A Selected Text
Part III
A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnag, and Japan
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 hath 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 had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of
cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the
air in raw, inclement summers. He told me he did not doubt, 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 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 downwards 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; 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 silk-worms, 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 would 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
lie 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 sundial 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 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
pincushions; 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, may write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, law, 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 superficies were 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 this 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 upon paper. 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 the 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 hath 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 streets, would lay down
their loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for an hour together; then put up
their implements, help each other 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 had 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 spit it out before it can operate; neither
have they been yet persuaded to use so long an abstinence as the prescription requires |
