FRACTIONAL HUMANITY


Mankind, in its heavy fashion, has chosen to mock the tailor with the
fact--the indubitable fact--that he is but the ninth part of a man. Yet,
after all, at this time of day, it seems more of a compliment than a gibe.
To be a whole ninth of a man! Few of _us_, when we ponder it, can boast so
much. Take, for instance, that other proverbial case of the
fractional-part-of-a-pin-maker. It takes nine persons to make a pin, we
were taught in our catechism. Actually that means that it takes nine
persons to make one whole pin-maker, which leaves the question still to be
solved as to how many whole pin-makers it takes to make a man. What is the
relation of one pin-maker to the whole social economy? That discovered, a
multiplication by nine will give us the exact fractional part of manhood
which belongs to the ninth-of-a-pin-maker. Obviously he is a much more
microscopic creature than the immemorially despised tailor, and, alas! his
case is nearest that of most of us. And it is curious to notice how we
rejoice in, rather than lament, this inevitable result of that great law
of differentiation, which one may figure as a terrible machine hour after
hour chopping up mankind into more and more infinitesimal fragments. We
feel a pride in being spoken of as 'specialists'--and yet what is a
specialist? The nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninth part of a man. Call me not
an entomologist, call me a lepidopterist, if you will--though, really,
that is too broad a term for a man who is not so much taken up with moths
generally as with the third ring of the antennæ of the great oak-eggar.