OCTOBEK 1, 1886.] 



♦ KNO\A^LEDGE ♦ 



)D0 



Clement of Alexandm, who had set himself the task of 

 hunting out all such references. Not even Eiisebius had 

 found this passage ; nor had he (in face of the fact that the 

 M8.S. of his day had been notoi-iou.sly .searched in vain for 

 such a passage) the courage to invent it. Yet he wanted 

 not that sort of courage by any means. Justin Martyr, in 

 A.D. 141, addressing the Roman people, the senate, and the 

 emperor in defence of Christianity, could adduce no such 

 evidence; }'et if he could it would have been worth a 

 hundred such arguments as he used (though that, perhaps, 

 Ls not saying much). "As to the objections," he writes, 

 " about our Jesus being crucified, I say," — not " your own 

 Tacitus says he was crucified, and by Pilate, even as our 

 liLstorians say," but simply and most feebly — " suft'ering was 

 common to all your sons of Jupiter, so why should not oiir 

 son of Jupiter suffer " 1 There is, in fact, no trace of the 

 passage before the fifteenth century. The very use of the 

 word " Cln-ist," as if it were a name, like the incorrect use 

 of " Buddha " for " the Buddha," shows that the passage is 

 an interpolation by some ignorant person, who certmnly 

 carried out his pious fraud at least 300 years after the time 

 of Tacitus, and probably much later even than that. The 

 Romans were not intolerant in religious matters ; and most 

 probably the malefactors referred to in the passage as it 

 originally stood were really evil men — not Christians at all, 

 even in name. 



* * * 

 The following jest ought to be good, seeing that it was 

 made nearly a year ago in the Saturday Revievj, and ia now 

 repeated for my special benefit and delectation, as something 

 too fine to be forgotten, in the sweetly honest critique of my 

 " Americanisms," on which I have touched elsewhere in 

 this number. INIy critic, by the way, expresses astonish- 

 ment that I '• have not hesitated to reprint the jibe of an 

 enemy " about " le savoir c'est inoi " — see Gossip for May, 

 p. 228. So like a Saturday Revieioer to regard a jibe as the 

 work of an enemy 1 My critic's astonishment at my repeat- 

 ing the joke is as characteristic of him as — -I trust — my 

 own action is of me. Anything like frankness, or fairness, 

 or a sense of fun for its own sake, must seem so strange to a 

 man like my critic. I doubt very much whether the man 

 who made the neat joke about le savoir c'est moi meant to 

 hurt me. There was too much good fun in the joke for 

 th.at. Any way I hold, now a.s always, that a joke about 

 myself is as well worth repeating as another, if good as a 

 joke, whether it is a sooth jest or not. There is much less 

 fun in the laboured joke — smelling of the dictionary — 

 elaborated by my Saturday Review critic, who in assuming 

 that a jibe must come from an enemy, writes himself down 

 one — where 1 write him down rather a false friend. 



" We suggested to Mr. Proctor the cultivation of a 

 marine mongoose to kill off the sea serpents which seem to 

 inhabit the seven-leagued boots with which he strides 

 across three continents disseminating very popular science." 

 Country and colonial papers plea.se copy, for the Saturday 

 Revieii! regards this as a superior joke 1 I commend it 

 specially to Mr. Grant Allen, whose proposition in the 

 Cornhill Magazine about a year ago, that a sea serpent 

 should be put into one of our museums, seems to mark the 

 incabation of this very funny suggestion. I ventured a 

 smile at that embiyonic jest, as I now venture to laugh at 

 it in its full-gi'own form. 



I woiLD not, however, advise my critic, or any of his 

 readers, to imagine that v;ry popular science will suffice to 

 make tri-continental lecturing successful. I fancy I re- 

 member cases in which '' very popular " science-mongers 

 have been very great failures on the platform. My own 



plan is to suppose my audiences very critical — Darwins, 

 Tyndalls, and Huxleys, come to hear a subject about which 

 they have no S])ecial or technical knowledge — and beyond 

 the omission of technicalities I do not know that my 

 lectures can be properly called popular. I would recom- 

 mend mj' critic, if he would attain better success on the 

 lecture platform than has j'et rewarded his exertions, to try 

 the following mixture: — First, long and loving study of 

 some subject ; secondly, real enthusiasm for it ; and thirdly 

 (what I am told some lecturers lamentably want), respect 

 for his audience. 



The mongoose, in this ''jibe of an enemy " (I thank thee, 

 friend, for teaching me the word), reminds me of a mon- 

 goose story, which I have heard in various forms, and now 

 repeat (throwing in Americanisms) as it was told me by a 

 charming fellow-passenger — an American lady — on the 

 Germanic a few weeks ago. (It will bear repeating, though 

 probably many of my readei's have already heard it) :^ 



A " down-east Yankee " sat in a street-car opposite a 

 quiet-looking man who carried a bag. Overcome at length 

 by innate inquisitiveness, the Yankee asked — 



Yankee : " Say, stranger, what air you carrying in thet 

 ther bag r' 



Stranger : " Ssli — sh ! Don't tell ! A mongoose I " 



Yankee : " I wa7it to know 1 But — say stranger — what's 

 a mongoose 1 " 



Stranger : "A mongoose is a Macauco, or Maki — genus 

 Lemuridce. It kills snakes." 



Yankee : " Du tell 1 But — say stranger — what snakes 

 are you going to kill with this yer — this yer — mucky — 

 mongoose 1 " 



Stranger {solemnly) : " I have a brother. He sees snakes ! 

 I'm taking along this mongoo.se to kill those snakes ! " 



Yankee : " Sakes alive ! But — say stranger — them 

 snakes ain't real ! " 



Sth anger (descending sadly from the car) : " I know it. 

 But then — you see — this mongoose isn't real either." Hxit. 



Yankee (reflectively) : Wal ! Darn my mother ! I " 

 * * * 



" The bearings of this " fable " lays " (as, alas ! too many 

 Americans say) " in the application on it." The Saturday 

 Revieir criticism is the mysterious bag. Any one who 

 expects to get truth out of such a critique may be aptly 

 compared to the unwise Yankee ; the mongoose is my 

 critic's wisdom ; my critic is the demented brother ; and 

 the snakes seen by the crazy brother are the fiults my critic 

 notes in my " Americanisms." I show elsewhere that the 

 faults "ain't real"; "but then — you see" — my critic's 

 wisdom " ain't real " either. 



A corresi'Ondent asks whether the surgical operations, 

 on which the interest of Mr. Grant Allen's shilling shocking 

 " Kalee's Shrine " chiefly turns, are possible : whether the 

 eyelids can be permanently prevented from working by cut- 

 ting two nerves, or put into working order again by cutting 

 two more. I cannot imagine how the former operition 

 could be effective for more than a few days, or how, if the 

 former were pos.sible, the latter could be effective at all. It 

 would seem about as likely that if an e.vleusor muscle were 

 cut tlirouijh, and then the corresponding.//ea;or were also cut 

 through, the person experimented on would be just as well 

 off as if he had not been touched. But I would not ven- 

 ture an opinion on a subject outside my range, lest haply 

 some Saturday Review critic should accuse me of writing 

 " with delightful .self-satisfiiction " about matters whereof I 

 know nothing. Mr-. Allen introduces .so many surgical 

 matters into his stories that I make no doubt he has 

 studied surgery very thoroughly indeed. 



