Jakub Arbes

“ He has penetrated deeply into the interior of the earth, and still deeper into the universe, with his physical and mental eye; he has endeavored to ascertain the laws of the world; but with all this he has been unable to repel the awful truth that merciless death and oblivion are awaiting him. Be born, live, and suffer, then perish, crumble into atoms, and vanish forever,—such is the horrible perspective which the progress of science opens to man. To feign ignorance, to console oneself with illusions and Utopian fiction, does not help any, and is cowardly. ”

“ The modern man’s proud boast of progress is really pitiable. It seems that a moment’s success, often questionable, of some ingenious head, dazzles a thousand others with a false vision of an amazing progress; and yet man’s powerlessness appears daily in a more and more intensive light. ‘The master and king of Nature,’ whose spirit is said to force Nature herself to bow to him,—this proud, vain, conceited giant among creatures will, in the light of exact science and logic, be shown to be a dwarf who really deserves pity. ”

“ Ideas spring from it, and human talents are hidden in it. For this reason, notwithstanding all the difference of ideas and faculties, the unknown laws which govern this mysterious process remain forever the same; in a word, logic is one and eternal. Who knows whether the brain of some farmer, mechanic, servant, or slave, long forgotten, if shaped under the same circumstances, laboring in the same direction, under like conditions as the brain of Newton,—who knows whether that brain would not have reached the same conclusions, or perhaps grander results, and much sooner than the brain of Newton? ”

“ Truly he has ever been and is endeavoring with all his power to save a picture of himself or a scene for his descendants; but art in all its phases has proved unable to do more than preserve a mere shadow of a picture,—a shadow that fades and vanishes until it disappears entirely and forever, just like the original. I have been thinking about it several years; and aided by all the discoveries of science that were accessible to me, I have become able to present vividly to human eyes any scene that existed hundreds or even thousands of years ago. ”

“ But certainly every one will admit that if it were possible for us in one hour to make a journey of five billion miles from a star of the twelfth magnitude to our earth, and were our eyes strengthened as I have mentioned, we could, in as short a time, view scenes from the whole of mankind’s history, beginning with the first man down to this very moment. This, too, every one will admit: that if the traveller desired to view a scene longer, he would have to fly with the same velocity and in the same direction as light does. ”

“ Later, when she shall have grown up into maidenhood, she will spend many an hour in melancholy dreams under that ill-fated bush of lilacs, and perhaps she will think of her father with bitterness, or perhaps she will willingly pluck from the shrub a little twig with a fresh blossom, and pinning it to her bosom, will kneel down at the grave without rebuke, without bitterness, and will forgive as her mother has forgiven. ”

“ For all these and other things the child has no sense; it plays in the grass wholly at random, without any purpose, without thinking; it even seems that it is not playing, that its little soul has not developed sense enough for the most primitive play. It stretches out its little hand for single stalks of grass that are higher than others, or that in some way draw its attention, as though it would pick them, but drops them forthwith. It looks around, and then looks forward or into space, and again it plays with its little hands in the grass or with one little nail awkwardly digs the ground ”

“ Only a mother who, in feverish excitement, has spent a sleepless night by the cradle of a sick child, will understand the state of this woman’s mind. Before her mental sight there passes, in wild chaos, one picture after another, each one more terrible, more threatening, and darker than the one before, until at last the most dreadful of all appears on the scene. ”

“ AM going to tell a simple story, as simple as the most common, every-day occurrence of which men hardly take any notice. I am going to tell of one of those sweet little creatures every tenth, eighth, or sixth of whom withers away when scarcely entered upon life; of one of those cobwebby organisms often felled to the grave in a night—nay, in a few hours—by a mere breath of a gentle wind; or again, possessed of such wonderful life-power that for almost a century they are able to withstand the wildest storms. ”

“ It is a panorama of a battle, but the scenes follow one another in reversed order, from the end of the fight to its beginning. Thus I see successively images of soldiers fleeing and pursuing, then fighting, and later preparing for battle. Now there is a daring and bloody attack of a few regiments against a firm position of the enemy, then a wild combat of single regiments of horsemen, manœuvres of the infantry, movements of the artillery. At times I see only clouds of white smoke with occasional flashes of fire. The silence of a grave is spread over the entire scene. ”

“ Of all the scenes that have taken place on the face of the globe, not a single one has been lost, but images of all are being preserved in the great mirror of the universe. By means of enormous speed all these images may be traced, looked at, and examined at will. I have invented the instruments necessary for this journey, and although they may surprise everybody by their unparalleled simplicity, they have been so often successfully tested that I can to-night invite any one of the company to undertake with me an expedition into the universe. ”

“ In the room there is a deep silence interrupted only by the breath of two human beings,—the mother’s breath, full and apparently free, but occasionally shortened as in anxiety, and the delicate breath of the child, a breath alarmingly quickened. ”

“ After thousands of years they recognize that life is but an everlasting struggle for mere existence. Men have been striving for power and glory, coveting riches, hugging their souls in the sweet embrace of sentimentality. The cold reason of Newton, fully penetrating the nothingness and perversion of men’s endeavors, frightened and terrified them. They dreaded the cold but truthful figures with which he measured the universe, the unmerciful consequences of his ice-cold but indisputable calculations ”

“ The hot rays of a June sun, nearly setting, play in the most varied hues on the luxuriant grass, here covering it with golden, yellow, or orange colors, there allowing the glittering green to display its various shades, from the shimmering evergreen to a greenish-brown. ”

“ I had long been thinking which brain would be the most suitable, and finally I decided to try the brain of a man whom the whole civilized world classes among its most acute thinkers. I knew that the brain of that man was preserved in the British Museum; by stratagem I succeeded in securing this invaluable treasure; and when after the battle of Königgrätz the longed-for opportunity came, and my own skull was cut off by a sabre, I replaced my brain with that of Newton.”
“That is an impossibility!” was shouted at the table of the physicians, anatomists, and physiologists. ”

“ It is the same as if half a thousand years ago I should have asserted what has since been conclusively proved,—that the earth moves around the sun. I am not at all surprised, therefore, that my esteemed guests think it impossible that I should have invented a better instrument than all our telescopes, and an incredibly simple one at that. But this is not all. For I have made another invention more improbable than the first. In truth, it is no new invention, for it has been known for ages ”

“ And yet there are few mortals whose life has been as strange as that of this little baby, who, not having yet any notion of life, is sitting in the thick, high, soft grass under a low bush of lilacs by the churchyard wall whither it has just come toddling from that hut,—its home. ”

“ To the mother the face looks deadly pale. She leaps to the cradle, and puts her hand on the child’s forehead; it is hot. The mother bends lower; she feels a hot breath which she thinks to be the breath of death.
She would cry out in pain, but she cannot. Her breath is stopped; the word dies on the trembling lips. Unutterable anxiety brings the cold sweat upon her brow; the blood rushes violently to her heart and back to her head; the arteries are beating more and more wildly ”

“ Many of us are acquainted well enough with the achievements of the human mind, but for a thousand reasons emanating from pure egotism, we ignore them, for fear of stirring up prejudices. Or is it possible to speak of progress when it is still necessary to employ errors of various kinds, not in order to save,—for an error can never save,— but to enslave mankind? ”

“ After the stormy manifestations of approval had subsided, my friend addressed the guests,—
“You will excuse, gentlemen, this unusual way of opening my performance; but as I have begun, so shall I finish it; only between the acts, permit me to say a few words which may interest some of you. You see a man before you whose brain is not his own, but—another’s.”
Then with his right hand my friend grasped the top of his head, and as easily as if he were taking off his cap, he took off the upper part of his skull, and holding it awhile in his hand, advanced a few steps to the foreground. ”

“ Truly, while that mysterious gray matter of our brain is in its normal state, many a one fears,—nay, dreads it. But the billions of beings who have gone before us are a sure guarantee that we shall perish like them, that no human power will avert our final doom. ”

“ Now, if we should soar up from this hall and fly with the velocity of light, we would see continually the very scene that is now before our eyes. But if we should suddenly be transferred to a point distant a little over 3,225,000,000 miles from the earth, and should then speed on with the velocity of light, the earth would appear to us as it looked twenty-four hours ago. If we should then suddenly advance ten, a hundred, or a thousand times as far, we should see what had happened on earth ten, a hundred, or a thousand days ago, and so on. ”

“ Go on!” implored the artists, writers, lawyers, and physicians.
“I suppose,” my friend continued, “that every one of us will concede that the human brain has always been made of the same material, that ages ago it was composed of the same parts, that its actions were governed by the same laws, that its surface was composed of the same convolutions, and that ages ago even there was deposited in these convolutions that wonderful gray matter, surrounded with white matter and composed of nerve-cells, which modern physiologists designate as the seat of thought, reason, judgment, and talent. ”

“ The surprise of those present grew into awe. Whatever may have been the effect of the unexpected occurrence upon this or that one of the guests, it was certain that there was no one who was not amazed in the highest degree. Evidently no one thought that the performance of an escamoteur would be opened in such an original way. All eagerly wondered what would come next.
After the corpse sat up in the coffin, a general silence prevailed. Not a finger stirred ; all eyes were bent upon the wonderful automaton which the experts had just pronounced to be an embalmed corpse. ”

“ Its simplicity will surprise every one; but he who recalls the fact that the results of all human thinking may be summed up in a few words, who knows that the apparent chaos of the universe and all its millions of natural forces are governed by one law,—he will at least understand how for a given purpose we may use the resultant of only a few forces. ”

“ Where, then, is the eulogized benefit to mankind? Who will vouch for it that this wonderful instrument for the propagating of ideas will at any time become the exclusive property of honest hands and serve good only?”
“To make such a commonplace remark a person certainly does not need the brain of Newton!” ”

“ The most spirited performance of an orator or actor dies away in the next moment, and will be forgotten before one or two generations pass away; the most solid and most magnificent buildings and monuments will crumble into dust after a few thousand years; the most beautiful paintings and statues often meet that fate in a few centuries. Whatever we may undertake, all is doomed to complete destruction. ”

“ Gradually the scene of a terrible battle is changing into a milder one, until I see a peaceful region in the lustre of the golden rays of a summer sun.
How strange! It took less time to survey the whole scene than it takes to read this description. The skill with which my friend had deluded my eyes was indeed surprising, and I fully believed that his other experiments would be equally successful.
“I think I have seen an image of the battle of Königgrätz,” I said to my friend, who, standing silently by me in the triangle, was engineering the machine. ”

“ And yet we must admit that it is the physicians who have done the most to alleviate human suffering. Unusual has been the progress of surgery. But the final result? Suppose medical science will really reach such perfection that it will be able to cure every single hurt and disease. What will be the consequence? Simple,—very simple. Men will not die then as heretofore on account of various diseases which they shall or shall not have brought upon themselves; they will not die prematurely; yet die they will. ”

“ If by means of polished glasses we are enabled to view bodies so distant, why should we not, by means of a far more perfect instrument, look, say, from a fixed star of the twelfth magnitude, at the earth and see everything as distinctly as a naked eye sees even minute objects at a distance of ten or twelve inches? ”

“ After these words the theologians remained silent; but a subdued expression of approval was heard from the table of the philosophers.
“For the time being, then,” continued my friend, “let us suppose, my honored guests, that my brain has really been supplanted by the brain of Newton. How odd, how childish, then, must appear to me this so-called enlightened age! We study the past ages and compassionately smile at, nay, we ridicule, the godlike simplicity, awkwardness, and roughness of our ancestors, without reflecting that later ages will likewise ridicule us. ”

“ The light of Neptune, the farthest-known planet, needs nearly three hours to reach the earth. The nearest fixed star is four billion miles distant from us; it takes no less than three thousand two hundred years before we see its light. The distance of the fixed stars of the twelfth magnitude, according to Struve, is about five billion miles, and their light comes to us in four thousand years. And Rosse’s gigantic telescope discovered stars so remote that their light reaches us only in about thirty million years. Accordingly the so-called universe must be at least thirty million years old. ”