<p class="gutsumm">The author permitted to see the grand academy
of Lagado. The academy largely described. The arts
wherein the professors employ themselves.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I visited many other apartments, but shall not trouble my
reader with all the curiosities I observed, being studious of
brevity.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>We crossed a walk to the other part of the academy, where, as
I have already said, the projectors in speculative learning
resided.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<SPAN href="images/p447b.jpg">
<ANTIMG alt= "The frame" title= "The frame" src="images/p447s.jpg" /></SPAN></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>We next went to the school of languages, where three
professors sat in consultation upon improving that of their own
country.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>quantum</i> 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.</p>
<h3>III - CHAPTER VI.</h3>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />