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PASSAGES FROM THE LIFE OF A PHILOSOPHER, by Charles Babbage
[Illustration:
_B. H. Babbage, del._
Impression from a woodcut of a small portion of Mr. Babbage’s
Difference Engine No. 1, the property of Government, at present
deposited in the Museum at South Kensington.
It was commenced 1823.
This portion put together 1833.
The construction abandoned 1842.
This plate was printed June, 1853.
This portion was in the Exhibition 1862.]
PASSAGES
FROM
THE LIFE OF A PHILOSOPHER.
BY
CHARLES BABBAGE, ESQ., M.A.,
F.R.S., F.R.S.E., F.R.A.S., F. STAT. S., HON. M.R.I.A., M.C.P.S.,
COMMANDER OF THE ITALIAN ORDER OF ST. MAURICE AND ST. LAZARUS,
INST. IMP. (ACAD. MORAL.) PARIS CORR., ACAD. AMER. ART. ET SC. BOSTON,
REG. ŒCON. BORUSS., PHYS. HIST. NAT. GENEV., ACAD. REG. MONAC., HAFN.,
MASSIL., ET DIVION., SOCIUS. ACAD. IMP. ET REG. PETROP., NEAP., BRUX.,
PATAV., GEORG. FLOREN, LYNCEI ROM., MUT., PHILOMATH. PARIS, SOC. CORR.,
ETC.
“I’m a philosopher. Confound them all—
Birds, beasts, and men; but no, not womankind.”—_Don Juan._
“I now gave my mind to philosophy: the great object of my ambition
was to make out a complete system of the universe, including and
comprehending the origin, causes, consequences, and termination of all
things. Instead of countenance, encouragement, and applause, which
I should have received from every one who has the true dignity of
an oyster at heart, I was exposed to calumny and misrepresentation.
While engaged in my great work on the universe, some even went
so far as to accuse me of infidelity;—such is the malignity of
oysters.”—_“Autobiography of an Oyster” deciphered by the aid of
photography in the shell of a philosopher of that race,—recently
scolloped._
LONDON:
LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, & GREEN.
1864.
[_The right of Translation is reserved._]
DEDICATION.
TO VICTOR EMMANUEL II., KING OF ITALY.
SIRE,
In dedicating this volume to your Majesty, I am also doing an act of
justice to the memory of your illustrious father.
In 1840, the King, Charles Albert, invited the learned of Italy to
assemble in his capital. At the request of her most gifted Analyst, I
brought with me the drawings and explanations of the Analytical Engine.
These were thoroughly examined and their truth acknowledged by Italy’s
choicest sons.
To the King, your father, I am indebted for the first public and
official acknowledgment of this invention.
I am happy in thus expressing my deep sense of that obligation to his
son, the Sovereign of united Italy, the country of Archimedes and of
Galileo.
I am, Sire,
With the highest respect,
Your Majesty’s faithful Servant,
CHARLES BABBAGE.
PREFACE.
Some men write their lives to save themselves from _ennui_, careless of
the amount they inflict on their readers.
Others write their personal history, lest some kind friend should
survive them, and, in showing off his own talent, unwittingly show them
up.
Others, again, write their own life from a different motive—from fear
that the vampires of literature might make it their prey.
I have frequently had applications to write my life, both from my
countrymen and from foreigners. Some caterers for the public offered
to pay me for it. Others required that I should pay them for its
insertion; others offered to insert it without charge. One proposed to
give me a quarter of a column gratis, and as many additional lines of
eloge as I chose to write and pay for at ten-pence per line. To many of
these I sent a list of my works, with the remark that they formed the
best life of an author; but nobody cared to insert them.
I have no desire to write my own biography, as long as I have strength
and means to do better work.
The remarkable circumstances attending those Calculating Machines,
on which I have spent so large a portion of my life, make me wish
to place on record some account of their past history. As, however,
such a work would be utterly uninteresting to the greater part of my
countrymen, I thought it might be rendered less unpalatable by relating
some of my experience amongst various classes of society, widely
differing from each other, in which I have occasionally mixed.
This volume does not aspire to the name of an autobiography. It relates
a variety of isolated circumstances in which I have taken part—some
of them arranged in the order of time, and others grouped together in
separate chapters, from similarity of subject.
The selection has been made in some cases from the importance of the
matter. In others, from the celebrity of the persons concerned; whilst
several of them furnish interesting illustrations of human character.
CONTENTS.
I. • My Ancestors • 1
II. • Childhood • 7
III. • Boyhood • 17
IV. • Cambridge • 25
V. • Difference Engine No. 1 • 41
VI. • Statement relative to the Difference
Engine, drawn up by the late Sir H. Nicolas
from the Author’s Papers • 68
VII. • Difference Engine No. 2 • 97
VIII. • Of the Analytical Engine • 112
IX. • Of the Mechanical Notation • 142
X. • The Exhibition of 1862 • 147
XI. • The late Prince Consort • 168
XII. • Recollections of the Duke of
Wellington • 173
XIII. • Recollections of Wollaston, Davy,
and Rogers • 186
XIV. • Recollections of Laplace, Biot, and
Humboldt • 195
XV. • Experience by Water • 205
XVI. • Experience by Fire • 213
XVII. • Experience amongst Workmen • 228
XVIII. • Picking Locks and Deciphering • 233
XIX. • Experience in St. Giles’s • 242
XX. • Theatrical Experience • 251
XXI. • Electioneering Experience • 259
XXII. • Scene from a New After-Piece • 276
XXIII. • Experience at Courts • 292
XXIV. • Experience at Courts • 298
XXV. • Railways • 313
XXVI. • Street Nuisances • 337
XXVII. • Wit • 363
XXVIII. • Hints for Travellers • 371
XXIX. • Miracles • 387
XXX. • Religion • 396
XXXI. • A Vision • 406
XXXII. • Various Reminiscences • 421
XXXIII. • The Author’s Contributions to
Human Knowledge • 430
XXXIV. • The Author’s further Contributions
to Human Knowledge • 441
XXXV. • Results of Science • 473
XXXVI. • Agreeable Recollections • 482
Appendix • 487
PASSAGES FROM THE LIFE OF A PHILOSOPHER.
CHAPTER I.
MY ANCESTORS.
Traced his descent, through ages dark,
From cats that caterwauled in Noah’s ark.
SALMAGUNDI, 4to, 1793.
Value of a celebrated Name — My Ancestors — Their Ante-Mosaic origin
— Flint-workers — Tool-makers — Not descended from Cain — Ought a
Philosopher to avow it if he were? — Probability of Descent from Tubal
Cain — Argument in favour, he worked in Iron — On the other side, he
invented Organs — Possible origin of my Name — Family History in very
recent times.
What is there in a name? It is merely an empty basket, until you put
something into it. My earliest visit to the Continent taught me the
value of such a basket, filled with the name of my venerable friend
the first Herschel, ere yet my younger friend his son, had adorned
his distinguished patronymic with the additional laurels of his own
well-earned fame.
The inheritance of a celebrated name is not, however, without its
disadvantages. This truth I never found more fully appreciated, nor
more admirably expressed, than in a conversation with the son of
Filangieri, the author of the {2} celebrated Treatise on Legislation,
with whom I became acquainted at Naples, and in whose company I visited
several of the most interesting institutions of that capital.
In the course of one of our drives, I alluded to the advantages of
inheriting a distinguished name, as in the case of the second Herschel.
His remark was, “For my own part, I think it a great disadvantage. Such
a man must feel in the position of one inheriting a vast estate, so
deeply mortgaged that he can never hope, by any efforts of his own, to
redeem it.”
Without reverting to the philosophic, but unromantic, views of our
origin taken by Darwin, I shall pass over the long history of our
progress from a monad up to man, and commence tracing my ancestry as
the world generally do: namely, as soon as there is the slightest
ground for conjecture. Although I have contended for the Mosaic date
of the creation of man as long as I decently could, and have even
endeavoured to explain away[1] some of the facts relied upon to prove
man’s long anterior origin; yet I must admit that the continual
accumulation of evidence probably will, at last, compel me to
acknowledge that, in this single instance, the writings of Moses may
have been misapprehended.
[1] On the remains of human art, mixed with the bones of extinct
races of animals. Proceedings of the Royal Society, 26th May, 1859.
〈DESCENT FROM FLINT-WORKERS.〉
Let us, therefore, take for granted that man and certain extinct races
of animals lived together, thousands of years before Adam. We find, at
that period, a race who formed knives, and hammers, and arrow-heads
out of flint. Now, considering my own inveterate habit of contriving
_tools_, it is more probable that I should derive my passion by
hereditary transmission from these original tool-makers, than from any
other inferior race existing at that period. {3}
Many years ago I met a very agreeable party at Mr. Rogers’ table.
Somebody introduced the subject of ancestry. I remarked that most
people are reluctant to acknowledge as their father or grandfather,
any person who had committed a dishonest action or a crime. But that
no one ever scrupled to be proud of a remote ancestor, even though he
might have been a thief or a murderer. Various remarks were made, and
reasons assigned, for this tendency of the educated mind. I then turned
to my next neighbour, Sir Robert H. Inglis, and asked him what he would
do, supposing he possessed undoubted documents, that he was lineally
descended from Cain.
Sir Robert said he was at that moment proposing to himself the very
same question. After some consideration, he said he should burn them;
and then inquired what I should do in the same circumstances. My reply
was, that I should preserve them: but simply because I thought the
preservation of any _fact_ might ultimately be useful.
〈NOT THROUGH CAIN.〉
I possess no evidence that I am descended from Cain. If any herald
suppose that there may be such a presumption, I think it must arise
from his confounding Cain with Tubal Cain, who was a great worker in
iron. Still, however he might argue that, the probabilities are in
favour of his opinion: for I, too, work in iron. But a friend of mine,
to whose kind criticisms I am much indebted, suggests that as Tubal
Cain invented the _Organ_, this probability is opposed to the former
one.
The next step in my pedigree is to determine whence the origin of my
modern family name.
Some have supposed it to be derived from the cry of sheep. If so, that
would point to a descent from the Shepherd Kings. Others have supposed
it is derived from the name of a place called Bab or Babb, as we have,
in the West of England, Bab {4} Tor, Babbacombe, &c. But this is
evidently erroneous; for, when a people took possession of a desert
country, its various localities could possess no names; consequently,
the colonists could not take names from the country to which they
migrated, but would very naturally give their own names to the several
lands they appropriated: “_mais revenons à nos moutons_.”
How my blood was transmitted to me through more modern races, is quite
immaterial, seeing the admitted antiquity of the flint-workers.
〈SAD OMISSION.〉
In recent times, that is, since the Conquest, my knowledge of the
history of my family is limited by the unfortunate omission of my name
from the roll of William’s followers. Those who are curious about the
subject, and are idlers, may, if they think it worth while, search all
the parish registers in the West of England and elsewhere.
The light I can throw upon it is not great, and rests on a few
documents, and on family tradition. During the past four generations I
have no surviving collateral relatives of my own name.
The name of Babbage is not uncommon in the West of England. One day
during my boyhood, I observed it over a small grocer’s shop, whilst
riding through the town of Chudley. I dismounted, went into the shop,
purchased some figs, and found a very old man of whom I made inquiry
as to his family. He had not a good memory himself, but his wife told
me that his name was Babb when she married him, and that it was only
during the last twenty years he had adopted the name of Babbage, which,
the old man thought, sounded better. Of course I told his wife that
I entirely agreed with her husband, and thought him a very sensible
fellow.
The craft most frequently practised by my ancestors seems {5} to
have been that of a goldsmith, although several are believed to have
practised less dignified trades.
In the time of Henry the Eighth one of my ancestors, together with a
hundred men, were taken prisoners at the siege of Calais.
When William the Third landed in Torbay, another ancestor of mine,
a yeoman possessing some small estate, undertook to distribute his
proclamations. For this bit of high treason he was rewarded with a
silver medal, which I well remember seeing, when I was a boy. It had
descended to a very venerable and truthful old lady, an unmarried aunt,
the historian of our family, on whose authority the identity of the
medal I saw with that given by King William must rest.
Another ancestor married one of two daughters, the only children of a
wealthy physician, Dr. Burthogge, an intimate friend and correspondent
of John Locke.
〈A WILD ANCESTOR.〉
Somewhere about 1700 a member of my family, one Richard Babbage, who
appears to have been a very wild fellow, having tried his hand at
various trades, and given them all up, offended a wealthy relative.
To punish this idleness, his relative entailed all his large estates
upon eleven different people, after whom he gave it to this Richard
Babbage, who, had there been no entail, would have taken them as
heir-at-law.
Ten of these lives had dropped, and the eleventh was in a consumption,
when Richard Babbage took it into his head to go off to America with
Bamfylde Moore Carew, the King of the Beggars.
The last only of the eleven lives existed when he embarked, and that
life expired within twelve months after Richard Babbage sailed. The
estates remained in possession of the representatives of the eleventh
in the entail. {6}
If it could have been proved that Richard Babbage had survived twelve
months after his voyage to America, these estates would have remained
in my own branch of the family.
I possess a letter from Richard Babbage, dated on board the ship in
which he sailed for America.
〈ACT OF PARLIAMENT.〉
In the year 1773 it became necessary to sell a portion of this
property, for the purpose of building a church at Ashbrenton. A private
Act of Parliament was passed for that purpose, in which the rights of
the true heir were reserved.
{7}