A Budget of Paradoxes Volume I Part 22

"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 was {268} allowed 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 the _cra.s.s_ cases--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 a.s.serted 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 qualification {269} which of its own nature admits of proof be proved, as by the diploma or certificate, &c., leaving things which cannot be proved, as a.s.serted private study, intuition, inspiration, &c., to work their own way.

"Let it be highly penal to a.s.sert 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 pract.i.tioner 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 pract.i.tioner 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 now {270} in 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, a _Defence 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, {271} and was convicted of blasphemy in 1827, for which he suffered imprisonment, and got the name of the _Devil's Chaplain_. The following are quotations:

"For the book of Revelation, there was no original Greek at all, but _Erasmus_ wrote it himself in Switzerland, in the year 1516. Bishop Marsh,[598] vol. i. p. 320."--"Is not G.o.d 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 G.o.d give you any other? if it be not a sufficient guide, why has he given you _that_?"

I remember a votary of the Society being asked to subst.i.tute for _reason_ "the right leg," and for _guide_ "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 the _argumentum a 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's _Age 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 the _Age of Reason_ were 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 it {272} had 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 author _cabbala_. An anonymous correspondent spells _cabbala_ as follows, [Greek: chabball], 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 of _chemistry_, he finds the fated number in [Greek: chimeia]. 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.

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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 with _v_ and _j_ treated 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

Phiz, styx, wrong, buck, flame, quid.

I gave him the following, which he agreed was "admirable sense": I certainly think the words would never have come together except in this way:

I, quartz pyx, who fling muck beds.

I long thought that no human being could say this under any circ.u.mstances.

At last I happened to be reading a religious writer--as he thought himself--who threw aspersions on his opponents thick and threefold. Heyday!

came into my head, this fellow flings muck beds; he must be a quartz pyx.

And then I remembered that a pyx is a sacred vessel, and quartz is a hard stone, as hard as the heart of a religious foe-curser. So that the line is the motto of the ferocious sectarian, who turns his religious vessels into mudholders, for the benefit of those who will not see what he sees.

I can find no circ.u.mstances for the following, which I received from another:

Fritz! quick! land! hew gypsum box.

From other quarters I have the following:

Dumpy quiz! whirl back fogs next.

This might be said in time of haze to the queer little figure in the Dutch weather-toy, which comes out or goes in with the change in the atmosphere.

Again,

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Export my fund! Quiz black whigs.

This Squire Western might have said, who was always afraid of the whigs sending the sinking-fund over to Hanover. But the following is the best: it is good advice to a young man, very well expressed under the circ.u.mstances:

Get nymph; quiz sad brow; fix luck.

Which in more sober English would be, Marry; be cheerful; watch your business. There is more edification, more religion in this than in all the 666-interpretations put together.

Such things would make excellent writing copies, for they secure attention to every letter; _v_ and _j_ might be placed at the end.

ON G.o.dFREY HIGGINS.