Gelett Burgess

“ The time has come to formulate, authoritatively, the precise scope of intellect which such distinctions suggest and to define the shorthand of conversation which their use has made practicable. The rapid spread of the theory, traveling from Sulphite to Sulphite, like the spark of a pyrotechnic set-piece, till the thinking world has been over-violently illuminated, has obscured its genesis and diverted attention from the simplicity and force of its fundamental principles. ”

“ A Sulphite is a person who does his own thinking, he is a person who has surprises up his sleeve. He is explosive. One can never foresee what he will do, except that it will be a direct and spontaneous manifestation of his own personality.
You cannot tell them by the looks. Sulphites come together like drops of mercury, in this bromidic world. Unknown, unsuspected groups of them are scattered over the earth, and we never know where we are going to meet them—like fireflies in Summer, like Americans in Europe. The Bromide we have always with us, predicating the obvious. ”

“ It cannot be denied, however, that their processes of thought are sulphitic; indeed, they are so wildly original, so fanciful, that we must denominate all such crazed brains, Hypo-Sulphites. Such persons are so surprising that they end by having no surprises left for us. We accept their mania and cease to regard it; it, in a word, becomes bromidic. So, in their ways, are all cranks and eccentrics, all whose set purpose is to astonish or to shock. ”

“ This is no classification as of desirable and undesirable people. The Sulphite, from his very nature, must continually surprise you by an unexpected course of action. He must explode. You never know what he will say or do. He is always sulphitic, but as often impossible. He will not bore you, but he may shock you. You find yourself watching him to see what is coming next, and it may be a subtle jest, a paradox, or an atrocious violation of etiquette.
All cranks, all reformers, and most artists are sulphitic. The insane asylums are full of Sulphites. ”

“ Philosophy is, itself, but a system of definitions. What, then, made the Chatelaine’s theory remarkable, when Civilization has wearied itself with distinctions? The attempt to classify one’s acquaintance is the common sport of the thinker, from the fastidious who says: “There are two kinds of persons—those who like olives and those who don’t,” to the fatuous, immemorial lover who says: “There are two kinds of women—Daisy, and the Other Kind!”
Previous attempts, less fantastic, have had this fault in common: their categories were susceptible of gradation—extremes fused one into the other. ”

“ In costume, perhaps, men still are more bromidic than women. A man has, for choice, a narrow range in garments—for everyday wear at most but four coats, three collars and two pairs of shoes.
Fewer women become Sulphites. The confession is ungallant and painful, but it must be made. We have only to watch them, to listen—and to pity.
But stay! If there is anything in heredity, women should be most sulphitic. For of all Bromides Adam was the progenitor, while Eve was a Sulphite from the first!
Alice in Wonderland, however, is the modern type—a Bromide amidst Sulphites. ”

“ We are all born with certain bromidic tendencies, and children are the greatest bromides in the world. What boy of ten will wear a collar different from what his school-mates are all wearing? He must conform to the rule and custom of the majority or he suffers fearfully. But, if he has a sulphitic leaven in his soul, adolescence frees him from the tyrannical traditions of thought. ”

“ Sulphites, those who are over that age. In some dim future incarnation, perhaps, the Bromide will leap into sulphitic apprehension of existence. It is the person who is Absolutely Young who says, “Alas, I never had a youth—I don’t understand what it is to be young!” and he who is Absolutely Old remarks, blithely, “Oh, dear, I can’t seem to grow up at all!” One is a Bromide and the other a Sulphite—and this explanation illuminates the paradox. ”

“ But always there is a shifting population at the vague frontier—the types intermingle and lose identity. Your Philistine is the very one who says: “This is Liberty Hall!”—and one must drink beer whether one likes it or not. It is the conservative business man, hard-headed, stubborn, who is converted by the mind-reader or the spiritualistic medium—one extreme flying to the other. ”

“ It is the bore who, at times, unconsciously to himself, amuses you to the point of repressed laughter. These terms are fluent—your friends have a way of escaping from the labeled boxes into which you have put them; they seem to defy your definitions, your Orders and Genera. Fifteen minutes’ consideration of the great Sulphitic Theory will, as the patent medicines say, convince one of its efficacy. A Bromide will never jump out of his box into that ticketed “Sulphite.” ”

“ Sulphites are agreed upon most of the basic facts of life, and this common understanding makes it possible for them to eliminate the obvious from their conversation. They have found, for instance, that green is restful to the eyes, and the fact goes without saying, in a hint, in a mere word. They are aware that heat is more disagreeable when accompanied by a high degree of humidity, and do not put forth this axiom as a sensational discovery. ”

“ What thinking person has not felt the need of some definite, final, absolute classification? We speak of “my kind” and “the other sort,” of Those who Understand, of Impossibles, and Outsiders. Some of these categories have attained considerable vogue. There is the Bohemian versus the Philistine, the Radical versus the Conservative, the Interesting versus the Bores, and so on. ”

“ It has become not only unnecessary for him to think, but almost impossible, so deeply these well-worn paths of thought have become. His intellectual processes are automatic—his train of thought can never get off the track. ”

“ And then—— when steam had had its day, impressing its materialism upon the world; making what should be hard, easy, and what should be easy, hard—came electricity—a new science almost approaching a spiritual force, and, with a rush, the telephone that made the commonplace bristle with romance! ”

“ In this, the type resembles the primary bodies of other systems of classification, such as the Philistines, the Conservatives, the Bores and so on, ad nauseam. The Bromide does his thinking by syndicate. He follows the main traveled roads, he goes with the crowd. In a word, they all think and talk alike—one may predicate their opinion upon any given subject. They follow custom and costume, they obey the Law of Averages. They are, intellectually, all peas in the same conventional pod, unenlightened, prosaic, living by rule and rote. ”

“ This is one of the few exceptions to the rule that a sulphitic thing can become bromidic. Time alone can accomplish this effect. Literature itself is either bromidic or sulphitic. The dime novel and melodrama, with hackneyed situations, once provocative, are so easily nitro-bromidic that they become sulphitic in burlesque and parody.
Metaphysically, Sulphitism is easily explained by the theory of Absolute Age. We have all seen children who seem to be, mentally, with greater possibility of growth than their parents. We see persons who understand without experience. ”

“ They not only do ordinary things in unusual ways, but they do unusual things in ordinary ways. What is more intensely sulphitic than, when you have said your farewells, to go immediately? Or, as you swim out to rescue a drowning girl, to keep your pipe burning, all the while? ”

“ They do not speak in awe-struck voices of supernatural apparitions, for of all fiction the ghost story is most apt to be bromidic, nor do they expect others to be impressed by their strange dreams any more than with their pathological symptoms. Hypnotism, they are convinced, has attained the standing of a science whose rationale is pretty well understood and established, and the subject is no longer an affording subject for anecdote. ”

“ By a similar reasoning, a Hypo-Sulphite can, at a step, become bromidic. The illustration most obvious is that of insanity. We are not much amused, usually, by the quaint modes of thought exhibited by lunatics and madmen. ”

“ Your professional humorist is usually a dull, melancholy fellow in his private life—and a clergyman may preach infant damnation and be a merry father at home.
Such considerations point inevitably to the truth that our theory depends essentially not upon action or talk, but upon the quality and rationale of thought. It is a question of Potentiality, rather than of Dynamics. It is the process of reasoning which concerns us, not its translation into conduct. A man may be a devoted supporter of Mrs. ”

“ We recognize and feel sympathetic with those of our caste—with those of the same age, not in years, but in wisdom. Now the standard of spiritual insight is the person of a thousand years of age. He knows the relative Importance of Things. ”

“ A wave of Oriental thought lifted many to a curious idealism—and, as so many other centuries had done before, there came to the nineteenth a fin de siecle glow that lifted up the curve still higher. The Renaissance of thought came—came the cult of simplicity and Mission furniture—corsets were abandoned—the automobile freed us from the earth—the Yellow Book began, Mrs. ”

“ It is the crux by which society is tested. But as I shall proceed scientifically, my conclusion will, I trust, effect rational proof of what was an a priori hypothesis.
The history of the origin of the theory is brief. The Chatelaine of a certain sugar plantation in Louisiana, in preparing a list of guests for her house-party, discovered, in one of those explosive moments of inspiration, that all people were easily divided into two fundamental groups or families, the Sulphites and the Bromides. The revelation was apodictic, convincing; it made life a different thing ”