L´habitus et la bouffe

"Il va de soi qu’on ne peut autonomiser les consommations alimentaires, surtout saisies à travers les seuls produits consommés, par rapport à l’ensemble du style de vie : ne serait-ce que parce que le goût en matière de plats (dont les produits, surtout au degré d’indétermination où la statistique les saisit, ne peuvent donner qu’une idée très approximative) est associé, par l’intermédiaire du mode de préparation, à toute la représentation de l’économie domestique et de la division du travail entre les sexes, le goût pour les plats cuisinés (pot-au-feu, blanquette, daube) qui demandent un fort investissement de temps et d’intérêt étant en affinité avec une conception traditionnelle du rôle féminin : c’est ainsi que l’opposition est particulièrement marquée, sous ce rapport, entre les classes populaires et les fractions dominées de la classe dominante où les femmes, dont le travail a une forte valeur marchande (ce qui contribue sans doute à expliquer qu’elles aient une plus haute idée de leur valeur), entendent consacrer en priorité leur temps libre au soin des enfants et à la transmission du capital culturel et tendent à mettre en question la division traditionnelle du travail entre les sexes ; la recherche de l’économie de temps et de travail dans la préparation se conjugue avec la recherche de la légèreté et de la faible teneur en calories des produits pour incliner vers les grillades et les crudités (les « salades composées ») et aussi vers les produits et les plats surgelés, les yaourts et les laitages sucrés, autant de choix qui sont aux antipodes des plats populaires, dont le plus typique est le pot-au-feu, fait de viande à bon marché et bouillie – par opposition à grillée ou rôtie –, mode de cuisson inférieur qui demande surtout du temps. Ce n’est pas par hasard que cette forme de cuisine – on dit d’une femme qui se consacre entièrement à son foyer qu’elle est « pot-au-feu » – symbolise un état de la condition féminine et de la division du travail entre les sexes comme les pantoufles que l’on chausse avant le dîner symbolisent le rôle complémentaire dévolu à l’homme.

(...) 

Le goût en matière alimentaire dépend aussi de l’idée que chaque classe se fait du corps et des effets de la nourriture sur le corps, c’est-à-dire sur sa force, sa santé et sa beauté, et des catégories qu’elle emploie pour évaluer ces effets, certains d’entre eux pouvant être retenus par une classe qui sont ignorés par une autre, et les différentes classes pouvant établir des hiérarchies très différentes entre les différents effets : c’est ainsi que là où les classes populaires, plus attentives à la force du corps (masculin) qu’à sa forme, tendent à rechercher des produits à la fois bon marché et nourrissants, les professions libérales donneront leur préférence à des produits savoureux, bons pour la santé, légers et ne faisant pas grossir. Culture devenue nature, c’est-à-dire incorporée, classe faite corps, le goût contribue à faire le corps de classe : principe de classement incorporé qui commande toutes les formes d’incorporation, il choisit et modifie tout ce que le corps ingère, digère, assimile, physiologiquement et psychologiquement. Il s’ensuit que le corps est l’objectivation la plus irrécusable du goût de classe, qu’il manifeste de plusieurs façons. D’abord dans ce qu’il a de plus naturel en apparence, c’est-à-dire dans les dimensions (volume, taille, poids, etc.) et les formes (rondes ou carrées, raides ou souples, droites ou courbes, etc.) de sa conformation visible, où s’exprime de mille façons tout un rapport au corps, c’est-à-dire une manière de traiter le corps, de le soigner, de le nourrir, de l’entretenir, qui est révélatrice des dispositions les plus profondes de l’habitus : c’est en effet au travers des préférences en matière de consommation alimentaire qui peuvent se perpétuer au-delà de leurs conditions sociales de production (comme en d’autres domaines un accent, une démarche, etc.)21, et aussi bien sûr au travers des usages du corps dans le travail et dans le loisir qui en sont solidaires, que se détermine la distribution entre les classes des propriétés corporelles.

La médiation par laquelle s’établit la définition sociale des nourritures convenables n’est pas seulement la représentation quasi consciente de la configuration approuvée du corps perçu, et en particulier de sa grosseur ou de sa minceur. C’est, plus profondément, tout le schéma corporel, et en particulier la manière de tenir le corps dans l’acte de manger, qui est au principe de la sélection de certaines nourritures. Ainsi par exemple si le poisson est, dans les classes populaires, une nourriture peu convenable pour les hommes, ce n’est pas seulement parce qu’il s’agit d’une nourriture légère, qui ne tient pas au corps, et qu’on ne prépare, en fait, que pour des raisons hygiéniques, c’est-à-dire pour les malades et pour les enfants ; c’est aussi qu’il fait partie, avec les fruits (bananes exceptées), de ces choses délicates qui ne peuvent être manipulées par des mains d’homme et devant lesquelles l’homme est comme un enfant (c’est la femme qui, se plaçant dans un rôle maternel, comme elle fait dans tous les cas semblables, se chargera de préparer le poisson dans l’assiette ou de peler la poire) ; mais c’est surtout qu’il demande à être mangé d’une façon qui contredit en tout la manière proprement masculine de manger, c’est-à-dire avec retenue, par petites bouchées, en mastiquant légèrement, avec le devant de la bouche, sur le bout des dents (pour les arêtes). C’est bien toute l’identité masculine, – ce que l’on appelle la virilité –, qui est engagée dans ces deux manières de manger, du bout des lèvres et par petits morceaux, comme les femmes à qui il convient de chipoter, ou à pleine bouche, à pleines dents et par grosses bouchées, comme il convient aux hommes, au même titre qu’elle est engagée dans les deux manières, parfaitement homologues, de parler, avec le devant de la bouche ou avec toute la bouche, et en particulier le fond de la bouche, la gorge (selon l’opposition, déjà notée ailleurs, entre la bouche, la fine bouche, la bouche pincée, ou les lèvres, et la gueule, – fort en gueule, coup de gueule, engueuler et aussi « s’en foutre plein la gueule »). Cette opposition se retrouverait dans tous les usages du corps, et en particulier dans les plus insignifiants en apparence, qui, à ce titre, sont prédisposés à servir de pense-bête où sont déposées les valeurs les plus profondes du groupe, ses « croyances » les plus fondamentales. Il serait facile de montrer par exemple que les Kleenex, qui demandent qu’on prenne son nez délicatement, sans trop appuyer et qu’on se mouche en quelque sorte du bout du nez, par petits coups, sont au grand mouchoir de tissu, dans lequel on souffle très fort d’un coup et à grand bruit, en plissant les yeux dans l’effort et en se tenant le nez à pleins doigts, ce que le rire retenu dans ses manifestations visibles et sonores est au rire à gorge déployée, que l’on pousse avec tout le corps, en plissant le nez, en ouvrant grande la bouche et en prenant son souffle très profond (« j’étais plié en deux »), comme pour amplifier au maximum une expérience qui ne souffre pas d’être contenue, et d’abord parce qu’elle doit être partagée, donc clairement manifestée à l’intention des autres. Et la philosophie pratique du corps masculin comme une sorte de puissance, grande, forte, aux besoins énormes, impérieux et brutaux, qui s’affirme dans toute la manière masculine de tenir le corps, et en particulier devant les nourritures, est aussi au principe de la division des nourritures entre les sexes, division reconnue, tant dans les pratiques que dans le discours, par les deux sexes. Il appartient aux hommes de boire et de manger plus, et des nourritures plus fortes, à leur image. Ainsi à l’apéritif, les hommes seront servis deux fois (et plus si c’est fête) et par grandes rasades, dans de grands verres (le succès du Ricard ou du Pernod tenant sans doute pour beaucoup au fait qu’il s’agit d’une boisson à la fois forte et abondante – pas un « dé à coudre »), et ils laisseront les amuse-gueule (biscuits salés, cacahuètes, etc.) aux enfants et aux femmes, qui boivent un petit verre (« il faut garder ses jambes ») d’un apéritif de leur fabrication (dont elles échangent les recettes). De même, parmi les entrées, la charcuterie est plutôt pour les hommes, comme ensuite le fromage, et cela d’autant plus qu’il est plus fort, tandis que les crudités sont plutôt pour les femmes, comme la salade : ce sont les uns ou les autres qui se resserviront ou se partageront les fonds de plats. La viande, nourriture nourrissante par excellence, forte et donnant de la force, de la vigueur, du sang, de la santé, est le plat des hommes, qui en prennent deux fois, tandis que les femmes se servent une petite part : ce qui ne signifie pas qu’elles se privent à proprement parler ; elles n’ont réellement pas envie de ce qui peut manquer aux autres, et d’abord aux hommes, à qui la viande revient par définition, et tirent une sorte d’autorité de ce qui n’est pas vécu comme une privation ; plus, elles n’ont pas le goût des nourritures d’hommes qui, étant réputées nocives lorsqu’elles sont absorbées en trop grande quantité par les femmes (par exemple, manger trop de viande fait « tourner le sang », procure une vigueur anormale, donne des boutons, etc.), peuvent même susciter une sorte de dégoût."

Pierre Bourdieu, La Distinction. Critique sociale du jugement, 1979

Put the Blame on (Über-Degenerate) Wagner

"Richard Wagner is in himself alone charged with a greater abundance of degeneration than all the degenerates put together with whom we have hitherto become acquainted. The stigmata of this morbid condition are united in him in the most complete and most luxuriant development. He displays in the general constitution of his mind the persecution mania, megalomania and mysticism; in his instincts vague philanthropy, anarchism, a craving for revolt and contradiction; in his writings all the signs of graphomania, namely, incoherence, fugitive ideation, and a tendency to idiotic punning, and, as the groundwork of  his being, the characteristic emotionalism of a colour at once erotic and religiously enthusiastic.
For Wagner's persecution mania, we have the testimony of his most recent biographer and friend, Ferdinand Praeger, who relates that for years Wagner was convinced that the Jews had conspired to prevent the representation of his operas—a delirium inspired by his furious anti-Semitism. His megalomania is so well known through his writings, his verbal utterances, and the whole course of his life, that a bare reference to it is sufficient. It is to be admitted that this mania was essentially increased by the crazy procedure of those who surrounded Wagner. A much firmer equilibrium than that which obtained in Wagner's mind would have been infallibly disturbed by the nauseous idolatry of which Bayreuth was the shrine. The Bayreuther Blätter is a unique phenomenon. To me, at least, no other instance is known of a newspaper which was founded exclusively for the deification of a living man, and in every number of which, through long years, the appointed priests of the temple have burned incense to their household god, with the savage fanaticism of howling and dancing dervishes, bent the knee, prostrated themselves before him, and immolated all opponents as sacrificial victims.
We will take a closer view of the graphomaniac Wagner. His Collected Writings and Poems form ten large thick volumes, and among the 4,500 pages which they approximately contain there is hardly a single one which will not puzzle the unbiased reader, either through some nonsensical thought or some impossible mode of expression. Of his prose works (his poems will be treated of further on), the most important is decidedly The Art-work of the Future. (01) The thoughts therein expressed—so far as the wavering shadows of ideas in a mystically emotional degenerate subject may be so called—occupied Wagner during his whole life, and were again and again propounded by him in ever new terms and phraseology. The Opera and the Drama, Judaism in Music, On the State and Religion, The Vocation of the Opera, Religion and Art, are nothing more than amplifications of single passages of The Art-work of the Future. This restless repetition of one and the same strain of thought is itself characteristic in the highest degree. The clear, mentally sane author, who feels himself impelled to say something, will once for all express himself as distinctly and impressively as it is possible for him to do, and have done with it. He may, perhaps, return to the subject, in order to clear up misconceptions, repel attacks, and fill up lacunæ; but he will never wish to rewrite his book, wholly or in part, two or three times in slightly different words, not even if in later years he attains to the insight that he has not succeeded in finding for it an adequate form. The crazed graphomaniac, on the contrary, cannot recognise in his book, as it lies finished before him, the satisfying expression of his thoughts, and he will always be tempted to begin his work afresh, a task which is endless, because it must consist in giving a fixed linguistic form to ideas which are formless.

(...)
Together with this anarchistic acerbity, there is another feeling that controls the entire conscious and unconscious mental life of Wagner, viz., sexual emotion. He has been throughout his life an erotic (in a psychiatric sense), and all his ideas revolve about woman. The most ordinary incitements, even those farthest removed from the province of the sexual instinct, never fail to awaken in his consciousness voluptuous images of an erotic character, and the bent of the automatic association of ideas is in him always directed towards this pole of his thought. In this connection let this passage be read from the Art-work of the Future (p. 44), where he seeks to demonstrate the relation between the art of dancing, music, and poetry: 'In the contemplation of this ravishing dance of the most genuine and noblest muses, of the artistic man [?], we now see the three arm-in-arm lovingly entwined up to their necks; then this, then that one, detaching herself from the entwinement, as if to display to the others her beautiful form in complete separation, touching the hands of the others only with the extreme tips of her fingers; now the one, entranced by a backward glance at the twin forms of her closely entwined sisters, bending towards them; then two, carried away by the allurements of the one [!] greeting her in homage; finally all, in close embrace, breast to breast, limb to limb, in an ardent kiss of love, coalescing in one blissfully living shape. This is the love and life, the joy and wooing of art,' etc. (Observe the word-play: Lieben und Leben, Freuen und Freien!) Wagner here visibly loses the thread of his argument; he neglects what he really wishes to say, and revels in the picture of the three dancing [181] maidens, who have arisen before his mind's eye, following with lascivious longing the outline of their forms and their seductive movements.
The shameless sensuality which prevails in his dramatic poems has impressed all his critics. Hanslick (07) speaks of the 'bestial sensuality' in Rheingold, and says of Siegfried: 'The feverish accents, so much beloved by Wagner, of an insatiable sensuality, blazing to the uttermost limits—this ardent moaning, sighing, crying, and sinking to the ground, move us with repugnance. The text of these love-scenes becomes sometimes, in its exuberance, sheer nonsense.' Compare in the first act of the Walküre, (08) in the scene between Siegmund and Sieglinde, the following stage directions: 'Hotly interrupting'; 'embraces her with fiery passion'; 'in gentle ecstasy'; 'she hangs enraptured upon his neck'; 'close to his eyes'; 'beside himself'; 'in the highest intoxication,' etc. At the conclusion, it is said, 'The curtain falls quickly,' and frivolous critics have not failed to perpetrate the cheap witticism, 'Very necessary, too.' The amorous whinings, whimperings and ravings of Tristan und Isolde, the entire second act of Parsifal, in the scene between the hero and the flower-girls, and then between him and Kundry in Klingsor's magic garden, are worthy to rank with the above passages. It certainly redounds to the high honour of German public morality, that Wagner's operas could have been publicly performed without arousing the greatest scandal. How unperverted must wives and maidens be when they are in a state of mind to witness these pieces without blushing crimson, and sinking into the earth for shame! How innocent must even husbands and fathers be who allow their womankind to go to these representations of 'lupanar' incidents! Evidently the German audiences entertain no misgivings concerning the actions and attitudes of Wagnerian personages; they seem to have, no suspicion of the emotions by which they are excited, and what intentions their words, gestures and acts denote; and this explains the peaceful artlessness with which these audiences follow theatrical scenes during which, among a less childlike public, no one would dare lift his eyes to his neighbour or endure his glance.
With Wagner amorous excitement assumes the form of mad delirium. The lovers in his pieces behave like tom-cats gone mad, rolling in contortions and convulsions over a root of valerian. They reflect a state of mind in the poet which is well known to the professional expert. It is a form of Sadism. It is the love of those degenerates who, in sexual transport, become like wild beasts. (09) Wagner suffered from 'erotic madness,' which leads coarse natures to murder for lust, and inspires 'higher degenerates' with works like Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Tristan und Isolde.

(...) The fact that only in Bayreuth could this music be heard, unfalsified and in its full strength, was also of great importance for the esteem in which it was held. If it had been played in every theatre, if, without trouble and formalities, one could have gone to a representation of Wagner as to one of Il Trovatore, Wagner would not have obtained his most enthusiastic public from foreign countries. To know the real Wagner it was necessary to journey to Bayreuth. This could be done only at long intervals and at specified times; seats and lodgings had to be obtained long in advance, and at great expenditure of trouble. It was a pilgrimage requiring much money and leisure; hence 'hoi polloi' were excluded from it. Thus, the pilgrimnage to Bayreuth became a privilege of the rich and well-bred, and to have been to' Bayreuth came to be a great social distinction among the snobs of both worlds. The journey was a thing to make a great parade of and be haughty over. The pilgrim no longer belonged to the vulgar crowd, but to the select few; he became a hadji! Oriental sages so well know the peculiar vanity of the hadjis', that one of their proverbs contains an express warning against the pious man who has been thrice to Mecca.
Hence the pilgrimage to Bayreuth became a mark of aristocracy, and an appreciation of Wagner's music, in spite of his nationality, was regarded as evidence of intellectual pre-eminence. The prejudice in his favour was created, and provided one went to him in this mood, there was no reason why Wagner should not have the same influence on hysterical foreigners as on hysterical Germans. Parsifal was especially fitted completely to subjugate the French neo-Catholics and Anglo-American mystics who marched behind the banner of the Salvation Army. It was with this opera that Wagner chiefly triumphed among his non-German admirers. Listening to the music of Parsifal has become the religious act of all those who wish to receive the Communion in musical form.
These are the explanatory causes of Wagner's conquest, first of Germany, and then of the world. The absence of judgment and independence among the multitude, who chant the antiphony in the Psalter; the imitation of musicians possessed of no originality, who witnessed his triumph, and, like genuine little boys wanting 'to be taken,' clung to his coat-tails—these did what was still needed to lay the world at his feet. As it is the most widely diffused, so is Wagnerism the most momentous aberration of the present time. The Bayreuth festival theatre, the Bayreuther Blätter, the Parisian Revue Wagnérienne, are lasting monuments by which posterity will be able to measure the whole breadth and depth of the degeneration and hysteria of the age.



Max Nordau, Degeneration, 1892

Notes
01
Richard Wagner, Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft . Leipzig, 1850.
07 Edward Hanslick, Musikalische Stationen. Berlin, 1880, pp. 220, 243.
08 Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, Band VI., p. 3 ff.
09 In a book on degeneration it is not possible wholly to avoid the subject of eroticism, which includes precisely the most characteristic and conspicuous phenomena of degeneration. I dwell, however, on principle as little as possible on this subject, and will, therefore, in reference to the characterization of Wagner's erotic madness, quote only one clinical work: Dr. Paul Aubry, 'Observation d'Uxoricide et de Libéricide suivis du Suicide du Meurtrier,' Archives de l'Anthropologie criminelle, vol. vii., p. 326: 'This derangement [erotic madness] is characterized by an inconceivable fury of concupiscence at the moment of approach.' And in a remark on the report of a murder perpetrated on his wife and children by an erotic maniac—a professor of mathematics in a public school—whom Aubrey had under his observation, he says, 'Sa femme qui parlait facilement et à tous des choses que l'on tient ordinairement le plus secrètes, disait que son mari était comme un furieux pendant l'acte sexuel.' See also Ball, La Folie érotique. Paris, 1891, p. 127.

The Time Capsule of Cupaloy

WITHIN the limitations imposed by space, the problems of preservation, and the difficulty of choosing the truly significant to represent all the enormous variety and vigor of our life, we have sought to deposit in the Time Capsule materials and information touching upon all the principal categories of our thought, activity, and accomplishment; sparing nothing, neither our wisdom nor our foolishness, our supreme achievements nor our recognized weaknesses.
We have included books and pictures that show where and how we live: some in apartments like dwellers in cliffs, but comfortably; others in detached houses; still others moving about the country in homes mounted on wheels.
We have set forth the story of our architecture, by which we have reared soaring pinnacles into the sky.
We have described the offices and the factories where we work, the machines that write, compute, tabulate, reproduce manuscript a thousandfold, sort out, and file; the machines that stamp and fashion metals; the machines and methods with which metals are knit together by electricity and cut apart by gas; the complex techniques of mass production, with which articles that consist of scores of different materials, requiring hundreds of operations to assemble, can nevertheless be sold among us for a few cents.
We have described in text and picture the arts and entertainment of our day; the games we play; the history & development & present attainments of painting, sculpture, music, the theater, motion pictures, and radio.
We have included copies of representative newspapers & magazines of this day, containing news, articles, fiction, and advertisements broadly characteristic of our period. We have also included a novel, the most widely read of our time. For good measure we have added specimens of our cartoons and "comics," such as daily and weekly delight millions in our newspapers and in our moving picture theaters.
Ours is a day of many faiths. We have provided descriptions of the world's religions, numbered their followers, and enclosed the Holy Bible, a book which is the basis of the Christian faith. We have provided outlines of the world's principal philosophies. We have discussed the all-pervading and effective educational systems of our time, and told in text and pictures the story of the training of our young.
We have included a copy of our Constitution, and something about our government, under which we live as free men, ruled by our own elected representatives chosen at regular intervals by the votes of all, both men and women. We have included, also, a history of our country and a chronological history of the world.
Our scientists have measured the speed of light and compared the distances of the planets, stars, and nebulæ; they have charted the slow evolution of primal protoplasm into man, fathomed the ultimate composition of matter and its relation to energy, transmuted the elements, measured the earth and explored it, harnessed earthquake, electricity, and magnetism to probe what lies be neath our feet; they have shifted the atoms in their lattices and created dyes, materials, stuffs that Nature herself forgot to make. The stories of these achievements have been set forth in the Time Capsule.
Our engineers & inventors have harnessed the forces of the earth and skies and the mysteries of nature to make our lives pleasant, swift, safe, and fascinating beyond any previous age. We fly faster, higher, and farther than the birds. On steel rails we rush safely, behind giant horses of metal and fire. Ships large as palaces thrum across our seas. Our roads are alive with self-propelling conveyances so complex the most powerful prince could not have owned one a generation ago; yet in our day there is hardly a man so poor he cannot afford this form of personal mobility.
Over wires pour cataracts of invisible electric power, tamed and harnessed to light our homes, cook our food, cool and clean our air, operate the machines of our homes & factories, lighten the burdens of our daily labor, reach out and capture the voices and music of the air, & work a major part of all the complex magic of our day.
We have made metals our slaves, and learned to change their characteristics to our needs. We speak to one another along a network of wires and radiations that enmesh the globe, and hear one another thousands of miles away as clearly as though the distance were only a few feet. We have learned to arrest the processes of decay; our foods are preserved in metal or frost and by these means we may have vegetables and fruits in any season, delicacies from foreign lands, and adequate diet anywhere.
All these things, and the secrets of them, and something about the men of genius of our time and earlier days who helped bring them about, will be found in the Time Capsule.
How our physicians have healed the sick, controlled pain, and conquered many diseases, has been recounted there; how we have suppressed epidemics through the enormous undertakings of our system of public health; how our drugs and biologicals are compounded, and the enormous and varied list of them.
There are included samples and specimens of the new materials of our time, created in the laboratories of our engineers and chemists, on the looms of our mills, and in the forges, furnaces, and vats of our factories.
There are also samples of the products of our farms, where machinery has turned scarcity into abundance; where research has produced plants never seen in nature; where science now is able to produce plants even without soil.
There are also many small articles that we wear or use; that contribute to the pleasure, comfort, safety, convenience, or healthfulness of our lives; articles with which we write, play, groom ourselves, correct our vision, remove our beards, illuminate our homes and work-places, tell time, make pictures, calculate sums, exchange values, protect property, train our children, prepare our food.
Believing, as have the people of each age, that our women are the most beautiful, most intelligent, and best groomed of all the ages, we have enclosed in the Time Capsule specimens of modern cosmetics, and one of the singular clothing creations of our time, a woman's hat.
That the pronunciation of our English tongue may not be lost, a "Key to English" has been prepared and printed in this book. That our vocabulary may not be forgotten, we have included in the Capsule a dictionary, defining more than 140,000 common words and phrases. That our idiom may be preserved, we have provided also a dictionary of slang and colloquial expressions. Finally, that our method of writing may be recovered, should all other record of it disappear, we have included a book in which the Lord's Prayer is translated into three hundred different tongues; also the fable "The Story of the North Wind & the Sun" translated into twenty-five languages. These may serve, as did the trilingual Rosetta stone, to help in the translation of our words.
In the Capsule there are only two actual books of our time, in the size and form to which we are accustomed. These are this book and the Holy Bible. All the rest have been photographed page by page on microfilm, which by the small space it requires has permitted us to include on four small reels the contents or equivalent of more than seventy ordinary books—enough in their usual form to fill the Capsule's crypt several times over. A magnifying instrument is included, with which the microfilm may be read.
Should those who recover the Capsule wish to know our appearance, and how we dress, act, and talk, there have been provided two reels of significant and typical scenes of our time, in pictures that move and speak, imprisoned on ribbons of cellulose coated with silver. If knowledge of machines for projecting these pictures and voices has disappeared, the machines may nevertheless be recreated, after recovery of the Capsule, from photographs and descriptions.
Each age considers itself the pinnacle & final triumph above all eras that have gone before. In our time many believe that the human race has reached the ultimate in material and social development; others, that humanity shall march onward to achievements splendid beyond the imagination of this day, to new worlds of human wealth, power, life, and happiness. We choose, with the latter, to believe that men will solve the problems of the world, that the human race will triumph over its limitations and its adversities, that the future will be glorious.

TO THE PEOPLE OF THAT FUTURE
WE LEAVE THIS LEGACY

THE BOOK OF RECORD OF
THE
TIME CAPSULE
OF CUPALOY
DEEMED CAPABLE OF RESISTING THE EFFECTS OF TIME FOR FIVE THOUSAND YEARS • PRESERVING AN ACCOUNT OF UNIVERSAL ACHIEVEMENTS • EMBEDDED IN THE GROUNDS OF THE
NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIR
1939

Crypt of Civilization

Preserving Our History in a Tomb
“CRYPT OF CIVILIZATION” WILL RE-CREATE OUR DAILY LIFE FOR PEOPLE OF 8113 A.D.
THE YEAR is 8113. Spired cities built by the ancient people of the twentieth century have long since crumbled to dust. Of the airplanes and automobiles in which they traveled, not a rusted scrap remains. Their perishable tools, utensils, books, magazines, and newspapers have vanished completely. What learning they possessed is but dimly known. But where Oglethorpe University once stood, in what was Atlanta, Ga., a band of archaeologists has just unearthed a door of stainless steel. They break it open—and find themselves in a treasure house of the past. Pictures and records, perfectly preserved through the ages, tell them in every detail the long-forgotten story of what life was like in 1938.
That is the romantic, breath-taking vision that is taking practical form at Oglethorpe University today. Into a crypt as large as an average living room, hollowed out of the granite bed rock beneath the campus and lined with walls of gleaming chromium, experts are stuffing motion-picture films, copies of present-day encyclopedias, textbooks, works of art, and models of machines that will give future historians a complete picture of their distant ancestors.
When the crypt is filled, the air in it will be replaced with inert nitrogen gas, and it will be sealed against the ravages of the ages. Graven in a plaque upon the stainless-steel door, a message will direct that the vault be opened in 8113—a date chosen because it is as far in the future as the first recorded date in history, the beginning of the Egyptian calendar, is in the past.
For the first time, points out Dr. Thornwell Jacobs, president of the university and originator of the project, the art of copying books and pictures in reduced size on movie film permits storing a vast bulk of priceless records in limited space. Duplicate “microfilm” copies of volumes for the Georgia vault are being made upon standard cellulose acetate film and upon tissue-thin metal film, a new invention that is believed still more durable. To prepare it, the image of the negative is etched into stainless steel, nickel, or copper by photo-engraving methods. An inlay of another metal, such as platinum, is then deposited in the etched portions. The result is an indestructible picture on metal in black upon a white background.
Five rolls of film, surrounded by inert gas, are sealed in a glass tube. Protected by a layer of asbestos, the tube in turn is placed in a seamless receptacle of stainless steel, a foot long and four inches in diameter. The receptacle itself is inclosed in a ribbed casting of extra-strong alloy, capable of resisting a crushing force of thousands of pounds. Row upon row of these receptacles will line the metal shelves of the crypt. Barring accident, their contents should be found in perfect condition after sixty centuries!
Suppose the location of the vault is for- gotten with passing centuries? Descriptions of the deposit, engraved on metal, will be placed in all the great libraries and museums of the world, and even in such out-of-the-way places as monasteries in Tibet and temples in China and India! Some one of these clews will almost inevitably be discovered. If English is an unknown tongue by 8113, how can the records be deciphered ? The first thing to meet the eye of a person entering the vault will be a movie machine of the pioneer “mutoscope” type, with the addition of a phonograph attachment. Turning a crank reveals one of 3,000 metal plates, bearing, say, a picture of an apple and “APPLE” in print. Sound apparatus then pronounces the word.
Since no one knows what sort of electric current people will use in 8113 A.D., if it is available at all, a windmill generator will provide current for the electric sound-film projector.
Records to be stored away will include sound films of the voices of present-day leaders, stereoscopic photos of all the world’s masterpieces of sculpture, a year-by-year history-in-pictures of the United States for the last 100 years, and the world’s greatest masterpieces of poetry. Models will show every essential kind of modern tool and machine, household utensils and tableware, and great engineering feats. A complete set of costumes for men and women will be preserved in helium gas. There will be cook books, histories, science textbooks, and books of practical instruction in mechanics, engineering, and all the arts and manufactures. Two Popular Science handbooks are to be included. Supermen of 8113 may be chagrined to find that some of their inventions were anticipated as early as the twentieth century. Or, if world war or some natural cataclysm has made mankind revert to a barbaric state by that time, the “lost arts” preserved in the Georgia crypt might conceivably start the race back along the road to civilization."

Popular Science, December 1938

Immorality of Human Flight

The philosophers of King Charles's reign were busy in finding out the art of flying. The famous Bishop Wilkins was so confident of success in it, that he says he does not question but in the next age it will be as usual to hear a man call for his wings when he is going a journey, as it is now to call for his boots. The humour so prevailed among the virtuosos of this reign, that they were actually making parties to go up to the moon together, and were more put to it in their thoughts how to meet with accommodations by the way, than how to get thither.(...) I shall present my reader with the following letter from an artist, who is now taken up with this invention, and conceals his true name under that of Dædalus.

“MR. IRONSIDE,

Knowing that you are a great encourager of ingenuity, I think fit to acquaint you, that I have made a considerable progress in the art of flying. I flutter about my room two or three hours in a morning, and when my wings are on, can go above an hundred yards at a hop, step, and jump. I can fiy already as well as a Turkey-cock, and improve every day. If I proceed as I have begun, I intend to give the world a proof of my proficiency in this art. Upon the next public thanksgiving-day, it is my design to sit astride the dragon upon Bow steeple, from whence, after the first discharge of the Tower guns, I intend to mount into the air, fly over Fleet Street, and pitch upon the May-pole in the Strand. From thence, by a gradual descent, I shall make the best of my way for St. James's Park, and light upon the ground near Rosamond's pond. This, I doubt not, will convince the world that I am no pretender; but before I set out, I shall desire to have a patent for making of wings, and that none shall presume to fly under pain of death, with wings of any other man's making. I intend to work for the court myself, and will have journeymen under me to furnish the rest of the nation. I likewise desire, that I may have the sole teaching of persons of quality, in which I shall spare neither time nor pains till I have made them as expert as myself. I will fly with the women upon my back for the first fortnight. I shall appear at the next masquerade, dressed up in my feathers and plumage like an Indian prince, that the quality may see how pretty they will look in their travelling habits. You know, sir, there is an unaccountable prejudice to projectors of all kinds, for which reason, when I talk of practising to fly, silly people think me an owl for my pains; but, sir, you know better things. I need not enumerate to you the benefits which will accrue to the public from this invention, as how the roads of England will be saved when we travel through these new high-ways, and how all familyaccounts will be lessened in the article of coaches and horses. I need not mention posts and packet-boats, with many other conveniences of life, which will be supplied this way. In short, sir, when mankind are in possession of this art, they will be able to do more business in threescore and ten years, than they could do in a thousand by the methods now in use. I therefore recommend myself and art to your patronage, and am,

“ Your most humble servant."

I have fully considered the project of these our modern Dædalists, and am resolved so far to discourage it, as to prevent any person from flying in my time. It would fill the world with innumerable immoralities, and give such occasions for intrigues as people cannot meet with who have nothing but legs to carry them. You should have a couple of lovers make a midnight assignation upon the top of the monument, and see the cupola of St. Paul's covered with both sexes like the outside of a pigeon-house. Nothing would be more frequent than to see a beau flying in at a garret window, or a gallant giving chase to his mistress, like a hawk after a lark. There would be no walking in a shady wood without springing a covey of toasts. The poor husband could not dream what was doing over bis head: if he were jealous, indeed, he might clip his wife's wings, but what would this avail when there were flocks of whore-masters perpetually hovering over his house ? What concern would the father of a family be in all the time his daughter was upon the wing! every heiress must have an old woman flying at her heels. In short, the whole air would be full of this kind of gibier, as the French call it. I do allow, with my correspondent, that there would be much more business done than there is at present. However, should he apply for such a patent as he speaks of, I question not but there would be more petitions out of the city against it, than ever yet appeared against any other monopoly whatsoever. Every tradesman that cannot keep his wife à coach could keep 'her a pair of wings, and there is no doubt but she would be every morning and evening taking the air with them.

I have here only considered the ill consequences of this invention in the influences it would have on love affairs : I have many more objections to make on other accounts; but these I shall defer publishing till I see my friend astride the dragon.

Addison, The Guardian, Monday, July 20th, 1713

Les vespertillos sélénites

La lune est-elle habitée? C'est ce qu'on ignore, mais on peut affirmer que, s'il y existe des êtres organisés, ils sont bien différents de ceux de la terre, puisqu'ils doivent vivre sans air et sans eau. Ils seraient en outre d'une bien petite dimension : un homme de cinquante centimètres serait un

géant.

Mais de ce que nous ne pouvons voir les habitants de la lune, ni comprendre leur organisation , on ne peut conclure qu'il n'y ait point d'êtres organisés sur ce globe; on peut même admettre que, s'il y en a, nous les verrons un jour. Nous avons dit qu'à l'aide du télescope d'Herschel, la lune

nous apparaît comme si nous n'en étions éloignés que de seize lieues; vienne maintenant un homme de génie qui centuple la puissance de ce télescope , et nous verrons la lune comme si nous n'en étions qu'à six cent quarante mètres ; puisque le progrès continue, il n'y aura plus sur ce globe rien de caché pour nous.

Ces probabilités ont fait, il y a quinze à seize ans, le succès d'une des plus audacieuses mystifications qu'on puisse imaginer. Quelques astronomes anglais étaient partis depuis

plus de dix mois pour le cap de Bonne-Espérance, emportant des instruments d'une grande perfection , pour faire des expériences , lorsque parut à Londres un mémoire attribué

au chef de cette expédition, qui révélait des merveilles : il avait vu les habitants de la lune, qu'il appelait Vespertillos ; c'était des hommes comme nous, plus petits, mais d'une perfection presque divine; ils avaient des ailes et ils s'élançaient à volonté dans l'espace.... Telle était la puissance des instruments, que l'heureux observateur avait pu étudier leurs mœurs : il avait vu des maris mollement étendus près de leurs épouses sur le gazon verdoyant , tandis qu'à leurs pieds

se jouaient des enfants d'une beauté plus qu'angélique.

L'observateur avait vu encore une foule d'autres choses que nous ne saurions dire, et qui, au premier aspect, semblaient très-vraisemblables; car, s'il est une vérité que l'on doive proclamer et contre laquelle ne puissent rien les remparts de bois de la vieille Angleterre, comme ils disent de l'autre côté de la Manche, c'est qu'un Anglais qui ment est toujours un des plus habiles menteurs du monde.

Dieu sait le bruit que fit la découverte ! Le mémoire fut traduit dans toutes les langues connues; on en publia à Paris quatorze éditions en six semaines. On ne parlait que des vespertillos, et les lionnes de ce temps commencèrent à trouver ridicule que le gouvernement ne fit rien pour tenter

d'acclimater chez nous d'aussi adorables créatures. En même temps on critiquait les savants de l'Observatoire de Paris. — L'État paye ces gens-là , disait-on ; il les paye même fort cher, et ils dorment!... Ce n'est pas eux. qui auraient découvert les vespertillos !

Le plus drôle de l'affaire, c'est que ces savants étaient tout honteux; on leur criait de toutes parts : Vespertillos! Ce mot était un poignard qu'ils avaient incessamment sur la gorge. Nous disons ce mot; quant à la cose, ils s'aveuglaient à la chercher, et ils ne la trouvaient point. Les infortunés seraient morts à la peine , si les astronomes anglais n'étaient enfin revenus du cap de Bonne-Espérance ; ils s'empressèrent de démentir les hâbleurs qui avaient si bien exploité la crédulité publique; mais par malheur, il n'est pas aussi facile de détruire une erreur de ce genre que de

l'implanter dans l'esprit du peuple , et aujourd'hui encore il existe des gens qui croient à l'existence des vespertillos.

Comte Foelix, Astronomie des dames, Paris, Martinon, 1858, p. 44-45