Impressions of Theophrastus Such

How We Encourage Research

The serene and beneficent goddess Truth, like other deities whose

disposition has been too hastily inferred from that of the men who have

invoked them, can hardly be well pleased with much of the worship paid

to her even in this milder age, when the stake and the rack have ceased

to form part of her ritual. Some cruelties still pass for service done

in her honour: no thumb-screw is used, no iron boot, no scorching of

flesh; but plenty of controversial bruising, laceration, and even

lifelong maiming. Less than formerly; but so long as this sort of

truth-worship has the sanction of a public that can often understand

nothing in a controversy except personal sarcasm or slanderous ridicule,

it is likely to continue. The sufferings of its victims are often as

little regarded as those of the sacrificial pig offered in old time,

with what we now regard as a sad miscalculation of effects.

One such victim is my old acquaintance Merman.

Twenty years ago Merman was a young man of promise, a conveyancer with a

practice which had certainly budded, but, like Aaron's rod, seemed not

destined to proceed further in that marvellous activity. Meanwhile he

occupied himself in miscellaneous periodical writing and in a

multifarious study of moral and physical science. What chiefly attracted

him in all subjects were the vexed questions which have the advantage of

not admitting the decisive proof or disproof that renders many ingenious

arguments superannuated. Not that Merman had a wrangling disposition: he

put all his doubts, queries, and paradoxes deferentially, contended

without unpleasant heat and only with a sonorous eagerness against the

personality of Homer, expressed himself civilly though firmly on the

origin of language, and had tact enough to drop at the right moment such

subjects as the ultimate reduction of all the so-called elementary

substances, his own total scepticism concerning Manetho's chronology, or

even the relation between the magnetic condition of the earth and the

outbreak of revolutionary tendencies. Such flexibility was naturally

much helped by his amiable feeling towards woman, whose nervous system,

he was convinced, would not bear the continuous strain of difficult

topics; and also by his willingness to contribute a song whenever the

same desultory charmer proposed music. Indeed his tastes were domestic

enough to beguile him into marriage when his resources were still very

moderate and partly uncertain. His friends wished that so ingenious and

agreeable a fellow might have more prosperity than they ventured to hope

for him, their chief regret on his account being that he did not

concentrate his talent and leave off forming opinions on at least

half-a-dozen of the subjects over which he scattered his attention,

especially now that he had married a "nice little woman" (the generic

name for acquaintances' wives when they are not markedly disagreeable).

He could not, they observed, want all his various knowledge and Laputan

ideas for his periodical writing which brought him most of his bread,

and he would do well to use his talents in getting a speciality that

would fit him for a post. Perhaps these well-disposed persons were a

little rash in presuming that fitness for a post would be the surest

ground for getting it; and on the whole, in now looking back on their

wishes for Merman, their chief satisfaction must be that those wishes

did not contribute to the actual result.

For in an evil hour Merman did concentrate himself. He had for many

years taken into his interest the comparative history of the ancient

civilisations, but it had not preoccupied him so as to narrow his

generous attention to everything else. One sleepless night, however (his

wife has more than once narrated to me the details of an event memorable

to her as the beginning of sorrows), after spending some hours over the

epoch-making work of Grampus, a new idea seized him with regard to the

possible connection of certain symbolic monuments common to widely

scattered races. Merman started up in bed. The night was cold, and the

sudden withdrawal of warmth made his wife first dream of a snowball,

and then cry--

"What is the matter, Proteus?"

"A great matter, Julia. That fellow Grampus, whose book is cried up as a

revelation, is all wrong about the Magicodumbras and the Zuzumotzis, and

I have got hold of the right clue."

"Good gracious! does it matter so much? Don't drag the clothes, dear."

"It signifies this, Julia, that if I am right I shall set the world

right; I shall regenerate history; I shall win the mind of Europe to a

new view of social origins; I shall bruise the head of many

superstitions."

"Oh no, dear, don't go too far into things. Lie down again. You have

been dreaming. What are the Madicojumbras and Zuzitotzums? I never heard

you talk of them before. What use can it be troubling yourself about

such things?"

"That is the way, Julia--that is the way wives alienate their husbands,

and make any hearth pleasanter to him than his own!"

"What _do_ you mean, Proteus?"

"Why, if a woman will not try to understand her husband's ideas, or at

least to believe that they are of more value than she can understand--if

she is to join anybody who happens to be against him, and suppose he is

a fool because others contradict him--there is an end of our happiness.

That is all I have to say."

"Oh no, Proteus, dear. I do believe what you say is right That is my

only guide. I am sure I never have any opinions in any other way: I mean

about subjects. Of course there are many little things that would tease

you, that you like me to judge of for myself. I know I said once that I

did not want you to sing 'Oh ruddier than the cherry,' because it was

not in your voice. But I cannot remember ever differing from you about

_subjects_. I never in my life thought any one cleverer than you."

Julia Merman was really a "nice little woman," not one of the stately

Dians sometimes spoken of in those terms. Her black _silhouette_ had a

very infantine aspect, but she had discernment and wisdom enough to act

on the strong hint of that memorable conversation, never again giving

her husband the slightest ground for suspecting that she thought

treasonably of his ideas in relation to the Magicodumbras and

Zuzumotzis, or in the least relaxed her faith in his infallibility

because Europe was not also convinced of it. It was well for her that

she did not increase her troubles in this way; but to do her justice,

what she was chiefly anxious about was to avoid increasing her husband's

troubles.

Not that these were great in the beginning. In the first development and

writing out of his scheme, Merman had a more intense kind of

intellectual pleasure than he had ever known before. His face became

more radiant, his general view of human prospects more cheerful.

Foreseeing that truth as presented by himself would win the recognition

of his contemporaries, he excused with much liberality their rather

rough treatment of other theorists whose basis was less perfect. His own

periodical criticisms had never before been so amiable: he was sorry for

that unlucky majority whom the spirit of the age, or some other

prompting more definite and local, compelled to write without any

particular ideas. The possession of an original theory which has not yet

been assailed must certainly sweeten the temper of a man who is not

beforehand ill-natured. And Merman was the reverse of ill-natured.

But the hour of publication came; and to half-a-dozen persons, described

as the learned world of two hemispheres, it became known that Grampus

was attacked. This might have been a small matter; for who or what on

earth that is good for anything is not assailed by ignorance, stupidity,

or malice--and sometimes even by just objection? But on examination it

appeared that the attack might possibly be held damaging, unless the

ignorance of the author were well exposed and his pretended facts shown

to be chimeras of that remarkably hideous kind begotten by imperfect

learning on the more feminine element of original incapacity. Grampus

himself did not immediately cut open the volume which Merman had been

careful to send him, not without a very lively and shifting conception

of the possible effects which the explosive gift might produce on the

too eminent scholar--effects that must certainly have set in on the

third day from the despatch of the parcel. But in point of fact Grampus

knew nothing of the book until his friend Lord Narwhal sent him an

American newspaper containing a spirited article by the well-known

Professor Sperm N. Whale which was rather equivocal in its bearing, the

passages quoted from Merman being of rather a telling sort, and the

paragraphs which seemed to blow defiance being unaccountably feeble,

coming from so distinguished a Cetacean. Then, by another post, arrived

letters from Butzkopf and Dugong, both men whose signatures were

familiar to the Teutonic world in the _Selten-erscheinende

Monat-schrift_ or Hayrick for the insertion of Split Hairs, asking their

Master whether he meant to take up the combat, because, in the contrary

case, both were ready.

Thus America and Germany were roused, though England was still drowsy,

and it seemed time now for Grampus to find Merman's book under the heap

and cut it open. For his own part he was perfectly at ease about his

system; but this is a world in which the truth requires defence, and

specious falsehood must be met with exposure. Grampus having once looked

through the book, no longer wanted any urging to write the most crushing

of replies. This, and nothing less than this, was due from him to the

cause of sound inquiry; and the punishment would cost him little pains.

In three weeks from that time the palpitating Merman saw his book

announced in the programme of the leading Review. No need for Grampus to

put his signature. Who else had his vast yet microscopic knowledge, who

else his power of epithet? This article in which Merman was pilloried

and as good as mutilated--for he was shown to have neither ear nor nose

for the subtleties of philological and archaeological study--was much

read and more talked of, not because of any interest in the system of

Grampus, or any precise conception of the danger attending lax views of

the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis, but because the sharp epigrams with

which the victim was lacerated, and the soaring fountains of acrid mud

which were shot upward and poured over the fresh wounds, were found

amusing in recital. A favourite passage was one in which a certain kind

of sciolist was described as a creature of the Walrus kind, having a

phantasmal resemblance to higher animals when seen by ignorant minds in

the twilight, dabbling or hobbling in first one element and then the

other, without parts or organs suited to either, in fact one of Nature's

impostors who could not be said to have any artful pretences, since a

congenital incompetence to all precision of aim and movement made their

every action a pretence--just as a being born in doeskin gloves would

necessarily pass a judgment on surfaces, but we all know what his

judgment would be worth. In drawing-room circles, and for the immediate

hour, this ingenious comparison was as damaging as the showing up of

Merman's mistakes and the mere smattering of linguistic and historical

knowledge which he had presumed to be a sufficient basis for theorising;

but the more learned cited his blunders aside to each other and laughed

the laugh of the initiated. In fact, Merman's was a remarkable case of

sudden notoriety. In London drums and clubs he was spoken of abundantly

as one who had written ridiculously about the Magicodumbras and

Zuzumotzis: the leaders of conversation, whether Christians, Jews,

infidels, or of any other confession except the confession of ignorance,

pronouncing him shallow and indiscreet if not presumptuous and absurd.

He was heard of at Warsaw, and even Paris took knowledge of him. M.

Cachalot had not read either Grampus or Merman, but he heard of their

dispute in time to insert a paragraph upon it in his brilliant work,

_L'orient au point de vue actuel_, in which he was dispassionate enough

to speak of Grampus as possessing a _coup d'oeil presque franais_ in

matters of historical interpretation, and of Merman as nevertheless an

objector _qui mérite d'être connu_. M. Porpesse, also, availing himself

of M. Cachalot's knowledge, reproduced it in an article with certain

additions, which it is only fair to distinguish as his own, implying

that the vigorous English of Grampus was not always as correct as a

Frenchman could desire, while Merman's objections were more sophistical

than solid. Presently, indeed, there appeared an able _extrait_ of

Grampus's article in the valuable _Rapporteur scientifique et

historique_, and Merman's mistakes were thus brought under the notice of

certain Frenchmen who are among the masters of those who know on

oriental subjects. In a word, Merman, though not extensively read, was

extensively read about.

Meanwhile, how did he like it? Perhaps nobody, except his wife, for a

moment reflected on that. An amused society considered that he was

severely punished, but did not take the trouble to imagine his

sensations; indeed this would have been a difficulty for persons less

sensitive and excitable than Merman himself. Perhaps that popular

comparison of the Walrus had truth enough to bite and blister on

thorough application, even if exultant ignorance had not applauded it.

But it is well known that the walrus, though not in the least a

malignant animal, if allowed to display its remarkably plain person and

blundering performances at ease in any element it chooses, becomes

desperately savage and musters alarming auxiliaries when attacked or

hurt. In this characteristic, at least, Merman resembled the walrus. And

now he concentrated himself with a vengeance. That his counter-theory

was fundamentally the right one he had a genuine conviction, whatever

collateral mistakes he might have committed; and his bread would not

cease to be bitter to him until he had convinced his contemporaries that

Grampus had used his minute learning as a dust-cloud to hide

sophistical evasions--that, in fact, minute learning was an obstacle to

clear-sighted judgment, more especially with regard to the Magicodumbras

and Zuzumotzis, and that the best preparation in this matter was a wide

survey of history and a diversified observation of men. Still, Merman

was resolved to muster all the learning within his reach, and he

wandered day and night through many wildernesses of German print, he

tried compendious methods of learning oriental tongues, and, so to

speak, getting at the marrow of languages independently of the bones,

for the chance of finding details to corroborate his own views, or

possibly even to detect Grampus in some oversight or textual tampering.

All other work was neglected: rare clients were sent away and amazed

editors found this maniac indifferent to his chance of getting

book-parcels from them. It was many months before Merman had satisfied

himself that he was strong enough to face round upon his adversary. But

at last he had prepared sixty condensed pages of eager argument which

seemed to him worthy to rank with the best models of controversial

writing. He had acknowledged his mistakes, but had restated his theory

so as to show that it was left intact in spite of them; and he had even

found cases in which Ziphius, Microps, Scrag Whale the explorer, and

other Cetaceans of unanswerable authority, were decidedly at issue with

Grampus. Especially a passage cited by this last from that greatest of

fossils Megalosaurus was demonstrated by Merman to be capable of three

different interpretations, all preferable to that chosen by Grampus, who

took the words in their most literal sense; for, 1°, the incomparable

Saurian, alike unequalled in close observation and far-glancing

comprehensiveness, might have meant those words ironically; 2°, _motzis_

was probably a false reading for _potzis_, in which case its bearing was

reversed; and 3°, it is known that in the age of the Saurians there

were conceptions about the _motzis_ which entirely remove it from the

category of things comprehensible in an age when Saurians run

ridiculously small: all which views were godfathered by names quite fit

to be ranked with that of Grampus. In fine, Merman wound up his

rejoinder by sincerely thanking the eminent adversary without whose

fierce assault he might not have undertaken a revision in the course of

which he had met with unexpected and striking confirmations of his own

fundamental views. Evidently Merman's anger was at white heat.

The rejoinder being complete, all that remained was to find a suitable

medium for its publication. This was not so easy. Distinguished mediums

would not lend themselves to contradictions of Grampus, or if they

would, Merman's article was too long and too abstruse, while he would

not consent to leave anything out of an article which had no

superfluities; for all this happened years ago when the world was at a

different stage. At last, however, he got his rejoinder printed, and not

on hard terms, since the medium, in every sense modest, did not ask him

to pay for its insertion.

But if Merman expected to call out Grampus again, he was mistaken.

Everybody felt it too absurd that Merman should undertake to correct

Grampus in matters of erudition, and an eminent man has something else

to do than to refute a petty objector twice over. What was essential had

been done: the public had been enabled to form a true judgment of

Merman's incapacity, the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis were but

subsidiary elements in Grampus's system, and Merman might now be dealt

with by younger members of the master's school. But he had at least the

satisfaction of finding that he had raised a discussion which would not

be let die. The followers of Grampus took it up with an ardour and

industry of research worthy of their exemplar. Butzkopf made it the

subject of an elaborate _Einleitung_ to his important work, _Die

Bedeutung des Aegyptischen Labyrinthes_; and Dugong, in a remarkable

address which he delivered to a learned society in Central Europe,

introduced Merman's theory with so much power of sarcasm that it became

a theme of more or less derisive allusion to men of many tongues. Merman

with his Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis was on the way to become a

proverb, being used illustratively by many able journalists who took

those names of questionable things to be Merman's own invention, "than

which," said one of the graver guides, "we can recall few more

melancholy examples of speculative aberration." Naturally the subject

passed into popular literature, and figured very commonly in advertised

programmes. The fluent Loligo, the formidable Shark, and a younger

member of his remarkable family known as S. Catulus, made a special

reputation by their numerous articles, eloquent, lively, or abusive, all

on the same theme, under titles ingeniously varied, alliterative,

sonorous, or boldly fanciful; such as, "Moments with Mr Merman," "Mr

Merman and the Magicodumbras," "Greenland Grampus and Proteus Merman,"

"Grampian Heights and their Climbers, or the New Excelsior." They tossed

him on short sentences; they swathed him in paragraphs of winding

imagery; they found him at once a mere plagiarist and a theoriser of

unexampled perversity, ridiculously wrong about _potzis_ and ignorant of

Pali; they hinted, indeed, at certain things which to their knowledge he

had silently brooded over in his boyhood, and seemed tolerably well

assured that this preposterous attempt to gainsay an incomparable

Cetacean of world-wide fame had its origin in a peculiar mixture of

bitterness and eccentricity which, rightly estimated and seen in its

definite proportions, would furnish the best key to his argumentation.

All alike were sorry for Merman's lack of sound learning, but how could

their readers be sorry? Sound learning would not have been amusing; and

as it was, Merman was made to furnish these readers with amusement at no

expense of trouble on their part. Even burlesque writers looked into his

book to see where it could be made use of, and those who did not know

him were desirous of meeting him at dinner as one likely to feed their

comic vein.

On the other hand, he made a serious figure in sermons under the name of

"Some" or "Others" who had attempted presumptuously to scale eminences

too high and arduous for human ability, and had given an example of

ignominious failure edifying to the humble Christian.

All this might be very advantageous for able persons whose superfluous

fund of expression needed a paying investment, but the effect on Merman

himself was unhappily not so transient as the busy writing and speaking

of which he had become the occasion. His certainty that he was right

naturally got stronger in proportion as the spirit of resistance was

stimulated. The scorn and unfairness with which he felt himself to have

been treated by those really competent to appreciate his ideas had

galled him and made a chronic sore; and the exultant chorus of the

incompetent seemed a pouring of vinegar on his wound. His brain became a

registry of the foolish and ignorant objections made against him, and of

continually amplified answers to these objections. Unable to get his

answers printed, he had recourse to that more primitive mode of

publication, oral transmission or button-holding, now generally regarded

as a troublesome survival, and the once pleasant, flexible Merman was on

the way to be shunned as a bore. His interest in new acquaintances

turned chiefly on the possibility that they would care about the

Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis; that they would listen to his complaints

and exposures of unfairness, and not only accept copies of what he had

written on the subject, but send him appreciative letters in

acknowledgment. Repeated disappointment of such hopes tended to embitter

him, and not the less because after a while the fashion of mentioning

him died out, allusions to his theory were less understood, and people

could only pretend to remember it. And all the while Merman was

perfectly sure that his very opponents who had knowledge enough to be

capable judges were aware that his book, whatever errors of statement

they might detect in it, had served as a sort of divining rod, pointing

out hidden sources of historical interpretation; nay, his jealous

examination discerned in a new work by Grampus himself a certain

shifting of ground which--so poor Merman declared--was the sign of an

intention gradually to appropriate the views of the man he had attempted

to brand as an ignorant impostor.

And Julia? And the housekeeping?--the rent, food, and clothing, which

controversy can hardly supply unless it be of the kind that serves as a

recommendation to certain posts. Controversial pamphlets have been known

to earn large plums; but nothing of the sort could be expected from

unpractical heresies about the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis. Painfully

the contrary. Merman's reputation as a sober thinker, a safe writer, a

sound lawyer, was irretrievably injured: the distractions of controversy

had caused him to neglect useful editorial connections, and indeed his

dwindling care for miscellaneous subjects made his contributions too

dull to be desirable. Even if he could now have given a new turn to his

concentration, and applied his talents so as to be ready to show himself

an exceptionally qualified lawyer, he would only have been like an

architect in competition, too late with his superior plans; he would not

have had an opportunity of showing his qualification. He was thrown out

of the course. The small capital which had filled up deficiencies of

income was almost exhausted, and Julia, in the effort to make supplies

equal to wants, had to use much ingenuity in diminishing the wants. The

brave and affectionate woman whose small outline, so unimpressive

against an illuminated background, held within it a good share of

feminine heroism, did her best to keep up the charm of home and soothe

her husband's excitement; parting with the best jewel among her wedding

presents in order to pay rent, without ever hinting to her husband that

this sad result had come of his undertaking to convince people who only

laughed at him. She was a resigned little creature, and reflected that

some husbands took to drinking and others to forgery: hers had only

taken to the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis, and was not unkind--only a

little more indifferent to her and the two children than she had ever

expected he would be, his mind being eaten up with "subjects," and

constantly a little angry, not with her, but with everybody else,

especially those who were celebrated.

This was the sad truth. Merman felt himself ill-used by the world, and

thought very much worse of the world in consequence. The gall of his

adversaries' ink had been sucked into his system and ran in his blood.

He was still in the prime of life, but his mind was aged by that eager

monotonous construction which comes of feverish excitement on a single

topic and uses up the intellectual strength.

Merman had never been a rich man, but he was now conspicuously poor, and

in need of the friends who had power or interest which he believed they

could exert on his behalf. Their omitting or declining to give this help

could not seem to him so clearly as to them an inevitable consequence of

his having become impracticable, or at least of his passing for a man

whose views were not likely to be safe and sober. Each friend in turn

offended him, though unwillingly, and was suspected of wishing to shake

him off. It was not altogether so; but poor Merman's society had

undeniably ceased to be attractive, and it was difficult to help him. At

last the pressure of want urged him to try for a post far beneath his

earlier prospects, and he gained it. He holds it still, for he has no

vices, and his domestic life has kept up a sweetening current of motive

around and within him. Nevertheless, the bitter flavour mingling itself

with all topics, the premature weariness and withering, are irrevocably

there. It is as if he had gone through a disease which alters what we

call the constitution. He has long ceased to talk eagerly of the ideas

which possess him, or to attempt making proselytes. The dial has moved

onward, and he himself sees many of his former guesses in a new light.

On the other hand, he has seen what he foreboded, that the main idea

which was at the root of his too rash theorising has been adopted by

Grampus and received with general respect, no reference being heard to

the ridiculous figure this important conception made when ushered in by

the incompetent "Others."

Now and then, on rare occasions, when a sympathetic _tête-à-tête_ has

restored some of his old expansiveness, he will tell a companion in a

railway carriage, or other place of meeting favourable to

autobiographical confidences, what has been the course of things in his

particular case, as an example of the justice to be expected of the

world. The companion usually allows for the bitterness of a disappointed

man, and is secretly disinclined to believe that Grampus was to blame.