JF Ptak Science Books Post 2149
I have found sometimes that books aren't necessarily badly written when they're written badly, especially when there's good content hidden under the layer(s) of unfortunate wordly insulations, so the job of the reader which such a thing is to either read half of what is written, or approach the thing full-on by reading it as an archaeological found-poem expedition. This sounds horrible, but sometimes it actually works (or so it seems to me), as in the following examples. I was looking for something entirely different when I opened the creaking old door to a Dickensian world of books and letters in James C. Fernald's (1838-1918) Scientific Sidelights, which feels much more Victorian than its 1903 date of publication. (Fernald was educated in the 1850's and 1860's and that and along with his reading carried over solidly into this work.)
Cracking the book a bit I found a fabulous heading,
"Accumulation of Ethical Forces"
for a short two-paragraph screed from a mid-19th century German source, quoted in the very sniffy Psychology of Henry James,. It was followed by another beauty,
"Accumulation of Excitements"
and then, another:
"The Accumulation of Small Impulses"
All of these were entries on the same page. The titles were terrific and inviting and called for a little reading--which was defeated by indifferent text. But the titles had a life of their own, independent (and in spite of) their articles, and called for assistance, and they found some, by simple re-arrangement of the visual aspects of the piece--this changed the metre and timing of the reading, making everything different, and perhaps better. (All that was done with the text was to alter the spacing--everything else remains the same.)
And so, in the first case, the realignment reads:
ACCUMULATION OF ETHICAL FORCES
I
One must first learn, unmoved,
looking neither to the right nor left,
to walk firmly on the
straight and narrow path,
before one can begin
"to make oneself over again".
He who every day makes a fresh resolve
is like one who,
arriving at the edge of the ditch
he is to leap,
forever stops
and returns for a fresh run.
II
Without unbroken advance
there is no such thing
as accumulation of the ethical forces
possible, and to make this possible,
and to exercise us and habituate
us in it,
is the sovereign blessing of regular work.
By Bahnsen, Beitrdge zur Characterologie, quoted by Henry James in Psychology, vol.i, ch. 4, p. 124. (1899.)
And in the original the entry reads like so:
14. ACCUMULATION OF ETHICAL FORCES
— Advance Must Be Unbroken. —
One must first learn, unmoved, looking neither
to the right nor left, to walk firmly on the straight and narrow path, before one can
begin " to make oneself over again." He who every day makes a fresh resolve is like
one who, arriving at the edge of the ditch he is to leap, forever stops and returns for
a fresh run. Without unbroken advance there is no such thing as accumulation of
the ethical forces possible, and to make this possible, and to exercise us and habituate
us in it, is the sovereign blessing of regular work. — Bahnsen Beitrdge zur Characterologie,
quoted by James in Psychology, vol. i, ch. 4, p. 124. (H. H. & Co., 1899.)
The second example:
ACCUMULATION OF EXCITMENTS
A stimulus which would be inadequate
by itself to excite
a nerve-center
to effective discharge may,
by acting with one
or more other stimuli
(equally ineffectual by themselves alone)
bring the discharge
about.
The natural way to consider this
is as a summation of tensions
which at last
overcome a resistance.
The first of them produce
a, " latent excitement," or
a " heightened irritability " —
the phrase is
immaterial
so far as practical consequences go;
the last
is the straw which breaks the camel's back.
— James Psychology, vol. i, ch.
3, p. 82. (H. H. & Co., 1899.)
And the last:
ACCUMULATION OF SMALL IM-
PULSES
Extraordinary effects are produced
by the accumulation of
small impulses.
Galileo set a heavy pendulum in motion
by the well-timed puffs of
his breath.
Ellicot set one clock going by
the ticks of another,
even when the two
clocks were separated
by a wall.
John Tyndall, Fragments of Science, vol. i, ch. 22, p. 444. (1900.)
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