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Good Habits for
Great Coding
Improving Programming Skills
with Examples in Python
—
Michael Stueben
Good Habits for Great
Coding
Improving Programming Skills
with Examples in Python

Michael Stueben
Good Habits for Great Coding
Michael Stueben
Falls Church, Virginia, USA

ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-3458-7 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-3459-4

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3459-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018934317
Copyright © 2018 by Michael Stueben
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or
part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
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and images only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no
intention of infringement of the trademark.
The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if
they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not
they are subject to proprietary rights.
While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of
publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal
responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty,
express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.
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Printed on acid-free paper
This book is dedicated to the isolated C.S. teacher
and student.
Table of Contents
About the Author��������������������������������������������������������������������������������vii
About the Technical Reviewer�������������������������������������������������������������ix
Acknowledgments�������������������������������������������������������������������������������xi
Introduction���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xiii

Part I: Not Learned in School�������������������������������������������������������1

Chapter 1: A Coding Fantasy����������������������������������������������������������������3
Advice for Developing Programmers (pain management)������������������������������������6

Chapter 2: Coding Tricks��������������������������������������������������������������������15

Chapter 3: Style����������������������������������������������������������������������������������27

Chapter 4: More Coding Tricks�����������������������������������������������������������35

Part II: Coding Advice����������������������������������������������������������������53

Chapter 5: Function Design����������������������������������������������������������������55

Chapter 6: Self-Documenting Code�����������������������������������������������������67

Chapter 7: Step-Wise Refinement�������������������������������������������������������91

Chapter 8: Comments�������������������������������������������������������������������������95

Chapter 9: Stop Coding���������������������������������������������������������������������105

Chapter 10: Testing���������������������������������������������������������������������������111

v
Table of Contents

Chapter 11: Defensive Programming������������������������������������������������123

Chapter 12: Refactoring��������������������������������������������������������������������127

Chapter 13: Write the Tests First (Sometimes)���������������������������������145

Chapter 14: Expert Advice����������������������������������������������������������������153

Part III: Perspective�����������������������������������������������������������������179

Chapter 15: A Lesson in Design��������������������������������������������������������181
How to Approach a Major Computer Science Project���������������������������������������193

Chapter 16: Beware of OOP��������������������������������������������������������������197

Chapter 17: The Evolution of a Function�������������������������������������������203

Chapter 18: Do Not Snub Inefficient Algorithms�������������������������������209

Part IV: Walk the Walk�������������������������������������������������������������219

Chapter 19: Problems Worth Solving������������������������������������������������221

Chapter 20: Problem Solving������������������������������������������������������������241

The Evolution of a Programmer������������������������������������������������������������������������252

Chapter 21: Dynamic Programming�������������������������������������������������253

The Most Profound Academic Joke Ever Told���������������������������������������������������253
A Memoir by Richard Hamming������������������������������������������������������������������������254
The Wayfarer�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������255

Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������307

vi
About the Author
Michael Stueben started teaching Fortran at Fairfax High School in
Virginia in 1977. Eventually the high school computer science curriculum
changed from Fortran to BASIC, Pascal, C, C++, Java, and finally to Python.
In the last five years, Stueben taught artificial intelligence at Thomas
Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, VA.
Along the way, he wrote a regular puzzle column for Discover Magazine,
published articles in Mathematics Teacher and Mathematics Magazine,
published a book on teaching high school mathematics: Twenty Years
Before the Blackboard (Mathematical Association of America, 1998).
In 2006 he received a Distinguished High School Mathematics
Teaching / Edyth May Sliffe Award from the Mathematical Association
of America.

vii
About the Technical Reviewer
Michael Thomas has worked in software
development for over 20 years as an individual
contributor, team lead, program manager, and
Vice President of Engineering. Michael has
over 10 years experience working with mobile
devices. His current focus is in the medical
sector using mobile devices to accelerate
information transfer between patients and
health care providers.

ix
Acknowledgments
Sincere thanks go to the following people: programmer Stephen Drodge
for reviewing an earlier draft of this book and for making many useful
suggestions; programmer Michael Ames for reviewing an earlier draft of
this book; Dr. Stuart Dreyfus (University of California, Berkeley) for his
personal thoughts on dynamic programming; Dr. Dana Richards (George
Mason University) for mathematical advice on algorithms and puzzles;
Dr. James Stanlaw of Illinois State University for discussions of signs,
symbols, and semiotics; neurobiologist Paul Cammer (the best teacher I
ever met) for years of discussions of effective teaching; hundreds of bright
students who accepted my sarcasm and returned it right back to me; my
wonderful wife of 40 years, Diane Sandford, for editing several versions
of this book; Apress technical reviewer Michael Thomas; Apress editors
James Markham, Jill Balzano, and Todd Green for their help in bringing
this book into print; and the web site Stack Overflow. Finally, I must thank
my two colleagues and master teachers: Dr. Peter Gabor (who reviewed
this manuscript and made many suggestions) and Dr. Shane Torbert (who
created the A.I. course I taught), both for five years of intense discussions
about algorithms. Any mistakes in this book are due to the author, not
those who gave me good advice.

xi
Introduction
For the player who wants to get ahead, he has only
one piece of advice: get to work. Not with generalities
taken from books, but in the struggle with concrete
[chess] positions.—Willy Hendriks, Move First, Think
Later (New in Chess, 2012), page 20.

This book is about improving coding skills and learning how to write
readable code. It is written both for teachers and developing programmers.
But I must immediately tell you that we learn how to write computer
code only by trying to code many challenging problems, reflecting on the
experience, and remembering the lessons we learned. Hence, you will find
here more than twenty quizzes and problems. Chess coach Willy Hendriks
is right: There is no other way.

xiii
Introduction

I have spent more than 38 years both writing computer code and
thinking about how to write code effectively.1 I can’t remember the last
time I had a serious bug that I couldn’t defeat—eventually. So what is the
difference between myself and a novice? Part of it is that I notice details
well, and I can stay focused for long periods of time. I can’t pass that on
to anyone, but I can show you some tricks gleaned from reading experts,
talking to fellow programmers, and from analyzing my own mistakes.
These tricks are guaranteed to reduce frustrations and failures. 2

1
I left Northern Illinois University in 1974 as a math major with just two C.S.
courses behind me (COBOL and Fortran). Both classes employed optical card
readers used with the University’s IBM 360/370 computer. It often took 15
minutes of standing in line for the card-punch machine in order to change a
single comma. At times there were no seats left in the computer room. I got tired
of coding at midnight. The experience was so unpleasant that I vowed never to
take another C.S. course. What got me interested in programming—actually the
first time—was a TI programmable calculator with magnetic strips for memory.
My first program would factor large integers, which I used for recreational
mathematics. I started teaching Fortran at Fairfax High School (Virginia) in 1977.
The school had three terminals (remotely connected) for the entire class. I tried
to give each student about 10 minutes a week on a keyboard. Surprisingly, even
under those conditions, some students became addicted to coding. Occasionally
I found a student hiding under the tables after school so that he could program
for hours after I locked up the room.
Later the H.S. curriculum changed from Fortran to BASIC, Pascal, C, C++, Java,
and finally to Python. I discovered that I could not work in two languages at the
same time. After six months with Python, I had forgotten my five years of Java.
Python is definitely the most fun, with C/C++ second. COBOL was the worst, with
Java the second worst. In fact, I think the Java language has discouraged many high
school teachers from teaching C.S.
2
“Essentially every approach works for a small project. Worse, it seems that
essentially every approach—however ill-conceived and however cruel to the
individuals involved—also works for a large project, provided you are willing to
throw indecent amounts of time and money at the problem.”—Bjarne Stroustrup,
The C++ Programming Language, 2nd Ed., (Addison Wesley, 1991), page 385.

xiv
 Introduction

The computer code in this book is written in the Python language,

which is almost executable pseudo-code. It comes with batteries, as they
say. For example, consider the Python min function:

print(min(3,5)) # output: 3
Most languages have a min function. But look what Python’s min can do:

paths = [[7,1,1], [5,1,3]]

print(min(paths))            # output: [5,1,3], because 5 < 7
print(min(paths, key = sum)) # output: [7,1,1], because 7+1+1 <
5+1+3

Note to reader: The code examples appearing in this book

(62 characters per line) were taken from programs with 80
characters per line. Consequently, some of the longer lines were
broken into two (usually indented) lines. This affects their readability
in a few cases, but has kept the type larger and easier to scan.

In Python, you can pass a function as a parameter to another function.

Why would anyone want to do that? Imagine that you wrote several different
functions, each using a different algorithm, to solve the same problem. Then
you wrote a test function to test each algorithm. You could change the name
of each of your functions, one at a time, to the name the test function expects
to call. Or you could just pass the function name as a parameter and not
have to change any code, which is much easier. Below is an example.3
def fn1():
    print('Hello:   ', end ='')
    return (1)

3
 las, if the different algorithms have different function signatures then this
A
method fails—e.g., the bubble sort, the selection sort, and the insertion sort all
pass just the array. But the recursive quick sort passes the array and the position
of the first and last elements.
xv
Introduction

def fn2():
    print('Goodbye: ', end ='')
    return(2)

def test(func):
    print('testing', func.__name__, 'Output =', func())

def main():
    print('In program',__file__) # output: In program C:\test.py
    test(fn1)                    # output: Hello:   testing fn1
Output = 1
    test(fn2)                    # output: Goodbye: testing fn2
Output = 2

In Python, you can make multiple assignments in one line and can do
a swap in one line.

a, b, c  = 1, 2, 3 # multiple assignment

a, b = b, a        # swap

A list (array) in Python can simultaneously hold different data types. A

function can return more than one parameter. The last element in a list has
index -1. The second-to-last element has index -2, etc. How convenient is
that?4 The extremely useful associative-array concept exists in Python as a
built-in data structure called a “dictionary.” The quick sort as shown
below can be written in two logical lines. OK, five printed lines, but they
are easy-to-understand lines.

def quickSort(array):
    if len(array) <= 1: return array
    return   quickSort([x for x in array[1:] if x <  array[0]]) \
           + [array[0]]                                        \
           + quickSort([x for x in array[1:] if x >= array[0]])

4
 his attribute can be a problem. I once ran a loop that moved backwards through
T
a list. When it went past 0, the out-of-range error was not caught, because it just
started at over at the end.
xvi
 Introduction

My point is that the language of Python is nearly ideal for developing

algorithms. The main drawback is speed. The language is interpreted, not
compiled. But only with graphics have I encountered a speed problem
with Python.
You may not understand Python. I have looked at books written in
languages that I didn’t understand, and (if the code was not too long or
too complex) I still understood the main ideas for algorithms. So I’m
hoping you can do the same. Let’s find out. Consider a function to raise
a positive integer to a power. For example, power(5, 23) = 5**23 =
11920928955078125. Of course, there is a built-in function (pow) and a
built-in operator (**) in Python to do this for us. But those won’t help us in
the application I have in mind. Can you understand the following code? I
wrote it in two versions.

def power(base, exponent):

    product = 1
    for n in range(exponent):
        product *= base
    return product

def powr(b, exp):

    x = 1
    for n in range(exp):
        x *= b
    return x

If you can understand this code, then you can follow much of the code
in this book. By the way, there are already a few lessons to be learned here.

1. In my opinion, the second version is easier to

understand than the first version. Short identifiers—with
obvious meaning—for short scope are more readable
than longer identifiers, which are better for function
names, class names, and variables in complex code.

xvii
Introduction

2. The reason pow would be a poor function

name is because the function would overwrite the
built-in pow function of the same name, for the
entire program. The reason exp is acceptable is
because it overwrites the built-in exp function only
for the short scope of the function. Good names
are sometimes hard to find. Believe it or not, I have
had students name their programs random and one
student named his program print. Then they were
confused when, under Linux, their random and
print functions failed to work.

For almost any application, this four-line power function

would be ideal. But it could be much more efficient. Again, consider
5**23 = 11920928955078125. We don’t need 22 multiplications to do the
arithmetic. Notice that we can break up 5**23 like this:

5 * (5*5) * (5*5*5*5) * (5*5*5*5*5*5*5*5*5*5*5*5*5*5*5*5) = 5**23,

and like this:

5 *  5**2   *    5**4   *          5**16               = 5**23,

where the exponents (1, 2, 4, and 16) add up to 23. (Recall x a ´ x b = x a +b .)

Once we calculate a = 5*5, it takes only one more multiplication to
produce b = a*a. Then only one more multiplication to produce c = b*b.
And only one more multiplication to produce d = c*c. Altogether we can
produce 5**23 in only 7 multiplications: (5*a*b*d). The trick is to write the
exponent 23 as a binary number: 23 (base 10) = 11101 (base 2). Then multiply
each digit (in reverse order) by the base (5 here) raised to a power of 2:

1*(5) * 1*(5**2) * 1*(5**4) * 1*(5**16) = 5**23.

xviii
 Introduction

You might try to write this function now, in your own preferred
language. The hills make us strong, as they say in cycling. But you may be
too busy, and the exercise probably seems both complex and pointless.
Who would want such a function anyway? But in a situation we will see
later, this binary-jumping type of multiplication will significantly speed up
a function. So for the time being I will give you a pass in writing
this algorithm. My eight-line solution follows. Python, of course, has
built-in features to change an integer into a binary string and to reverse the
characters in a string. No wonder people like to code in Python.

def powr(b, exp):

    binStng = str(bin(exp))[2:] # Change integer exp to a
binary string.
    revStng = reversed(binStng) # Reverse the digits (alt. =
binStng[::-1]).
    product  = 1
    for ch in revStng:
        if ch == '1':
           product *= b
        b *= b
    return product

If you don’t know Python, the first two lines will be a mystery, hence
the comments. If you do know Python, you still may learn something new
and useful in those two lines. The loop should be clear to anyone who has
worked with for loops.
I’ve been programming for nearly four decades, and had written a
variation of this function about a month previously. Nevertheless, it took
me nine runs to get this function working. (I had placed b *= b above
the if statement, and it took me a while to realize the order mattered.)
I mention this to make the point that most programmers, certainly the
author, fail to write correct code in the first few attempts.

xix
Introduction

Before we leave this introduction, I want to give you three quizzes that
will tell you what this book is all about.
QUIZ 1.

# If we optimize the one-line BODY of this for-loop, then

# what is the MINIMUM number of multiplications necessary?
# Do NOT use an exponential operator (**). Do NOT use a built-
# in power function. You MUST use the symbol * to indicate
# multiplication.
#
    total = 0
    for n in range(1, 3000000):
         total += (2*n*n*n + 3*n*n + 4*n) # <--Improve this line.
    print('total =', total)
#--------------------------------------------------------------

The answer is at the end of this chapter, but try to solve it now. Passive
reading will not take you far. One of my colleagues (the amazing Ria
Galanos) was asked the following question in a Google summer interview:
QUIZ 2. Given x, an unsorted list of the first 100 positive integers,
one of the integers is replaced by 0: x[randint(1,100)] = 0. Write the
code—any way you want—to print the missing (replaced) integer. A
solution is in the footnote.5

5
 UIZ 2 ANSWER: print(5050-sum(x)). Where did the 5050 come from? That
Q
is the sum of the first 100 positive integers. We can compute this number in
our heads. 1+100 = 101, 2+99 = 101, 3+98 = 101, … 50+51 = 101 (a trick worth
remembering). Then, 50* 101 = 5050. I later found this problem in Peter Winkler’s
Mathematical Puzzles—A Connoisseur’s Collection (A.K. Peters, 2004), page 102.
P.S. She got the job.

xx
 Introduction

There are three main cultures of coding.6 The people in these cultures
all use computers, yet they rarely interact with each other. Perhaps you can
tell now which one most interests you.

1. The software developer (industry), who works

with libraries of previously developed code to
produce new software tools, who devises schemes
to manage complexity in software programs, who
determines what features make programming tools
more useful, or more fun (games), etc.

2. The computer scientist (theory), who develops

and analyzes algorithms, who studies the syntax
and semantics of computer languages, who designs
efficient storage and retrieval strategies, who
determines what can be computed efficiently, etc.

3. The computational scientist (problem solving in

other fields), who uses the computer as a scientific
tool in modeling and simulations, as a way to
visualize spatial and temporal patterns, as way to
solve equations, as a way to efficiently organize,
search, and find patterns in data, etc.

In this book there are references to all three cultures. Most beginners
focus on just learning a language, learning data structures, and building
coding-specific problem-solving skills. What is missing is learning to write
readable code. In my experience, readability is difficult to teach well in
both high school and college courses. There are reasons for this, which
I will give you later. But I would like you to compare your ability to write

6
 rian Hayes, “Cultures of Code”, American Scientist, Vol. 103, No. 1,
B
January–February, 2015, pages 10–13. This article is also on the Internet.

xxi
Introduction

readable code with mine. Imagine we are the last two candidates for a
summer coding job. The interviewer gives us the following assignment:
QUIZ 3. If I take a 52-card deck and I shuffle it well, then what is the
probability that at least one card remains in place?7 Solve this problem by
computer simulation8 (here, sampling) in your favorite language. That is,
shuffle 1,000,000 sorted arrays and determine what percentage of them
have at least one element remaining in place. Express this number as a
probability. Be sure to make your code as readable as possible. Bring me
your code tomorrow morning. I’ll have one of our programmers look at
your two programs and tell me whose code he prefers.
Quiz 3 is the most important quiz in this book. If you attempt no other
problem in this book, try to write this short program—and a complete
program is expected, not just a function. My code follows, with notes as
to why I made some design decisions. Before you compare your code to
mine, what can you tell me about the programmer who will judge our
code? My answer is in the footnote.9
How would you answer this interview question: “So, what will you do
this summer if you don’t get this job?” My suggested answer-to-impress is
in the footnote.10

7
 his is known as Montmort’s Matching Problem. See Isaac Todhunter, Theory of
T
Probability (London: Macmillan, 1865), (Chelsea Reprint, 1965), page 91 (online).
Curiously, for a deck of any number of cards greater than 5 the answer is almost
the same.
8
Tech. Note. Wikipedia states that a computer model is the set of algorithms
capturing the essence of a process or system, and that a computer simulation is
the running of those algorithms. That being said, the terms simulation and model
are often interchanged in both writing and speaking. Random sampling to obtain
numerical approximations by ratios is called the Monte Carlo Method.
9
He wants someone who pays attention to detail, who has some maturity in
his/her coding skills, and who wants this job so much that the candidate will try
to impress the code reviewer. Will your code show this?
10
“I’ll have to go back to reading computer books and working problems on my
own. I would much rather gain some experience this summer by working in
industry.”

xxii
 Introduction

QUIZ 3 ANSWER.

"""+==========+========-========*========-========+===========+
   ||                    A SHUFFLING PROBLEM                    ||
   ||              by M. Stueben (October 8, 2017)              ||
   ||     Interview Question, Mr. Jones, XYZ Corporation     ||
   ||                                                        ||
   || Description: By computer stimulation this program ||
   || determines the probability of a deck of ||
   || 52 cards having at least one unmoved card ||
   || element after shuffling. (Answer: 0.63, ||
   || rounded.)                                 ||
   ||                                                        ||
   || Language:  Python Ver. 3.4                             ||
   || Graphics:  None                                        ||
   || Downloads: None                                        ||
   || Run time:  Approx. 43 seconds for 1,000,000 runs of a  ||
   || 52-element array.                                      ||
   +==========================================================+
"""
########################<START OF PROGRAM>#####################
def printHeading():
    print('                     A SHUFFLING PROBLEM')
    print('                   (currently calculating)')
#--------------------------------------------------------------

def shuffleArrays():
    totalArrays = 0 # Arrays with at least one unmoved element
after shuffling.
    for trial in range(TRIAL_RUNS):
        array = list(range(LIST_SIZE))
        shuffle(array)

xxiii
Introduction

        for num in range(LIST_SIZE):

            if array[num] == num:
                totalArrays += 1
                break
    probability = round(totalArrays/TRIAL_RUNS, 2)
    return probability
#--------------------------------------------------------------

def printResult(probability):
    print('   Result:', probability ,'is the probability of an
array having at')
    print('   least one unmoved element after shuffling. This
is based')
    print('   on a computer simulation with an array size =',
LIST_SIZE, 'and')
    print('  ', TRIAL_RUNS, 'trial runs.')
#============<GLOBAL CONSTANTS and GLOBAL IMPORTS>=============

from random import shuffle

TRIAL_RUNS = 1000000
LIST_SIZE  =      52
assert LIST_SIZE > 1, 'LIST_SIZE must be greater than 1.'
#==============================================================

def main():
    printHeading()
    probability = shuffleArrays()
    printResult(probability)
#--------------------------------------------------------------

xxiv
 Introduction

if __name__ == '__main__':
    from time import clock; START_TIME = clock();main();
print('\n   '+'- '*12);
    print('   PROGRAM RUN TIME:%6.2f'%(clock()-START_TIME),
'seconds.');
##################<END OF PROGRAM>#############################

Output:

                     A SHUFFLING PROBLEM

                   (currently calculating)
   Result: 0.63 is the probability of an array having at
   least one unmoved element after shuffling. This is based
   on a computer simulation with an array size = 52 and
   1000000 trial runs.

   - - - - - - - - - - - -
   PROGRAM RUN TIME:  43 seconds.

What was I thinking when I wrote this code?

1. The pretty box, the centering, the vertical alignment

are all just window dressing. Is this fancy stuff
necessary? Like it or not, looks matter.

2. The minimum information is a title, your name,

the date, and a program description. The other
information in the box is optional, but shows
attention to detail. I want to look like I am trying to
impress the interviewer.

3. There are no spelling, punctuation, or grammatical

errors (important). I used complete sentences in
both the description and the program output.

xxv
Introduction

4. This program is so simple, why not place all of the

code in the main function? Two reasons: 1) major
code chunks need descriptive, self-documenting
names, and 2) the main function is expected to be
mostly a list of calls to other functions (stepwise
refinement).

5. Comments are almost unnecessary, because the code

is self-documented and well organized. Docstrings
in a program this short are unnecessary. Still, some
interviewers may expect them in an interview program.

6. The variable names are descriptive. Over-abbreviation,

to save a few keystrokes, was avoided. In particular
array was used, not a or arr.

7. The output is well-labeled.

8. The two constants are in all caps.

9. The import and global constants are placed above

the main function. It is usual to place them at the
top of the program in large commercial programs.
In extremely small programs I think they are better
placed above the main function.

10. An assert is used to catch ridiculous cases. Error

traps should be common in student code.

11. The indenting is everywhere consistent: 4 spaces.

12. Some output is printed immediately. I do not want

the user to stare at an empty screen for 43 seconds
and wonder if the program is running.

xxvi
 Introduction

13. The following two lines could have been combined

into one line, but then the descriptive variable
probability would not be part of the code.

    probability = round(totalArrays/TRIAL_RUNS, 2)
    return probability

14. The run-time is printed. (Every program I write

prints its run time.) Some text editors and IDEs
automatically print the runtime. That is how
important this statistic is.

15. The answer is correct.

Did you learn anything? Readability is a hot topic with conflicting

opinions. What you are used to seeing will look more readable than what
I am used to seeing. But it is always good to know how other people think,
even if we disagree. I hope that I have interested you in reading the rest of
the book. If not, at least start the next chapter. Much of this book is text, not
code. Good luck.

Documentation and readability are as important to

software quality in the long run as speed of creation,
correct functioning, and performance are in the
short run.—L. Peter Deutsch, (ACM Fellow), Found
on the Internet (ACM SigSoft, Software Engineering
Notes, Vol. 24, Issue 1, January, 1999).

***
QUIZ 1 ANSWER: total += ((n+n + 3)*n + 4)*n. (Only two
multiplications are necessary.) Here are some running times (of repeated
calls) for six different versions:
1. 2*n*n*n + 3*n*n + 4*n -->. . . . . .1.09
seconds  (original)

xxvii
Introduction

2. ((n+n + 3)*n + 4)*n -->. . . . . . .0.76

seconds  (fastest)

3. n*((n + n + 1) * (n + 1) + 3)-->....0.86
seconds. (2nd fastest)

4. ((n+n)*n + (n+n+n))*n + n+n+n+n --> 1.39

seconds. (also two stars)

5. 2*n**3 + 3*n**2 + 4*n -->. . . . . .2.85

seconds. (poor)

6. 2*pow(n,3) + 3*pow(n,2) + 4*n --> . 3.23

seconds. (worst)

For non-Python people, please excuse this digression into the Python
language. When I showed my powr function to my colleague Peter Gabor,
he suggested the following improvements:

def powr1(b, exp):

    myPowr = 1
    while exp > 0:
        myPowr *= ((~exp)&1) or b
        b *= b
        exp >>= 1  # Shift one bit right.
    return myPowr

Explanation: The Python tilde (pronounced TIL-da) operator (~) is a bit-

wise operator. The expression ~x is the same as –(x+1). It is only employed
here because it will flip the right-most bit. The expression (~exp)&1 is
equivalent to the rightmost bit of ~exp. The expression ((~exp)&1) or b

xxviii
 Introduction

will be either 1 or b. In Python the or operator returns the value of the last
expression evaluated, not True or False. His powr1 function can also be
written like this:

def powr2(b, exp):

    myPowr = 1
    while exp > 0:
        if exp%2 == 1:   # An odd exp means right-most bit is 1.
            myPowr *= b
        b *= b
        exp //= 2
    return myPowr

Or even like this (a form I would not want to debug):

def powr3(b, exp):

    return (not exp) or ((powr3(b, exp >> 1)**2) * (((~exp)&1)
or b))

xxix
PART I

Not Learned in School

CHAPTER 1

A Coding Fantasy
Once upon a time, a talented young programmer was in a situation where
he did not have the resources to seek more education. He had a dead-­end
job that would never allow any promotion. Further, his family could not help
him, and he lived in a decaying and unsafe part of town. Our programmer
had four friends who had developed similar programming skills and who
also felt limited by their opportunities. They were all slightly depressed and
worried about their futures.
Suddenly, the five programmers discovered an amazing opportunity. If
they could team up and write a particular computer application, then the
attention they would receive would immediately open doors for better jobs.
Of course, anyone in this situation would want to attempt to write the
application. But it was not so simple. Previously, the most challenging
program each of them had written took three weeks of time at 1-2 hours a
day. Most of the time was spent in debugging. Some of those bugs were so
difficult to track down that they had twice given up on their programs, only
to come back to them out of curiosity. In fact, those three weeks of time
were actually spread over six weeks. They all had the same experience.
Upon reviewing the work for this new project, it appeared that the
job naturally could be divided into five equal parts. The problem was
that each part was five times longer than anything any one of them had
worked on before. They had 40 weeks to finish the project. In theory, if
all could stay focused, that was more than enough time to finish. But in
practice, the complexity was beyond what anyone thought he or she could

© Michael Stueben 2018 3

M. Stueben, Good Habits for Great Coding, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3459-4_1
Chapter 1 A Coding Fantasy

do. The tantalizing prize was also an invitation to failure. Briefly each
thought that the quiet go-nowhere life they were currently living might be
preferable to 40 weeks of misery that almost certainly would lead to failure.
Who needed that? Maybe something else would come along. Eventually
in conversation, the five friends realized that this defeatist thinking is a
common reason why people do not climb out of their poor situations in
life. Yet, as each one currently understood the project, it was too difficult
for them to complete. If they could increase the likelihood of success, then
it might be worth a try. So, what to do?
First, the five programmers had to accept the fact that they would have
to turn themselves into programming robots. Many of the pleasures that
were part of their everyday lives would have to be replaced with hours of
coding. This would require a change of both habits and perspective on
life. Could they do this? The prize dangling in front of them just might be
enough.
The real problem was debugging. Although all parts of the code
seemed reasonable enough, there were so many parts that debugging
problems would arise en masse. They didn’t see how any one of them
could be successful. Then someone suggested a solution: For almost every
key function written, a companion function could be written to test that
function. After each session of coding, the testing functions would be
run. Another program would import most of the important functions and
run several sets of data through each function. The data would test, for
example, almost every if statement in a function.
This meant that if a redesign occurred, the functions adversely affected
would be flagged immediately. Writing two functions for every one
function needed in the application would be extra work, but the testing
functions would be simple to write, and mostly similar to each other. This
scheme, called unit testing, seemed to offer hope.
Another member suggested that the group get together every
week to read each other’s code, to discuss problems, and to suggest
solutions coming from fresh eyes. In these code reviews they would

4
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
to his darkened rooms and hidden music, to be awe-stricken by the
cataleptic horrors there achieved;—the Count St. Germain declaring
himself three hundred years old, and professing the occult science of
diamond-manufacturing Brahmins;—the coffee-house keeper,
Schröpfer, deluding Leipsic and Frankfort with his pretended theurgic
art;—and St. Maurice, swindling the sceptical wits and roués who
flutter in the drawing-rooms of Mesdames Du Maine and De Tencin,
pretending to open converse for them with sylphs and Salamanders,
invoking the genius Alaël, and finally subsiding into the Bastille. Such
are some among the actual caricatures of the artistic conception
embodied in the character of Zanoni.
Atherton. Truly a bad symptom of the general disease, when men
grow unable to see that the highest dignity lies close at hand.
Willoughby. As though man could never exhibit magnanimity
unless in some thrilling dramatic ‘situation.’
Gower. Or could not believe in the unseen world save by help of
necromancers, miracle-mongers, and clairvoyantes.
Atherton. The ancient saying abides true,—He that ruleth his own
spirit is greater than he that taketh a city,—greater than even he who
should carry the cloud-capital of the whole world of spirits, pull down
its meteor-flag, and make all the weird garrison his thralls. I think, if I
were a preacher, I should some day take up the phase of man’s
mental history we have now reviewed as a practical exposition of
Christ’s words—‘Nevertheless, in this rejoice not that the spirits are
subject unto you, but rather that your names are written in heaven.’
Kate. I should like to know, after all, precisely who and what these
Rosicrucians were. When did they make their first appearance?
Willoughby. They were originally neither more nor less than the
‘Mrs. Harris’ of a Lutheran pastor.
Mrs. Atherton. Mr. Willoughby!
Atherton. Fact, Lily. Willoughby never said anything truer.
Willoughby. Allow me to tell you the story.—About the year 1610,
there appeared anonymously a little book, which excited great
sensation throughout Germany. It was entitled, The Discovery of the
Brotherhood of the Honourable Order of the Rosy Cross, and
dedicated to all the scholars and magnates of Europe.[256]
It commenced with an imaginary dialogue between the Seven Sages
of Greece, and other worthies of antiquity, on the best method of
accomplishing a general reform in those evil times. The suggestion
of Seneca is adopted, as most feasible, namely, a secret
confederacy of wise philanthropists, who shall labour everywhere in
unison for this desirable end. The book then announces the actual
existence of such an association. One Christian Rosenkreuz, whose
travels in the East had enriched him with the highest treasures of
occult lore, is said to have communicated his wisdom, under a vow
of secresy, to eight disciples, for whom he erected a mysterious
dwelling-place called The Temple of the Holy Ghost. It is stated
further, that this long-hidden edifice had been at last discovered, and
within it the body of Rosenkreuz, untouched by corruption, though,
since his death, one hundred and twenty years had passed away.
The surviving disciples of the institute call on the learned and devout,
who desire to co-operate in their projects of reform, to advertise their
names. They themselves indicate neither name nor place of
rendezvous. They describe themselves as true Protestants. They
expressly assert that they contemplate no political movement in
hostility to the reigning powers. Their sole aim is the diminution of
the fearful sum of human suffering, the spread of education, the
advancement of learning, science, universal enlightenment, and
love. Traditions and manuscripts in their possession have given them
the power of gold-making, with other potent secrets; but by their
wealth they set little store. They have arcana, in comparison with
which the secret of the alchemist is a trifle. But all is subordinate,
with them, to their one high purpose of benefiting their fellows both in
body and soul.
Mrs. Atherton. No wonder the book made some noise.
Willoughby. I could give you conclusive reasons, if it would not tire
you to hear them, for the belief that this far-famed book was written
by a young Lutheran divine named Valentine Andreä. He was one of
the very few who understood the age, and had the heart to try and
mend it. You see him, when his college days are over, starting on his
travels—his old mother giving him her tearful ‘God bless you,’ as she
puts into his hand all the treasure of her poverty,—a rusty old coin,
and twelve kreuzer. From the cottage-door her gaze follows with
many a prayer the good son, whose beloved form lessens along the
country road. Years after, he comes back, bringing with him the
same old coin, and with it several hundred gulden. He has seen the
world, toiling, with quick observant eye and brave kindly heart,
through south and western Germany, among the Alps, through Italy
and France. He has been sometimes in clover as a travelling tutor,
sometimes he has slept and fared hard, under vine-hedges, in noisy,
dirty little inns, among carriers, packmen, and travelling apprentices.
The candidate becomes pastor, and proves himself wise in men as
well as books. A philanthropist by nature, he is not one of those
dreamers who hate all that will not aid their one pet scheme, and
cant about a general brotherhood which exempts them from
particular charity. Wherever the church, the school, the institute of
charity have fallen into ruin or disorder by stress of war, by fraud, or
selfish neglect, there the indefatigable Andreä appears to restore
them. He devises new plans of benevolence,—appealing,
persuading, rebuking. He endures the petulence of disturbed
indolence, the persecution of exposed abuse; bearing with, and
winning over, all sorts of hopeless crabbed people, thrusting men’s
hands into their pockets, they know not how. He is an arch bore in
the eyes of miserly burgomasters and slumberous brother clergy—a
very patron-saint for the needy and distressed, the orphan and the
widow. To this robust practical benevolence was added a genial
humour, not uncommon in minds of strength like his, and a certain
trenchant skill in satirical delineation which renders some of his
writings among the most serviceable to the historian of those times.
Gower. Oh, how I love that man!
Willoughby. Well, this Andreä writes the Discovery of the
Rosicrucian Brotherhood, a jeu-d’esprit with a serious purpose, just
as an experiment to see whether something cannot be done by
combined effort to remedy the defect and abuses—social,
educational, and religious, so lamented by all good men. He thought
there were many Andreäs scattered throughout Europe—how
powerful would be their united systematic action!
Kate. But why mix up with his proposal all this idle fabling about
Rosenkreuz and his fraternity?
Willoughby. But for that spice of romance, this notion of his could
never have done more than chip the shell or sprawl helpless in the
nest. The promise of supernatural powers awakened universal
attention—fledged, and gave it strength to fly through Europe.
Mrs. Atherton. But the hoax could not last long, and would, after
all, encourage those idle superstitions which were among the most
mischievous of the errors he was trying to put down.
Willoughby. So indeed it proved. But his expectation was
otherwise. He hoped that the few nobler minds whom he desired to
organize would see through the veil of fiction in which he had
invested his proposal; that he might communicate personally with
some such, if they should appear; or that his book might lead them
to form among themselves a practical philanthropic confederacy,
answering to the serious purpose he had embodied in his fiction. Let
the empty charlatan and the ignoble gold-seeker be fooled to the top
of their bent, their blank disappointment would be an excellent jest;
only let some few, to whom humanity was more dear than bullion, be
stimulated to a new enterprise.
Gower. The scheme was certain, at any rate, to procure him some
amusement.
Willoughby. Many a laugh, you may be sure, he enjoyed in his
parsonage with his few friends who were in the secret, when they
found their fable everywhere swallowed greedily as unquestionable
fact. On all sides they heard of search instituted to discover the
Temple of the Holy Ghost. Printed letters appear continually,
addressed to the imaginary brotherhood, giving generally the initials
of the candidate, where the invisibles might hear of him, stating his
motives and qualifications for entrance into their number, and
sometimes furnishing samples of his cabbalistic acquirements. Still,
no answer. Not a trace of the Temple. Profound darkness and
silence, after the brilliant flash which had awakened so many hopes.
Soon the mirth grew serious. Andreä saw with concern that shrewd
heads of the wrong sort began to scent his artifice, while quacks
reaped a rogue’s harvest from it. The reality was ridiculed as fiction,
and the fiction hailed as reality. Society was full of the rotten
combustible matter which his spark had kindled into a conflagration
he could not hope to stay. A cloud of books and pamphlets issued
from the press, for and against the fraternity, whose actual house lay
beneath the Doctor’s hat of Valentine Andreä. Medical practitioners
of the old school, who denounced the spagiric method, and to whom
the name of Paracelsus was an abomination, ridiculed the
Rosicrucian secrets, and scoffed at their offer of gratuitous cures.
Orthodox divines, like Libavius, swinging a heavy club, cruelly
demolished the little book,—which, of a truth, was not fit to sustain
rough handling. They called down fire from heaven on its unknown
authors, and declared that their rosa should be rota—their rose, the
wheel. Meanwhile a number of enthusiasts became volunteer
expositors of the principle and aim of this undiscoverable
brotherhood. Andreä saw his scheme look as ridiculous in the hands
of its credulous friends as it seemed odious in those of its enemies.
A swarm of impostors pretended to belong to the Fraternity, and
found a readier sale than ever for their nostrums. Andreä dared not
reveal himself. All he could do was to write book after book to
expose the folly of those whom his handiwork had so befooled, and
still to labour on, by pen and speech, in earnest aid of that reform
which his unhappy stratagem had less helped than hindered.
Mrs. Atherton. And was no society ever actually formed?
Willoughby. I believe not; nothing, at least, answering in any way to
Andreä’s design. Confederacies of pretenders appear to have been
organized in various places; but Descartes says he sought in vain for
a Rosicrucian lodge in Germany. The name Rosicrucian became by
degrees a generic term, embracing every species of occult
pretension,—arcana, elixirs, the philosopher’s stone, theurgic ritual,
symbols, initiations. In general usage the term is associated more
especially with that branch of the secret art which has to do with the
creatures of the elements.
Atherton. And from this deposit of current mystical tradition sprang,
in great measure, the Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism of the
eighteenth century,—that golden age of secret societies. Then
flourished associations of every imaginable kind, suited to every
taste. The gourmand might be sure of a good dinner in one; the
alchemist might hope to catch his secret in a second; the place-
hunter might strengthen his interest in the brotherhood of a third;
and, in all, the curious and the credulous might be fleeced to their
hearts’ content. Some lodges belonged to Protestant societies,
others were the implements of the Jesuits. Some were aristocratic,
like the Strict Observance; others democratic, seeking in vain to
escape an Argus-eyed police. Some—like the Illuminati under
Weishaupt, Knigge, and Von Zwackh, numbering (among many
knaves) not a few names of rank, probity, and learning—were the
professed enemies of mysticism and superstition. Others existed
only for the profitable juggle of incantations and fortune-telling. The
lodges contended with each other and among themselves; divided
and subdivided; modified and remodified their constitutions; blended
and dispersed; till, at last, we almost cease to hear of them. The best
perished at the hands of the Jesuits, the worst at the hands of the
police.
Willoughby. At Vienna, the Rosicrucians and Freemasons were at
one time so much the rage that a modification of the mason’s apron
became a fashionable part of female dress, and chatelaines were
made of miniature hammers, circles, and plumblines.
Kate. Very pretty, some of them, I dare say.
Atherton. Do you remember, Gower, that large old house we saw
at Vienna, called the Stift?
Gower. Perfectly, and the Stift-gasse, too, leading to it, for there I
got wet through.
Atherton. That building is the relic of a charity founded by a
professed Rosicrucian. He took the name of Chaos (after their
fashion)—every brother changing his name for some such title as
Sol, Aureus, Mercurius, and so on, according to his taste. He came
to Vienna in the seventeenth century, and somehow, whether by his
alchemy or not I cannot say, acquired both fortune and nobility.
Ferdinand III. made him Hofkammerath, and prefixed a Von to the
Chaos. This good man founded an institution for orphans, who were
once educated in that house, since converted into a military
academy, and bearing still, in its name and neighbourhood, traces of
the original endowment.
Mrs. Atherton. Andreä would have taken some comfort could he
but have seen at least that practical fruit of his Rosicrucian whim.
How his heart would have rejoiced to hear the hum of the orphan
school-room, and to see their smoking platters!
Kate. My curiosity is not yet satisfied. I should like to know
something more about those most poetical beings, the creatures of
the elements,—Sylph, Undine, and Co.
Atherton. On this subject, Kate, I am happy to be able to satisfy
you. I can conduct you at once to the fountain-head. I will read you
the process enjoined in the Comte de Gabalis for attaining to
converse with some of these fanciful creations. (Taking down a little
book.) Here is the passage.[257] (Reads.)
‘If we wish to recover our empire over the salamanders, we must
purify and exalt the element of fire we have within us, and restore the
tone of this chord which desuetude has so relaxed. We have only to
concentrate the fire of the world, by concave mirrors, in a globe of
glass. This is the process all the ancients have religiously kept
secret; it was revealed by the divine Theophrastus. In such a globe
is formed a solar powder, and this, self-purified from the admixture of
other elements, and prepared according to the rules of art, acquires,
in a very short time, a sovereign virtue for the exaltation of the fire
within us, and renders us, so to speak, of an igneous nature.
Henceforth the inhabitants of the fiery sphere become our inferiors.
Delighted to find our reciprocal harmony restored, and to see us
drawing near to them, they feel for us all the friendship they have for
their own species, all the respect they owe to the image and
vicegerent of their Creator, and pay us every attention that can be
prompted by the desire of obtaining at our hands that immortality
which does not naturally belong to them. The salamanders, however,
as they are more subtile than the creatures of the other elements,
live a very long time, and are therefore less urgent in seeking from
the sage that affection which endows them with immortality....
‘It is otherwise with the sylphs, the gnomes, and the nymphs. As they
live a shorter time, they have more inducement to court our regard,
and it is much easier to become intimate with them. You have only to
fill a glass vessel with compressed air, with earth, or with water,
close it up, and leave it exposed to the sun’s rays for a month. After
that time, effect a scientific separation of the elements, which you will
easily accomplish, more especially with earth or water. It is wonderful
to see what a charm each of the elements thus purified possesses
for attracting nymphs, sylphs, and gnomes. After taking the smallest
particle of this preparation every day for a few months, you see in
the air the flying commonwealth of the sylphs, the nymphs coming in
crowds to the waterside, and the guardians of hidden treasure
displaying their stores of wealth. Thus, without magical figures,
without ceremonies, without barbarous terms, an absolute power is
acquired over all these people of the elements. They require no
homage from the philosopher, for they know well that he is their
superior.... Thus does man recover his natural empire, and become
omnipotent in the region of the elements, without aid of dæmon,
without illicit art.’
Of course you have all learnt from Undine that the creatures of the
elements are supposed to obtain a soul, and become immortal by
alliance with one of our race. There is a double advantage, too, for
these happy philosophers may not only raise their nymph or sylphide
to a share with them in the happiness of heaven, if they reach it, but
if the sage should be so unfortunate as not to be predestined to an
immortality of blessedness, his union with one of these beings will
operate on himself conversely,—that is, will render his soul mortal,
and deliver him from the horrors of the endless second death. So
Satan misses his prey in either sphere.
Willoughby. I never knew before that these cabbalists were
Calvinists.
Atherton. This touch of Jansenism excites the same astonishment
in the author of the Comte de Gabalis. A delightful wag, that Abbé
Villars!
The philosophers are described by the Count as the instructors and
the saviours of the poor elementary folk, who, but for their assistance
in forming liaisons with mortals, would inevitably at last fall into the
hands of their enemy, the devil. As soon, he says, as a sylph has
learnt from us how to pronounce cabbalistically the potent name
Nehmahmihah,[258] and to combine it, in due form, with the delicious
name Eliael, all the powers of darkness take to flight, and the sylph
enjoys, unmolested, the love he seeks!
Willoughby. How universal seems to have been the faith in the
magical efficacy of certain words, from the earliest to the latest
times, among the more sober as well as the most extravagant
theurgists. A long list of them might be drawn up. There is the Indian
O-U-M; there are the Ephesian letters; with Demogorgon, ‘dreaded
name,’ as Milton reminds us; the barbarous words, too, which the
Chaldean oracles and Psellus declare must on no account be
Hellenised.
Gower. And the word Agla, I remember, in Colin de Plancy, which,
when duly pronounced, facing the east, makes absent persons
appear, and discovers lost property.[259] I suppose the potency is in
proportion to the unintelligibility of the terms.
Atherton. The Comte de Gabalis tells us how the Salamander
Oramasis enabled Shem and Japhet to restore the patriarch Noah to
his former vigour by instructing them how to pronounce six times
alternately, walking backward, the tremendous name Jabamiah.
But the word above every word is the Shemhamphorash of the
Talmud.[260] The latter rabbins say that Moses was forty days on
Mount Sinai, to learn it of the angel Saxael. Solomon achieved his
fiend-compelling wonders by its aid. Jesus of Nazareth, they say,
stole it from the Temple, and was enabled by its virtue to delude the
people. It is now, alas! lost; but could any one rightly and devoutly
pronounce it, he would be able to create therewith a world. Even
approximate sounds and letters, supplied by rabbinical conjecture,
give their possessor power over the spirit-world, from the first-class
archangel to the vulgar ghost: he can heal the sick, raise the dead,
and destroy his enemies.
Willoughby. It is curious to see some of these theosophists, who
cry out so against the letter, becoming its abject bondsmen among
the puerilities of the Cabbala. They protest loudly that the mere letter
is an empty shell—and then discover stupendous powers lying
intrenched within the curves and angles of a Hebrew character.
Atherton. Our seventeenth century mystics, even when most given
to romancing, occupied but a mere corner of that land of marvel in
which their Jewish contemporaries rejoiced. The Jews, in their
dæmonology, leave the most fantastic conceptions of all other times
and nations at an immeasurable distance. Their affluence of devils is
amazing. Think of it!—Rabbi Huna tells you that every rabbi has a
thousand dæmons at his left hand, and ten thousand at his right: the
sensation of closeness in a room of Jewish assembly comes from
the press of their crowding multitudes: has a rabbi a threadbare
gabardine and holes in his shoes, it is from the friction of the
swarming devilry that everywhere attends him.[261]
Gower. To return to societies—did you ever hear, Willoughby, of the
Philadelphian Association?[262]
Willoughby. That founded by Pordage, do you mean—the doctor
who fought the giant so stoutly one night?
Gower. The same. I picked up a book of his at a stall the other day.
Kate. Who was he? Pray tell us the story of the battle.
Gower. A Royalist clergyman who took to medicine under the
Protectorate. The story is simply this.—Pordage, whose veracity
even his enemies do not impugn, declares that he woke from sleep
one night, and saw before his bed a giant ‘horrible and high,’ with an
enormous sword drawn in one hand, and an uprooted tree in the
other. The monster evidently means mischief. The Doctor seizes his
walking-stick. Round swings the lumbering tree-trunk, up goes the
nimble staff——
Atherton. What became of the bedposts?
Gower. Hush, base materialist! The weapons were but the symbols
of the conflict, and were symbolically flourished. The real combat
was one of spirit against spirit—wholly internal; what would now be
called electro-biological. Each antagonist bent against his foe the
utmost strength of will and imagination.
Willoughby. Somewhat after the manner of the Astras which the
Indian gods hurled at each other—spells of strong volition, which
could parch their object with heat, freeze him with cold, lash him with
hail, shut him up in immobility, though hundreds of miles away.
Atherton. Surpassing powers those, indeed; not even requiring the
present eye and will of the operator to master the imagination of the
subject mind.
Kate. And the battle in the bedroom?
Gower. Lasted half an hour; when the giant, finding Dr. Pordage a
tough customer, took his departure.
Willoughby. Pordage was a great student and admirer of Behmen;
but, unlike his master, an inveterate spirit-seer. I dare say he actually
had a dream to the effect you relate.
Gower. But he and the whole Philadelphian Society—a coterie of
some twenty ghost-seers—profess to have seen apparitions of
angels and devils, in broad daylight, every day, for nearly a month.
Mrs. Atherton. What were they like?
Gower. The chief devils drove in chariots of black cloud, drawn by
inferior dæmons in the form of dragons, bears, and lions. The spirits
of wicked men were the ugliest of all,—cloven-footed, cats-eared,
tusked, crooked-mouthed, bow-legged creatures.
Atherton. Did the Philadelphians profess to see the spirits with the
inward or the bodily eye?
Gower. With both. They saw them in whole armies and
processions, gliding in through wall or window-pane—saw them as
well with the eyes shut as open. For, by means of the sympathy
between soul and body, the outer eye, says Pordage, is made to
share the vision of the inner. When we cease to use that organ, the
internal vision is no less active. I should add that the members were
conscious of a most unpleasant smell, and were troubled with a
sulphurous taste in the mouth while such appearances lasted.
Willoughby. Mrs. Leade is one of the most conspicuous of their
number,—a widow of good family from Norfolk, who forsook the
world and retired into her inmost self, holding intercourse with spirits
and writing her revelations.
Gower. She, I believe, carried to its practical extreme the
Paracelsian doctrine concerning the magical power of faith.
Willoughby. That is her one idea. By union with the divine will, she
says, the ancient believers wrought their miracles. Faith has now the
same prerogative: the will of the soul, wholly yielded to God,
becomes a resistless power, can bind and loose, bless and ban,
throughout the universe. Had any considerable number among men
a faith so strong, rebellious nature would be subdued by their holy
spells, and Paradise restored.
Atherton. Some of the German Romanticists have revived this idea
—never, perhaps, wholly dead. Some stir was made for awhile by
the theory that the power of miracle was native in man—and haply
recoverable.
Willoughby. Such a doctrine is but one among the many
retrogressions of the mediæval school.
 BOOK THE NINTH
THE SPANISH MYSTICS
 CHAPTER I.

It is no flaming lustre, made of light,

No sweet concert nor well-timed harmony,
Ambrosia, for to feast the appetite,
Of flowery odour mixed with spicery,—
No soft embrace, or pleasure bodily;
And yet it is a kind of inward feast,
A harmony that sounds within the breast,
An odour, light, embrace, in which the soul doth rest.

A heavenly feast no hunger can consume;

A light unseen yet shines in every place;
A sound no time can steal; a sweet perfume
No winds can scatter; an entire embrace
That no satiety can e’er unlace;
Engraced into so high a favour there,
The saints with all their peers whole worlds outwear,
And things unseen do see, and thing unheard do hear.

Giles Fletcher.

Gower fulfilled his promise, and read, on two successive evenings,

the following paper on the Mysticism of the Counter-Reformation, as
illustrated principally by its two Spanish champions, St. Theresa and
St. John of the Cross:—

I. Saint Theresa.
On the revival of letters the mysticism of Alexandria reappeared
in Florence. That lamp which, in the study of Ficinus, burnt night
and day before the bust of Plato, proclaimed, in reality, the
worship of Plotinus. The erudite feebleness of Alexandrian
eclecticism lived again in Gemisthus Pletho,—blended, as of old,
Platonic ideas, oriental emanations, and Hellenic legend,—
dreamed of a philosophic worship, emasculated and universal,
which should harmonize in a common vagueness all the religions
of the world. Nicholas of Cusa re-adapted the allegorical
mathematics which had flourished beneath the Ptolemies and
restored the Pythagoras of the Neo-Platonists. Pico of Mirandola
(the admirable Crichton of his time) sought to reconcile the
dialectics of Aristotle with the oracles of Chaldæa, and to breathe
into withered scholasticism the mysterious life of Cabbalistic
wisdom. An age so greedy of antiquity was imposed on by the
most palpable fabrications; and Greece beheld the servile
product of her second childhood reverenced as the vigorous
promise of her first. Patricius sought the sources of Greek
philosophy in writings attributed to Hermes and Zoroaster. He
wrote to Gregory XIV. proposing that authors such as these
should be substituted for Aristotle in the schools, as the best
means of advancing true religion and reclaiming heretical
Germany.
The position of these scholars with regard to Protestantism
resembles, not a little, that of their Alexandrian predecessors
when confronted by Christianity. They were the philosophic
advocates of a religion in which they had themselves lost faith.
They attempted to reconcile a corrupt philosophy and a corrupt
religion, and they made both worse. The love of literature and art
was confined to a narrow circle of courtiers and literati. While
Lutheran pamphlets in the vernacular set all the North in a flame,
the philosophic refinements of the Florentine dilettanti were
aristocratic, exclusive, and powerless. Their intellectual position
was fatal to sincerity; their social condition equally so to freedom.
The despotism of the Roman emperors was more easily evaded
by a philosopher of ancient times than the tyranny of a Visconti
or a D’Este, by a scholar at Milan or Ferrara. It was the fashion
to patronise men of letters. But the usual return of subservience
and flattery was rigorously exacted. The Italians of the fifteenth
century had long ceased to be familiar with the worst horrors of
war, and Charles VIII., with his ferocious Frenchmen, appeared
to them another Attila. Each Italian state underwent, on its petty
scale, the fate of Imperial Rome. The philosophic and religious
conservatism of Florence professed devotion to a church which
reproduced, with most prolific abundance, the superstitions of
by-gone Paganism,—of that very Paganism in whose behalf the
Neo-Platonist philosopher entered the lists against the Christian
father. To such men, the earnest religious movement of the North
was the same mysterious, barbaric, formidable foe which
primitive Christianity had been to the Alexandrians. The old
conflict between Pagan and Christian—the man of taste and the
man of faith—the man who lived for the past, and the man who
lived for the future, was renewed, in the sixteenth century,
between the Italian and the German. The Florentine Platonists,
moreover, not only shared in the weakness of their prototypes,
as the occupants of an attitude radically false; they failed to
exhibit in their lives that austerity of morals which won respect for
Plotinus and Porphyry, even among those who cared nothing for
their speculations. Had Romanism been unable to find defenders
more thoroughly in earnest, the shock she then received must
have been her deathblow. She must have perished as Paganism
perished. But, wise in her generation, she took her cause out of
the hands of that graceful and heartless Deism, so artificial and
so self-conscious,—too impalpable and too refined for any real
service to gods or men. She needed men as full of religious
convictions as were these of philosophical and poetic conceits.
She needed men to whom the bland and easy incredulity of such
symposium-loving scholars was utterly inconceivable—abhorrent
as the devil and all his works. And such men she found. For by
reason of the measure of truth she held, she was as powerful to
enslave the noblest as to unleash the vilest passions of our
nature. It was given her, she said, to bind and to loose. It was
time, she knew, to bind up mercy and to loose revenge. A
succession of ferocious sanctities fulminated from the chair of St.
Peter. Science was immured in the person of Galileo. The
scholarship, so beloved by Leo, would have been flung into the
jaws of the Inquisition by Caraffa. Every avenue, open once on
sufferance, to freer thought and action, was rigorously blocked
up. Princes were found willing to cut off the right hand, pluck out
the right eye of their people, that Rome might triumph by this
suicide of nations. But nowhere did she find a prince and a
people alike so swift to shed blood at her bidding, as among that
imperious race of which Philip II. was at once the sovereign and
the type. In Spain was found, in its perfection, the chivalry of
persecution: there dwelt the aristocracy of fanaticism. It was long
doubtful whether the Roman or the Spanish Inquisition was the
more terrible for craft, the more ingenious in torments, the more
glorious with blood.
But Spain was not merely the political and military head of the
Counter-Reformation. She contributed illustrious names to
relume the waning galaxy of saints. Pre-eminent among these
luminaries shine Ignatius Loyola, Theresa, and John of the
Cross. The first taught Rome what she had yet to learn in the
diplomacy of superstition. Education and intrigue became the
special province of his order: it was the training school of the
teachers: it claimed and merited the monopoly of the vizard
manufacture. Rome found in Theresa her most famous seeress;
in John, her consummate ascetic. It was not in the upper region
of mysticism that the narrow intellect and invincible will of Loyola
were to realize distinction. He had his revelations, indeed,—was
rapt away to behold the mystery of the Trinity made manifest,
and the processes of creation detailed. But such favours are only
the usual insignia so proper to the founder of an order.
Compared with St. Francis the life of Ignatius is poor in vision
and in miracle. But his relics have since made him ample
amends. Bartoli enumerates a hundred miraculous cures.[263]
John and Theresa were mystics par excellence: the former, of
the most abstract theopathetic school; the latter, with a large
infusion of the theurgic element, unrivalled in vision—angelic and
dæmoniacal.
But one principle is dominant in the three, and is the secret of the
saintly honours paid them. In the alarm and wrath awakened by
the Reformation, Rome was supremely concerned to enforce the
doctrine of blind obedience to ecclesiastical superiors. These
Spanish saints lived and laboured and suffered to commend this
dogma to the Church and to all mankind. Summoned by the Rule
of Obedience, they were ready to inflict or to endure the utmost
misery. Their natures were precisely of the kind most fitted to
render service and receive promotion at that juncture. They were
glowing and ductile. Their very virtues were the dazzle of the
red-hot brand, about to stamp the brow with slavery. Each
excellence displayed by such accomplished advocates of wrong,
withered one of the rising hopes of mankind. Their prayers
watered with poisoned water every growth of promise in the field
of Europe. Their Herculean labours were undertaken, not to
destroy, but to multiply the monsters which infested every
highway of thought. Wherever the tears of Theresa fell, new
weeds of superstition sprang up. Every shining austerity endured
by John gilded another link in the chain which should bind his
fellows. The jubilant bells of their devotion rang the knell of
innumerable martyrs.
In the fourteenth century, mysticism was often synonymous with
considerable freedom of thought. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, it was allowed to exist only as it
subserved the ecclesiastical scheme. The problem was,—how to
excite the feeling and imagination of the devotee to the highest
pitch, and yet to retain him in complete subjection to the slightest
movement of the rein. Of this problem John and Theresa are the
practical and complete solution. All their fire went off by the
legitimate conducting-rod: every flash was serviceable: not a
gleam was wasted. Once mysticism was a kind of escape for
nature. The mystic left behind him much of the coarse
externalism necessary to his Church, and found refuge in an
inner world of feeling and imagination. But now the Church, by
means of the confessor, made mysticism itself the innermost
dungeon of her prison-house. Every emotion was methodically
docketed; every yearning of the heart minutely catalogued. The
sighs must always ascend in the right place: the tears must
trickle in orthodox course. The prying calculations of the casuist
had measured the sweep of every wave in the heaving ocean of
the soul. The instant terrible knife cut off the first spray of love
that shot out beyond the trimly-shaven border of prescription.
Strong feelings were dangerous guests, unless they knew (like
the old Romans) when to go home and slay themselves, did that
Tiberius, the director, but bestow on them a frown.
In France, too, mysticism was to fall under the same yoke; but
the Frenchman could never reach the hard austerity of the
Spaniard. The sixteenth century produced St. Francis de Sales
on the north, and St. John of the Cross on the south, of the
Pyrénées. With the former, mysticism is tender, genial, graceful;
it appeals to every class; it loves and would win all men. With the
latter, it is a dark negation—a protracted suffering—an anguish
and a joy known only to the cloister. De Sales was to John, as a
mystic, what Henry IV. was to Philip as a Catholic King. Even in
Italy, the Counter-Reformation was comparatively humane and
philanthropic with Carlo Borromeo. In Spain alone is it little more,
at its very best, than a fantastic gloom and a passionate severity.
But everywhere the principle of subserviency is in the ascendant.
The valetudinarian devotee becomes more and more the puppet
of his spiritual doctor. The director winds him up. He derives his
spiritless semblance of life wholly from the priestly mechanism. It
may be said of him, as of the sick man in Massinger’s play,

That he lives he owes

To art, not Nature; she has given him o’er.
He moves, like the fairy king, on screws and wheels
Made by his doctor’s recipes, and yet still
They are out of joint, and every day repairing.

Theresa was born at Avila, in the year 1515, just two years (as
Ribadeneira reminds us) before ‘that worst of men,’ Martin
Luther.[264] The lives of the saints were her nursery tales.
Cinderella is matter of fact; Jack and the Beanstalk
commonplace, beside the marvellous stories that must have
nourished her infantine faculty of wonder. At seven years old she
thinks eternal bliss cheaply bought by martyrdom; sets out with
her little brother on a walk to Africa, hoping to be despatched by
the Moors, and is restored to her disconsolate parents by a cruel
matter-of-fact uncle, who meets them at the bridge. Her dolls’
houses are nunneries. These children construct in the garden,
not dirt pies, but mud-hermitages; which, alas! will always tumble
down.
As she grows up, some gay associates, whose talk is of ribbons,
lovers, and bull-fights, secularise her susceptible mind. She
reads many romances of chivalry, and spends more time at the
glass. Her father sends her, when fifteen, to a convent of
Augustinian nuns in Avila, to rekindle her failing devotion. A few
days reconcile her to the change, and she is as religious as ever.
Then, what with a violent fever, Jerome’s Epistles, and a priest-
ridden uncle, she resolves on becoming a nun. Her father
refuses his consent; so she determines on a pious elopement,
and escapes to the Carmelite convent. There she took the vows
in her twentieth year.[265]
We find her presently vexed, like so many of the Romanist
female saints, with a strange complication of maladies,—cramps,
convulsions, catalepsies, vomitings, faintings, &c. &c. At one
time she lay four days in a state of coma; her grave was dug, hot
wax had been dropped upon her eyelids, and extreme unction
administered; the funeral service was performed; when she
came to herself, expressed her desire to confess, and received
the sacrament.[266] It is not improbable that some of the trances
she subsequently experienced, and regarded as supernatural,
may have been bodily seizures of a similar kind. But at this time
she was not good enough for such favours; so the attacks are
attributed to natural causes. It is significant that the miraculous
manifestations of the Romish Church should have been
vouchsafed only to women whose constitution (as in the case of
the Catharines and Lidwina) was thoroughly broken down by
years of agonizing disease. After three years (thanks to St.
Joseph) Theresa was restored to comparative health, but
remained subject all her life, at intervals, to severe pains.[267]
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