(_By a Student of Jargon._)
By the courtesy of Professor Prawling, F. R. S., who has supplied us
with the MS. of his recent lecture before the Psycho-Economical Society,
we are in a position to give our readers a full account of that masterly
and epoch-making address, of which, strange to say, no adequate notice
has so far appeared in any newspaper.
Professor Prawling's credentials, we may premise, are of a nature to
inspire the utmost confidence. His father, Theodore Prawling, was the
inventor of the speedle, that remarkable implement, fully described by
_Punch_ in the early seventies, which rendered possible the
emulsification of all gelatinoid substances and revolutionised the
marmalade industry. He is duly commemorated by the fine statue which is
one of the principal features of Dundee. His son, however, has even
greater claims on our respect and admiration. Educated at the High
School, Crieff, and the Universities of Glasgow, Upsala, the Sorbonne
and Princeton, he is generally recognised in the United States as the
foremost authority on Paedological Gongorism and the cognate science of
Mendelian Economics.
The problem with which he grapples in his latest contribution to these
fascinating studies may be tersely summed up in a single sentence: Can a
healthy metabolism be superinduced on an economic system already showing
symptoms of extrinsic conglucination?
Professor Prawling is of opinion that it _can_, but only if and when the
evils of co-partnership and co-operation have been neutralized by a
diastolic synthesis. To compute exactly the extent to which these evils
have been developed he has devised a syncretic abacus, in which, on the
principle of the spectroscope, the aplanatic foci are arranged in
fluorescent nodules each equidistant from the metacentre. With a
frankness that cannot be too highly commended, Professor Prawling admits
that this instrument is founded on BENTHAM'S Panopticon. But the
deviations from BENTHAM and the expansions of his machine are far more
remarkable than the resemblances to it. Prawling--if he will allow us
the familiarity--is not a utilitarian. His aim is to re-establish our
textile pre-eminence by reconciling monistic individualism with the
fullest solidarity of the social complex. He is meticulously careful in
stressing the point that the demarcations arrived at by the use of his
abacus are not absolute, but conditioned by EINSTEIN'S theory of
relativity. The ancillary industries, each moving in its orbit, whether
jurassic or botulistic, must be placed on a contractual basis with
liberty of preferential retaliation. Thus the whole industrial polyphony
is linked up by enharmonic modulations, and thrombosis--or, at any rate,
conglucination--of the central ganglia of commerce is reduced to
negligible dimensions.
At this juncture it is well to point out in the interests of clarity
that regurgitation can only be avoided by a rigorous adhesion to the
canon of CRITTENDEN--that the unit of nutrition must vary inversely with
the square of dilution.
It will thus be seen that by the logical application of a few simple and
easily apprehended principles Professor Prawling has built up a great
edifice of practical economics, which, whether we regard it in its
subliminal or its pragmatic aspects, cannot fail to have influence on
the dynamics of International Industrialism.
One word more. The conglucination theory appeals with especial force to
_Punch_, because it reminds him of the kindred and remarkable
speculation on Snooling discussed by him many years ago. The new theory,
like the old, deserves to be treated "in no spirit of sedentary
sentimentalism, but in its largest and most oleaginous entirety. It is
no plan for fixing hat-pegs in a passage, nor is it a mode of treating
neuralgia with treacle." How true and appropriate this is. _Mutatis
mutandis_ we may add the further statement that it is "the truest and
tenderest thesis that can occupy the most calculating cosmopolite." The
corporate pursuit of a granulated conglucination is perhaps the highest
achievement of which the present generation is capable.
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Illustration: "I TRUST YOU'LL EXCUSE ME MENTIONING IT, MY GOOD FELLOW,
BUT THAT IS THE RIGHT ENTRANCE--ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE ROAD."
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More Impending Apologies.
"Cardinal Dubois, Archbishop of Rouen, has been translated, as most
of us expected, to the Archbishopric in Paris. Being a very
distinguished man of letters, the Academie Francaise would like to
include him among the Immorals, but, alas! they are 'full inside.'"
_Evening Paper._
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