II

MAD DOGS AND MOSQUITOES

I ENTERED a chemist’s shop. The polite apothecary asked me to wait awhile, and, to save my soul from the tedium of staring vacantly at his immense coloured bottles, he very kindly handed me a copy of a magazine. It proved to be the current number of The British Importer. It did not appear promising; it was scarcely in my line; the chances of a thrill seemed remote. I fancied that the coloured bottles might be more exciting, after all. But I suddenly revised my judgment. The word WARNING! caught my eye. It was at the top of a reproduction of a card issued by the Incorporated Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. It bore the signatures of the Princess Christian, the Earl of Derby, Lord Cromer, and a host of other distinguished individuals. It proclaimed as its object that it aimed at the prevention of Climatic Fever, Malaria, Yellow Fever, Dengue Fever, Coast Fever, Endemical Fever, Remittent Fever, and Bilious Remittent Fever—a truly terrible array. And it laid down, as an indisputable proposition,

That the Bite of a Mosquito should be dreaded as much as that of a Mad Dog.

 I thanked her Royal Highness, I expressed my obligations to these noble lords and learned doctors for so interesting a statement so concisely phrased, and, laying aside The British Importer, from which I had imported as much as I could carry in one load, I gave myself furiously to think.

 The fact is, of course, that the mad dog has gone out of fashion. He had his vogue, and it was a great one while it lasted. But his day is dead. The turn of the mosquito has come. It is perhaps a little disconcerting and a little humiliating, but it is irresistibly true. And, since it is so resistlessly true, it is better to face the facts. In his magnificent History of the Nineteenth Century Mr. Robert McKenzie broke the news to us as gently as he could. That great chapter on ‘The Redress of Wrongs’ which haunts the ear for ever like a shout of triumph, might have been entitled: ‘The Slaughter of the Mad Dogs.’ I very respectfully present the suggestion to Mr. McKenzie, with an eye to future editions. In that stately chapter he marshals the hideous injustices and social tyrannies under which men groaned but a generation or two ago. He recites, in glowing language, the glorious story of reform. And when he has told his thrilling tale, and has described the destruction of one monstrous evil after another, he brings his chapter to a conclusion with a sentence that you learn by heart, simply because you cannot help it. ‘The injustice of ages has been cancelled’ he cries triumphantly; ‘the Hampdens of the future must be contented to occupy themselves mainly with the correction of small and uninteresting evils.’ The mad dogs are all slain, that is to say; the reformers of to-morrow must turn their attention, like the Princess and the peers whose proclamation set me scribbling, to the matter of the mosquitoes.

 In his Heretics Mr. G. K. Chesterton scented this truth of the mad dogs and the mosquitoes, but distantly. He describes what he calls the war between the telescope and the microscope. Compared with this, he thinks, the war between Russia and Japan is but a storm in a teacup. In the past we have abandoned ourselves to the worship of bigness. We have strutted about the planet looking for big things, and the natural result is that we have found them all. Now what is to be done? The telescope is of no further use. And it’s far too early to go to bed.

 Out with the microscope! Make the stones tell their story. Let the leaf of every tree, and the wing of every fly, and the petal of every flower unfold their lovely tales. A fig for the telescope! Its pleasures are so easily exhausted. Hurrah for the microscope! Its domain is without limit; its future is eternal. There are at least a million million mosquitoes for every mad dog. Then who cares for mad dogs? Let’s get to the mosquitoes!

 Many years ago a singular custom prevailed in addressing children. The good man would look into the eyes of his youthful auditors, and, assuming a melodramatic tone, intended to convey the idea that he was about to impart something sensational, he would say: ‘Peradventure, my boys, I am even now addressing some future Columbus or Captain Cook, some Polar explorer or celebrated discoverer!’ And in those olden times the argument was very effective; but it has, of course, been blown to bits since then. The last time it was used, one of the boys asked permission to submit a question. ‘What’s the good of being a Christopher Columbus’ he asked, ‘now that you have no more Americas to be discovered? What’s the good of being a Captain Cook now that we’ve seen pictures of every rock and reef that pokes its head out of the ocean? What’s the good of being a Polar explorer when there are no more Poles?’ That is the point. We cannot be expected to supply new Africas for every budding Livingstone, new Mexicos for every prospective Cortes; and the supply of Poles is certainly shockingly limited. What then? Shall we put the shutters up? Not at all.

 When Major Leonard Darwin delivered his presidential address to the Royal Geographical Society, this matter of mad dogs and mosquitoes was evidently at the back of his mind. ‘It is true,’ he said, ‘that the South Pole is as yet uncaptured, that the map of Arabia is still largely composed of great blank spaces, and that the bend of the Brahmaputra is drawn by guesswork in our atlases. But it is probable that all these problems will be solved almost immediately. What, then, is there left for the Royal Geographical Society to do? The Society must, then, direct its efforts with more persistence than heretofore in the direction of encouraging travellers to make detailed and systematic examinations of comparatively small areas.’ Bravely said! ‘The mad dogs are nearly all slaughtered,’ the learned President seems to say. ‘Gentlemen of the Royal Geographical Society, let us turn our attention to the mosquitoes!’ ‘The Hampdens of the future must be contented to occupy themselves mainly with the correction of small and uninteresting evils.’ Exit the mad dog! Enter the mosquito!

 Wouldst thou be a hero? Wait not then supinely
 For fields of fine romance that no day brings;
 The finest work oft lies in doing finely
A multitude of unromantic things!

 But we must probe more deeply yet. The greatest word ever spoken about mad dogs and mosquitoes was uttered by Paul. He always seems to have the last word about everything. ‘We wrestle’ he says, ‘not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness’. Our fiercest fight, he tells us, is not with the coarse sins of the flesh mad dogs but with sins that are as insidious and ubiquitous and invisible as mosquitoes in the night. And, as our Princess and peers have told us, ‘the bite of a mosquito is as much to be dreaded as that of a mad dog.’ ‘If, says old William Law, ‘we would make any real progress in religion, we must not only abhor gross and notorious sins, but we must regulate the innocent and lawful parts of our behaviour and put the most common and allowed actions of life under the rules of discretion and piety.’ That is precisely Paul’s point.

 But by this time my reader can think of no one but Thomas Chalmers and his early ministry at Kilmany. How he thundered at the mad dogs! He preached against adultery and robbery and murder twice every Sabbath. But, as he himself confessed, no good ever came of it. Then came the memorable illness and his wonderful conversion. Every minister ought to give his people that great page of Scotland’s spiritual history in Chalmers’ own beautiful but billowy language. And after his conversion the mad dogs troubled Chalmers no more. We hear no more about sensuality about what Paul calls ‘flesh and blood.’ But, instead, we hear a great deal of a multitude of microscopic pests, of which we heard no single word before. He laments his impetuosity; he deplores his being ‘bustled’; he weeps over his coldness. ‘Oh my sinful emulations!’ he cries; ‘my ambition of superiority over others! my lack of meekness! my want of purity of heart. My heart is overspread with thorns.’ Here, too, is a record of a terrific tussle with a mosquito. ‘Had asked John Bonthorn to supper yesternight,’ he says in his diary, ‘and told him with emphasis that we supped at nine. He came this night at eight. All forbearance and civility left me, and with my prayers I mixed the darkness of that heart which hateth his brother. This is most truly lamentable, and reveals to me the exceeding nakedness of my heart.’ Yes, there is no doubt about it. These princes of the holier life Paul, and Law, and Chalmers know what they are talking about. Our real conflict is not with the mad dogs, but with the mosquitoes.

Hear two witnesses. Professor Momerie asks: ‘Will you say that the man who has made your home a very hell by his morose and sullen temper is more righteous than the man who has stolen your handkerchief? Why, the misery caused by all the pickpockets in the world to the whole human race is less than that inflicted on your single self by the so-called little sins of your relative’s detestable temper.’ In his lovely essay on Charles Lamb, the Right Hon. Augustine Birrell, M.P., confesses that the gentle Elia was too fond of gin and water. But he asks if ‘an occasional intoxication which hurt no one but himself is to be considered a more damning offence than the pale jealousy, the speckled malice, the boundless self-conceit, the maddening petulance, and the spiteful ill-will of others, who, though they lifted no glass to their lips, broke many hearts by their bitterness and envy?’ We find it hard to answer these questions of the learned professor and the distinguished statesman. But this much is clear: it is all a matter of mad dogs and mosquitoes.

A young lady asked Charles Dickens to enter his confessions in her album. ‘What is your pet aversion?’ one question ran. To which Dickens replied, ‘Having the calves of my legs gnawed off by a mad dog!’ The experience is certainly not alluring; but, then, how many people have endured it? and how many have been tortured by mosquitoes? Mad dogs have slain their hundreds, but mosquitoes have slain their tens of thousands. For the venom of these tiny creatures is fearfully fatal. As witness the long list of fevers mentioned in the proclamation of the Princess and the peers, and attributed by them to the ubiquitous mosquito. Or ask Paul, or Law, or Chalmers, or the man whose face you see daily in the mirror. Wherefore, as the proclamation puts it, ‘the bite of a mosquito should be dreaded as much as that of a mad dog.’ The card bears the title, A warning to wise men. That is very suggestive; there is no more to be said.

F. W. Boreham