Famous Fools and Fanatics.

Hastings Standard, Issue 47, 20 June 1896, Page 4

Famous Fools and Fanatics.

[Contributed.] In one of the popular works of the late Charles Kingsley there are the words, " There never was anyone who spoke out the truth yet on the earth who was not called a ' howling idiot ' for his pains at first." The facts of history and the observation of everyday life will bear out this remark. A man who advances a theory contrary to th preconceived notions of the general public- will bo branded a fool or a fanatic for his reward. The natural history of fools would make very interesting reading. Fools are few and far betweeu. One fool in a church is worth a dozen of your careful, cool, calculating, and cautions characters. The Lord -Jesus Christ was the first fanatic in Christian history. He was not only numbered with the transgressors*, but He was charged with being beside Himself. " He hath the devil and is mad," said the Jews, aft t He had delivered one of His marvellous discourse*. The world did not understand Him. Even His own relations considered He was mad. " The world," says the Apostle, " knowet'i ns not, because it knew Him not." Thus the best of men, the prime and flower of human kind, the Son of man, was the most famous fanatic who ever lived. It appears also that the Apostle Paul was branded with the same characteristic. His contemporaries were at a loss to discover a reason for histrange actions. They saw him brave the greatest perils, oppose the greatest powers, endure the greatest hardships, make the greatest sacrifices ; and they failed to find a reason for his strange conduct. So they supposed that he had pored over the musty Jewish records until his brain had really given way under the strain, and that much learning had made him mad. When the intrepid monk that shook the world dared to d ; -*""b the cobwebs of the Papacy, and hid the audacity to bum the Pope's bull in the market-place at Wittenburg, some very choice ecclesiastical Billingsgate from the catapults of the priests of Rome was hurled at his poor head. But he survived it, did Martin Lather. He was a fool, a fanatic, a madman. John Wesley, the Father of Methodism, the greatest religious reformer of the last century, was also placed in " shame's high pillory." Would thot we had a few more like him now. With all his faults, we love him still. He was a notorious fool. W r hen William Carey undertook his mission to India, one of the most aristocratic members of the British House of Commons, said that it was the "mission of a madman." Sydney Smith, the witty canon of St. Paul's, spoke of the first batch of missionaries that went out for the purpose of evangelising the heathen, as " little detachments of maniacs." There are religious fools and fanatics in abundance whose names will be dear to every Christian heart to the end of time, yea through all eternity. But there are some scientific fools who must not Ik- forgotten. Dr Friend said of Roger Bacon that '• he was the miracle of his age, and possessed, perhaps, the greatest genius for mechanical science that has been known since the days of Archimedes." The germ idea of the steam engine is generally traced to Solomon de Cans. We are told that he " travelled from Normandy to Paris to present a treatise to Louis XIII. on the subject. His Minister, Cardinal Richelieu dismissed the applicant, and on account of his importunity imprisoned him as a dangerous madman." It would be very tedious to tabulate even a century of fools and fanatics. The present century is very rich in fanaticism —especially in the domain of science. Just take a sample : In the first year of this period Herschell made his discoveries of light and heat ; in the second, the Planet Ceres was discovered by Piazzi, and Wollaston the lines in spectrum ; in the third, Gibers discovered the planet Pallas, Herschell the binary systems of double stars, and Young the law of interferences ; in the fourth, we have the discovery of Juno by Harding, and the new views of Leslie on heat, as well as the discoveries of Prolixin hydraulics ; in the fifth, La Place promulgates the doctrine of capillary attraction ; in the sixth, the French philosophers complete their measure of an arc from Barcelona to Dunkirk ; in the seventh, Olbers discovers Vesta, and Herschell the satellites of Uranus; in the eighth, Lagrange promulgates his planetary theory; in the ninth, the catalogue is crowded with discoveries in acoustics, and the attractions of spheroids; the tenth is signalised by Malus's discovery of the polarisation of light ; and the eleventh, by Brewster's and Arago's discoveries of colors in crystallised plates by polarised light; while the twelfth is rendered memorable by Biot's discoveries of colors in mica by polarised light ; followed in the thirteenth by Brewster's discovery of polarised rings, and La Place's promulgation of the Lunar theory; in the fourteenth we have Well's theory of dew; in the next Poisson's theory of waves, accompanied by the particular views of Pond and Brenklyon parallax; in the sixteenth we have the promulgation of the theory of flame, as well as Davy's invention of the safety lamp, along with PoUson's views on the stability of the swtm. Fresnel on interferencesof polarised light, Brewster on colors in anmakd light, Babbage on the calculas of functions, and Bromhead on integrations; these are followed in the seventh by Brewster's discoveries on radiant heat and hi-axial rings, and Herschell on integrations ; in the eighteenth Petit and Dulong discovered the law of cooling, and of specific heat; Kater made his experiments on the pendulum, and Seebach his discoveries on prismatic heat ; in the nineteenth the world of science was astonished by Oerstead's discovery of absorption of light, and Encke's of a periodical

comet, and Barlow's law of magnetism, Babb.igc on series, :m<l Homer 0,1 equations; whilst the twentieth was distinguished by the formation of the Astronomical Society, and the discovery of Stieve of double .-tars ; the. twenty-first by Scoresby, and Sabre's enquiries into magnetism, Arago and Davy's discoveries in electro-magnetism the extension of the arc to Shetland and Minorca by Biot and Arago, the attraction of spheriods by Ivory, and the inquiries into analyses by Cauchy ; in the next discoveries literally crowd the record, relating not only to double stars, thermo-electricity, and thermo-magneti-un, but also acoustics ; in the next we have Moll and \anbech's observations on the velocity of sound, Miicherlech's on the effect of heat on crystals, and Faraday's on the condensation of gases ; in the next Bessel promulgated his views on perturbation-. Ilerschell and South made the world still better acquainted with the double stars, Hamilton enlarged the bounds of optical inquiry by his system of ray-; in the twenty-fifth Sabine appear* with more observations on the pendulum. Ivory on the figure of equilibrium, Barlow on magnetism by rotation, and Professor Powell on radiant heat. But stop ! a quarter of a century will suffice. What an illustrious array of fools, fanatics, scientists, madmen ! A madman is very frequently a man of one idea. Insanity assumes a variety of forms and shapes. An i lea gets into a man's head; supposing that head to be owned by a madman. Vvhr.t is the result ? Why, it burns itself into his briin, and sets his whole soul ablaze ; it absorbs his attention by day, and in the night his dreams are coloured with the idea ; it become* the imperial passion ; it stirs his blood ; if lends every energy to its use ; it presses itself upon him; it carries him onward like an irresistible tidal-wave ; it becomes the regnant force of his being. Suppose a fool gone mad on Prohibition. He sees drunkards rolling over the precipice every minute ; he pictures ghastly homes, shattered lives, starving children, pinched p;id haggard women ; the State squandering public money to feed vice ; and a long procession of ruined and blasted lives throw shadows over his soul, and make his flesh creep, his hair to sumd on end, and the blood to rush to his linger tips, and all that—and more.