The Clockmaker

THE CARAFFE stood on a table in the midst of the room. For near a week no one had passed the door; the maid was careless and since a month, the water stood unchanged. The leading race of animalculae had thus attained a great antiquity and were far advanced in scientific studies. Their chief delight was in astronomy; philosophers passed their days in the contemplation of the heavenly bodies, society pleased itself in the discussion of competing theories. Two windows, one looking to the east, one to the south, gave them two solar years of different length, the second mingling with the first, the first succeeding again to the second after an interval of darkness. Many generations rose and perished in the night; the tradition of a sun grew faint, so that pessimists despaired of its return; and the moon, which was then at the full, deceived some of the wisest. It was not till the sixth long solar year, that an animalculae of unrivalled intellect arose, overthrew former science, and bequeathed a heritage of disputation.

His hypothesis may be called The Room Theory. It was in parts erroneous. The room was not filled with drinking water; neither were its walls of the same substance as the table cloth. But in most points, the theory accorded rudely with the facts; and its author had calculated the relative position of the caraffe, the table, the walls, the chimney piece ornaments and the eight-day clock, to the millionth place of decimals, for his instruments and methods were exquisitely fine. So far his merits were recognised by the most sceptical. But the philosopher was a man of a devout, obedient mind; and he had chosen to accept and build upon a legend of the race. In early days, before science had arisen, the oblong yellow space on the north wall was said to have opened, and an object, huge beyond thought, to have appeared and for some generations moved visibly in space. A light, according to some brighter than the sun, according to others scarce brighter than the moon, accompanied the meteor in its orbit. The caraffe was shaken the while by thunderclaps and unaccountable convulsions; the sides of heaven were heard to crepitate; a final detonation signalised the moment of disappearance; and when animalculae had recovered from the shock, the yellow oblong space on the north wall was seen to have resumed its natural appearance. Such was the report of grave and critical historians; in the mouths of the untutored, it ran otherwise. "In the old cannibal days," said they, "an animalculae of unheard-of bigness came through the wall; he had the sun in one claw; the movement of his swimming shook the whole caraffe; and before going out again, he did something to the clock." To the amazement of society, it was this popular version the philosopher accepted. A light-bearing colossus, similar to the one observed, walked at stated periods about the outer walls of the room; and his passage before first one window and then another explained the solar years. But the philosopher went further still. In the animalcular Kosmos there was one feature of superlative abnormality: the clock, with its pendulum, its dial, and its hands. Generations of observers had proved beyond question that the pendulum swayed, that the hands crept about the dial, that the phenomenon of the chimes occurred at intervals of a roughly approximate equality, and that it was at least possible to conceive a relation between these intervals and the procession of the hands. Attention became early rivetted upon the clock; the evidences of purpose in creation centred there; the creator, who spoke obscurely in his other works, seemed in the clock to utter an authentic voice; and theism and atheism joined battle on the question of the Clockmaker. The animalcular Newton was a Clockmakerist; and he hazarded the bold guess that the colossus who carried a lamp around the room would be forced to regulate his movements by clocktime.