Headlong Hall | Page 8

"If you talk to me," said Mr Foster, "of mythological personages, of
course I cannot meet you on fair grounds."
"We will begin, if you please, then," said Mr Escot, "no further back
than the battle of Salamis; and I will ask you if you think the mariners
of England are, in any one respect, morally or intellectually, superior to
those who then preserved the liberties of Greece, under the direction of
Themistocles?"
"I will venture to assert," said Mr Foster, "that considered merely as
sailors, which is the only fair mode of judging them, they are as far
superior to the Athenians, as the structure of our ships is superior to
that of theirs. Would not one English seventy-four, think you, have
been sufficient to have sunk, burned, and put to flight, all the Persian
and Grecian vessels in that memorable bay? Contemplate the progress
of naval architecture, and the slow, but immense succession of
concatenated intelligence, by which it has gradually attained its present
stage of perfectibility. In this, as in all other branches of art and science,
every generation possesses all the knowledge of the preceding, and
adds to it its own discoveries in a progression to which there seems no
limit. The skill requisite to direct these immense machines is
proportionate to their magnitude and complicated mechanism; and,
therefore, the English sailor, considered merely as a sailor, is vastly
superior to the ancient Greek."
"You make a distinction, of course," said Mr Escot, "between scientific
and moral perfectibility?"
"I conceive," said Mr Foster, "that men are virtuous in proportion as
they are enlightened; and that, as every generation increases in
knowledge, it also increases in virtue."

"I wish it were so," said Mr Escot; "but to me the very reverse appears
to be the fact. The progress of knowledge is not general: it is confined
to a chosen few of every age. How far these are better than their
neighbours, we may examine by and bye. The mass of mankind is
composed of beasts of burden, mere clods, and tools of their superiors.
By enlarging and complicating your machines, you degrade, not exalt,
the human animals you employ to direct them. When the boatswain of
a seventy-four pipes all hands to the main tack, and flourishes his rope's
end over the shoulders of the poor fellows who are tugging at the ropes,
do you perceive so dignified, so gratifying a picture, as Ulysses
exhorting his dear friends, his ERIAERES 'ETAIROI, to ply their oars
with energy? You will say, Ulysses was a fabulous character. But the
economy of his vessel is drawn from nature. Every man on board has a
character and a will of his own. He talks to them, argues with them,
convinces them; and they obey him, because they love him, and know
the reason of his orders. Now, as I have said before, all singleness of
character is lost. We divide men into herds like cattle: an individual
man, if you strip him of all that is extraneous to himself, is the most
wretched and contemptible creature on the face of the earth. The
sciences advance. True. A few years of study puts a modern
mathematician in possession of more than Newton knew, and leaves
him at leisure to add new discoveries of his own. Agreed. But does this
make him a Newton? Does it put him in possession of that range of
intellect, that grasp of mind, from which the discoveries of Newton
sprang? It is mental power that I look for: if you can demonstrate the
increase of that, I will give up the field.
Energy--independence--individuality--disinterested virtue--active
benevolence--self-oblivion--universal philanthropy--these are the
qualities I desire to find, and of which I contend that every succeeding
age produces fewer examples. I repeat it; there is scarcely such a thing
to be found as a single individual man; a few classes compose the
whole frame of society, and when you know one of a class you know
the whole of it. Give me the wild man of the woods; the original,
unthinking, unscientific, unlogical savage: in him there is at least some
good; but, in a civilised, sophisticated, cold-blooded, mechanical,
calculating slave of Mammon and the world, there is none--absolutely
none. Sir, if I fall into a river, an unsophisticated man will jump in and

bring me out; but a philosopher will look on with the utmost calmness,
and consider me in the light of a projectile, and, making a calculation
of the degree of force with which I have impinged the surface, the
resistance of the fluid, the velocity of the current, and the depth of the
water in that particular place, he will ascertain with the greatest nicety
in what part of the mud at the bottom I may probably be found, at