No More Learning

Few men died, unless by most
extraordinary accident, before the age of six hundred; few lived longer
than a decade of centuries; but eight were considered the natural
term. After the discovery of the embalming principle, as I have already
described it to you, it occurred to our philosophers that a laudable
curiosity might be gratified, and, at the same time, the interests of
science much advanced, by living this natural term in installments. In
the case of history, indeed, experience demonstrated that something of
this kind was indispensable. An historian, for example, having attained
the age of five hundred, would write a book with great labor and then
get himself carefully embalmed; leaving instructions to his executors
pro tem. , that they should cause him to be revivified after the lapse of
a certain period--say five or six hundred years. Resuming existence at
the expiration of this time, he would invariably find his great work
converted into a species of hap-hazard note-book--that is to say, into
a kind of literary arena for the conflicting guesses, riddles, and
personal squabbles of whole herds of exasperated commentators.
These guesses, etc. , which passed under the name of annotations, or
emendations, were found so completely to have enveloped, distorted, and
overwhelmed the text, that the author had to go about with a lantern to
discover his own book. When discovered, it was never worth the trouble
of the search. After re-writing it throughout, it was regarded as the
bounden duty of the historian to set himself to work immediately
in correcting, from his own private knowledge and experience, the
traditions of the day concerning the epoch at which he had originally
lived. Now this process of re-scription and personal rectification,
pursued by various individual sages from time to time, had the effect of
preventing our history from degenerating into absolute fable. "

"I beg your pardon," said Doctor Ponnonner at this point, laying his
hand gently upon the arm of the Egyptian--"I beg your pardon, sir, but
may I presume to interrupt you for one moment? "

"By all means, sir," replied the Count, drawing up.

"I merely wished to ask you a question," said the Doctor. "You mentioned
the historian's personal correction of traditions respecting his own
epoch.
Pray, sir, upon an average what proportion of these Kabbala were
usually found to be right? "

"The Kabbala, as you properly term them, sir, were generally discovered
to be precisely on a par with the facts recorded in the un-re-written
histories themselves;--that is to say, not one individual iota of either
was ever known, under any circumstances, to be not totally and radically
wrong. "

"But since it is quite clear," resumed the Doctor, "that at least five
thousand years have elapsed since your entombment, I take it for
granted that your histories at that period, if not your traditions
were sufficiently explicit on that one topic of universal interest, the
Creation, which took place, as I presume you are aware, only about ten
centuries before. "

"Sir! " said the Count Allamistakeo.

The Doctor repeated his remarks, but it was only after much additional
explanation that the foreigner could be made to comprehend them. The
latter at length said, hesitatingly:

"The ideas you have suggested are to me, I confess, utterly novel.
During my time I never knew any one to entertain so singular a fancy
as that the universe (or this world if you will have it so) ever had
a beginning at all. I remember once, and once only, hearing something
remotely hinted, by a man of many speculations, concerning the origin
_of the human race;_ and by this individual, the very word _Adam_
(or Red Earth), which you make use of, was employed. He employed
it, however, in a generical sense, with reference to the spontaneous
germination from rank soil (just as a thousand of the lower genera of
creatures are germinated)--the spontaneous germination, I say, of five
vast hordes of men, simultaneously upspringing in five distinct and
nearly equal divisions of the globe. "

Here, in general, the company shrugged their shoulders, and one or
two of us touched our foreheads with a very significant air. Mr. Silk
Buckingham, first glancing slightly at the occiput and then at the
sinciput of Allamistakeo, spoke as follows:

"The long duration of human life in your time, together with
the occasional practice of passing it, as you have explained, in
installments, must have had, indeed, a strong tendency to the general
development and conglomeration of knowledge. I presume, therefore, that
we are to attribute the marked inferiority of the old Egyptians in
all particulars of science, when compared with the moderns, and more
especially with the Yankees, altogether to the superior solidity of the
Egyptian skull. "

"I confess again," replied the Count, with much suavity, "that I am
somewhat at a loss to comprehend you; pray, to what particulars of
science do you allude? "

Here our whole party, joining voices, detailed, at great length, the
assumptions of phrenology and the marvels of animal magnetism.