Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 70, No. 433, November 1851

THE SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH

Who will venture to make catalogue of the possible results of the "Submarine Electric Telegraph?" The more we meditate, the more new wonders open before us. We are running a race with Time; we outstrip the sun, with the round world for the race-course. – Yet, let us not boast: we do not run the race, but that more than a hundred million horse-power invisible to us, which was created with the sun. We are but the atoms involved, and borne about in the secrets of nature. And the secrets – what know we of them? – The facts only of a few of them: the main-springs of their action are, and perhaps ever will be, hidden. The world progresses; it has its infant state, its manhood state, and its old age – in what state are we now? and what is the world's age? Madame de Stael considered it quite in its youth – only fifteen – scarcely responsible! It seems, however, making rapid growth. Is it past the conceited epoch, and now cutting its wise teeth? We stand like spectators at the old fair-show; we see the motley, the ever busy, ever running harlequin and columbine; we are astonished at the fooleries, and are amazed at the wit, the practical wisdom, the magical wand power of the fantastic descendants of Adam and Eve, the masculine, and the feminine; and we laugh to behold the shuffling step of old Grandfather Time, as —

It is through the agency of mind that a few secrets are disclosed to us, and for our use. We call the recipient and the inventor Genius. It is given, as it is wanted, at the right time, and for the preordained purpose. We are sceptical as to "mute inglorious Miltons." Where the gift is bestowed it is used; and if it appear to be partially used, it is where partially given, that one man may advance one step, his successor another – and thus invention leads to invention. Genius for one thing arises in one age, and sleeps after his deed is done; genius for another thing succeeds him. Who shall dare to limit the number? One thing only we pause to admire – how seldom does the gift fall upon bad men!

There have been, perhaps, those who have had thrown in upon their minds a wondrous vision of things to come, which they were not allowed, themselves, to put forth in manifest action to the world. There have been seers of knowledge; and, perhaps, prophesiers in facts. No one will credit the assertion, therefore we make it not, that thousands of years ago steam was known, and applied to the purposes of life. We call, then, certain records the prophecies of Facts; that is, there was a certain practical knowledge, which in its description is prophetic of a new knowledge to be developed. Semiramis set up a pillar on which it was written, "I, Semiramis, by means of iron made roads over impassable mountains, where no beasts [of burthen] come." Did Semiramis prophecy a railroad – or were there Brunells and Stephensons then? When Homer spake, of the ships of the Phæcians, how they go direct to the place of their venture, "knowing the mind" of the navigator, "covered with cloud and vapour," had the old blind bard a mind's-eye vision of our steam-ships? Many more may be the prophecies of Facts; for in these cases doubtless there were facts, the prophecy being in the telling.

But there have been visions also without facts – that is, without the practical visions of an inward knowledge – wherein nature had given a mirror and bade genius look into it. Friar Bacon's prophecy is an example.

"Bridges," says he, "unsupported by arches, can be made to span the foaming current; man shall descend to the bottom of the ocean safely breathing, and treading with firm step on the golden sands never brightened by the light of day. Call but the secret powers of Sol and Luna into action, and behold a single steersman, sitting at the helm, guiding the vessel which divides the waves with greater rapidity than if she had been filled with a crew of mariners tolling at the oars. And the loaded chariot, no longer encumbered by the panting steeds, darts on its course with relentless force and rapidity. Let the pure and simple elements do thy labour; bind the eternal elements, and yoke them to the same plough."

Here is poetry and philosophy wound together, making a wondrous chain of prophecy. Who shall adventure upon a solution of that golden chain, which the oldest of poets told us descended from heaven to earth, linking them as it were together? Was it an electric fluid in which mind and matter were in indissoluble union?

What prophetic truths may yet be extracted from myth and fable, and come blazing like comets we know not whence, into the world's field! Hermes "the inventor," what is his wand, serpent-twined, and its meaning, brought into vulgar translation, and seen in the buffoonery of harlequinade? of what new power may it not be the poetical prototype? Who shall contemplate the multiplicity of nature's facts, and the myriads of multiplicities in their combination? Knowing that all that has ever been written or spoken, in all languages, is but the combination of a few sounds transferred to the alphabet of twenty-four letters, or even less, are we not lost in the contemplation of the possibilities of the myriads of facts, in their interchangings, combinations, and wonderful dove-tailings?

Perhaps, that we may not know too much before our time, facts are withdrawn from us as others are protruded. Memory may sleep, that invention may awake. Did we know by what machinery Stonehenge was built, we might have rested satisfied with a power inadequate to other and new wants, for which that power might have been no help. Archimedes did that which we cannot do, in order that we might do that which he did not. Who shall lift the veil of possibility?

Of this we may be sure, as the mind is made inventive, (and there is no seeming probability that a faculty once given will be taken away from our created nature,) there is a large and inexhaustible store-house, wherefrom it shall have liberty to gather and to combine. We do not believe that steam itself, the miracle of our age, is anything more than a stepping-stone to the discovery of another power – means superseding means. There is and will be no end, as long as the fabric of the world lasts.

There is an old German play, in which the whimsical idea of bringing the Past and Present together in dramatis personæ is amusingly embodied. We forget the particulars, but we think Cæsar or Cicero figure in the dialogue. The ridiculous is their laughable ignorance of the commonest things. The modern takes out his watch and puts it to his ear, and tells the ancient the hour of the day. This is but one out of many puzzling new things; but, even here, how little is told of the real post-Ciceronian inventions; for the object of the play is to show the skill of the Germans only; it is but an offering to the German genius of invention.

Could a tale of Sinbad's voyage have been read to the Roman – how, as he approached the mountain, the nails flew out of the ship, for lack of comprehension of the load-stone – he would have thought it only fantastically stupid; and if he had laughed, it would have been at the narrator's expense. And so, indeed, it has fared with discoverers: they have been before the time of elucidation, like Friar Bacon; and some for fear of ridicule have kept back their knowledge; but not many perhaps; for knowledge, when it is touched by genius, becomes illuminated and illuminating, and will shine though men may shut the door, and stay themselves outside and see it not, while it brightens up only the four walls of a small chamber as it were with the magic lantern in a student's hand. Whereas it ought, according to its power, to gild the universe. The secresy of invention is rather of others' doing – of an envious or doubting world of lookers-on, than of the first perceiving genius. Fortunately the gift of genius, as intended for the use of mankind, comes with an expansive desire of making it known.

If the memory of tradition fails, and some inventions are lost, that their detail may not hamper the faculty that should take altogether a new line, so have we what we may term false lines, that yet, nevertheless, lead into the true. Science may walk in an apparently unnecessary labyrinth, and awhile be lost in the wildest mazes, and yet come out into day at last, and have picked up more than it sought by the way. Wisdom herself may have been seen sometimes wearing the fool's cap. The child's play of tossing up an apple has ended in establishing the law of gravitation. The boy Watt amused himself in watching a kettle on the fire: his genius touched it, and it grew and grew into a steam-engine; and, like the giant in the show, that shook off his limbs, and each became another giant, myriads of gigantic machines, of enormous power, hundred armed Briareuses, are running to and fro in the earth, doing the bidding of the boy observant at his grandam's hearth. Is there an Arabian tale, with all its magic wonders, that can equal this? We said that Wisdom has worn the fool's cap; true, and Foolery was the object – the philosopher's stone; but in the wildest vagaries of her thought, there were wise things said and done, and her secretary, Common Sense, made notes of the good; and all was put down together in a strange shorthand, intelligible to the initiated; and the facts of value were culled, in time, and sifted from the follies, and from the disguises – for there were disguises, that strangers should not pry into them before the allowed hour. Alchemy has been the parent of chemistry – that "[Greek: epistêmê iera]," and its great mysteries, to reveal which was once death!! Secrets were hidden under numbers, letters, signs of the zodiac, animals, plants, and organic substances. Thus in the vocabulary of the alchemists, the basilisk, the dragon, the red and green lions, were the sulphates of copper and of iron; the salamander, the fire; milk of the black cow, mercury; the egg, gold; the red dragon, cinnabar. There is a curious specimen, in the work of the monk Theophilus, translated by Mr Hendrie, how to make Spanish gold: —

"The Gentiles, whose skilfulness in this art is probable, make basilisks in this manner: They have underground a house, walled with stones everywhere, above and below, with two very small windows, so narrow that scarcely any light can appear through them: in this house they place two old cocks, of twelve or fifteen years, and they give them plenty of food. When these have become fat, through the heat of their good condition, they agree together, and lay eggs. Which being laid, the cocks are taken out, and toads are placed in, which may hatch the eggs, and to which bread is given for food. The eggs being hatched, chickens issue out like hens' chickens, to which, after seven days, grow the tails of serpents, and immediately, if there were not a stone pavement, they would enter the earth," &c. &c. – "After this, they uncover them, and apply a copious fire, until the animals' insides are completely burnt. Which done, when they have become cold, they are taken out, and carefully ground, adding to them a third part of the blood of a Red Man, which blood has been dried and ground."

Doubtless it was the discovery of some such language as this which led to the popular belief that the Jews, who were great goldsmiths and alchemists, made sacrifices with the blood of children; and many a poor Jew suffered for the sin of mistifying knowledge. "The toads of Theophilus," says Mr Hendrie, "are probably fragments of the mineral salt, nitrate of potash, which would yield one of the elements for the solvent of gold; the blood of the Red Man, which had been dried and ground, probably a muriate of ammonia," &c. Such were the secrets of the "Ars Hermetica;" and their like may have been bidden in the wand of Hermes. Dragons, serpents, and toads! Awful the vocabulary, to scare the profane; but fair Science came at length unscathed out of the witches' cauldron: and thus it appeared that natural philosophy, like its own toad, ugly and venomous, bore a "precious jewel in its head."

Alchemy and magic were twin sisters, and often visited grave philosophers in their study both together. The Orphic verses and the hexameters of Hesiod, on the virtues of precious stones, exhibit the superstitions of science. They descended into the deeply imaginative mind of Plato, and perhaps awakened the curiosity of the elder, scarcely less fabulous Pliny, the self-devoted martyr to the love of discoveries in science. The Arabian Tales may owe some of their marvels to the hidden sciences, in which the Arabs were learned, and which they carried with them into Spain. Albertus Magnus, in his writings, preserved the Greek and Arab secrets; and our Roger Bacon turned them over with the hand of a grave and potent genius, and his touch made them metaphorically, if not materially, golden. His prophecy, which we have given, was, when uttered, a kind of "philosopher's stone."

Superstitions of science, of boasted and boasting philosophy! And why not? Is there not enough of superstition now extant – a fair sample of the old? Is the new philosophy without that original ingredient? It is passed down from the old, and will incorporate itself with all new in some measure or other, for the very purpose of misleading, that the very bewilderment may set the inventive brain to work, in ways it thought not of. Reasoners are every day reasoning themselves out of wholesome, airbreathing, awakening truths into the visionary land of dreams, and, speaking mysteriously like uncontradicted somnambulists, believe themselves to be oracular. Materialists have followed matter, driven it into corners, divided it, dissected it, and cut it into such bits that it has become an undiscernible evaporation; and they have come away disappointed, and denied its existence altogether. Thus, mesmerism is the bewildered expression of this disappointment, their previous misapprehension. They will not believe that the wand of Hermes represents two serpents intertwined – they see but one, though the two look each other in the face before them, and they are purblind to the wand and the hand that holds it. Even the "Exact Sciences," as they are called, are not complete; they lead to precipices, down which to look is a giddiness. The fact is, the action of the mind is as that of the body: mind and body have their daily outward work, and their times of sleep and of dreaming, and the dreaming of the one is not unfrequently the life of the other. The dream of the philosopher, be he waking or sleeping, is his refreshment, and at times suggestive of the to come. How know we but that "such stuff as dreams are made of" may serve for the fabrication of noble thoughts, and be inwoven into the habit of life, and become useful wear?

Perhaps magic was the first and needful life of philosophy – needful as a covering while it grew, and which it shook off as its swaddling-clothes, and became a truth. How few can trace invention to its germ, or know where the germ lies, and how that it fed upon reached it! The suggestion of a dream begetting a reality! They are no fools who think that good and bad angels are the authors of inventions. It is ingenious to suppose that we are rather the receivers and encouragers of our original thoughts than the authors of them. We may use the magnifying glasses of our reason or our passions, and do but a little distort them, or advance them to use and beauty, as we are good or bad in ourselves. And thus, from suggestions given, the imaginative genius, inventing, magnifies and multiplies by these his glasses and his instruments; and the thing invented requires much of this brilliant finery of our own to be removed before it be fitted for demand and use. Like wrought iron, the sparks must be beaten out of it while it is forming into shape. It must be off its red heat or white heat – be dipped in the cold stream of doubt, and look ugly enough to the eye of common opinion, and be long in the hand of experiment to try the patience of the inventor. And, after all, will the benefited be thankful? History has many a sad tale to tell on this subject. The "Sic vos non vobis" should be inscribed over the portals of the patent office. Yet sometimes, in pity to lost expectations, in the carrying out one great idea to – shall we say its final incompletion, to its last residuum of insanity? – some little scarcely noticeable matter in the machinery has been by some kind suggesting spirit held up to the eye of the philosopher, which has proved to be the magnum bonum of the whole scheme.