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RHYMES OF CONTRAST
O N
WISDOM AND FOLLY.
A C O M P A R IS ON BET W E EN
OBSERVANT AND REFLECTIVE AGE,
DERISIVELY CALLED FOGIE,
AlM D A
SENSELESS AND UNTHINKING AMERICAN GO-AEIEAD.
INTEN DEID TO EXEMPLIFY
AN IMPORTANT AGENT IN THE WORKING PLAN
O F T H E
H U MAN IN T E L L E C T.
A NARRATED DIALOGUE.
By JAMES RUSH, M.D.,
AUTHOR or A “NATURAL HISTORY of THE INTELLECT, THE *PHILosophy
of The HUMAN voice, AND of ‘HAMLET,
A DRAMATIC PRELUDE.”
PHILADELPHIA :
J. B. LIPPIN COTT & C O.
FEBRUARY FIR's T,
M D C C C L XIX. -


PREFA CE,
THROUGH ignorance or inattention, the purpose of an act
may be at first and afterwards overlooked; as will probably
be the case with the following Pages. I do not publish
them with reference to their Anapestic canter and jingle, their
humor, oddity, or even the needed satire they may contain:
which whether passable or indifferent, are not offered as ‘some-
thing new,” that eye and ear-trap of the day. Regarding the
execution of such subjects, others have already treated them
better than falls within the Author's ability. The most trifling
fiction may however, illustrate the most important truth; and
if the mere literary critic overlooking the intention of the trifle
before him, should successfully retort jest and ridicule against
its invasive attack upon folly, ignorance, and vice, it would
require no great effort: for wit, whatever its originality or
power, can always be answered by wit, rendered brighter per-
haps by the light it was designed to extinguish. And here
so different from the steadfastness of truth, which cannot be
opposed, and only confirmed by truth; ridicule being no test
of it, except made by the tongue of truth, and then it will be
no humorous contrast to itself. Though truth may be accept-
ably caricatured by drollery, it is always from the painter and
(iii)


Vi PREFACE.
being uncontroled by Nature, would from the variable tendency
of a supposed self-will in thought, be widely different from their
present respective accuracy, order, and inventive beauty. For
as science and the higher poetry represent Nature; when Na-
ture presents to them her images of things, she does it by
the necessity of her Law of the intellectual and involuntary
tie. If the brain has a power of selecting its images, and of
joining them for its free-will purposes, we would have con-
fusion on most of the subjects of thought; and Government,
Religion, Medicine, and Morals would present a stranger
medley of irreconcilable notions than has heretofore confused
all metaphysical and therefore impracticable Theories.
I have stated in another place, that when many images
rise on a subject of inquiry, they have various degrees of re-
lation to each other; what we have called the strictly Related
tie, or a conclusion upon it, produces the truth of science, the
rules of grandeur and beauty in the higher poetry, and in the
esthetic arts; the other relations, under their different degrees,
creating no strict perception of truth, yet sometimes afford-
ing an illustration of it, and only furnishing the slightly con-
nected images of the resemblances or contrasts of wit, the
oddities of humor, and the distortions of drollery: showing
the ground of a preceding remark, that ridicule, founded on
these fainter relations, is no test of truth, though often in
sophistry used against it. Otherwise it would be to oppose
false or feebly related images to those of the strictly related
tie. Now the theories of Metaphysics, from the Greek ety-
mology of Meta, beyond, and phusis, nature, being on notions


xii PREFACE.
thought or word was sought and found by the Author. The
stricter tie that produced what he truly states, and the less
related tie of mere analogy, fainter resemblance, contrast or
contrariety, in its humorous illustrations, were all impressed
into perceptions by the involuntary ties of the working plan
of the mind, as the like ties are raised in the mind of others,
from the highest to the lowest perceptive degree; leading to
the inference that its boasted profundity, genius, and origi-
nality are no more than its recorded description, not of human
productions, but of images involuntarily struck-up by Nature
on the brain. Should this be true, compare the productive
intellects thus formed, with those of trite and vulgar rotine, in
appointed Royal ministers, voted Presidents, everyday Pro-
vosts, Professors, Lawyers, Doctors, and Mystic Theologians,
who in pride and vanity, persuade themselves, their thoughts
and words are the undirected choice of their Will.
These Rhymes may perhaps amuse those who are merrily
disposed; and though they contain not one instance of per-
sonal satire or caricature, yet if even the charge of insignifi-
cance cannot save them from the sneers of those corporate
combinations for money and notoriety, and of those “vested
rights’ which so often inflict unpunished wrongs; we may per-
haps find in these sneers some self-confessed instances of the
truth of their application to fraud, extravagance, and folly, to
the disasters of popularity and avarice, and to the precipitate
thoughtlessness of the Country, by complaining individuals
thus putting the cap of the convict, of the fool, of a mocked
Liberty and Independence, or of a flying Mercury, on their
own well fitted head. -


PREFACE. xiii
Separated from the odd and satiric subjects of these Pages,
though brought within their view, two eminent instances of
Public virtue are so remarkable, they could not be referred to,
and named, without that compliment to justice and wisdom,
which it is to be feared their posterity will be too much in-
terested in other things, to care for or remember.
PHILADELPHIA, January 18, 1869.


ON WISDOM AND FOLLY. 27.
Then they bubbled good-by to the Sun, who replied,
Of that trumpet beware, ’tis a dangerous pride;
If you blow it too high, you'll grow giddy and fall,
And away go your trumpet, wealth, honor, and all.
I don't think it will do you much good, what I’ve said;
'Tis to ruin you run; if you will, go ahead.
Then he shone on the Moon, and bid them call upon her,
For having less light, she might have all the honor.
The Moon being Full, all the Bubbles combine,
To inhale their full too of her glorious Shine, 290
Since they thought of its value if brought to the Earth,
In all serious questions, no less than for mirth,
And that should Metaphysics and Moonshine die-out,
There'd be nothing but Truth! and no Falsehood and Doubt.
But the Moon having heard of their “go-ahead’ schemes,
Setting intellect far behind fictional dreams,
Her Asylum for Lunatics straightway unlocks,
And to them made it free, in a wild dreaming box.
Yet to swell out their greatness, and save packing trouble,
Blew all with her horn into one monstrous Bubble; 300
Which, filled with what honor the Soapsuds would bear,
She sent back to the Earth, to grow still greater there.
Here they called a mass meeting from Georgia to Maine,
Of the Bubble and Box, the contents to explain.
When some Public cracked (?) speakers long known to the State,
Wishing still to be greater, because they were great,
Made the greatness within the great Bubble so proud,
That it burst, and with Froth, wide bespattered the crowd.
This explains why a Fool, when self-stung by conceit,
Bloats its atom of Froth, his ambition to mete. 310


oN wisDOM AND Folly. 33
See the grasping monopolies, which at their pleasure
Seize other men's dues, and then waste without measure,
Rag credit that can't keep the wolf from the door,
To begin, cheats itself, and then swindles the poor,
have elsewhere called, and described them, act with successive and con-
nected influence on each other, in their intended purpose, and perform it
well. A fool wants this order and connection of his constituents, and
acts evilly and wrong. Until therefore, mankind are brought to this gen-
eral consent, in knowing the working plan of thought, for wrong think-
ing is never unanimous, they will continue to be unsteady, contradictory,
and contentious, as individuals, and as a community altogether unable to
govern themselves.
It is from an instinctive groping after a uniform mode of perception,
that the greater number of Nations have looked for this desired una-
nimity, in the supposed mental system of a Monarch. He may have
more power, for power is sometimes the energy of passion; but the intel-
lectual fate of a King, with his surroundings of wealth, adulation, vanity,
pride, ambition, and glory, resembles that of an obscure individual con-
spicuously and unexpectedly raised to our Presidency; one being born,
the other voted, to his incompetence. This altogether perverts the natural
order and balance of the constituents, necessary for mental unanimity,
and leaves the subjects and the people, to the sole use of the forceful sub-
stitute for knowledge and truth, a numerical majority. Majority may
then be rightly defined, to be that doubtful and blundering pretense to
wisdom, sometimes right, but by its remove from a perceptive una-
nimity, oftener wrong: yet necessarily adopted as the only means for
effecting the united action, though not as the unthinking believe it to be,
the united intelligence of man.
In the common use of the word majority, it has become so identified
with the terms power, knowledge, wisdom, and right, that to have a
majority is seemingly to hold these instruments at command: and the re-
sponsibility of using them, which would be felt by an individual, is by a
numerical preponderance, unacknowledged, evaded or forgotten, and its
weight directed only for preserving or increasing itself.
There has been a vain hope to find the unanimity of a broadly in-
structed intellect, in the supposed power of wisdom and right, by extend-
ing a majority to two-thirds, or four-fifths, or to the undivided verdict of
a Jury. The essential vice however, of a majority lies in its heteroge-
neous numbers; and their increase may only extend the power of the error
or the wrong. The truth of a majority is therefore to be looked upon as
a metaphysical notion, and phrase, not embraced by the purpose or lan-
3


36 RHYMES OF CONTRAST
Let them know the mind's structure, by which they'll be taught,
They’ve a mirror for Sights more amusing in thought;
Here they’ll see God and Nature, in truth represented,
Not pictures of things as if things were demented, 470
But making their Shows out of knowledge, they'll find
The amusement they want is right-using the mind.
You can see even this in a Fool's self-content,
Satisfied for the moment, when on folly bent;
Thus a mind rich in knowledge, the sovereignty gains,
To be always self-happy, as Nature ordains;
With the world's writhing worm of ambition down-trod
To display in their truth, the unproud works of God.*
Stand aside for that multitude, hear all the noise
Of men black and white, dusty black and white boys, 480
With high City Dignities scrambling to hear
A new cut-and-dried speech from his Honor the Mayor;
So much music, such bells, and such prancing Light horse,
You would think of Boy Billy and Banbury Cross.
Not at all; 'tis some fifty Odd Fellows a-coming,
With aprons, belts, badges, their fifing and drumming;
A visiting movement, that ceaseless vibration,
The swing here and there of our pendulum Nation;
Some idlers of Gotham, packed off in Committee
To honor like fools of an odd Quaker City, 490
Whose spendthrifty Councils as ‘Lords of Misrule,” -
To pay Honor with waste, by the ‘something new’ school,
A magnificent Banquet resolved to provide,
For themselves, then their Guests, with friend-loafers beside,
* The succeeding lines in the Text, on Parades and Shows, have all the
related ties, from that of the stricter truth, through their degrees of the
diminishing analogies of ludicrous resemblance, contrariety, oddity, and
exaggeration, to the apparent contradiction of absurdity.


42 RHYMES OF CONTRAST
See the wonders of Fate, to our happy age cast,
Time and space squeezed so close, they are both dead at last.*
Ah, thou stigmatized August, marked month of its date,
In the year eighteen hundred and fifty and eight; 650
When Atlantic's Great Rope threw its long lasso loop,
To inclose Queen and President, both as its dupe,
Making each Sovereign party to each send its word,
Though while neither was deaf, yet they neither one heard.
* The lines that follow in the Text allude to an attempt, by popular
uproar, to conceal, or assist the difficulty and extravagance of an under-
taking, in eighteen hundred and fifty-eight, to cross the Atlantic with an
Electric Cable. The attempt failed; and the shareholders had a worth-
less stock on their hands. The Lines merely record amusingly the kind
of show, and encouraging foolishness, by which a go-ahead People are
mishurried, when a popular current is employed to carry an incautious
prudence to unthinking prodigality. But speculation is like a cat, hard
in dying; or like a child, on one fall, is up-again to take another; and
after five years, the Cable, with other funds, and somewhat less noise,
was again tried, and succeeded, but to what degree of its purpose, is a
secret. Probably it is on the same under-water shelf as the Thames
Tunnel; and about to be as useless: except the London Bridges, in one
case, should be swept away, and the European mails disused in the other.
Except also, for stock, monopolizing trade, and political purposes, im-
patient Quid Nuncs, and for catching thieves.
That portion of the Rhymes relating to the Cable was written at the
time of its failure, for a poetical friend, having a ready perception of the
Ridiculous, who had lived in New York. Her death occurred before the
time for sending them. Within the last six months, the thoughts have
been extended and varied to their present form, on purpose to illustrate
by truthful description, or by satiric or humorous exaggeration, the use
of the involuntary tie of images, on the subject of the Cable, and other
excitements and excesses of the American people. Though the Stock
and Notoriety Jobbing in the Cable-case have been in a manner suc-
cessful on second trial, its previous failure is humorously recorded as
one of those useless examples which the world sees or hears of and forgets;
but which might especially inform our wonder-mongering fellow-citizens,
that when they bloat their pretensions with metaphysical calculations
and hopes, they will do least, and most, when they work by the physical,
quiet, and patient method of Nature and Truth.


ON WISDOM AND FOLLY. 45
For blindfold belief, now it's known well enough,
You must hoodwink all eyes by a newspaper puff;
With an implicit Faith must receive what you're told,
And see chalk as if cheese, and engraving as gold.
If you say, you have tried all in vain to perceive it,
You hear, that's the best reason why, to believe it; 720
All fools reason thus; and to name an enormity
Fools can't forgive, ’tis the want of conformity.
So, with a faith in advance of their hope,
They assumed they'd already their hand on the rope;
But to save disappointment, by proxy they'd show,
For the likeness at least, of the rope it might go.
Hence what signs everywhere of the Cable prevail,
Men wore long Chinese cues, one dog a spliced tail,
Little boys with their miniature capstans were seen,
Little girls jumped the rope on the Battery Green. 730
And it's winked, but the slanderous point to be parried,
Some stylish young ladies, about to be married,
On cords 'cross Fifth Avenue hung out their clothes,
Looking like a Rag Fair of their Paris Trousseaus;
And a style that an Empress turned from in despair,
All the Modistes of Five Points soon copied-out there;
While a Fishwife who lived near the Fly-market Docks
Dreamed all night of her having rope-ends of lank locks,
Then appeared like Medusa, to strike Doubters dead,
With a wig of Electrical Eels on her head. - 740
See such coach-loads of Councilmen crowded so dense,
And with not a child's wheelbarrow freight of good sense;
Such electrical slang, and such nautical gabble,
Yet no Fogie's voice in the amateur rabble;
Such triumphs of nonsense, at once you'd have guessed
'Twas a fool's boast of something he never possessed;