Part 17 (2/2)

'Well, Mr. MacBorrowdale, in your recent observations, have you found anything likely to satisfy Jack of Dover, if he were prosecuting his inquiry among us?'

_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ Troth, no, my lord. I think, if he were among us, he would give up the search as hopeless. He found it so in his own day, and he would find it still more so now. Jack was both merry and wise.

We have less mirth in practice; and we have more wisdom in pretension, which Jack would not have admitted.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ He would have found it like Juvenal's search for patriotic virtue, when Catiline was everywhere, and Brutus and Cato were nowhere.{1}

1 Et Catilinam quoc.u.mque in populo videas, quoc.u.mque sub axe: sed nee Brutus erit, Bruti nec avunculus usquam.

--Juv. Sat. xiv. 41-43.

_Lord Curryfin._ Well, among us, if Jack did not find his superior, or even his equal, he would not have been at a loss for company to his mind. There is enough mirth for those who choose to enjoy it, and wisdom too, perhaps as much as he would have cared for. We ought to have more wisdom, as we have clearly more science.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Science is one thing, and wisdom is another.

Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers. If you look at the results which science has brought in its train, you will find them to consist almost wholly in elements of mischief. See how much belongs to the word Explosion alone, of which the ancients knew nothing. Explosions of powder-mills and powder-magazines; of coal-gas in mines and in houses; of high-pressure engines in s.h.i.+ps and boats and factories. See the complications and refinements of modes of destruction, in revolvers and rifles and sh.e.l.ls and rockets and cannon. See collisions and wrecks and every mode of disaster by land and by sea, resulting chiefly from the insanity for speed, in those who for the most part have nothing to do at the end of the race, which they run as if they were so many Mercuries speeding with messages from Jupiter.

Look at our scientific drainage, which turns refuse into poison. Look at the subsoil of London, whenever it is turned up to the air, converted by gas leakage into one ma.s.s of pestilent blackness, in which no vegetation can flourish, and above which, with the rapid growth of the ever-growing nuisance, no living thing will breathe with impunity. Look at our scientific machinery, which has destroyed domestic manufacture, which has subst.i.tuted rottenness for strength in the thing made, and physical degradation in crowded towns for healthy and comfortable country life in the makers. The day would fail, if I should attempt to enumerate the evils which science has inflicted on mankind. I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race.

_Lord Curryfin._ You have gone over a wide field, which we might exhaust a good bin of claret in fully discussing. But surely the facility of motion over the face of the earth and sea is both pleasant and profitable. We may now see the world with little expenditure of labour or time.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ You may be whisked over it, but you do not see it. You go from one great town to another, where manners and customs are not even now essentially different, and with this facility of intercourse become progressively less and less so. The intermediate country--which you never see, unless there is a show mountain, or waterfall, or ruin, for which there is a station, and to which you go as you would to any other exhibition--the intermediate country contains all that is really worth seeing, to enable you to judge of the various characteristics of men and the diversified objects of Nature.

_Lord Curryfin._ You can suspend your journey if you please, and see the intermediate country, if you prefer it.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ But who does prefer it? You travel round the world by a hand-book, as you do round an exhibition-room by a catalogue.

_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ Not to say that in the intermediate country you are punished by bad inns and bad wine; of which I confess myself intolerant.

I knew an unfortunate French tourist, who had made the round of Switzerland, and had but one expression for every stage of his journey: _Mauvaise auberge!_

_Lord Curryfin._ Well, then, what say you to the electric telegraph, by which you converse at the distance of thousands of miles? Even across the Atlantic, as no doubt we shall yet do.

_Mr. Gryll._ Some of us have already heard the doctor's opinion on that subject.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I have no wish to expedite communication with the Americans. If we could apply the power of electrical repulsion to preserve us from ever hearing anything more of them, I should think that we had for once derived a benefit from science.

_Mr. Gryll._ Your love for the Americans, doctor, seems something like that of Cicero's friend Marius for the Greeks. He would not take the nearest road to his villa, because it was called the Greek Road.{1} Perhaps if your nearest way home were called the American Road, you would make a circuit to avoid it.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I am happy to say I am not put to the test.

Magnetism, galvanism, electricity, are 'one form of many names.'{2} Without magnetism we should never have discovered America; to which we are indebted for nothing but evil; diseases in the worst forms that can afflict humanity, and slavery in the worst form in which slavery can cast. The Old World had the sugar-cane and the cotton-plant, though it did not so misuse them. Then, what good have we got from America? What good of any kind, from the whole continent and its islands, from the Esquimaux to Patagonia?

1 Non enim te puto Graecos ludos desiderare: praesertim quum Graecos ita non ames, ut ne ad villain quidem tuam via Grasca ire soleas.--Cicero: Ep. ad Div, vii. i.

2 (Greek phrase)--aeschylus: Prometheus.

_Mr. Gryll._ Newfoundland salt-fish, doctor.

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