There appears to be no reason to doubt that Mr. Edison’s most
remarkable invention, the theoscope, has a great future before it.
An instrument that enables us to see another as he sees himself must
accomplish great good by promoting clear understandings between man and
man, and subjecting estimates of personal character to the chance of
revision. As matters now stand, and have stood from time immemorial,
our opinion of even a man whom we have known from infancy is formed by
a series of what are known to journalism as “Star Chamber proceedings,”
in which the man himself is not heard with that fulness and frankness
that are desirable. It is hardly fair either to convict or to acquit
him—nay, even to honor or reward him—upon indirect testimony,
introduced by him for another purpose. True justice obviously requires
that A in making up his mind about B should in some way, if possible,
avail himself of the advantage of looking into a mind already made
up—a mind enriched and instructed by longer and nearer observation of
the subject upon which light is sought: in short, B’s mind. If Mr.
Edison’s invention make this as practicable as (if practicable) it is
imperative, he has indeed brought “joy to the afflicted” in a way to
make the proprietor of a patent medicine grow green with envy.
That he should call his marvelous and delicate appliance a theoscope
appears at first thought a reasonless and wanton exercise of the
right of nomenclature; but on reflection the name seems singularly
appropriate. “Theoscope,” I venture to inform the reader unacquainted
with Greek, is from the words Θεός, god, and σκοπειν, to view. The
theoscope is therefore an instrument with which to look at gods. When
one man sees another as the other sees himself, the image, naturally,
is one of supernatural dignity and importance—one worthy of divine
honors, even if ’tis not in mortals to command them. One hardly knows
which to admire the more, the ingenuity that invented the theoscope or
the inspiration that named it.
Most readers are more or less disposed to agree with Burns that the
gift to see ourselves as others see us would from many a blunder free
us, and foolish notion; but few, probably, have reflected on the
considerable advantage of seeing others as they see themselves. It
seems certain, for example, that it would notably minish the acerbities
of debate if each of two disputants could behold in the other, not
an obstinate, pig-headed malefactor endeavoring by unfair means to
establish an idiotic proposition, but a high-hearted philanthropist,
benevolent and infallible, tenderly concerned for an erring opponent’s
reclamation and intellectual prosperity. The general use of the
theoscope in newspaper offices can hardly fail profoundly to modify
and mollify discussion, in range and heat. When the editor of the
_Cow County Opinionator_ has written down the editor of the
_Hog’s-Back Allegationist_ as “a loathsome contemporary whose
moral depravity is only exceeded by his social degradation, and whose
skill in horse-stealing has been thought worthy of record in the books
of a court which his ill-gotten gold was unable to corrupt,” it may
occur to him to ring up his enemy and inveigle him to the other end
of the apparatus. The god-like image of a blameless man and generous
rival which will then confront him he may know in his soul to be an
incredibly counterfeit presentment, but the moral effect of looking
at a noble work of the imagination is to soften the heart and elevate
the sentiments: he will probably find something in his written censure
which he would willingly let die save for the precious example of its
incomparable style.
If the theoscope may be expected to work so desirable moral changes in
the man at the receiving instrument, what may we not hope as to its
influence on the person before the transmitter? To be seen at last
as one really is (according to one’s own belief) must necessarily be
supremely gratifying to all who have known and bewailed the opacity of
the glass through which they have hitherto been seen darkly. No longer
doomed to chafe under the disability that forbids expression, our
natures must expand to something nearly as great and good as that other
self which we can send over the wire by merely touching a button. When
a famous cartoonist had the justice to offset his weekly caricatures by
representing his favorite victims once as they would have represented
themselves he doubtless did something toward discrediting his own
conceptions and justifying theirs. There are persons whom nothing will
reform, but it would be possible to make a long list of “prominent
citizens” who would be lifted to the breezy altitudes of a higher and
better life by the consciousness, however erroneous, of the power so to
present their true personalities that he who runs may read, instead of
so that he who reads runs, as now.