Richard A. Proctor

“ The theory that genius will make its way, despite all obstacles, is like the popular notion that 'murder will out,' and other such fancies. We note when events happen which favour such notions, but we not only do not note—in the very nature of things it is impossible that we should have the chance of noting—cases unfavourable to a notion which, after all, is but a part of the general and altogether erroneous idea that what we think ought to be, will be. ”

“ Let us picture to ourselves for a [Pg 61] moment the central sun, the earth, and the earth's path, not as they really are, for the mind refuses altogether to picture the dimensions even of the earth, which is but an atom compared with the sun, whose own proportions, in turn, mighty though they are, sink into utter insignificance compared with the enormous scale of the orbit in which the earth travels around him. Let us reduce the scale of the entire system to one 500-millionth part of its real value: even then we have a tolerably large orbit to imagine. ”

“ And now, for the first time, ideas derived from her life before her illness seemed to be awakened within her. When pictures of flowers, trees, and animals were shown her, she was pleased; but when she was shown a landscape in which there was a river or a troubled sea, she became violently agitated, and a fit of spasmodic rigidity and insensibility immediately followed. The mere sight of water in motion made her shudder. Again, from an early stage of her illness she had derived pleasure from the proximity of a young man to whom she had been attached. ”

“ There is indeed almost as strange a mystery in unconsciousness as there is in the phenomena of dual consciousness. The man who has passed for a time into unconsciousness through a blow, or fall, or fit, cannot help asking himself like Bernard Langdon in that weird tale, Elsie Venner, 'Where was the mind, the soul, the thinking principle all that time?' It is irresistibly borne in upon him that he has been dead for a time. ”

“ As if to turn a wonderful achievement into a miracle of combined skill and good fortune, came the announcement that, after all, the planet discovered in the spot to which Adams and Leverrier pointed was not the planet of their calculations, but travelled in an orbit four or five hundred millions of miles nearer to the sun than the orbit which had been assigned to the unknown body. Many were led to suppose that nothing but a most marvellous accident had rewarded with such singular success the calculations of Adams and Leverrier. ”

“ It is impossible to contemplate the disc of the full moon, as seen with a powerful telescope, without feeling that these systems of rays must have resulted from the operation of forces of the most stupendous nature, though as yet their true meaning is hid from us. They would be marvellous phenomena, even if they were not so mysterious—marvellous in their enormous extension, their singular brightness, and their manner of traversing 'seas,' craters, and mountain-ranges indifferently. ”

“ And on the other hand, those who know little or nothing of astronomy can of course form no opinion on astronomical matters, however high they may be in authority outside matters scientific. To assert, then, that it is either improper or undesirable for unofficial astronomers to comment on the plans or results of astronomers employed and paid by the nation is practically equivalent to asserting that it is improper or undesirable for the work of these paid astronomers to be examined at all,—a conclusion manifestly absurd. ”

“ For we have manifestly to differentiate between the effects due to the moon's relative smallness on the one hand, and those due to her great age on the other. If we could believe the moon to be an orb which simply represents the condition to which our earth will one day attain, we could study her peculiarities of appearance with some hope of understanding how they had been brought about, as well as of learning from such study the future history of our own earth. But clearly the moon has had another history than our earth. ”

“ There is, however, a grandeur in the interpretation placed by modern science upon these beautiful displays which dwarfs into littleness even such ideas as have been suggested by the terrors of superstition. We perceive that meteors are not mere terrestrial phenomena, nor of brief existence. They speak to us of domains in space compared with which the volume of our earth—nay, even the volume of the sun himself—is a mere point: of time-intervals compared with which the millions of years spoken of by geologists appear but as mere seconds. ”

“ Certainly no coxswain in my time at Cambridge ever achieved the feat, nor could it be safely attempted even by the most skilful steersman. The consequence was that there was a break in the long course which took away all its value as a preparation for the actual race. It may seem to the uninitiated a trifling matter that a crew should get a few seconds of rest in so long a pull. But those who know what racing is, are aware that the slightest break—one stroke even, shirked—is an immense relief to the tugging oarsman. ”

“ He thought he had never before or since encountered such rugged Siberian weather. 'Many of the narrow roads were now filled above the tops of the hedges, through which the snow was driven into most romantic and grotesque shapes, so striking to the imagination as not to be seen without wonder and pleasure. The poultry dared not to stir out of their roosting places: for cocks and hens are so dazzled and confounded by the glare of snow, that they would soon perish without assistance. ”

“ As they grow up the appetite grows with them, and speedily becomes a master, the master a tyrant; and by the time he arrives at manhood, the man is a slave. I heard a man say that for eight-and-twenty years the soul within him had had to stand like an unsleeping sentinel, guarding his appetite for strong drink. To be a man at last under such a disadvantage, not to mention a saint, is as fine a piece of grace as can well be seen. ”

“ For it should be remembered that we become cognisant of the existence of a meteoric system only when the earth threads its way through one, when those which she encounters may become visible as falling stars if it so chances that she encounters them on the dark or night half of her surface. But the earth is far smaller compared with a system like the November meteor-flight than a rifle-ball compared with the largest flight of birds ever yet seen. ”

“ It is quite otherwise with the phenomena of heredity. We know nothing even of the proximate cause of any single phenomenon; far less of that ultimate cause in which all these phenomena had their origin. The inheritance of a trait of bodily figure, character, or manner is a mystery as great as that other and cognate mystery, the appearance of some seemingly sudden variation in a race which has for many generations presented an apparently unvarying succession of attributes, bodily, physical, or mental. ”

“ If our earth is, as astronomers and physicists believe, to grow dead and cold, all life perishing from her surface, it is tolerably clear, from what we already know of her history, that the appearance she will present in her decrepitude will be utterly unlike that presented by the moon. ”

“ If we rightly picture these conditions, which fairly represent those under which the astronomer has to determine the distance of the sun from the earth, we shall perceive that the wonder rather is that any idea of the sun's distance should be obtained at all, than that the estimates obtained should differ from each other, and that the best of them should err in measurable degree from the true distance. ”

“ At present, it is safer to speak of electricity as a state or condition of matter. If it were not that some very eminent electricians (and one especially whose eminence as a practical electrician is very great) are said to believe still that there is such a thing as an electric fluid, we should have simply asserted that in the present position of scientific research, with the known velocity at which the so-called electric current flows, and the known relations between [Pg 293] electricity, heat, and light, the theory of an electric fluid is altogether untenable. ”

“ In reality, perhaps, the wonder rather is that signs of change should not be often recognised, than that from time to time a new crater should appear or the walls of old craters fall in. The moon's surface is exposed to variations of temperature compared with which those affecting the surface of our earth are altogether trifling. It is true there is no summer or winter in the moon. ”

“ A certain property, called electricity, is excited in any substance by any cause affecting the condition of the substance, whether that cause be mechanical, chemical, thermal, or otherwise. No change can take place in the physical condition of any body without the generation of a greater or less amount of electricity, although in far the greater number of cases there may be no obvious evidence of the fact, while in many cases no evidence may be obtainable even by the use of the most delicate scientific tests. ”

“ Even more surprising, however, than any of the incidents which preceded the discovery of Neptune was this achievement itself. That a planet so remote as to be quite invisible to the naked eye, never approaching our own earth within less than twenty-six hundred millions of miles, never even approaching Uranus within less than nine hundred and fifty millions of miles, should be detected by means of those particular perturbations (among many others) which it produced upon a planet not yet known for three-quarters of a century, seemed indeed surprising. ”

“ Each planet would be seen most favourably when in the part of its path remotest from the earth, so that the planet nearest to the sun would on the whole have the advantage of any difference due to that cause. For, of course, while Mercury, being farther from the sun, approaches the earth nearer when between the earth and sun, he recedes farther from the sun for the same reason when on the part of his path beyond the sun.
It was perfectly clear that no such planet as Leverrier considered necessary to reconcile theory and observation exists between the sun and Mercury's orbit. ”

“ One who has taken part in boat-races very soon detects any irregularity in the rowing—by which I do not of course refer to so gross a defect as not keeping time. All the men of a crew may be keeping most perfect time, and may even present the appearance of keeping stroke together, and yet may not be feeling their work simultaneously. I was aware that something was going wrong, but I found it impossible, without abandoning the style of rowing in which I had been so carefully trained, to keep stroke with the rest of the crew. ”

“ Let a man of this family marry a woman whose faculties are the complement of his own. It is possible that a child of such a couple may combine the defects or weaknesses of both parents, and we have then the case of spontaneous imbecility or criminality. But it is also possible that he may combine the excellences of both, and burst upon the world as a spontaneous genius.... Again, we must remember that, even if we consider the intellect as "one and indivisible," it is far from being the only faculty needful for the attainment of excellence, even in the fields of pure science. ”

“ To predict the advent of a man of great genius as we predict the approach of an eclipse or a transit, will doubtless never be in men's power; but it is conceivable that at some perhaps not very remote epoch, anticipations may be formed somewhat like those which astronomers are able to make respecting the recurrence of meteoric showers at particular times and seasons, and visible in particular regions. ”

“ It remains to be considered how science may hope to obtain more trustworthy evidence than we yet have respecting the corona and its changes of form, extent, lustre, and physical constitution. In the case of the prominences, we have the means of making systematic observations on every fine, clear day. It has been, indeed, through observations thus effected by the spectroscopic method that an association has been recognised between the number, size, and brilliancy of the prominences on the one hand, and the number, size, and activity of the sun-spots on the other. ”

“ But even in river rowing, as distinguished from river racing, there are more styles than one,—by which we mean more correct styles, for, of course, there are multitudinous bad styles in every kind of rowing. The style suitable for a racing boat moving at full speed would not be suitable even for the same boat at starting, and would be utterly unsuitable for a pleasure boat. We may remark, in passing, that, however suitable tubbing practice may be several weeks before a race, it is open to objection after a crew has settled into its racing stroke. ”

“ Thus the sun, viewed in this way, is the youngest member of the solar system, while the tiniest members of the asteroid family, if not the oldest in reality, are the oldest to which the telescope has introduced us. Jupiter and Saturn come next to the sun in youth; they are still passing through the earliest stages of planetary existence, even if we ought not rather to adopt that theory of their condition which regards them as subordinate suns, helping the central sun to support life on the satellites which circle around them. ”

“ The excitement which men feel just before a race begins, and during the first half-mile or so of its progress, is so intense that a small difference of this sort is apt to produce much more effect than might be expected. I think the somewhat flurried style in which the Cantabs were often observed to row the first half-mile of the great race might be partly ascribed to this cause. Of course, I am far from saying that if a Cambridge crew had been decidedly better than their opponents, the race could have been lost or even endangered from such a cause as this. ”