Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World
Six hours a day the young students were employed in this labour; and
the professor showed me several volumes in large folio, already
collected, of broken sentences, which he intended to piece together,
and out of those rich materials, to give the world a complete body of
all arts and sciences; which, however, might be still improved, and
much expedited, if the public would raise a fund for making and
employing five hundred such frames in Lagado, and oblige the managers
to contribute in common their several collections.
He assured me “that this invention had employed all his thoughts from
his youth; that he had emptied the whole vocabulary into his frame, and
made the strictest computation of the general proportion there is in
books between the numbers of particles, nouns, and verbs, and other
parts of speech.”
I made my humblest acknowledgment to this illustrious person, for his
great communicativeness; and promised, “if ever I had the good fortune
to return to my native country, that I would do him justice, as the
sole inventor of this wonderful machine;” the form and contrivance of
which I desired leave to delineate on paper, as in the figure here
annexed. I told him, “although it were the custom of our learned in
Europe to steal inventions from each other, who had thereby at least
this advantage, that it became a controversy which was the right owner;
yet I would take such caution, that he should have the honour entire,
without a rival.”
We next went to the school of languages, where three professors sat in
consultation upon improving that of their own country.
The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting polysyllables
into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because, in reality,
all things imaginable are but nouns.
The other project was, a scheme for entirely abolishing all words
whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health,
as well as brevity. For it is plain, that every word we speak is, in
some degree, a diminution of our lungs by corrosion, and, consequently,
contributes to the shortening of our lives. An expedient was therefore
offered, “that since words are only names for _things_, it would be
more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were
necessary to express a particular business they are to discourse on.”
And this invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease
as well as health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction with the
vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to raise a rebellion unless
they might be allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues, after
the manner of their forefathers; such constant irreconcilable enemies
to science are the common people. However, many of the most learned and
wise adhere to the new scheme of expressing themselves by things; which
has only this inconvenience attending it, that if a man’s business be
very great, and of various kinds, he must be obliged, in proportion, to
carry a greater bundle of things upon his back, unless he can afford
one or two strong servants to attend him. I have often beheld two of
those sages almost sinking under the weight of their packs, like
pedlars among us, who, when they met in the street, would lay down
their loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for an hour
together; then put up their implements, help each other to resume their
burdens, and take their leave.
But for short conversations, a man may carry implements in his pockets,
and under his arms, enough to supply him; and in his house, he cannot
be at a loss. Therefore the room where company meet who practise this
art, is full of all things, ready at hand, requisite to furnish matter
for this kind of artificial converse.
Another great advantage proposed by this invention was, that it would
serve as a universal language, to be understood in all civilised
nations, whose goods and utensils are generally of the same kind, or
nearly resembling, so that their uses might easily be comprehended. And
thus ambassadors would be qualified to treat with foreign princes, or
ministers of state, to whose tongues they were utter strangers.
I was at the mathematical school, where the master taught his pupils
after a method scarce imaginable to us in Europe. The proposition, and
demonstration, were fairly written on a thin wafer, with ink composed
of a cephalic tincture. This, the student was to swallow upon a fasting
stomach, and for three days following, eat nothing but bread and water.
As the wafer digested, the tincture mounted to his brain, bearing the
proposition along with it. But the success has not hitherto been
answerable, partly by some error in the _quantum_ or composition, and
partly by the perverseness of lads, to whom this bolus is so nauseous,
that they generally steal aside, and discharge it upwards, before it
can operate; neither have they been yet persuaded to use so long an
abstinence, as the prescription requires.
CHAPTER VI.
A further account of the academy. The author proposes some
improvements, which are honourably received.
In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained; the
professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses, which
is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people
were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favourites
upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching
ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great
abilities, eminent services; of instructing princes to know their true
interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their
people; of choosing for employments persons qualified to exercise them,
with many other wild, impossible chimeras, that never entered before
into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old
observation, “that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational,
which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.”
But, however, I shall so far do justice to this part of the Academy, as
to acknowledge that all of them were not so visionary. There was a most
ingenious doctor, who seemed to be perfectly versed in the whole nature
and system of government. This illustrious person had very usefully
employed his studies, in finding out effectual remedies for all
diseases and corruptions to which the several kinds of public
administration are subject, by the vices or infirmities of those who
govern, as well as by the licentiousness of those who are to obey. For
instance: whereas all writers and reasoners have agreed, that there is
a strict universal resemblance between the natural and the political
body; can there be any thing more evident, than that the health of both
must be preserved, and the diseases cured, by the same prescriptions?
It is allowed, that senates and great councils are often troubled with
redundant, ebullient, and other peccant humours; with many diseases of
the head, and more of the heart; with strong convulsions, with grievous
contractions of the nerves and sinews in both hands, but especially the
right; with spleen, flatus, vertigos, and deliriums; with scrofulous
tumours, full of fetid purulent matter; with sour frothy ructations:
with canine appetites, and crudeness of digestion, besides many others,
needless to mention. This doctor therefore proposed, “that upon the
meeting of the senate, certain physicians should attend it the three
first days of their sitting, and at the close of each day’s debate feel
the pulses of every senator; after which, having maturely considered
and consulted upon the nature of the several maladies, and the methods
of cure, they should on the fourth day return to the senate house,
attended by their apothecaries stored with proper medicines; and before
the members sat, administer to each of them lenitives, aperitives,
abstersives, corrosives, restringents, palliatives, laxatives,
cephalalgics, icterics, apophlegmatics, acoustics, as their several
cases required; and, according as these medicines should operate,
repeat, alter, or omit them, at the next meeting.”
This project could not be of any great expense to the public; and might
in my poor opinion, be of much use for the despatch of business, in
those countries where senates have any share in the legislative power;
beget unanimity, shorten debates, open a few mouths which are now
closed, and close many more which are now open; curb the petulancy of
the young, and correct the positiveness of the old; rouse the stupid,
and damp the pert.
Again, because it is a general complaint, that the favourites of
princes are troubled with short and weak memories; the same doctor
proposed, “that whoever attended a first minister, after having told
his business, with the utmost brevity and in the plainest words,
should, at his departure, give the said minister a tweak by the nose,
or a kick in the belly, or tread on his corns, or lug him thrice by
both ears, or run a pin into his breech; or pinch his arm black and
blue, to prevent forgetfulness; and at every levee day, repeat the same
operation, till the business were done, or absolutely refused.”
He likewise directed, “that every senator in the great council of a
nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence
of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary; because if
that were done, the result would infallibly terminate in the good of
the public.”
When parties in a state are violent, he offered a wonderful contrivance
to reconcile them. The method is this: You take a hundred leaders of
each party; you dispose them into couples of such whose heads are
nearest of a size; then let two nice operators saw off the occiput of
each couple at the same time, in such a manner that the brain may be
equally divided. Let the occiputs, thus cut off, be interchanged,
applying each to the head of his opposite party-man. It seems indeed to
be a work that requires some exactness, but the professor assured us,
“that if it were dexterously performed, the cure would be infallible.”
For he argued thus: “that the two half brains being left to debate the
matter between themselves within the space of one skull, would soon
come to a good understanding, and produce that moderation, as well as
regularity of thinking, so much to be wished for in the heads of those,
who imagine they come into the world only to watch and govern its
motion: and as to the difference of brains, in quantity or quality,
among those who are directors in faction,” the doctor assured us, from
his own knowledge, that “it was a perfect trifle.”
I heard a very warm debate between two professors, about the most
commodious and effectual ways and means of raising money, without
grieving the subject. The first affirmed, “the justest method would be,
to lay a certain tax upon vices and folly; and the sum fixed upon every
man to be rated, after the fairest manner, by a jury of his
neighbours.” The second was of an opinion directly contrary; “to tax
those qualities of body and mind, for which men chiefly value
themselves; the rate to be more or less, according to the degrees of
excelling; the decision whereof should be left entirely to their own
breast.” The highest tax was upon men who are the greatest favourites
of the other sex, and the assessments, according to the number and
nature of the favours they have received; for which, they are allowed
to be their own vouchers. Wit, valour, and politeness, were likewise
proposed to be largely taxed, and collected in the same manner, by
every person’s giving his own word for the quantum of what he
possessed. But as to honour, justice, wisdom, and learning, they should
not be taxed at all; because they are qualifications of so singular a
kind, that no man will either allow them in his neighbour or value them