Feb. 24, 1882.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



357 



these s(|uares, save one, place a number (after the manner 

 of the abomination of desolation to wliich in our own post- 

 Pyramidal days hath been assigned the name of the 

 " Fifteen Puzzle ") — then it may be shown that the number 

 of arrangements which can be made of these fifteen 

 numbers in tlie aforesaid sixteen sijuares is equal to 

 tlie number of miles separating our solar system from 

 that star which, according to the best Egyptological investi- 

 gations of the date of the Great Pyramid, shone, at its 

 mcriodinal culmination, directly down the Great Gallery 

 and its prolongation the ascending passage. 



Then comes my ingenious and (outside the Pyramid) 

 scientific friend, Mr. Baxendell, who, accepting the Pyramid 

 dimensions assigned by Professor Smyth, tinds other rela- 

 tions wliich they fulfil equally well, showing, of course, 

 other singular coincidences existing quite independently of 

 the Pyramid. Nay, he finds several independent coinci- 

 dences for each dimension, failing, apparently, to notice that 

 the most remarkable feature of his paper — the singular 

 closeness of the numerical results — exists (scarcely in 

 diminished degree) if the Pyramid be left entirely out of 

 the question. Take, for instance, what I find many regard 

 as singularly impressive, the six diflferent fonnuL-e, by which 

 he gets out 1881-59 as the number of inches in the length 

 of the Grand Gallery (which I need hardly say is not known 

 to anything like this degree of exactitude). They are as 

 follows : — 



25,000 ', 



sir* _ a*-n'\/ir 





Hit 400,OOOp^ \e"3-/lu» 



= ^'^'^^'^ =1881-59 

 400,000e')) 



400,000ij^ 



How terrible these formula? appear, in conjunction with 

 the circumstance, that by taking dates for the Fall, the 

 Exodus, and the birth of Christ, not quite agreeing with 

 those approved by recognised theological authorities, the 

 length of the descending and ascending passages cor- 

 respond so closely \\-ith the intervals between the first and 

 second and the second and third of those events (years 

 representing inches), as to compel us to believe that the 

 Christian dispensation cannot last more years than there 

 are inches in the Grand Gallery. Now these formuhe, 

 when analysed, are found to indicate a number of 

 really curious coincidences between the numbers repre- 

 senting .S', the sun's distance, 21 the moon's, s the sun's 

 diameter, e the earth's (equatorial), o- the diameter 

 of the sun's liquid body — quietly assumed, for we 

 know nothing about it — i; another terrestrial diameter, 

 and - the ratio of the circumference to a diameter of a 

 circle. If the Pyramid had no existence, these curious 

 coincidences would remain. The fact that they exist, and 

 are in themselves so singular, shows simply how little value 

 there is in tlie argument from mere coincidence. Given 

 ten or twenty numbers taken at random from different 

 columns of the Times newspaper, or the dimensions of a 

 house, or field, or piece of furniture, or, in fine, taken from 

 anywhere we like, it will be found that with a little 

 patience, any number of coincidences may be found among 

 the numbers themselves, or connecting them witli any other 

 set of numbers, with the dimensions of the solar system, 

 with the volumes, diameters, densities, Ac, of the planets, 

 or, in fine, with \\hatsoever we please. One of the best 

 proofs ever given of this is found in the multitude of rela- 

 tions, independent of the Pyramid, which have turned up 

 whilej'yramidalists have been endeavouring to connect the 

 Pyramid with the solar system. These coincidences are 

 altogether more curious than any coincidence between the 

 Pyramid and astronomical numbers ; the former are as 

 close and remarkable as they are real, the latter, which 



are only imaginary, have only been established by the 

 process which schoolboys call "fudging," — and now new 

 mea.sures ha\-e left the work to be done all over again. 



BRAIN TROUBLES. 



Pi'NNlxc;. 



IT is not, perhaps, commonly known that a tendency to 

 make puns is regarded by many students of mental 

 physiology as a sign of cerebral disease, a circumstance 

 which we would commend to the notice of those persons 

 who are always on the watch to play upon words, without 

 caring whether their word-play is amusing or not. AVhatever 

 opinion we form respecting puns, between the extreme 

 views that a man who would make a pun would pick a 

 pocket, and, as Hood extravagantly maintained (in reply 

 to the saying that puns are the lowest foi-m of wit), 

 that puns are the foundation of all wit, there can be no 

 doubt that puns of a certain sort indicate a ready, bright, 

 and witty mind. But the wit of a punning remark depends 

 entirely on the ideas conveyed by the word or words used 

 in a double sense, not on the pun itself. We laugh at 

 the lines — 



They went and told the Sexton, 

 And the Sexton toll'd the bell, 



because of the absurdity of the ideas suggested. We are 

 struck by the cleverness of other puns, because of the truth 

 of the words, in whatever sense we understand the words 

 played on. But we find nothing amusing or clever when 

 a second meaning, neither humorous nor sensible in itself, 

 is given to anything that has been said in ordinary conver- 

 sation ; and when a confirmed punster seizes every word 

 capable of bearing two meanings, and expects us to laugh 

 at his word-play, we not only are not amused, but soon 

 become unutterably bored. Yet, although it implies a 

 wrongly-directed mind to make puns in this purposeless 

 way, under the impression that they are amusing, it does 

 not necessarily imply impending idiocy or insanity ; for in 

 the majority of cases of this kind, the punster does not 

 yield to an impulse to play upon words, but vorks very 

 hard to acquire the trick of verbal torturing. He may be 

 compared to one who, having observed that the tricks of a 

 clever clown have been received with approval, tries to ex- 

 cite equal merriment by grimaces which are not in the least 

 fuimy, and which, if he really could not help making them, 

 would indicate either that he was insane, or else that he had 

 St. Vitus's dance or some other nervous disease. Precisely as 

 such buffoonery would, in reality, signify only want of sense, 

 not insanity or disease, so the habit of making witless puns 

 implies only a feeble, not a diseased, mind. The case is 

 different, however, when one who is sensible enough to see 

 the folly of mere word-twisting finds his mind turning, as 

 it were, against his will, to the profitless task. We cannot 

 fail to recognise the signs of incipient brain mischief, for 

 instance, when we see Swift taking pains to twist the name 

 of "Alexander the Great," into "all eggs under the grate." 

 It would have been a bad sign if he had made so wretched 

 a joke in conversation, though an ordinary mind might 

 have done so without suggesting tlie idea that the mental 

 machinery was out of order; but that the author of "The 

 Tale of a Tub," should be at the pains to write down such 

 nonsense was of evil portent indeed. The matter might 

 seem trifling enough in itself, as would it be a matter 

 intrinsically of small moment if Mr. Gladstone or the 

 Bishop of London chose to walk down Pall Mall in a 

 nightcap instead of their customary head-gear ; but no one 

 who rightly understands mental phenomena could doubt 



