Perpetuum Mobile: or Search for self-motive Power. By Henry
Dircks.[243] London, 1861, 8vo.
A useful collection on the history of the attempts at perpetual motion,
that is, at obtaining the consequences of power without any power to
produce them. September 7, 1863, a correspondent of the _Times_ gave an
anecdote of George Stephenson,[244] which he obtained from Robert
Stephenson.[245] A perpetual motionist wanted to explain his method; to
which George replied--"Sir! I shall believe it when I see you take yourself
up by the waistband, and carry yourself about the room." Never was the
problem better stated.
There is a paradox of which I ought to give a specimen, I mean the
_slander-paradox_; the case of a person who takes it into his head, upon
evidence furnished entirely by the workings of his own thoughts, that some
other person has committed a foul act of which the world at large would no
more suppose him guilty than they would suppose that the earth is a flat
bordered by ice. If I were to determine on giving cases in which the
self-deluded person imagines {139} a conspiracy against _himself_, there
would be no end of choices. Many of the grosser cases are found at last to
be accompanied by mental disorder, and it is difficult to avoid referring
the whole class to something different from simple misuse of the reasoning
power. The first instance is one which puts in a strong light the state of
things in which we live, brought about by our glorious freedom of thought,
speech, and writing. The Government treated it with neglect, the press with
silent contempt, and I will answer for it many of my readers now hear of it
for the first time, when it comes to be enrolled among circle-squarers and
earth-stoppers, where, as the old philosopher said, it will not gravitate,
being _in proprio loco_.[246]
1862. On new year's day, 1862, when the nation was in the full tide of
sympathy with the Queen, and regret for its own loss, a paper called the
_Free Press_ published a number devoted to the consideration of the causes
of the death of the Prince Consort. It is so rambling and inconsecutive
that it takes more than one reading to understand it. It is against the
_Times_ newspaper. First, the following insinuation:
"To the legal mind, the part of [the part taken by] the _Times_ will
present a _prima facie_ case of the gravest nature, in the evident
fore-knowledge of the event, and the preparation to turn it to account when
it should have occurred. The article printed on Saturday must have been
written on Friday. That article could not have appeared had the Prince been
intended to live."
Next, it is affirmed that the _Times_ intended to convey the idea that the
Prince had been poisoned.
"Up to this point we are merely dealing with words which the _Times_
publishes, and these can leave not a shadow of doubt that there is an
intention to promulgate the idea that Prince Albert had been poisoned."
The article then goes on with a strange olio of {140} insinuations to the
effect that the Prince was the obstacle to Russian intrigue, and that if he
should have been poisoned,--which the writer strongly hints may have been
the case,--some Minister under the influence of Russia must have done it.
Enough for this record. _Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui
l'admire_:[247] who can he be in this case?