THOMAS SAY AND THOREAU’S ENTOMOLOGY “Entomology extends the limits of being in a new direction, so that I walk in nature with a sense of greater space and freedom. It suggests besides, that the universe is not rough-hewn, but perfect in its details. Nature will bear the closest inspection; she invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. She has no interstices; every part is full of life. I explore, too, with pleasure, the sources of the myriad sounds which crowd the summer noon, and which seem the very grain and stuff of which eternity is made. Who does not remember the shrill roll-call of the harvest fly? ANACREON There were ears for these sounds in Greece long ago, as Anacreon’s ode will show” — Henry Thoreau “Natural History of Massachusetts” July 1842 issue of The Dial1 “There is as much to be discovered and to astonish in magnifying an insect as a star.” — Dr. Thaddeus William Harris 1. Franklin Benjamin Sanborn reported that “one of Harvard College’s natural historians” (we may presume this to have been Dr. Thaddeus William Harris, Thoreau’s teacher in natural science in his senior year) had remarked to Bronson Alcott that “if Emerson had not spoiled him, Thoreau would have made a good entomologist.” HDT WHAT? INDEX THOMAS SAY AND THOREAU’S ENTOMOLOGY “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Thomas Say and Thoreau’s Entomology HDT WHAT? INDEX THOMAS SAY AND THOREAU’S ENTOMOLOGY 1690 8mo 5-31: Friend William Say and Friend Mary Guest (daughter of the widow Guest) posted their bans and became a married couple in the Burlington, New Jersey monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, across the river from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Friend William was working as a sawyer. DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Thomas Say and Thoreau’s Entomology HDT WHAT? INDEX THOMAS SAY AND THOREAU’S ENTOMOLOGY 1709 December 16, Friday (Old Style): Friend Thomas Say was born near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He would be educated at the Quaker school and his father, Friend William Say, would apprentice him to a saddler, but he would become an apothecary. While a young man, he would suppose that in a trance he had visited Heaven. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Thomas Say and Thoreau’s Entomology HDT WHAT? INDEX THOMAS SAY AND THOREAU’S ENTOMOLOGY 1755 August 28, Thursday: Friend Benjamin Say was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father was Friend Thomas Say, an apothecary, and after an education in Quaker schools he would become a physician. Sir William Johnson, together with his force of 1,500 troops and native Americans, reached the Southern shore of Lake Saint Sacrement. He promptly renamed the lake as Lake George in honor of his Sovereign, King George II. Sir William started work on another fortress, which he named Fort William Henry after the son of George II. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Thomas Say and Thoreau’s Entomology HDT WHAT? INDEX THOMAS SAY AND THOREAU’S ENTOMOLOGY 1774 William Mentz published “The Visions of a certain Thomas Say, of the City of Philadelphia, which he saw in a Trance.” (This was not a recent trance, but something that had happened to Friend Thomas while he was yet a young man, in perhaps the 1730s or 1740s. This publication was unauthorized.) March: Friend Thomas Say had it printed in the Pennsylvania Journal, that “Whereas a certain William Mentz has printed for sale, without my knowledge or consent, ‘The Vision of Thomas Say,’ which is but an incorrect and imperfect part of what I propose to make public. And as I never intended what I had wrote on that head to be published during my life, all persons are desired not to encourage the said Mentz in such wrong proceeding.” THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Thomas Say and Thoreau’s Entomology HDT WHAT? INDEX THOMAS SAY AND THOREAU’S ENTOMOLOGY 1776 Late in the year, the conscription practices of the Massachusetts General Court were amended to exclude Quaker conscientious objectors who had been members before April 19, 1775. OHNE MICH! Some Quakers, however, terming themselves “Free Quakers,” affiliated themselves with the conflict, and there are some records of Friends in the Boston Meeting being accused of an unspecified “misconduct” which was probably the bearing of arms on one side or the other of the insurrection. The sympathies of some Friends lay with the revolutionaries, and the sympathies of others lay with the authorities. During the hostilities, for HDT WHAT? INDEX THOMAS SAY AND THOREAU’S ENTOMOLOGY instance, one Boston merchant, Friend Daniel Silsbe or Silsbury, emigrated to London. HDT WHAT? INDEX THOMAS SAY AND THOREAU’S ENTOMOLOGY During the Revolutionary War, Friend Benjamin Say of Philadelphia would disregard the Quaker Peace Testimony of the Religious Society of Friends and serve in uniform in the Continental Army: THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Thomas Say and Thoreau’s Entomology HDT WHAT? INDEX THOMAS SAY AND THOREAU’S ENTOMOLOGY 1780 Friend Benjamin Say received the degree of M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He would practice as a physician in Philadelphia. CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Thomas Say and Thoreau’s Entomology HDT WHAT? INDEX THOMAS SAY AND THOREAU’S ENTOMOLOGY 1781 Friend John Dalton’s early years had been heavily influenced by Friend Elihu Robinson, an instrument maker and meteorologist. At the age of 15, Friend John joined his older brother Jonathan in running a Quaker school at Kendal, near the family home in Cumberland, England. The Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends held in London, this year considered it necessary once again to emphasize that the Quaker Peace Testimony was incompatible with any Quaker vessel being armed: It is recommended to the several quarterly and monthly meetings, that all concerned in armed vessels be dealt with according to the minute of 1744; and it is recommended to Friends everywhere, to take into their serious consideration the inconsistency of any under our profession suffering their temporal interest to induce them in any manner to contribute to the purposes of war. Friend Benjamin Say, a physician of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was among those known as the “fighting Quakers,” who upon being disowned by the Religious Society of Friends on account of their disregard of the Quaker Peace Testimony, initiated the formation of the society entitled “The Monthly Meeting of Friends, railed by some Free Quakers, distinguishing us from the brethren who have disowned us.”2 Friend Samuel Wetherill wrote these words upon being disowned by Philadelphia Monthly Meeting: We wish only to be freed from every species of ecclesiastical tyranny, and mean to pay a due regard to the principles of our forefathers, and to their rules and regulations so far as they apply to our circumstances, and hope, thereby, to preserve decency and to secure equal liberty to all. We have no design to form creeds or confessions of faith, but humbly to confide in those sacred lessons of wisdom and benevolence, which have been left us by Christ and His apostles, contained in the holy scriptures; and appealing to that divine principle breathed by the breath of God into the hearts of all, to leave every man to think and judge for himself, according to the abilities received, and to answer for his faith and opinions to him, who “seeth the secrets of all hearts,” the sole Judge and sovereign Lord of conscience.3 2. There’s this jest, that a Free Quaker was someone who was free of Quakerism. This wasn’t the way they thought of themselves, of course, but we don’t have a record that any of these people came back to Quakerism when the bloodshedding came to be over and the Ten Commandments reasserted themselves as guides to our conduct. 3. “An Address to those of the People called Quakers, who have been disowned for Matters Religious and Civil” HDT WHAT? INDEX THOMAS SAY AND THOREAU’S ENTOMOLOGY 1787 June 27, Wednesday: Credentials of the members of the Federal Convention: State of New Hampshire. Thomas Say was born in Philadelphia, son of the disowned “Free Quaker” physician, Dr. Benjamin Say, who in this year was co-founding the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.4 THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY 4. Thomas was a great-grandson of Friend John Bartram, and during his boyhood would frequently take his butterfly and beetle specimens to his great-uncle Friend William Bartram. Refer to Harry B. Weiss and Grace M. Ziebler’s THOMAS SAY: EARLY AMERICAN NATURALIST (Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Illinois and Baltimore, Maryland, 1931) or Patricia Tyson Stroud’s THOMAS SAY: NEW WORLD NATURALIST (U of Pennsylvania P, Philadelphia, 1992). HDT WHAT? INDEX THOMAS SAY AND THOREAU’S ENTOMOLOGY 1790 In England, the jurist Jeremy Bentham was developing a scheme of control through visuality and information which he would term the “panopticon”: a prison architecturally designed to minimize personal privacy while maximizing the convenience of constant surveillance of all prisoners by a minimal set of guards. It would be in this decade, also, that the Irishman Robert Barker would be pioneering a scheme of information through visuality and surveillance which he would term the “panorama,” displayed in a specially designed “rotunda” space.