A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I | Page 6

formed by accident and circumstance alone, and that it
truly represents the casualties of about a third of a century. For instance,
the large proportion of works {8} on the quadrature of the circle is not
my doing: it is the natural share of this subject in the actual run of

events.
[I keep to my plan of inserting only such books as I possessed in 1863,
except by casual notice in aid of my remarks. I have found several
books on my shelves which ought to have been inserted. These have
their titles set out at the commencement of their articles, in leading
paragraphs; the casuals are without this formality.[6]]
Before proceeding to open the Budget, I say something on my personal
knowledge of the class of discoverers who square the circle, upset
Newton, etc. I suspect I know more of the English class than any man
in Britain. I never kept any reckoning; but I know that one year with
another--and less of late years than in earlier time--I have talked to
more than five in each year, giving more than a hundred and fifty
specimens. Of this I am sure, that it is my own fault if they have not
been a thousand. Nobody knows how they swarm, except those to
whom they naturally resort. They are in all ranks and occupations, of
all ages and characters. They are very earnest people, and their purpose
is bona fide the dissemination of their paradoxes. A great many--the
mass, indeed--are illiterate, and a great many waste their means, and
are in or approaching penury. But I must say that never, in any one
instance, has the quadrature of the circle, or the like, been made a
pretext for begging; even to be asked to purchase a book is of the very
rarest occurrence--it has happened, and that is all.
These discoverers despise one another: if there were the concert among
them which there is among foreign mendicants, a man who admitted
one to a conference would be plagued to death. I once gave something
to a very genteel French applicant, who overtook me in the street, at my
own door, saying he had picked up my handkerchief: whether he
picked it up in my pocket for an introduction, I know not. {9} But that
day week came another Frenchman to my house, and that day fortnight
a French lady; both failed, and I had no more trouble. The same thing
happened with Poles. It is not so with circle-squarers, etc.: they know
nothing of each other. Some will read this list, and will say I am right
enough, generally speaking, but that there is an exception, if I could but
see it.

I do not mean, by my confession of the manner in which I have sinned
against the twenty-four hours, to hold myself out as accessible to
personal explanation of new plans. Quite the contrary: I consider
myself as having made my report, and being discharged from further
attendance on the subject. I will not, from henceforward, talk to any
squarer of the circle, trisector of the angle, duplicator of the cube,
constructor of perpetual motion, subverter of gravitation, stagnator of
the earth, builder of the universe, etc. I will receive any writings or
books which require no answer, and read them when I please: I will
certainly preserve them--this list may be enlarged at some future time.
There are three subjects which I have hardly anything upon; astrology,
mechanism, and the infallible way of winning at play. I have never
cared to preserve astrology. The mechanists make models, and not
books. The infallible winners--though I have seen a few--think their
secret too valuable, and prefer mutare quadrata rotundis--to turn dice
into coin--at the gaming-house: verily they have their reward.
I shall now select, to the mystic number seven, instances of my
personal knowledge of those who think they have discovered, in
illustration of as many misconceptions.
1. Attempt by help of the old philosophy, the discoverer not being in
possession of modern knowledge. A poor schoolmaster, in rags,
introduced himself to a scientific friend with whom I was talking, and
announced that he had found out the composition of the sun. "How was
that done?"--"By consideration of the four elements."--"What are {10}
they?"--"Of course, fire, air, earth, and water."--"Did you not know that
air, earth, and water, have long been known to be no elements at all, but
compounds?"--"What do you mean, sir? Who ever heard of such a
thing?"
2. The notion that difficulties are enigmas, to be overcome in a moment
by a lucky thought. A nobleman of very high rank, now long dead, read
an article by me on the quadrature, in an early number of the Penny
Magazine. He had, I suppose, school recollections of