Chapter 9

Fx= A0Ω0+ A1Ω1+ A2Ω2+ A3Ω3+ &c.

which he did not explain, though there is meaning to it in the quartos. At another time he was proposing the general solution of the[573]fifth degree by help of 625 independent equations of one form and 125 of another. The first separate memoir from any Transactions that I ever possessed was given to me when at Cambridge; the refutation (1819) of this asserted solution, presented to the Academy of Lisbon by Evangelista Torriano. I cannot say I read it. The tract above is an attack on modern mathematicians in general, and on the Board of Longitude, and Dr. Young.[574]

DR. MILNER'S PARADOXES.

1820. In this year died Dr. Isaac Milner,[575]President of Queens' College, Cambridge, one of the class of rational paradoxers. Under this name I include all who, in private life, and in matters which concern themselves, take their own course, and suit their own notions, no matter what other people may think of them. These men will put things to uses they were never intended for, to the great distress and disgust of their gregarious friends. I am one of the class, and I could write a little book of cases in which I have incurred absolute reproach for not "doing as other people do." I will name two of my atrocities: I took one of those butter-dishes which have for a top a dome with holes in it, which is turned inward, out of reach of accident, when not in use. Turning the dome inwards, I filled the dish with water, and put a sponge in the dome: the holes let it fill with water, and I had a penwiper, always moist, and worth its price five times over. "Why! what do you mean? It was made to hold butter. You are always at some queer thing or other!" I bought a leaden comb, intended to dye the hair, it being supposed that the application of lead will have this effect. I did not try: but I divided the comb into two, separated the part of closed prongs from the other; and thus I had two ruling machines. The lead marks paper, and by drawing the end of one of the machines along a ruler, I could rule twenty lines at a time, quite fit to write on. I thought I should have killed a friend to whom I explained it: he could not for the life of him understand how leadenlineson paper would dye the hair.

But Dr. Milner went beyond me. He wanted a seat suited to his shape, and he defied opinion to a fearful point.He spread a thick block of putty over a wooden chair and sat in it until it had taken a ceroplast copy of the proper seat. This he gave to a carpenter to be imitated in wood. One of the few now living who knew him—my friend, General Perronet Thompson[576]—answers for the wood, which was shown him by Milner himself; but he does not vouch for the material being putty, which was in the story told me at Cambridge; William Frend[577]also remembered it. Perhaps the Doctor took off his great seal in green wax, like the Crown; but some soft material he certainly adopted; and very comfortable he found the wooden copy.

Milner's lamp

The same gentleman vouches for Milner's lamp: but this had visiblesciencein it; the vulgar see no science in the construction of the chair. A hollow semi-cylinder, but not with a circular curve, revolved on pivots. The curve was calculated on the law that, whatever quantity of oil might be in the lamp, the position of equilibrium just brought the oil up to the edge of the cylinder, at which a bit of wick was placed. As the wick exhausted the oil, the cylinder slowly revolved about the pivots so as to keep the oil always touching the wick.

Great discoveries are always laughed at; but it is very often not the laugh of incredulity; it is a mode of distorting the sense of inferiority into a sense of superiority, or a mimicry of superiority interposed between the laugher and his feeling of inferiority. Two persons in conversationagreed that it was often a nuisance not to be able to lay hands on a bit of paper to mark the place in a book, every bit of paper on the table was sure to contain something not to be spared. I very quietly said that I always had a stock of bookmarkers ready cut, with a proper place for them: my readers owe many of my anecdotes to this absurd practice. My two colloquials burst into a fit of laughter; about what? Incredulity was out of the question; and there could be nothing foolish in my taking measures to avoid what they knew was an inconvenience. I was in this matter obviously their superior, and so they laughed at me. Much more candid was the Royal Duke of the last century, who was noted for slow ideas. "The rain comes into my mouth," said he, while riding. "Had not your Royal Highness better shut your mouth?" said the equerry. The Prince did so, and ought, by rule, to have laughed heartily at his adviser; instead of this, he said quietly, "It doesn't come in now."

HERBART'S MATHEMATICAL PSYCHOLOGY.

De Attentionis mensura causisque primariis. By J. F. Herbart.[578]Kœnigsberg, 1822, 4to.

This celebrated philosopher maintained that mathematics ought to be applied to psychology, in a separate tract, published also in 1822: the one above seems, therefore, to be his challenge on the subject. It is onattention, and I think it will hardly support Herbart's thesis. As a specimen of his formula, lettbe the time elapsed since the consideration began,βthe whole perceptive intensity of the individual,φthe whole of his mental force, andzthe force given to a notion by attention during the timet. Then,

z=φ(1 -ε-βt)

Now for a test. There is ajactura,v, the meaning of which I do not comprehend. If there be anything in it, my mathematical readers ought to interpret it from the formula

v=πφβ/(1 -β)ε-βt+ Cε-t

and to this task I leave them, wishing them better luck than mine. The time may come when other manifestations of mind, besidesbelief, shall be submitted to calculation: at that time, should it arrive, a final decision may be passed upon Herbart.

ON THE WHIZGIG.

The theory of the Whizgig considered; in as much as it mechanically exemplifies the three working properties of nature; which are now set forth under the guise of this toy, for children of all ages. London, 1822, 12mo (pp. 24, B. McMillan, Bow Street, Covent Garden).

The toy called thewhizgigwill be remembered by many. The writer is a follower of Jacob Behmen,[579]William Law,[580]Richard Clarke,[581]and Eugenius Philalethes.[582]Jacob Behmen first announced the three working properties of nature, which Newton stole, as described in theGentleman's Magazine, July, 1782, p. 329. These laws are illustrated in the whizgig. There is the harsh astringent, attractive compression; the bitter compunction, repulsive expansion; and the stinging anguish, duplex motion. The author hints that he has written other works, to which he gives no clue. I have heard that Behmen was pillaged by Newton, and Swedenborg[583]by Laplace,[584]and Pythagoras by Copernicus,[585]and Epicurus by Dalton,[586]&c. I do not think this mention will revive Behmen; but it may the whizgig, a very pretty toy, and philosophical withal, for few of those who used it could explain it.

SOME MYTHOLOGICAL PARADOXES.

A Grammar of infinite forms; or the mathematical elements of ancient philosophy and mythology. By Wm. Howison.[587]Edinburgh, 1823, 8vo.

A curius combination of geometry and mythology. Perseus, for instance, is treated under the head, "the evolution of diminishing hyperbolic branches."

The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients; part the second: or the key of Urania, the words of which will unlock all the mysteries of antiquity. Norwich, 1823, 12mo.A Companion to the Mythological Astronomy, &c., containing remarks on recent publications.... Norwich, 1824, 12mo.A new Theory of the Earth and of planetary motion; in which it is demonstrated that the Sun is vicegerent of his own system. Norwich, 1825, 12mo.The analyzation of the writings of the Jews, so far as they are found to have any connection with the sublime science of astronomy. [This is pp. 97-180 of some other work, being all I have seen.]

The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients; part the second: or the key of Urania, the words of which will unlock all the mysteries of antiquity. Norwich, 1823, 12mo.

A Companion to the Mythological Astronomy, &c., containing remarks on recent publications.... Norwich, 1824, 12mo.

A new Theory of the Earth and of planetary motion; in which it is demonstrated that the Sun is vicegerent of his own system. Norwich, 1825, 12mo.

The analyzation of the writings of the Jews, so far as they are found to have any connection with the sublime science of astronomy. [This is pp. 97-180 of some other work, being all I have seen.]

These works are all by Sampson Arnold Mackey,[588]for whom seeNotes and Queries, 1st S. viii. 468, 565, ix. 89, 179. Had it not been for actual quotations given by one correspondent only (1st S. viii. 565), that journal would have handed him down as a man of some real learning. An extraordinary man he certainly was: it is not one illiterate shoemaker in a thousand who could work upon such a singular mass of Sanskrit and Greek words, without showingevidence of being able to read a line in any language but his own, or to spell that correctly. He was an uneducated Godfrey Higgins.[589]A few extracts will put this in a strong light: one for history of science, one for astronomy, and one for philology:

"Sir Isaac Newton was of opinion that 'the atmosphere of the earth was the sensory of God; by which he was enabled to see quite round the earth:' which proves that Sir Isaac had no idea that God could see through the earth.

"Sir Richard [Phillips] has given the most rational explanation of the cause of the earth's elliptical orbit that I have ever seen in print. It is because the earth presents its watery hemisphere to the sun at one time and that of solid land the other; but why has he made his Oxonian astonished at the coincidence? It is what I taught in my attic twelve years before.

"Again, admitting that the Eloim were powerful and intelligent beings that managed these things, we would accusethemof being the authors of all the sufferings of Chrisna. And as they and the constellation of Leo were below the horizon, and consequently cut off from the end of the zodiac, there were but eleven constellations of the zodiac to be seen; the three at the end were wanted, but those three would be accused of bringing Chrisna into the troubles which at last ended in his death. All this would be expressed in the Eastern language by saying that Chrisna was persecuted by those Judoth Ishcarioth!!!!! [the five notes of exclamation are the author's]. But the astronomy of those distant ages, when the sun was at the south pole in winter, would leave five of those Decans cut off from our view, in the latitude of twenty-eight degrees; hence Chrisna died ofwounds from five Decans, but the whole five may be included in Judoth Ishcarioth! for the phrase means 'the men that are wanted at the extreme parts.' Ishcarioth is a compound ofish, a man, andcaratwanted or taken away, and oth the plural termination, more ancient thanim...."

I might show at length how Michael is the sun, and the D'-ev-'l in French Di-ob-al, also 'L-evi-ath-an—the evi being the radical part both of devil and leviathan—is the Nile, which the sun dried up for Moses to pass: a battle celebrated by Jude. Also howMoses, the same name asMuses, is frommesha, drawn out of the water, "and hence we called our land which is saved from the water by the name ofmarsh." But it will be of more use to collect the character of S. A. M. from such correspondents ofNotes and Queriesas have written after superficial examination. Great astronomical and philological attainments, much ability and learning; had evidently read and studied deeply; remarkable for the originality of his views upon the very abstruse subject of mythological astronomy, in which he exhibited great sagacity. Certainly his views wereoriginal; but their sagacity, if it be allowable to copy his own mode of etymologizing, is of anori-gin-alecast, resembling that of a person who puts to his mouth liquors both distilled and fermented.

A KANTESIAN JEWELER.

Principles of the Kantesian, or transcendental philosophy. By Thomas Wirgman.[590]London, 1824, 8vo.

Mr. Wirgman's mind was somewhat attuned to psychology; but he was cracky and vagarious. He had been a fashionable jeweler in St. James's Street, no doubt the son or grandson of Wirgman at "the well-known toy-shop inSt. James's Street," where Sam Johnson smartened himself with silver buckles. (Boswell,æt.69). He would not have the ridiculous large ones in fashion; and he would give no more than a guinea a pair; such, says Boswell, in Italics, were theprinciplesof the business: and I think this may be the first place in which the philosophical word was brought down from heaven to mix with men. However this may be,myWirgman sold snuff-boxes, among other things, and fifty years ago a fashionable snuff-boxer would be under inducement, if not positively obliged, to have a stock with very objectionable pictures. So it happened that Wirgman—by reason of a trifle too much candor—came under the notice of theSuppressionSociety, and ran considerable risk. Mr. Brougham was his counsel; and managed to get him acquitted. Years and years after this, when Mr. Brougham was deep in the formation of the London University (now University College), Mr. Wirgman called on him. "What now?" said Mr. B. with his most sarcastic look—a very perfect thing of its kind—"you're in a scrape again, I suppose!" "No! indeed!" said W., "my present object is to ask your interest for the chair of Moral Philosophy in the new University!" He had taken up Kant!

Mr. Wirgman, an itinerant paradoxer, called on me in 1831: he came to convert me. "I assure you," said he, "I am nothing but an old brute of a jeweler;" and his eye and manner were of the extreme of jocosity, as good in their way, as the satire of his former counsel. I mention him as one of that class who go away quite satisfied that they have wrought conviction. "Now," said he, "I'll make it clear to you! Suppose a number of gold-fishes in a glass bowl,—you understand? Well! I come with my cigar and go puff, puff, puff, over the bowl, until there is a little cloud of smoke: now, tell me, what will the gold-fishes say to that?" "I should imagine," said I, "That they would not know what to make of it." "By Jove! you're a Kantian;" said he, and with this and the like, he left me, vowing thatit was delightful to talk to so intelligent a person. The greatest compliment Wirgman ever received was from James Mill, who used to say he did notunderstandKant. That such a man as Mill should think this worth saying is a feather in the cap of the jocose jeweler.

Some of my readers will stare at my supposing that Boswell may have been the first down-bringer of the wordprinciplesinto common life; the best answer will be a prior instance of the word as true vernacular; it has never happened to me to notice one. Many words have very common uses which are not old. Take the following from Nichols (Anecd.ix. 263): "Lord Thurlow presents his best respects to Mr. and Mrs. Thicknesse, and assures them that he knows of no cause to complain of any part of Mr. Thicknesse's carriage; least of all the circumstance of sending the head to Ormond Street." Surely Mr. T. had lent Lord T. a satisfactory carriage with a movable head, and the above is a polite answer to inquiries. Not a bit of it!carriageis hereconduct, and theheadis abust. The vehicles of the rich, at the time, were coaches, chariots, chaises, etc., never carriages, which were rathercarts. Gibbon has the word for baggage-wagons. In Jane Austen's novels the word carriage is established.

WALSH'S DELUSIONS.

John Walsh,[591]of Cork (1786-1847). This discoverer has had the honor of a biography from Professor Boole, who, at my request, collected information about him on the scene of his labors. It is in thePhilosophical Magazinefor November, 1851, and will, I hope, be transferred to some biographical collection where it may find a larger class of readers. It is the best biography of a single hero of the kind that I know. Mr. Walsh introduced himself to me,as he did to many others, in the anterowlandian days of the Post-office; his unpaid letters were double, treble, &c. They contained his pamphlets, and cost their weight in silver: all have the name of the author, and all are in octavo or in quarto letter-form: most are in four pages, and all dated from Cork. I have the following by me:

The Geometric Base, 1825.—The theory of plane angles. 1827.—Three Letters to Dr. Francis Sadleir. 1838.—The invention of polar geometry. By Irelandus. 1839.—The theory of partial functions. Letter to Lord Brougham. 1839.—On the invention of polar geometry. 1839.—Letter to the Editor of the Edinburgh Review. 1840.—Irish Manufacture. A new method of tangents. 1841.—The normal diameter in curves. 1843.—Letter to Sir R. Peel. 1845.—[Hints that Government should compel the introduction of Walsh's Geometry into Universities.]—Solution of Equations of the higher orders. 1845.

Besides these, there is aMetalogia, and I know not how many others.

Mr. Boole,[592]who has taken the moral and social features of Walsh's delusions from the commiserating point of view, which makes ridicule out of place, has been obliged to treat Walsh as Scott's Alan Fairford treated his client Peter Peebles; namely, keep the scarecrow out of court while the case was argued. My plan requires me to bring him in: and when he comes in at the door, pity and sympathy fly out at the window. Let the reader remember that he was not an ignoramus in mathematics: he might have won his spurs if he could have first served as an esquire. Though so illiterate that even in Ireland he never picked up anything more Latin thanIrelandus, he was a very pretty mathematician spoiled in the making by intense self-opinion.

This is part of a private letter to me at the back of a page of print: I had never addressed a word to him:

"There are no limits in mathematics, and those that assert there are, are infinite ruffians, ignorant, lying blackguards. There is no differential calculus, no Taylor's theorem, no calculus of variations, &c. in mathematics. There is no quackery whatever in mathematics; no % equal to anything. What sheer ignorant blackguardism that!

"In mechanics the parallelogram of forces is quackery, and is dangerous; for nothing is at rest, or in uniform, or in rectilinear motion, in the universe. Variable motion is an essential property of matter. Laplace's demonstration of the parallelogram of forces is a begging of the question; and the attempts of them all to show that the difference of twenty minutes between the sidereal and actual revolution of the earth round the sun arises from the tugging of the Sun and Moon at the pot-belly of the earth, without being sure even that the earth has a pot-belly at all, is perfect quackery. The said difference arising from and demonstrating the revolution of the Sun itself round some distant center."

In the letter to Lord Brougham we read as follows:

"I ask the Royal Society of London, I ask the Saxon crew of that crazy hulk, where is the dogma of their philosophic god now?... When the Royal Society of London, and the Academy of Sciences of Paris, shall have read this memorandum, how will they appear? Like two cur dogs in the paws of the noblest beast of the forest.... Just as this note was going to press, a volume lately published by you was put into my hands, wherein you attempt to defend the fluxions andPrincipiaof Newton. Man! what are you about? You come forward now with your special pleading, and fraught with national prejudice, to defend, like the philosopher Grassi,[593]the persecutor of Galileo, principlesand reasoning which, unless you are actually insane, or an ignorant quack in mathematics, you know are mathematically false. What a moral lesson this for the students of the University of London from its head! Man! demonstrate corollary 3, in this note, by the lying dogma of Newton, or turn your thoughts to something you understand.

"Walsh Irelandus."

Mr. Walsh—honor to his memory—once had the consideration to save me postage by addressing a pamphlet under cover to a Member of Parliament, with an explanatory letter. In that letter he gives a candid opinion of himself:

(1838.) "Mr. Walsh takes leave to send the enclosed corrected copy to Mr. Hutton as one of the Council of the University of London, and to save postage for the Professor of Mathematics there. He will find in it geometry more deep and subtle, and at the same time more simple and elegant, than it was ever contemplated human genius could invent."

He then proceeds to set forth that a certain "tomfoolery lemma," with its "tomfoolery" superstructure, "never had existence outside the shallow brains of its inventor," Euclid. He then proceeds thus:

"The same spirit that animated those philosophers who sent Galileo to the Inquisition animates all the philosophers of the present day without exception. If anything can free them from the yoke of error, it is the [Walsh] problem of double tangence. But free them it will, how deeply soever they may be sunk into mental slavery—and God knows that is deeply enough; and they bear it with an admirable grace; for none bear slavery with a better grace than tyrants. The lads must adopt my theory.... It will be a sad reverse for all our great professors to be compelled to become schoolboys in their gray years. But the sore scratch is to be compelled, as they had before been compelled one thousand years ago, to have recourse to Ireland for instruction."

The following "Impromptu" is no doubt by Walsh himself: he was more of a poet than of an astronomer:

"Through ages unfriended,With sophistry blended,Deep science in Chaos had slept;Its limits were fettered,Its voters unlettered,Its students in movements but crept.Till, despite of great foes,GreatWalshfirst arose,And with logical might did unravelThose mazes of knowledge,Ne'er known in a college,Though sought for with unceasing travail.With cheers we now hail him,May success never fail him,In Polar Geometrical mining;Till his foes be as tamedAs his works are far-famedFor true philosophic refining."

"Through ages unfriended,

With sophistry blended,

Deep science in Chaos had slept;

Its limits were fettered,

Its voters unlettered,

Its students in movements but crept.

Till, despite of great foes,

GreatWalshfirst arose,

And with logical might did unravel

Those mazes of knowledge,

Ne'er known in a college,

Though sought for with unceasing travail.

With cheers we now hail him,

May success never fail him,

In Polar Geometrical mining;

Till his foes be as tamed

As his works are far-famed

For true philosophic refining."

Walsh's system is, that all mathematics and physics are wrong: there is hardly one proposition in Euclid which is demonstrated. His example ought to warn all who rely on their own evidence to their own success. He was not, properly speaking, insane; he only spoke his mind more freely than many others of his class. The poor fellow died in the Cork union, during the famine. He had lived a happy life, contemplating his own perfections, like Brahma on the lotus-leaf.[594]

GROWTH OF FREEDOM OF OPINION.

The year 1825 brings me to about the middle of myAthenæumlist: that is, so far as mere number of names mentioned is concerned. Freedom of opinion, beyond a doubt, is gaining ground, for good or for evil, according to what the speaker happens to think: admission of authority is no longer made in the old way. If we take soul-cure and body-cure, divinity and medicine, it is manifest that a change has come over us. Time was when it was enough that dose or dogma should be certified by "Il a été ordonné, Monsieur, il a été ordonné,"[595]as the apothecary said when he wanted to operate upon poor de Porceaugnac. Very much changed: but whether for good or for evil does not now matter; the question is, whether contempt ofdemonstrationsuch as our paradoxers show has augmented with the rejection ofdogmatic authority. It ought to be just the other way: for the worship of reason is the system on which, if we trust them, the deniers of guidance ground their plan of life. The following attempt at an experiment on this point is the best which I can make; and, so far as I know, the first that ever was made.

Say that my list of paradoxers divides in 1825: this of itself proves nothing, because so many of the earlier books are lost, or not likely to be come at. It would be a fearful rate of increase which would make the number of paradoxes since 1825 equal to the whole number before that date. Let us turn now to another collection of mine, arithmetical books, of which I have published a list. The two collections are similarly circumstanced as to new and old books; the paradoxes had no care given to the collection of either; the arithmetical books equal care to both. The list of arithmetical books, published in 1847, divides at 1735; the paradoxes, up to 1863, divide at 1825. If we take the process which is most against the distinction, and allow every yearfrom 1847 to 1863 to add a year to 1735, we should say that the arithmetical writers divide at 1751. This rough process may serve, with sufficient certainty, to show that the proportion of paradoxes to books of sober demonstration is on the increase; and probably, quite as much as the proportion of heterodoxes to books of orthodox adherence. So that divinity and medicine may say to geometry, Don'tyousneer: if rationalism, homœopathy, and their congeners are on the rise among us, your enemies are increasing quite as fast. But geometry replies—Dear friends, content yourselves with the rational inference that the rise of heterodoxy within your pales is not conclusive against you, taken alone; for it rises at the same time within mine. Store within your garners the precious argument that you are not proved wrong by increase of dissent; because there is increase of dissent against exact science. But do not thereforeevenyourselves to me: remember that you, Dame Divinity, have inflicted every kind of penalty, from the stake to the stocks, in aid of your reasoning; remember that you, Mother Medicine, have not many years ago applied to Parliament for increase of forcible hindrance of antipharmacopœal drenches, pills, and powders. Who ever heard of my asking the legislature to fine blundering circle-squarers? Remember that the D in dogma is the D in decay; but the D in demonstration is the D in durability.

THE STATUS OF MEDICINE.

I have known a medical man—a young one—who was seriously of the opinion that the country ought to be divided into medical parishes, with a practitioner appointed to each, and a penalty for calling in any but the incumbent curer. How should people know how to choose? The hair-dressers once petitioned Parliament for an act to compel people to wear wigs. My own opinion is of the opposite extreme, as in the following letter (Examiner, April 5, 1856); which, to my surprise, I saw reprinted in a medical journal, as aplan not absolutely to be rejected. I am perfectly satisfied that it would greatly promote true medical orthodoxy, the predominance of well educated thinkers, and the development of their desirable differences.

"Sir.The Medical Bill and the medical question generally is one on which experience would teach, if people would be taught.

"The great soul question took three hundred years to settle: the little body question might be settled in thirty years, if the decisions in the former question were studied.

"Time was when the State believed, as honestly as ever it believed anything, that itmight,could, andshouldfind out the true doctrine for the poor ignorant community; to which, like a worthy honest state, it addedwould. Accordingly, by the assistance of the Church, which undertook the physic, the surgery, and the pharmacy of sound doctrine all by itself, it sent forth its legally qualified teachers into every parish, and woe to the man who called in any other. They burnt that man, they whipped him, they imprisoned him, they did everything but what was Christian to him, all for his soul's health and the amendment of his excesses.

"But men would not submit. To the argument that the State was a father to the ignorant, they replied that it was at best the ignorant father of an ignorant son, and that a blind man could find his way into a ditch without another blind man to help him. And when the State said—But here we have the Church, which knows all about it, the ignorant community declared that it had a right to judge that question, and that it would judge it. It also said that the Church was never one thing long, and that it progressed, on the whole, rather more slowly than the ignorant community.

"The end of it was, in this country, that every one who chose taught all who chose to let him teach, on condition only of an open and true registration. The State wasallowed to patronize one particular Church, so that no one need trouble himself to choose a pastor from the mere necessity of choosing. But every church is allowed its colleges, its studies, its diplomas; and every man is allowed his choice. There is no proof that our souls are worse off than in the sixteenth century; and, judging by fruits, there is much reason to hope they are better off.

"Now the little body question is a perfect parallel to the great soul question in all its circumstances. The only things in which the parallel fails are the following: Every one who believes in a future state sees that the soul question is incomparably more important than the body question, and every one can try the body question by experiment to a larger extent than the soul question. The proverb, which always has a spark of truth at the bottom, says that every man of forty is either a fool or a physician; but did even the proverb maker ever dare to say that every man is at any age either a fool or a fit teacher of religion?

"Common sense points out the following settlement of the medical question: and to this it will come sooner or later.

"Let every man who chooses—subject to one common law of manslaughter for all thecrasscases—doctor the bodies of all who choose to trust him, and recover payment according to agreement in the courts of law. Provided always that every person practising should be registered at a moderate fee in a register to be republished every six months.

"Let the register give the name, address, and asserted qualification of each candidate—as licentiate, or doctor, or what not, of this or that college, hall, university, &c., home or foreign. Let it be competent to any man to describe himself as qualified by study in public schools without a diploma, or by private study, or even by intuition or divine inspiration, if he please. But whatever he holds his qualification to be, that let him declare. Let all qualificationwhich of its own nature admits of proof be proved, as by the diploma or certificate, &c., leaving things which cannot be proved, as asserted private study, intuition, inspiration, &c., to work their own way.

"Let it be highly penal to assert to the patient any qualification which is not in the register, and let the register be sold very cheap. Let the registrar give each registered practitioner a copy of the register in his own case; let any patient have the power to demand a sight of this copy; and let no money for attendance be recoverable in any case in which there has been false representation.

"Let any party in any suit have a right to produce what medical testimony he pleases. Let the medical witness produce his register, and let his evidence be for the jury, as is that of an engineer or a practitioner of any art which is not attested by diplomas.

"Let any man who practises without venturing to put his name on the register be liable to fine and imprisonment.

"The consequence would be that, as now, anybody who pleases might practise; for the medical world is well aware that there is no power of preventing what they call quacks from practising. But very different from what is now, every man who practises would be obliged to tell the whole world what his claim is, and would run a great risk if he dared to tell his patient in private anything different from what he had told the whole world.

"The consequence would be that a real education in anatomy, physiology, chemistry, surgery, and what is known of the thing called medicine, would acquire more importance than it now has.

"It is curious to see how completely the medical man of the nineteenth century squares with the priest of the sixteenth century. The clergy of all sects are now better divines and better men than they ever were. They have lost Bacon's reproach that they took a smaller measure of things than any other educated men; and the physicians are nowin this particular the rearguard of the learned world; though it may be true that the rear in our day is further on in the march than the van of Bacon's day. Nor will they ever recover the lost position until medicine is as free as religion.

"To this it must come. To this the public, which will decide for itself, has determined it shall come. To this the public has, in fact, brought it, but on a plan which it is not desirable to make permanent. We will be as free to take care of our bodies as of our souls and of our goods. This is the profession of all who sign as I do, and the practice of most of those who would not like the name

"Heteropath."

The motion of the Sun in the Ecliptic, proved to be uniform in a circular orbit ... with preliminary observations on the fallacy of the Solar System. By Bartholomew Prescott,[596]1825, 8vo.

The author had published, in 1803, aDefence of the Divine System, which I never saw; also,On the inverted scheme of Copernicus. The above work is clever in its satire.

THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE SOCIETY.

Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society, established Nov. 12, 1824. Twenty-four plain questions to honest men.

These are two broadsides of August and November, 1826, signed by Robert Taylor,[597]A.B., Orator of the Christian Evidence Society. This gentleman was a clergyman,and was convicted of blasphemy in 1827, for which he suffered imprisonment, and got the name of theDevil's Chaplain. The following are quotations:

"For the book of Revelation, there was no original Greek at all, butErasmuswrote it himself in Switzerland, in the year 1516. Bishop Marsh,[598]vol. i. p. 320."—"Is not God the author of your reason? Can he then be the author of anything which is contrary to your reason? If reason be a sufficient guide, why should God give you any other? if it be not a sufficient guide, why has he given youthat?"

I remember a votary of the Society being asked to substitute forreason"the right leg," and forguide"support," and to answer the two last questions: he said there must be a quibble, but he did not see what. It is pleasant to reflect that theargumentum à carcere[599]is obsolete. One great defect of it was that it did not go far enough: there should have been laws against subscriptions for blasphemers, against dealing at their shops, and against rich widows marrying them.

Had I taken in theology, I must have entered books against Christianity. I mention the above, and Paine'sAge of Reason, simply because they are the only English modern works that ever came in my way without my asking for them. The three parts of theAge of Reasonwere published in Paris 1793, Paris 1795, and New York 1807. Carlile's[600]edition is of London, 1818, 8vo. It must be republished when the time comes, to show what stuff governments and clergy were afraid of at the beginning of this century. I should never have seen the book, if ithad not been prohibited: a bookseller put it under my nose with a fearful look round him; and I could do no less, in common curiosity, than buy a work which had been so complimented by church and state. And when I had read it, I said in my mind to church and state,—Confound you! you have taken me in worse than any reviewer I ever met with. I forget what I gave for the book, but I ought to have been able to claim compensation somewhere.

THE CABBALA.

Cabbala Algebraica. Auctore Gul. Lud. Christmann.[601]Stuttgard, 1827, 4to.

Eighty closely printed pages of an attempt to solve equations of every degree, which has a process called by the authorcabbala. An anonymous correspondent spellscabbalaas follows,χαββαλλ, and makes 666 out of its letters. This gentleman has sent me since my Budget commenced, a little heap of satirical communications, each having a 666 or two; for instance, alluding to my remarks on the spelling ofchemistry, he finds the fated number inχιμεια. With these are challenges to explain them, and hints about the end of the world. All these letters have different fantastic seals; one of them with the legend "keep your temper,"—another bearing "bank token five pence." The only signature is a triangle with a little circle in it, which I interpret to mean that the writer confesses himself to be the round man stuck in the three-cornered hole, to be explained as in Sydney Smith's joke.

There is a kind of Cabbala Alphabetica which the investigators of the numerals in words would do well to take up: it is the formation of sentences which contain all the letters of the alphabet, and each only once. No one has done it withvandjtreated as consonants; but you and I can do it. Dr. Whewell[602]and I amused ourselves, some years ago, with attempts. He could not make sense, though he joined words: he gave me

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