Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/83

The system of Descartes was causing a stir among learned men, and James Flower, too, determined to reduce all philosophy to a basic postulate. He laid out paper and a number of fine pens at his side, but he could never come on his postulate. “I think, therefore I am,” he said; “at least, I think I am.” But this led in a circle and got him nowhere. Then he joined the new-founded school of Bacon. With persistent experiments he burned his fingers, and tried to cross clover with barley, and pulled the legs from numberless insects, striving to discover something———almost anything; but he never did. As he had a moderate income from money left him by an uncle, his experiments were varied and extensive.

A Separatist of fanatic intensity had written a violent book in the best scientific manner———“The Effects of Alcoholic Spirits, Momentary and Perpetual.” This work fell into the hands of James Flower, and he set out one evening to verify some of its more fantastic theories, In the midst of his investigation the spirit of induction left him, and, without cause or warning, he assaulted one of His Majesty's guardsmen with a potted plant. Had he only known it, this was the one spontaneous idea of his life. The matter was hushed up by an archdeacon who was related to his mother. James Flower’s small fortune was invested in a plantation in Barbados, and he was sent to live there. Clearly, he did not fit in with orthodoxy and pentameters.

And so he had grown wistfully old, on the island.