princess, great crowds of gnomes had gathered in front of the temple,
but none dared to enter. The king and the queen and all the court had
arrived. They were all running and floating to and fro and talking and
gesticulating, everybody giving some good advice which nobody followed;
they did not know what to do. That anyone could enter Lucifer’s temple
and come out again alive, or otherwise than blind or insane, seemed to
them an impossibility. The king looked very grave and the princess was
in despair.
“After all,” I heard the queen say to the princess, while trying to
comfort her, “Mulligan is nothing but a hobgoblin.”
“No!” cried Adalga, “I know he is a man!”
While speaking these words the princess elongated her body to its
full length, and looking towards the temple, saw me standing upon the
threshold, and in spite of the cries of her mother, who tried to stop
her, she flew to me and the next instant she was in my arms. The door
had not yet been closed, and from the interior a ray of yellowish
light, coming from the eyes of the green frog, fell upon the princess.
I sought to shield her with my person, but it was already too late,
for that ray mingling with the blue in Adalga’s sphere, immediately
produced therein a permanent shade of green.
A shout of joy arose from the multitude when they saw me issue from
the temple, and never-ending hurrahs resounded; but this was changed
to groans of distress when they beheld the change of colour which had
taken place in the princess. The king was very much distressed, and
while pulling his hair and beating his sides, he cried:
“Unfortunate was the hour when this magician entered my kingdom. Was it
not enough that our beloved daughter had the misfortune of falling in
love with this wretch and taint her beautiful silver white with a nasty
blue? Having given her the blues, he now causes her to expose herself
to the rays of the frog. Oh that I had never been born, or seen the
hour of such misery! Let the executioner come immediately and execute
the sentence of death.”
A storm of indignation arose, and the vivisectors appeared. However, I
was not afraid; I knew now the character of the gnomes and knew what to
say.
“May it please your majesty,” I said, “as well as our gracious queen
and all the venerated assembly, to behold their beloved princess in
this beautiful garment of green, whose splendour surpasses everything
that has ever been seen before or may be seen afterwards. I call those
present to witness that the princess never was so charming as since
she has turned green. Green is the colour of hope, and indicates the
beginning of wisdom. In the kingdom of man green is the favourite
colour. Green is the grass of the earth, the trees and plants, and
even the ocean waves turn green when they come kissing the shore. But
why should I waste words in praising a colour whose superiority is
acknowledged by everyone who is capable of judging its beauty? Has
not her gracious majesty, the queen herself, shown the superiority
of her taste by choosing the emerald as the jewel of her heart, and
adorning her person with green as the true expression of her excellent
qualities? Verily, I am giving only expression to the feeling of every
intelligent gnome who loves his dynasty and his country, if I request
you to join me in the cry--‘Hurrah for green!’”
And “Hurrah for green!” was shouted by all, over and over again.
Owing to my eloquent speech green at once became the fashionable
colour, and everyone wanted to become green. They lauded and praised
me as the benefactor of gnomekind, and the ladies thronged around me,
congratulating me, and begging of me to give them a shade of green.
When order was somewhat restored I made a few more remarks, calling
everyone a traitor who would not join me in my predilection for green.
I said that the princess and I loved each other, and that I would have
married her in spite of her being blue; but now, as she had turned
green and resembled her mother, she had become a thousand times dearer
to my heart.
Here, however, I am bound to confess for the sake of truth that my
statements were not strictly correct, for the queen’s colour was of the
pure and beautiful hue of the emerald, while the colour of the princess
was an impure or dirty green, not at all comparable with the former.
However, we all knew that on certain occasions a few little rhetorical
liberties must be permitted.
The king was very much pleased; he believed every word I said. He
called me his benefactor and saviour of his country. He conferred
on me on the spot the office of Grand Chancellor of the Kingdom and
Superintendent of Public Schools. He decorated me with the insignia of
the Order of the Bull-frog, and consented that the ceremony confirming
my engagement to the princess should take place immediately, to be
followed by the marriage as soon as the three dwarfs would return with
their discovery of the sun.
When the king had finished giving this decision, he embraced me and the
princess, and this was also done by the queen and her maids, by the
ministers and high dignitaries that were present, and by their wives
and daughters, mothers and mothers-in-law; but the rest of the gnomes
danced and shouted and stood upon their heads, swinging their legs as
a token of joy. The princess was radiant with smiles, and we all were
very happy. Cravatu even said that this was the happiest day that had
ever been seen in the kingdom.
We returned to the palace, where preparations were made immediately for
a great festival. The best mushrooms that could be found were collected
and prepared by the best cooks. Some were boiled, others stewed, and
some dished up raw. The queen herself assisted in the kitchen work.
The court musicians arrived, the palace was decorated in great style,
and deputations came, not only from all parts of Bimbam’s country, but
also from neighbouring states. I received a fine suite of apartments
adjoining those of the king and the princess, together with a lot of
attending servants to keep my rooms continually illumined, for which
purpose the most radiant gnomes were selected.
But I will not impose upon the patience of the reader by describing the
festivities which took place when the still beautiful princess Adalga
became Mr Mulligan’s bride. I will only say that during the most solemn
moment of the ceremony, when the mutual promises were exchanged, it
seemed to me that I distinctly heard the triumphant croaking of a frog;
but no one else noticed it, and it may have been only an effect of my
own imagination.
[Illustration: EDUCATING THE GNOMES]
VII.
DIGGING FOR LIGHT.
I was now tolerably well satisfied. From the abject state of a nobody,
existing only as a “subject” for scientific observation, looked upon
as a hobgoblin, and doomed to vivisection prisoner of a jumping-jack,
I had suddenly become somebody of importance, owing to my cleverness
and to the credulity of the king. I saw myself now raised to the
highest dignity in the kingdom of the gnomes, and engaged to a most
amiable and charming--even if a little green--princess, and there was
momentarily nothing to be desired except the discovery of the sun and
the completion of my marriage.
This discovery of the sun caused me a certain uneasiness; but I hoped
that the king would not continue to insist upon that condition. A
considerable time had elapsed, and nothing was heard of the dwarfs or
their expedition. It seemed to me not at all improbable that they had
fallen into the hands of Professor Cracker, and were now bottled up
in alcohol, adorning the shelves of some museum. At all events, I had
not the faintest hope that even if they were to return, they would
have discovered anything worth speaking of, or be able to describe it,
and I therefore thought of means for persuading the king to alter the
stipulation in regard to my marriage, and to permit it to take place
before the discovery of the sun. This I did not think very difficult,
for the king was very changeable and did not seem to know his own
mind. Although, whenever he got some idea into his head, he was very
stubborn and self-willed, nevertheless he was easily led by the nose
by those who knew how to flatter him. His capriciousness was shown by
the rashness with which he ordered my execution, and his instability by
changing his mind and making me Grand Chancellor of his kingdom.
For this purpose I sought and obtained an interview with the king, and
asked his consent that the marriage between myself and the princess
should not be delayed. I proved to him by arguments that the sun could
not do otherwise but exist, and that it was merely a question of time
to discover it; that this event would perhaps not take place as soon as
we wished it, but that this would make no difference to the sun. I took
especial pains to explain to him that the interests of the state would
suffer by my being doomed to live as a bachelor.
But the king had never studied logic, and was inaccessible to my
arguments.
“I want the sun!” he cried, growing more than usually red in his face.
To this I replied--
“If your majesty will permit, we all know that life, and light, and
heat come from the sun. The sunlight does not penetrate into your
kingdom because the rays of the sun are refracted upon the surface of
the earth; but the caloric rays of the sun penetrate through these
rocks, otherwise there would be no heat and life, and everything would
be cold and dead in this place. Now, as you feel the warmth within your
residence, you will easily see that there must be a sun.”
“I see nothing,” answered the king. “All that you say may be as you
say, but it does not enable me to perceive the sun.”
“And would it not be just as well,” I said, “if your majesty would
accept my information that there is a sun? If I tell you so, you will
know it, and knowledge is power.”
But the king would not agree. “I perceive,” he said, “that you tell me
that there is a sun; but for all that I do not perceive the sun itself,
and cannot eat it or have it deposited in my treasury.”
This stubbornness of Bimbam I. irritated me somewhat, and I said--
“All that your majesty says goes to show that the gnomes will have
to travel still a long way before they will come up to our standard
of science. We, the scientists of the human kingdom, do not need to
acquire or possess or even to see anything, much less to eat or absorb
it into our own constitution; it is quite sufficient for us to have
a theory about it which is believed to be correct. This is what we
consider to be real knowledge.”
“What a fools’ paradise this must be,” exclaimed the king. “In our
country we enjoy that which we are and possess, and care very little
about theories and opinions.”
While we were engaged in this conversation Cravatu entered, and brought
the news that the three dwarfs had returned, and that everything had
come out exactly as I predicted; for these imbeciles, not having sense
enough to find their way back, had been found in the vicinity of the
place where they had been left. All that could be made out by their
incoherent speech was that they had seen something, but what that was
nobody knew, for they were totally unable to describe it.
This fulfilment of my prediction raised me still higher in the
estimation of the king, who, seeing that I could foretell future
events, looked upon me as a kind of supernatural being, and wanted to
be instructed in that art.
“It is very easy,” I answered. “If your majesty will only study logic,
and, instead of directly looking at a thing, reject the evidence of
your senses and begin to argue from the basis of what you assume to be
true. Logic is the method of reasoning from particulars to generals, or
the inferring of one general proposition from one or several particular
ones; which means that instead of looking at a thing as a whole, and
afterwards examining its parts and the relations in which they stand
to it, we must look at some separate part and imagine the rest. It
is a process of demonstrating to our own satisfaction and to the
satisfaction of everyone who believes in our judgment----”
Here I was interrupted by the loud snoring of the king who had gone to
sleep in his chair. The sudden stopping of my speech had the effect of
awakening him. He yawned, and elongating his body to its full length,
he stretched his limbs, and then went on to say--
“This is very interesting, and I want to have this method introduced in
all the schools of my kingdom; but for the present the most important
thing is the discovery of the sun, and I want you to discover it
without further delay.”
I suggested that this might be done after my wedding; but the king
sternly replied, “No sun, no marriage! That’s all.”
Being so near to the completion of my happiness, I was exceedingly
grieved to see my hopes wrecked by their fulfilment being made to
depend upon an impossible condition; but a happy thought struck me, and
I said--
“I assure your majesty that the sun is right over our heads, and there
is nothing to prevent you from seeing it as soon as you will get out of
this mountain, except the atmospheric air, which, unfortunately enough,
is impenetrable to your sight, while I can easily enough see through
it. Under these circumstances, the only thing that can possibly be done
will be to cut a hole through the air, and make a tunnel deep enough
until you will reach the outer limits of the atmosphere, when there
will be nothing to prevent you from seeing the sun.”
This proposal pleased the king exceedingly, and Cravatu could find no
words strong enough to express his admiration of my wisdom. They both
knew already enough of logic to understand that they would be able
to see the sun if there were nothing to hinder them from seeing him.
Accordingly orders were immediately issued that the best labourers,
miners, and mechanics should be selected for the purpose of cutting a
hole in what they called the “sky,” for the sky for them began there
where their own element, the earth, ended.
On the very next day the work was begun. They selected a place on the
very top of the Untersberg. The Pigmies drilled the holes, the Vulcani
did the blasting, the Cubitali furnished the required materials, and
the Sagani superintended the work, giving directions. We had the
pleasure of seeing that already during the first twenty-four hours a
hole of about ten feet depth and with a diameter of ten feet was made
as the beginning of the tunnel for enlightenment.
Thus day by day, or, to speak more correctly, night after night, the
work went on; for when it is day in our world no work is done by the
gnomes, as with the beginning of sunrise they fall into a state of
lethargy, from which they awaken only after the night has set in. Every
night the king and the queen with her maids, the princess, myself, and
the high dignitaries of the kingdom, went out to see the progress made
in the work of the tunnel, and every night the hole grew deeper to a
certain extent, according to the quality of the material which had to
be cut; but when it began to dawn upon the surface of the earth the
gnomes went to sleep and slept so well that nothing could have awakened
them from their slumber.
In the meantime I considered it my duty to give great attention to
the education of the gnomes, and to the development of their power of
drawing inferences from things unknown. For the purpose of enabling
them to distinguish the true from the false, I established schools of
logic all over the country, in which all sorts of lies were taught, so
as to give them a chance for using their own common sense and finding
out the truth for themselves by overcoming the falsehood. Soon I was in
possession of a corps of capable liars for assisting me in this work;
but the education of the princess I took into my own charge.
At first Adalga did not enjoy the lessons, which is only natural, as
the birth and beginning of everything is painful and difficult, but
after a while she became delighted with my instructions. As my method
may prove to be interesting and instructive to my compatriots engaged
in pedagogical enterprises, I will illustrate it by an example.
First of all I tried to explain to the princess, by practical
experiment, that a good scientist can never know anything whatever; he
can only know what a thing is not, but not what it is, and from what he
perceives that it is not he draws his inferences as to what it may be.
Thus, for instance, taking a stone and handing it to Adalga, I said--
“Queen of my heart! will you tell me what this is?”
“With pleasure!” she answered. “It is a stone.”
“How do you know it?”
“Because I see it.”
“Sight is deceptive,” I said. “It may be a pumpkin.”
“I do not care what it may be; I know it is a stone.”
“How can you prove it?”
“I do not need to prove it. I know it, and so does everybody who knows
a stone.”
“You cannot know it,” I said, “unless you can give any rational reason
for your belief.”
“I do not need to give any reasons for it. I am satisfied to know what
I know.”
I saw that I could not get the better of her in this way, so I said--
“Will you have the kindness to imagine this stone to be a pumpkin?”
“Well, Mr Mulligan!” she answered, “if this gives you pleasure, I shall
imagine it to be a pumpkin.”
“Now take a bite of it, my darling,” I said.
“I can’t, and you ought not to ask me anything so absurd.”
“But why can’t you?”
“Because it is too hard.”
“Exactly!” I exclaimed. “And now as you have discovered that it is
too hard for being a pumpkin, you have a scientific right to infer
that it is not a pumpkin and may possibly be a stone; _quod erat
demonstrandum_.”
This way of making a simple thing very complicated, according to the
strict rules of exact science, pleased the princess very much and
amused her greatly. It now became necessary to show to her how we may
arrive at a knowledge of universals by drawing logical inferences from
particulars. For this purpose I told her that we must never trust to
our reason, but only put faith into our method of reasoning. Pointing
to the stocking which the princess was just knitting, I asked her what
it was.
“A stocking,” she said. “I thought you knew that much already.”
“Who is going to wear it?”
“I.”
“And what are you?”
“A princess of this kingdom.”
“Do all the princesses of this kingdom wear stockings?”
“All those whom I know.”
“Very well!” I replied. “The consequence is that all the people who
wear stockings are princesses of the kingdom of the gnomes.”
This seemed strange to Adalga, but she could not prove that it was not
so, and I proceeded to explain to her that the power to draw logical
inferences was the highest power which a scientist could possess, and
that by means of logic almost anything could be proved, be it true or
false. Thus I proved to her by way of an illustration, first, that
white was black; secondly, that black was white; and thirdly, that
there was no colour at all.
“White, my dear!” I said, “is, as everybody knows, no colour at all;
for it is produced by a combination of all the prismatic colours in
the same proportion as they exist in the solar ray, where each colour
neutralises the other. Now, if there is no colour, there can be no
light, and where no light exists everything is as black as night, and
if everything is black, white must be black also, and consequently
white is black.”
“Very strange!” exclaimed Adalga.
“If white is black,” I continued, “it follows that black is white,
because if there is no difference between two things they must be
identical. Moreover, everybody knows that black is no colour at all,
but the negation of colour, and it follows that if a thing has no
particular colour of any kind, it must necessarily be white.”
“Incredible!” exclaimed the princess.
“There is nothing incredible about it,” I said. “It is all very
reasonable. Moreover, there is no such thing as a colour at all, for
what we call by that name refers only to a certain sensation which
is produced in our brains by means of certain vibrations transmitted
through the retina and the optic nerve. If you look at any coloured
thing in the dark you will find it to be without any colour at all. The
sensations we receive are only due to certain vibrations of something
unknown.”
“What is a vibration?” asked Adalga.
“Vibration,” I said, “is nothing but a certain kind of motion, and
as motion _per se_ does not exist, vibration is nothing, while that
unknown thing which moves must be everything. But the existence of that
unknown thing is not admitted by science, and consequently science
knows nothing of everything, and of everything nothing, just as you
like; and you can make nothing out of everything, and everything out of
nothing, at your own pleasure.”
The princess was delighted to hear that she could now make everything
out of nothing, although for the beginning it could be done only
theoretically, and her repugnance to philosophical hair-splittings
faded away. She continued her lessons with great diligence, and very
soon I had the pleasure of seeing that she believed nothing and denied
everything. A few weeks more, and I was highly gratified to find that
she could no longer tell a mock-turtle from a tommy cat without
entering into a long series of arguments for the purpose of proving
which was which. Unfortunately, in proportion as she lost her power of
perceiving the reality, while improving in the practice of logic, her
own light grew more and more dim, her luminosity less, and the green
colour in her sphere darker; but I considered this as a matter of only
secondary importance; for it is said that beauty is a perishable thing,
while wisdom remains.
Sometimes she was inclined to worry about the fading of her charms, but
I reasoned her out of it, saying: “If everything is nothing, then, as a
matter of course, beauty also is nothing, and it is not worth the while
to worry about the loss of nothing.”
“But,” objected Adalga, “if beauty is nothing and nothing is
everything, beauty is everything, and we must do all we can to preserve
it.”
“Beauty,” I replied, “among our people is the outcome of fashion.
If it were to become fashionable in our world to wear goitrès and
hunchbacks, everybody would find it beautiful and adopt it at once; and
even if he did not find it beautiful, he would pretend to find it so.
Thus it often happens that everybody wears a most ridiculous article of
dress, not because he thinks it beautiful, but because he thinks that
others do so. In this way the people act foolish, and silently laugh at
each other for being such fools.”
“This I should think to be very immoral,” objected Adalga.
“Human morality,” I replied, “is also a matter of custom. What is
considered very moral among one nation or class of people is considered
immoral among others. Some, for instance, regard stealing as a
disgrace, others as a proof of great ingenuity. But we will not enter
into these social questions. We would never come to an end. What you
need for the purpose of evoluting into a higher and nobler sort of a
being is, first of all, the three steps, or mental operations, by
which you will proceed from particulars to generals, and from generals
to still higher generalities by means of rejections and conclusions, so
as to arrive at those axioms and general laws, from which we may infer,
by way of synthesis, other particulars unknown to us, and perhaps
placed beyond the reach of direct examination.”
“Oh my!” exclaimed the princess, and I saw that my explanation was not
very clear to her; but this is excusable in a gnome, and I did not
despair.
There is nothing more certain than that religious speculation without
science leads to superstition; but it is also true that scientific
speculation in regard to philosophical questions leads to blind
materialism and insanity, if it is carried on without any religious
basis, which means spiritual perception of truth. Adalga overdid the
thing, because she was of an impulsive, fiery nature, and not used to
self-restraint, and when I discovered the mistake it was too late
to remedy it. I had taught her never to take anything for granted,
and the end of it was that she doubted my words, disputed and denied
everything, and always did the very contrary of what we expected her
to do. It is said that a little learning is a dangerous thing, and I
would add that the greater the learning the greater the folly, if at
the foundation of all that imaginary knowledge there is no instinctive
perception of truth, or what we call intuition.