lucidity, and, finally, by elongation
and development, point. If you examine the human brain, you will find
it, though capable of being stretched to a great length, compressed in
a diminutive compass, involved and snarled; whereas the same physical
portion of the genus gets simplicity, a beginning and an end, a
directness and consecutiveness that are necessary to logic, and, as has
just been mentioned, a point, in the monikin seat of reason, which, by
all analogy, go to prove the superiority of the animal possessing
advantages so great.”
“Nay, sir, if you come to analogies, they will be found to prove more
than you may wish. In vegetation, for instance, saps ascend for the
purposes of fructification and usefulness; and, reasoning from the
analogies of the vegetable world, it is far more probable that tails
have ascended into brains than that brains have descended into tails;
and, consequently, that men are much more likely to be an improvement
on monkeys, than monkeys an improvement on men.”
I spoke with warmth, I know; for the doctrine of Dr. Reasono was new to
me; and by this time, my esprit de corps had pretty effectually blinded
reflection.
“You gave him a red-hot shot that time, Sir John,” whispered Captain
Poke at my elbow; “now, if you are so disposed, I will wring the necks
of all these little blackguards, and throw them out of the window.”
I immediately intimated that any display of brute force would militate
directly against our cause; as the object, just at that moment, was to
be as immaterial as possible.
“Well, well, manage it in your own way, Sir John, and I’m quite as
immaterial as you can wish; but should these cunning varments ra’ally
get the better of us in the argument, I shall never dare look at Miss
Poke, or show my face ag’in in Stunin’tun.”
This little aside was secretly conducted, while Dr. Reasono was
drinking a glass of eau sucre; but he soon returned to the subject,
with the dignified gravity that never forsook him.
“Your remark touching saps has the usual savor of human ingenuity,
blended, however, with the proverbial short-sightedness of the species.
It is very true that saps ascend for fructification; but what is this
fructification, to which you allude? It is no more than a false
demonstration of the energies of the plant. For all the purposes of
growth, life, durability, and the final conversion of the vegetable
matter into an element, the root is the seat of power and authority;
and, in particular, the tap-root above or rather below all others. This
tap-root may be termed the tail of vegetation. You may pluck fruits
with impunity—nay, you may even top all the branches, and the tree
shall survive; but, put the axe to the root, and the pride of the
forest falls.”
All this was too evidently true to be denied, and I felt worried and
badgered; for no man likes to be beaten in a discussion of this sort,
and more especially by a monkey. I bethought me of the elephant, and
determined to make one more thrust, by the aid of his powerful tusks,
before I gave up the point.
“I am inclined to think, Dr. Reasono,” I put in as soon as possible,
“that your savans have not been very happy in illustrating their theory
by means of the elephant. This animal, besides being a mass of flesh,
is too well provided with intellect to be passed off for a dunce; and
he not only has ONE, but he might almost be said to be provided with
TWO tails.”
“That has been his chief misfortune, sir. Matter, in the great warfare
between itself and mind, has gone on the principle of ‘divide and
conquer.’ You are nearer the truth than you imagined, for the trunk of
the elephant is merely the abortion of a tail; and yet, you see, it
contains nearly all the intelligence that the animal possesses. On the
subject of the fate of the elephant, however, theory is confirmed by
actual experiment. Do not your geologists and naturalists speak of the
remains of animals, which are no longer to be found among living
things?”
“Certainly, sir; the mastodon—the megatherium, iguanodon; and the
plesiosaurus—”
“And do you not also find unequivocal evidences of animal matter
incorporated with rocks?”
“This fact must be admitted, too.”
“These phenomena, as you call them, are no more than the final deposits
which nature has made in the cases of those creatures in which matter
has completely overcome its rival, mind. So soon as the will is
entirely extinct, the being ceases to live; or it is no longer an
animal. It falls and reverts altogether to the element of matter. The
processes of decomposition and incorporation are longer, or shorter,
according to circumstances; and these fossil remains of which your
writers say so much, are merely cases that have met with accidental
obstacles to their final decomposition. As respects our two species, a
very cursory examination of their qualities ought to convince any
candid mind of the truth of our philosophy. Thus, the physical part of
man is much greater in proportion to the spiritual, than it is in the
monikin; his habits are grosser and less intellectual; he requires
sauce and condiments in his food; he is farther removed from
simplicity, and, by necessary implication, from high civilization; he
eats flesh, a certain proof that the material principle is still strong
in the ascendant; he has no cauda—-”
“On this point, Dr. Reasono, I would inquire if your scholars attach
any weight to traditions?”
“The greatest possible, sir. It is the monikin tradition that our
species is composed of men refined, of diminished matter and augmented
minds, with the seat of reason extricated from the confinement and
confusion of the caput, and extended, unravelled, and rendered logical
and consecutive, in the cauda.”
“Well, sir, WE too have our traditions; and an eminent writer, at no
great distance of time, has laid it down as incontrovertible, that men
once HAD caudae.”
“A mere prophetic glance into the future, as coming events are known to
cast their shadows before.”
“Sir, the philosopher in question establishes his position, by pointing
to the stumps.”
“He has unluckily mistaken a foundation-stone for a ruin! Such errors
are not unfrequent with the ardent and ingenious. That men WILL have
tails, I make no doubt; but that they HAVE ever reached this point of
perfection, I do most solemnly deny. There are many premonitory
symptoms of their approaching this condition; the current opinions of
the day, the dress, habits, fashions, and philosophy of the species,
encourage the belief; but hitherto you have never reached the enviable
distinction. As to traditions, even your own are all in favor of our
theory. Thus, for instance, you have a tradition that the earth was
once peopled by giants. Now, this is owing to the fact that men were
formerly more under the influence of matter, and less under that of
mind than to day. You admit that you diminish in size, and improve in
moral attainments; all of which goes to establish the truth of the
monikin philosophy. You begin to lay less stress on physical, and more
on moral excellences; and, in short, many things show that the time for
the final liberation and grand development of your brains, is not far
distant. This much I very gladly concede; for, while the dogmas of our
schools are not to be disregarded, I very cheerfully admit that you are
our fellow-creatures, though in a more infant and less improved
condition of society.”
“King!”
Here Dr. Reasono announced the necessity of taking a short intermission
in order to refresh himself. I retired with Captain Poke, to have a
little communication with my fellow-mortal, under the peculiar
circumstances in which we were placed, and to ask his opinion of what
had been said. Noah swore bitterly at some of the conclusions of the
monikin philosopher, affirming that he should like no better sport than
to hear him lecture in the streets of Stunin’tun, where, he assured me,
such doctrine would not be tolerated any longer than was necessary to
sharpen a harpoon, or to load a gun. Indeed, he did not know but the
Doctor would be incontinently kicked over into Rhode Island, without
ceremony.
“For that matter,” continued the indignant old sealer, “I should ask no
better sport than to have permission to put the big toe of my right
foot, under full sail, against the part of the blackguard where his
beloved tail is stepped. That would soon bring him to reason. Why, as
for his cauda, if you will believe me, Sir John, I once saw a man, on
the coast of Patagonia—a savage, to be sure, and not a philosopher, as
this fellow pretends to be—who had an outrigger of this sort, as long
as a ship’s ringtail-boom. And what was he, after all, but a poor devil
who did not know a sea-lion from a grampus!”
This assertion of Captain Poke relieved my mind considerably; and
laying aside the bison-skin, I asked him to have the goodness to
examine the localities, with some particularity, about the termination
of the dorsal bone, in order to ascertain if there were any encouraging
signs to be discovered. Captain Poke put on his spectacles, for time
had brought the worthy mariner to their use, as he said, “whenever he
had occasion to read fine print”; and, after some time, I had the
satisfaction to hear him declare, that if it was a cauda I wanted,
there was as good a place to step one, as could be found about any
monkey in the universe; “and you have only to say the word, Sir John,
and I will just step into the next room, and by the help of my knife
and a little judgment in choosing, I’ll fit you out with a
jury-article, which, if there be any ra’al vartue in this sort of
thing, will qualify you at once to be a judge, or, for that matter, a
bishop.”
We were now summoned again to the lecture-room, and I had barely time
to thank Captain Poke for his obliging offer, which circumstances just
then, however, forbade my accepting.