KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[July 31, 1886. 



"II." certainly docs), "he cannot possibly remember all be writes." 

 There is no fiillacy in this of course. Oh, dear, no ! 



In KNOHLKDGE'for July 10, a very complete reply (letter 1804) 

 is given to "H.'R"bit of metaphysical mystification about "infi- 

 nite ilivisibilitx ," III f lie letter immediately following, the walrus 

 — "n. I '" -' I'i^ 1 i.nl.n, "Hallyards" (but they are ino-ttricably 

 mil "I "I " ' ' ' ': 'li'inolishes the law of gravitation on the very 

 Eullii ;. ■! . • i I a fras acts like a gas, and not like a solid. 

 I" Ksim 1 M ..I lor Illy 17, " H." returns to the charge on the sub- 

 ject of iniinite divisibility, but he persistently ignores the distinct- 

 tion between space and matter which was pointed out to Iiim. 

 An atom is indivisible not because it is too small to be divided, 

 but because we have no means of dividing it. To this may be 

 added that if wo had the means of dividing the atoms of substance, 

 say, oxygen, we should get something, but that something would 

 not be oxygen. Let " H." get a heap of shot and a paper knife. 

 He may divide the heap until he comes to single shots. These 

 are (with the means he has) indivisible. But does it follow that 

 the space each shot occupies is indivisible ? " II." might find means 

 to divide the shots further, either by smashing them with a sledge- 

 hammer, or by putting them in an acid. The result in either case 

 would not be shots, but somclhh,:, ehc. Talking of shot, I cannot 

 help thinking that "H.alhards senior" bronght down that 10 ft. 

 condor by a weapon well-known to great travellers, and used by 

 several who have given their names to parts of the earth's surface 



Don't be alarmed, Mr. Editcr, I have no intention of following 

 " H." through his whole range of subjects, " the comity of nations," 

 " printers' devilrv," blunders about quotations, solar myths, garden 

 slugs, the man in the moon, &c. I would not if I could, and I am 

 not a walrus. I propose to construct an index of all the subjects on 

 which " H." has treated, and I have a strong suspicion that if ever 

 completed it will be an examiile of the " infinitely divisible." A 

 great deal of it surely belongs only to the " Paradox Corner." 



[1844]—" Mr. G. L. Gomme is satisfied that in the customs of 

 Lammastide (1st of August) ' we have the key to the whole system 

 of ancient agriculture." The one great custom, he remarks, that 

 links it with a very remote past, is the removal of fences from 

 lands that were held in common by the village community, but 

 which had to some extent been inclosed for individual proprietor- 

 ship since the preceding Lammastide— a custom that prevailed with 

 much curious variation on the South Downs in Sussex, besides other 

 places, till within the last 50 years, even if it be not [?] yet extinct. 

 His paper must be read as a whole in order to understand the 

 force of his argument ; the custom at any rate seems to have but 

 weak connection with the reputed meaning of the word, which, 

 like the other great mass days, involves a church offering, whether 

 of a lamb, as sometimes explained, or of a loaf (hlaf)."— Saturday 

 Review on " The Antiquary," vols, vi., vii. Oct. 27th, 1883. 



Differing from the Reviewer above, 1 would suggest that the 

 Lammas custom has the closest connection with the real— though 

 not, indeed, with the reputed meaning of the word. Lammas in 

 French is "St. Pierre-es-liens." This word lien in English has 

 come to have only a moral meaning, and to be pronounced (I 

 think) like " lean." But when French was current in England, it 

 was no doubt pronounced "lyian," anH used of material bonds. 

 The mass would naturally be called "Lienmas" — or perhaps 

 "Loanmas" — for lianc in French means a uiiMe— and then you 

 have the word at once, without going to purely gratuitous hypo- 

 theses about lambs and loaves. The probability of this deri- 

 vation would be greatly increased if it is the case that 

 the feast was not known in England before the Nor- 

 man Conquest; and this does seem probable. It is said in the 

 lessons for the day in the Roman breviary that Eudacia, wife of 

 Theodosius the younger, was presented at Jerusalem with the 

 chain (i.e., one of the chains) wherewith Herod bound St. Peter; 

 which she sent to her daughter Eudo.iia at Rome, who brought it 

 to the Pope, and he then shewed her the chain wherewith St. 

 Peter was bound by Nero; that the two joined themselves together 

 BO as to seem the work of one artificer ; that thence a church 

 was dedicated on the Esquila; under the name of St. Peter in 

 Chains, and a feast assigned on the Ist August, till then occu- 

 pied with surviving idolatrous festivities; the chains working 

 miracles— amoni; which in 969 a certain Count, a friend of the 

 Emperor 0th i, was delivered from a devil by contact with the 

 chains; " uc dienceps in urbe sanctorum vinculorum religio pro- 

 pagata est." From which last concluding sentence I feel inclined 

 to infer that the feast really dates from the end of the tenth 

 century. It may not have been introduced into England till much 

 later ; Trinity Sunday was introduced only by St. Thomas Becket 



raory of his own consecration on that day. If this be so, the 

 would not be known to the pre-Norman English; and this 

 onnt for its not being called Bondmas, or any like name. 

 The removal of the hurdles is, of course, a very graphic way of 

 commemorating the falling of the chains from St. Peter's hands. 



would a. 



Hai 



MICHAELMA 



[1845] — "Mr. Edward Peacock has a congenial subject in 

 Michaelmas." [Does this mean that the great goose-feast muBt 

 be interesting to all peacocks ?] " Multitudes of angels, according 

 to Jewish tradition, are created daily, but no archangels. These 

 are limited to the original four who first spread their mighty wings 

 at the birth of all things. The respect in which St. Michael is held, 

 beginning with Satan himself, extending to Mahommed, coming 

 down to John Bunyan, and continuing to now, is owing to his 

 character as protector of the people of God. The Devil could not 

 bring against him a railing accusation when the two disputed for 

 the body of Moses." [This must allude to some little-known 

 tradition; for St. Judo says, quite contrariwise, that the Archangel 

 did not dare to bring, Ac] " The enemy of Michael is the enemy 

 of God, according to the Prophet of Islam ; and it is curious tha* 

 so unsparing a bruiser of saint-worship and Popery as the man of 

 Elstow should make his hero in his terrible fight" with ApoUyon 

 call upon the prince of the archangels for aid ; at least the winner 

 in the conflict confesses to have done so with success in his aftcr- 

 pa?.an :— 



But blessed Michael helped me, and I 

 By dint of sword did qnickly make him fly — 

 that is, Apollyon." — Saturday lievieic on " The Antiquary," 

 vols, vi., vii., Oct. 27, 1883. 



The aid of St. Michael in Christian's conflict with Apollyon ie 

 just one of those anomalies which favour the theory that the earlier 

 part of the P.P. was pirated by Bunyan, and is of pre-Reformation 

 date. The Reviewer by the way orrs in saying that Xn. either 

 invoked St. M. or says he did bo. He merely says that St. M. 

 helped him. Any Protestant could say this : but the curious thing 

 is that in the account of the conflict there is no mention of St. M. ; 

 and that in the last lines of the little hymn Xn. thanks " him " 

 "his holy name" — (sic in 1st Edn.) — there having been no mention 

 of God whatever. Later editions have capital H'b ; exactly as in 

 ExoduB, where it is said " he" (Moses) wrote on the tables— which 

 in our bibles is printed "He" to make it agree with the other 

 account in Deuteronomy. If Bunyan had men/if God, what reason 

 can be assigned for his not having written it ? Hallvards. 



THOUGHT-READING. 



[1846]— Since writing the letter, 17G9, in which I alluded to the 

 theory that possibly a rudimentary sense or organ in some minds 

 or brains might account for the phenomena of thought-reading and 

 mesmerism, I have carefully applied the theory to each case of 

 thought-reading recorded in Knowledge, Vol. VI. pp. 364, et scq., 



vith t 

 The firsi 



pers 



!t of e 

 ,s and things 



?nts refers to the guessing of the names 



md ther 





3 difticu 



intil we get 



ich is guessed as fork. The only cxplanatioi 

 is that the questioner instead of having the idea fork in his mind 

 had that of the word " fork " written or printed, or of the sound of 

 the letters f, o, r, k ; but then the experiment tongs, guessed as^re- 

 irons, poler, wants exactly an opposite explanation. I will now refer 

 to the experiments carried on at Liverpool by Messrs. Guthrie & 

 Birchall. A gold cross is guessed first as something yellow, then 

 as a cross. In this case one would like to know whether the 

 questioner arrived at the idea by this process of reasoning, or 

 whether he was looking at a gold cross. The next answer is re- 

 markable — " Looks like an egg." It seems, therefore, that the 

 thought-reader sees the things be is thinking of ; for, again, in the 

 next experiment, " a penholder with a thimble inserted on the end 

 of it" is guessed as "a column with something bell-shaped turned 

 down on it." It seems to me that much depends on the idea 

 as conceived by the questioner. Supposing the questioner to 

 be looking at a golden cross, one can imagine the image of 

 a yellow cross appearing in the thought-reader's brain ; but it 

 seems to me that, if the questioner were merely thinking of 

 a 'golden cross, the idea of gold et hoc genus omne rather than 

 yellow would be produced in the thought-reader's brain. In a 

 former letter I stated that whether we see a cannon fired, hear the 

 report, or smell the powder, the same idea may be produced in our 

 brains, namely, a cannon has been fired ; but, as I am personally 

 constituted, the idea " a cannon has been fired " neither pictures to 

 my brain the smoke coming out of the muzzle, nor produces in my 

 ears the sound of artillery, or in my nose the smell of sulphuretted 



