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_ CHAPTER V
[The author permitted to see the grand academy of Lagado. The
academy largely described. The arts wherein the professors employ
themselves.]
This academy is not an entire single building, but a continuation
of several houses on both sides of a street, which growing waste,
was purchased and applied to that use.
I was received very kindly by the warden, and went for many days to
the academy. Every room has in it one or more projectors; and I
believe I could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms.
The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and
face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several
places. His clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour.
He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out
of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed,
and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me,
he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to
supply the governor's gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate:
but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me "to give
him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since
this had been a very dear season for cucumbers." I made him a
small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose,
because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see
them.
I went into another chamber, but was ready to hasten back, being
almost overcome with a horrible stink. My conductor pressed me
forward, conjuring me in a whisper "to give no offence, which would
be highly resented;" and therefore I durst not so much as stop my
nose. The projector of this cell was the most ancient student of
the academy; his face and beard were of a pale yellow; his hands
and clothes daubed over with filth. When I was presented to him,
he gave me a close embrace, a compliment I could well have excused.
His employment, from his first coming into the academy, was an
operation to reduce human excrement to its original food, by
separating the several parts, removing the tincture which it
receives from the gall, making the odour exhale, and scumming off
the saliva. He had a weekly allowance, from the society, of a
vessel filled with human ordure, about the bigness of a Bristol
barrel.
I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder; who likewise
showed me a treatise he had written concerning the malleability of
fire, which he intended to publish.
There was a most ingenious architect, who had contrived a new
method for building houses, by beginning at the roof, and working
downward to the foundation; which he justified to me, by the like
practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider.
There was a man born blind, who had several apprentices in his own
condition: their employment was to mix colours for painters, which
their master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling.
It was indeed my misfortune to find them at that time not very
perfect in their lessons, and the professor himself happened to be
generally mistaken. This artist is much encouraged and esteemed by
the whole fraternity.
In another apartment I was highly pleased with a projector who had
found a device of ploughing the ground with hogs, to save the
charges of ploughs, cattle, and labour. The method is this: in an
acre of ground you bury, at six inches distance and eight deep, a
quantity of acorns, dates, chestnuts, and other mast or vegetables,
whereof these animals are fondest; then you drive six hundred or
more of them into the field, where, in a few days, they will root
up the whole ground in search of their food, and make it fit for
sowing, at the same time manuring it with their dung: it is true,
upon experiment, they found the charge and trouble very great, and
they had little or no crop. However it is not doubted, that this
invention may be capable of great improvement.
I went into another room, where the walls and ceiling were all hung
round with cobwebs, except a narrow passage for the artist to go in
and out. At my entrance, he called aloud to me, "not to disturb
his webs." He lamented "the fatal mistake the world had been so
long in, of using silkworms, while we had such plenty of domestic
insects who infinitely excelled the former, because they understood
how to weave, as well as spin." And he proposed further, "that by
employing spiders, the charge of dyeing silks should be wholly
saved;" whereof I was fully convinced, when he showed me a vast
number of flies most beautifully coloured, wherewith he fed his
spiders, assuring us "that the webs would take a tincture from
them; and as he had them of all hues, he hoped to fit everybody's
fancy, as soon as he could find proper food for the flies, of
certain gums, oils, and other glutinous matter, to give a strength
and consistence to the threads."
There was an astronomer, who had undertaken to place a sun-dial
upon the great weathercock on the town-house, by adjusting the
annual and diurnal motions of the earth and sun, so as to answer
and coincide with all accidental turnings of the wind.
I was complaining of a small fit of the colic, upon which my
conductor led me into a room where a great physician resided, who
was famous for curing that disease, by contrary operations from the
same instrument. He had a large pair of bellows, with a long
slender muzzle of ivory: this he conveyed eight inches up the
anus, and drawing in the wind, he affirmed he could make the guts
as lank as a dried bladder. But when the disease was more stubborn
and violent, he let in the muzzle while the bellows were full of
wind, which he discharged into the body of the patient; then
withdrew the instrument to replenish it, clapping his thumb
strongly against the orifice of then fundament; and this being
repeated three or four times, the adventitious wind would rush out,
bringing the noxious along with it, (like water put into a pump),
and the patient recovered. I saw him try both experiments upon a
dog, but could not discern any effect from the former. After the
latter the animal was ready to burst, and made so violent a
discharge as was very offensive to me and my companion. The dog
died on the spot, and we left the doctor endeavouring to recover
him, by the same operation.
I visited many other apartments, but shall not trouble my reader
with all the curiosities I observed, being studious of brevity.
I had hitherto seen only one side of the academy, the other being
appropriated to the advancers of speculative learning, of whom I
shall say something, when I have mentioned one illustrious person
more, who is called among them "the universal artist." He told us
"he had been thirty years employing his thoughts for the
improvement of human life." He had two large rooms full of
wonderful curiosities, and fifty men at work. Some were condensing
air into a dry tangible substance, by extracting the nitre, and
letting the aqueous or fluid particles percolate; others softening
marble, for pillows and pin-cushions; others petrifying the hoofs
of a living horse, to preserve them from foundering. The artist
himself was at that time busy upon two great designs; the first, to
sow land with chaff, wherein he affirmed the true seminal virtue to
be contained, as he demonstrated by several experiments, which I
was not skilful enough to comprehend. The other was, by a certain
composition of gums, minerals, and vegetables, outwardly applied,
to prevent the growth of wool upon two young lambs; and he hoped,
in a reasonable time to propagate the breed of naked sheep, all
over the kingdom.
We crossed a walk to the other part of the academy, where, as I
have already said, the projectors in speculative learning resided.
The first professor I saw, was in a very large room, with forty
pupils about him. After salutation, observing me to look earnestly
upon a frame, which took up the greatest part of both the length
and breadth of the room, he said, "Perhaps I might wonder to see
him employed in a project for improving speculative knowledge, by
practical and mechanical operations. But the world would soon be
sensible of its usefulness; and he flattered himself, that a more
noble, exalted thought never sprang in any other man's head. Every
one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and
sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at
a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write
books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and
theology, without the least assistance from genius or study." He
then led me to the frame, about the sides, whereof all his pupils
stood in ranks. It was twenty feet square, placed in the middle of
the room. The superfices was composed of several bits of wood,
about the bigness of a die, but some larger than others. They were
all linked together by slender wires. These bits of wood were
covered, on every square, with paper pasted on them; and on these
papers were written all the words of their language, in their
several moods, tenses, and declensions; but without any order. The
professor then desired me "to observe; for he was going to set his
engine at work." The pupils, at his command, took each of them
hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the
edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn, the whole
disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then commanded
six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the several lines softly, as
they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four
words together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to
the four remaining boys, who were scribes. This work was repeated
three or four times, and at every turn, the engine was so
contrived, that the words shifted into new places, as the square
bits of wood moved upside down.
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 norms.
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 lunge 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.
_____
PART III - A VOYAGE TO LAPUTA, BALNIBARBI, LUGGNAGG, GLUBBDUBDRIB, AND JAPAN CHAPTER V [Jonathan Swift's novel: Gulliver's Travels] _
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