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Humphry Davy was born at Penzance, in Cornwall, on the 17th of December, 1778, and died at Geneva on the 29th of May, 1829, at the age of fifty. He was a philosopher who turned knowledge to wisdom; he was one of the foremost of our English men of science; and this book, written when he was dying, which makes Reason the companion of Faith, shows how he passed through the light of earth into the light of heaven.
His father had a small patrimony at Varfell, in Ludgvan. His mother had lost in early childhood both her parents within a few hours of each other, and had been adopted by John Tonkin, an eminent surgeon in Penzance, to whom, therefore, so to speak, Humphry Davy became grandson by adoption. There were five such grandchildren—Humphry, the elder of two boys, the other boy being named John, and three girls.
At a preparatory school and at the Penzance Grammar School Humphry Davy was a noticeable boy. He read eagerly and showed great quickness of imagination, delighted in legends, when eight years old told stories to his companions, and as a boy wrote verse. There was a Quaker saddler who made for himself an electrical machine and mechanical models, in which young Davy took keen interest, and from that saddler, Robert Dunkin, came the first impulse towards experiments in science. At fifteen Davy was placed for further education at a school in Truro. A year later his father died, and John Tonkin apprenticed him, on the 10th of February, 1795, to Dr. Borlase, a surgeon in large practice at Penzance. Medical practitioners in those days dispensed their own medicines, and the inquiring mind of this young apprentice being let loose upon a store-room of chemicals, experimental chemistry became his favourite pursuit. His grandfather, by adoption, allowed him to fit up a garret as a laboratory, notwithstanding the fears of the household that “This boy, Humphry, will blow us all into the air.”
Activity and originality of mind, with a persistent habit of inquiry and experiment, brought Davy friends who could appreciate and help him. When Dr. Beddoes, of Bristol, was examining the Cornish coast, in 1798, he came upon young Humphry Davy, was told of researches made by him, and urged to engage him as laboratory assistant in a Pneumatic Institution that he was then establishing in Bristol. Davy went in October, 1798, then in his twentieth year; but his good friend, and grandfather by adoption, had set his heart upon Humphry’s becoming an eminent burgeon, and even altered his will when his boy yielded to the temptation of a laboratory for research. Men also know something of the trouble of the hen who has a chance duckling in her brood, and sees that contumacious chicken run into the water deaf to all the warnings of her love.
At Bristol Humphry Davy came into companionship with Coleridge and Southey, who were then also at the outset of their career, and there are poems of his in the Poetical Anthology then published by Southey. But at the same time Davy contributed papers on “Heat, Light, and the Combinations of Light,” on “Phos-Oxygen and its Combinations,” and on “The Theory of Respiration,” to a volume of West Country Collections, that filled more than half the volume. He was experimenting then on gases and on galvanism, and one day by experiment upon himself, in the breathing of carburetted hydrogen, he almost put an end to his life.
In 1799 Count Rumford was founding the Royal Institution, and its home in Albemarle Street was then bought for it. The first lecturer appointed was in bad health, and in 1801 he was obliged to resign. Young Davy was now known to men of science for the number and freshness of his experiments, and for the substantial value of his chemical discoveries. It was resolved by the managers, in July, 1801, that Humphry Davy be appointed Assistant-Lecturer in Chemistry, Director of the Chemical Laboratory, and assistant-editor of the journals of the Royal Institution. His first remuneration was a room in the house, coals and candles, and 100 pounds a year. Count Rumford held out the prospect of a professorship with 300 pounds a year, and the certainty of full support in the use of the laboratory for his own private research. His age then was twenty-three. He at once satisfied men of science and amused people of fashion. His energy was unbounded; there was a fascination in his personal character and manner. He was a genial and delightful lecturer, and his inventive genius was continually finding something new. A first suggestion of the process of photography was dropped incidentally among the records of researches that attracted more attention. Davy had been little more than a year at the Royal Institution when he was made its Professor of Chemistry. After another year he was made a Fellow. Dr. Paris, his biographer, says that “the enthusiastic admiration which his lectures obtained is at this period scarcely to be imagined. Men of the first rank and talent—the literary and the scientific, the practical, the theoretical—blue-stockings and women of fashion, the old and the young, all crowded—eagerly crowded—the lecture-room.” At the beginning of the year 1805 his salary was raised to 400 pounds a year. In May of that year the Royal Society awarded to him the Copley Medal. Within the next two years he was elected Secretary of the Royal Society. Since 1800 he had been advancing knowledge by experiments with galvanism. The Royal Institution raised a special fund to place at his disposal a more powerful galvanic battery than any that had been constructed. The fame of his discoveries spread over Europe.
The Institute of France gave Davy the Napoleon Prize of three thousand francs for the best experiments in galvanism. Dublin, in 1810, paid Davy four hundred guineas for some lectures upon his discoveries. The Farming Society of Ireland gave him 750 pounds for six lectures on chemistry applied to agriculture. In the following year he received more than a thousand pounds for two courses of lectures at Dublin, and was sent home with the honorary degree of LL.D. In April, 1812, he was knighted, resigned his professorship at the Royal Institution, and “in order more strongly to mark the high sense of his merits” he was elected Honorary Professor of Chemistry. In the same month Davy married a young and rich widow, who had charmed all Edinburgh by her beauty and her wit. Two months after marriage Sir Humphry Davy dedicated to his wife his “Elements of Chemical Philosophy.” In March, 1813, he published his “Elements of Agricultural Chemistry.” He travelled abroad, and was received with honour by the chief men of science in all places that he visited. When, at Pavia, he first met Volta: he found that Volta had put on full-dress to receive him.
In August, 1815, Davy’s attention was drawn to the loss of life by explosions of fire-damp, and by the end of the year he had devised his safety-lamp. The coal owners subscribed 1,500 pounds for a testimonial, gave him also a dinner and a service of plate. In October, 1818, he was made a baronet. In November, 1820, he was elected President of the Royal Society.
His next researches were chiefly on electro-magnetism and the protection of the copper sheathing on ships’ bottoms. At the end of 1826 his health failed seriously. He went to Italy; resigned, in July, 1827, the Presidency of the Royal Society; came back to England, longing for “the fresh air of the mountains;” wrote and published his “Salmonia, or Days of Fly-fishing.” In the spring of 1828 he left England again. He was at Rome in the winter of 1829, still engaged in quiet research, and it was then that he wrote his “Consolations in Travel; or, the Last Days of a Philosopher.” His wife, who shone in London society, did not go with him upon this last journey, but travelled day and night to reach him when word came to her and to his brother John, who was a physician, that he had again been struck with palsy and was dying. That stroke of palsy followed immediately upon the finishing of the book now in the reader’s hand. Davy lived to see again his wife and brother, rallied enough to leave Rome with them, and had got as far as Geneva on the 28th of May, 1829. He died in the next night.
H. M.
Prefixed to the First Edition, by Sir Humphry Davy’s Brother.
As is stated in the Preface which follows, this work was composed during a period of bodily indisposition;—it was concluded at the very moment of the invasion of the Author’s last illness. Had his life been prolonged, it is probable that some additions and some changes would have been made. The editor does not consider himself warranted to do more than give to the world a faithful copy, making only a few omissions and a few verbal alterations. The characters of the persons of the dialogue were intended to be ideal, at least in great part such they should be considered by the reader; and, it is to be hoped, that the incidents introduced, as well as the persons, will be viewed only as subordinate and subservient to the sentiments and doctrines. The dedication, it may be specially noticed, is the author’s own, and in the very words dictated by him, at a time when he had lost the power of writing except with extreme difficulty, owing to the paralytic attack, although he retained in a very remarkable manner all his mental faculties unimpaired and unclouded.
John Davy. London, January 6th, 1830.
To Thomas Poole, ESQ. Of
nether stowey
in remembrance of
thirty years of continued and
faithful
friendship.
Salmonia was written during the time of a partial recovery from a long and dangerous illness. The present work was composed immediately after, under the same unfavourable and painful circumstances, and at a period when the constitution of the Author suffered from new attacks. He has derived some pleasure and some consolation, when most other sources of consolation and pleasure were closed to him, from this exercise of his mind; and he ventures to hope that these hours of sickness may be not altogether unprofitable to persons in perfect health.
Rome, February 21, 1829.
I passed the autumn and the early winter of the years 18— and 18— at Rome. The society was, as is usual in that metropolis of the old Christian world, numerous and diversified. In it there were found many intellectual foreigners and amongst them some distinguished Britons, who had a higher object in making this city their residence than mere idleness or vague curiosity. Amongst these my countrymen, there were two gentlemen with whom I formed a particular intimacy and who were my frequent companions in the visits which I made to the monuments of the grandeur of the old Romans and to the masterpieces of ancient and modern art. One of them I shall call Ambrosio: he was a man of highly cultivated taste, great classical erudition, and minute historical knowledge. In religion he was of the Roman Catholic persuasion; but a Catholic
In the beginning of October on a very fine afternoon I drove with these two friends to the Colosaeum, a monument which, for the hundredth time even, I had viewed with a new admiration; my friends partook of my sentiments. I shall give the conversation which occurred there in their own words. Onuphrio said, “How impressive are those ruins!—what a character do they give us of the ancient Romans, what magnificence of design, what grandeur of execution! Had we not historical documents to inform us of the period when this structure was raised and of the purposes for which it was designed, it might be imagined the work of a race of giants, a Council Chamber for those Titans fabled to have warred against the gods of the pagan mythology. The size of the masses of travertine of which it is composed is in harmony with the immense magnitude of the building. It is hardly to be wondered at that a people which constructed such works for their daily sports, for their usual amusements, should have possessed strength, enduring energy, and perseverance sufficient to enable them to conquer the world. They appear always to have formed their plans and made their combinations as if their power were beyond the reach of chance, independent of the influence of time, and founded for unlimited duration—for eternity!”
Ambrosio took up the discourse of Onuphrio, and said, “The aspect of this wonderful heap of ruins is so picturesque that it is impossible to regret its decay; and at this season of the year the colours of the vegetation are in harmony with those of the falling ruins, and how perfectly the whole landscape is in tone! The remains of the palace of the Caesars and of the golden halls of Nero appear in the distance, their gray and tottering turrets and their moss-stained arches reposing, as it were, upon the decaying vegetation: and there is nothing
Onuphrio now resumed the discourse. He said, “I have not the same exalted views on the subject which our friend Ambrosio has so eloquently expressed. Some little of the perfect state in which these ruins exist may have been owing to causes which he has described; but these causes have only lately begun to operate, and the mischief was done before Christianity was established at Rome. Feeling differently on these subjects, I admire this venerable ruin rather as a record of the destruction of the power of the greatest people that ever existed, than as a proof of the triumph of Christianity; and I am carried forward in melancholy anticipation to the period when even the magnificent
To this Ambrosio replied, his countenance and the tones of his voice expressing some emotion: “I do not think, Onuphrio, that you consider this question with your usual sagacity or acuteness; indeed, I never hear you on the subject of religion without pain and without a feeling of regret that you have not applied your powerful understanding to a more minute and correct examination of the evidences of revealed religion. You would then, I think, have seen, in the origin, progress, elevation, decline and fall of the empires of antiquity, proofs that they were intended for a definite end in the scheme of human redemption; you would have found prophecies which have been amply verified; and the foundation or the ruin of a kingdom, which appears in civil history so great an event, in the history of man, in his religious institutions, as comparatively of small moment; you would have found the establishment of the worship of one God amongst a despised and contemned people as the most important circumstance in the history of the early world; you would have found the Christian dispensation naturally arising out of the Jewish, and the doctrines of the pagan nations all preparatory to the triumph and final establishment of a creed fitted for the most enlightened state of the human mind and equally adapted to every climate and every people.”
To this animated appeal of Ambrosio, Onuphrio replied in the most tranquil manner and with the air of an unmoved philosopher:—“You mistake me, Ambrosio, if you consider me as hostile to Christianity. I am not of the school of the French Encyclopaedists, or of the English infidels. I consider religion as essential to man, and belonging to the human mind in the same manner as instincts belong to the brute creation, a light, if you please of revelation to guide him through the darkness of this life, and to keep alive his undying hope of immortality: but pardon me if I consider this instinct as equally useful in all its different forms, and still a divine light through whatever medium or cloud of human passion or prejudice it passes. I reverence it in the followers of Brahmah, in the disciple of Mahomet, and I wonder at in all the variety of forms it adopts in the Christian world. You must not be angry with me that I do not allow infallibility to your Church, having been myself brought up by Protestant parents, who were rigidly attached to the doctrines of Calvin.”
I saw Ambrosio’s countenance kindle at Onuphrio’s explanation of his opinions, and he appeared to be meditating an angry reply. I endeavoured to change the conversation to the state of the Colosaeum, with which it had begun. “These ruins,” I said, “as you have both observed, are highly impressive; yet when I saw them six years ago they had a stronger effect on my imagination; whether it was the charm of novelty, or that my mind was fresher, or that the circumstances under which I saw them were peculiar, I know not, but probably all these causes operated in affecting my mind. It was a still and beautiful evening in the end of May; the last sunbeams were dying away in the western sky and the first moonbeams shining in the eastern; the bright orange tints lighted up the ruins and as it were kindled the snows that still remained on the distant Apennines, which were visible from the highest accessible part of the amphitheatre. In this glow of colouring, the green of advanced spring softened the grey and yellow tints of the decaying stones, and as the lights gradually became fainter, the masses appeared grander and more gigantic; and when the twilight had entirely disappeared, the contrast of light and shade in the beams of the full moon and beneath a sky of the brightest sapphire, but so highly illuminated that only Jupiter and a few stars of the first magnitude were visible, gave a solemnity and magnificence to the scene which awakened the highest degree of that emotion which is so properly termed the sublime. The beauty and the permanency of the heavens and the principle of conservation belonging to the system of the universe, the works of the Eternal and Divine Architect, were finely opposed to the perishing and degraded works of man in his most active and powerful state. And at this moment so humble appeared to me the condition of the most exalted beings belonging to the earth,
Onuphrio said: “I am not sorry that you have changed the conversation. You have given us the history of a most interesting recollection and well expressed a solemn though humiliating feeling. In such moments and among such scenes it is impossible not to be struck with the nothingness of human glory and the transiency of human works. This, one of the greatest monuments on the face of the earth, was raised by a people, then its masters, only seventeen centuries ago; in a few ages more it will be but as dust, and of all the testimonials of the vanity or power of man, whether raised to immortalise his name, or to contain his decaying bones without a name, no one is known to have a duration beyond what is measured by the existence of a hundred generations; and it is only to multiply centuple for instance the period of time, and the memorials of a village and the monuments of a country churchyard may be compared with those of an empire and the remains of the world.”
Ambrosio, to whom the conversation seemed disagreeable, put us in mind of an engagement we had made to spend the evening at the conversazione of a celebrated lady, and proposed to call the carriage. The reflections which the conversation and the scene had left in my mind little disposed me for general society. I requested them to keep their engagement, and said I was resolved to spend an hour amidst the solitude of the ruins, and desired them to send back the carriage for me. They left me, expressing a hope that my poetical or melancholy fancy might not be the occasion of a cold, and wished me the company of some of the spectres of the ancient Romans.
When I was left alone, I seated myself in the moonshine, on one of the steps leading to the seats supposed to have been occupied by the patricians in the Colosaeum at the time of the public games. The train of ideas in which I had indulged before my friends left me continued to flow with a vividness and force increased by the stillness and solitude of the scene; and the full moon has always a peculiar effect on these moods of feeling in my mind, giving to them a wildness and a kind of indefinite sensation, such as I suppose belong at all times to the true poetical temperament. It must be so, I thought to myself; no new city will rise again out of the double ruins of this; no new empire will be founded upon these colossal remains of that of the old Romans. The world, like the
“I will now call your attention to some remarkable laws belonging to the history of society, and from the consideration of which you will be able gradually to develop the higher and more exalted principles of being. There appears nothing more accidental than the sex of an infant, yet take any great city or any province and you will find that the relations of males and females are unalterable. Again, a part of the pure air of the atmosphere is continually consumed in combustion and respiration; living vegetables emit this principle during their growth; nothing appears more accidental than the proportion of vegetable to
The low and sweet voice ceased; it appeared as if I had fallen suddenly upon the earth, but there was a bright light before me and I heard my name loudly called; the voice was not of my intellectual guide—the genius before me was my servant bearing a flambeau in his hand. He told me he had been searching me in vain amongst the ruins, that the carriage had been waiting for me above an hour, and that he had left a large party of my friends assembled in the Palazzo F—–.
DIALOGUE THE SECOND. DISCUSSIONS CONNECTED WITH THE VISION IN THE COLOSAEUM.
The same friends, Ambrosio and Onuphrio, who were my companions at Rome in the winter, accompanied me in the spring to Naples. Many conversations occurred in the course of our journey which were often to me peculiarly instructive, and from the difference of their opinions generally animated and often entertaining. I shall detail one of these conversations, which took place in the evening on the summit of Vesuvius, and the remembrance of which from its connection with my vision in the Colosaeum has always a peculiar interest for me. We had reached with some labour the edge of the crater and were admiring the wonderful scene around us. I shall give the conversation in the words of the persons of the drama.
Philalethes.—It is difficult to say whether there is more of sublimity or beauty in the scene around us. Nature appears at once smiling and frowning, in activity and repose. How tremendous is the volcano, how magnificent this great laboratory of Nature in its unceasing fire, its subterraneous lightnings and thunder, its volumes of smoke, its showers of stones and its rivers of ignited lava! How contrasted the darkness of the scoriae, the ruins and the desolation round the crater with the scene below! There we see the rich field covered with flax, or maize, or millet, and intersected by rows of trees which support the green and graceful festoons of the vine; the orange and lemon tree covered with golden fruit appear in the sheltered glens; the olive trees cover the lower hills; islands purple in the beams of the setting sun are scattered over the sea in the west, and the sky is tinted with red softening
Ambrosio.—We see not only the power and activity of man, as existing at present, and of which the highest example may be represented by the steam-boat which is now departing for Palermo, but we may likewise view scenes which carry us into the very bosom of antiquity, and, as it were, make us live with the generations of past ages. Those small square buildings, scarcely visible in the distance, are the tombs of distinguished men amongst the early Greek colonists of the country; and those rows of houses, without roofs, which appear as if newly erecting, constitute a Roman town restored from its ashes, that remained for centuries as if it had been swept from the face of the earth. When you study it in detail you will hardly avoid the illusion that it is a rising city; you will almost be tempted to ask where are the workmen, so perfect art the walls of the houses, so bright and uninjured the painting upon them. Hardly anything is wanting to make this scene a magnificent epitome of all that is most worthy of admiration in Nature and art; had there been in addition to the other objects a fine river and a waterfall the epitome would, I think, have been absolutely perfect.
Phil.—You are most unreasonable in imagining additions to a scene which it is impossible to embrace in one view, and which presents so many objects to the senses, the memory, and to the imagination; yet there is a river in the valley between Naples and Castel del Mare; you may see its silver thread and the white foam of its torrents in the distance, and if you were geologists you would find a number of sources of interest, which have not been mentioned, in the scenery surrounding us. Somma which is before us, for instance, affords a wonderful example of a mountain formed of marine deposits, and which has been raised by subterraneous fire, and those large and singular veins which you see at the base and rising through the substance of the strata are composed of volcanic porphyry, and offer a most striking and beautiful example of the generation and structure of rocks and mineral formations.
Onuphrio.—As we passed through Portici, on the road to the base of Vesuvius, it appeared to me that I saw a stone which had an ancient Roman inscription upon it, and which occupied the place of a portal in the modern palace of the Barberini.
Phil.—This is not an uncommon circumstance: Most of the stones used in the palaces of Portici had been employed more than two thousand years before in structures raised by the ancient Romans or Greek colonists; and it is not a little remarkable that the buildings of Herculaneum, a town covered with ashes, tufa, and lava, from the first recorded eruption of Vesuvius more than seventeen hundred years ago, should have been constructed of volcanic materials produced by some antecedent igneous action of the mountain in times beyond the reach of history; and it is still more remarkable that men should have gone on for so many ages making erections in spots where their works have been so often destroyed, inattentive to the voice of time or the warnings of nature.
Onu.—This last fact recalls to my recollection an idea which Philalethes started in the remarkable dream which he would have us believe occurred to him in the Colosaeum, namely—that no important facts which can be useful to society are ever lost; and that, like these stones, which though covered with ashes or hidden amongst ruins, they are sure to be brought forward again and made use of in some new form.
Amb.—I do not see the justness of the analogy to which Onuphrio refers; but there are many parts of that vision on which I should wish to hear the explanations of Philalethes. I consider it in fact as a sort of poetical epitome of his philosophical opinions, and I regard this vision or dream as a mere web of his imagination in which he intended to catch us, his summer-flies and travelling companions.
Phil.—There, Ambrosio, you do me wrong. I will acknowledge, if you please, that the vision in the Colosaeum is a fiction; but the most important parts of it really occurred to me in sleep, particularly that in which I seemed to leave the earth and launch into the infinity of space under the guidance of a tutelary genius. And the origin and progress of civil society form likewise parts of another dream which I had many years ago, and it was in the reverie which happened when you quitted me in the Colosaeum that I wove all these thoughts together, and gave them the form in which I narrated them to you.
Amb.—Of course we may consider them as an accurate representation of your waking thoughts.
Phil.—I do not say that they strictly are so, for I am not quite convinced that dreams are always representations of the state of the mind modified by organic diseases or by associations. There are certainly no absolutely new ideas produced in sleep, yet I have had more than one instance, in the course of my life, of most extraordinary combinations occurring in this state, which have had considerable influence on my feelings, my imagination, and my health.
Onu.—Why Philalethes, you are becoming a visionary, a dreamer of dreams. We shall perhaps set you down by the side of Jacob Behmen or of Emanuel Swedenbourg, and in an earlier age you might have been a prophet, and have ranked perhaps with Mahomet. But pray give us one of these instances in which such a marvellous influence was produced on your imagination and your health by a dream that we may form some judgment of the nature of your second sight or inspirations; and whether they have any foundation, or whether they are not, as I believe, really unfounded, inventions of the fancy, dreams respecting dreams.
Phil.—I anticipate unbelief, and I expose myself to your ridicule in the statement I am about to make, yet I shall mention nothing but a simple fact. Almost a quarter of a century ago, as you know, I contracted that terrible form of typhus-fever known by the name of gaol-fever, I may say, not from any imprudence of my own, but whilst engaged in putting in execution a plan for ventilating one of the great prisons of the metropolis. My illness was severe and dangerous. As long as the fever continued, my dreams or delirium were most painful and oppressive; but when the weakness consequent to exhaustion came on, and when the probability of death seemed to my physicians greater than that of life, there was an entire change in all my ideal combinations. I remained in an apparently senseless or lethargic state, but in fact my mind was peculiarly active; there was always before me the form of a beautiful woman, with whom I was engaged in the most interesting and intellectual conversation.
Amb.—The figure of a lady with whom you were in love.
Phil.—No such thing; I was passionately in love at the time, but the object of my admiration was a lady with black hair, dark eyes, and pale complexion; this spirit of my vision, on the contrary, had brown hair, blue eyes, and a bright rosy complexion, and was, as far as I can recollect, unlike any of the amatory forms which in early youth had so often haunted my imagination. Her figure for many days was so distinct in my mind, as to form almost a visual image. As I gained strength, the visits of my good angel (for so I called it) became less frequent, and when I was restored to health they were altogether discontinued.
Onu.—I see nothing very strange in this—a mere reaction of the mind after severe pain—and, to a young man of twenty-five, there are few more pleasurable images than that of a beautiful maiden with blue eyes, blooming cheeks, and long nut-brown hair.
Phil.—But all my feelings and all my conversations with this visionary maiden were of an intellectual and refined nature.
Onu.—Yes, I suppose, as long as you were ill.
Phil.—I will not allow you to treat me with ridicule on this point till you have heard the second part of my tale. Ten years after I had recovered from the fever, and when I had almost lost the recollection of the vision, it was recalled to my memory by a very blooming and graceful maiden, fourteen or fifteen years old, that I accidentally met during my travels in Illyria; but I cannot say that the impression made upon my mind by this female was very strong. Now comes the extraordinary part of the narrative. Ten years after, twenty years after my first illness, at a time when I was exceedingly weak from a severe and dangerous malady, which for many weeks threatened my life, and when my mind was almost in a desponding state, being in a course of travels ordered by my medical advisers, I again met the person who was the representative of my visionary female, and to her kindness and care I believe I owe what remains to me of existence. My despondency gradually disappeared, and though my health still continued weak, life began to possess charms for me which I had thought were for ever gone; and I could not help identifying the living angel with the vision which appeared as my guardian genius during the illness of my youth.
Onu.—I really see nothing at all in this fact, whether the first or the second part of the narrative be considered, beyond the influence of an imagination excited by disease. From youth, even to age, women are our guardian angels, our comforters; and I dare say any other handsome young female, who had been your nurse in your last illness, would have coincided with your remembrance of the vision, even though her eyes had been hazel and her hair flaxen. Nothing can be more loose than the images represented in dreams following a fever, and with the nervous susceptibility produced by your last illness, almost any agreeable form would have become the representative of your imaginary guardian genius. Thus it is, that by the power of fancy, material forms are clothed in supernatural attributes; and in the same manner imaginary divinities have all the forms of mortality bestowed upon them. The gods of the pagan mythology were in all their characters and attributes exalted human beings; the demon of the coward, and the angelic form that appears in the dream of some maid smitten by devotion, and who, having lost her earthly lover, fixes her thoughts on heaven, are clothed in the character and vestments of humanity changed by the dreaminess of passion.
Amb.—With such a tendency, Philalethes, as you have shown to believe in something like a supernatural or divine influence on the human mind, I am astonished there should be so much scepticism belonging to your vision in the Colosaeum. And your view of the early state of man, after his first creation, is not only incompatible with revelation, but likewise with reason and everything that we know respecting the history or traditions of the early nations of antiquity.
Phil.—Be more distinct and detailed in your statements, Ambrosio, that I may be able to reply to them; and whilst we are waiting for the sunrise we may discuss the subject, and for this, let us seat ourselves on these stones, where we shall be warmed by the vicinity of the current of lava.
Amb.—You consider man, in his early or first created state, a savage, like those who now inhabit New Holland or New Zealand, acquiring by the little use that they make of a feeble reason the power of supporting and extending life. Now, I contend, that if man had been so created, he must inevitably have been destroyed by the elements or devoured by savage beasts, so infinitely his superiors in physical force. He must, therefore, have been formed with various instinctive faculties and propensities, with a perfection of form and use of organs fitting him to become the master of the earth; and, it appears to me, that the account given in Genesis of the first parents of mankind having been placed in a garden fitted with everything necessary to their existence and enjoyment, and ordered to increase and multiply there, is strictly in harmony with reason, and accordant with all just metaphysical views of the human mind. Man as he now exists can only be raised with great care and difficulty from the infant to the mature state; all his motions are at first automatic, and become voluntary by association; he has to learn everything by slow and difficult processes, many months elapse before he is able to stand, and many years before he is able to provide for the common wants of life. Without the mother or the nurse in his infant state, he would die in a few hours; and without the laborious discipline of instruction and example, he would remain idiotic and inferior to most other animals. His reason is only acquired gradually, and when in its highest perfection is often uncertain in its results. He must, therefore, have been created with instincts that for a long while supplied the want of reason, and which enabled him from the first moment of his existence to provide for his wants, to gratify his desires, and enjoy the power and the activity of life.
Phil.—I acknowledge that your objection has some weight, but not so much as you would attribute to it. I will suppose that the first created man or men had certain powers or instincts, such as now belong to the rudest savages of the southern hemisphere; I will suppose them created with the use of their organs for defence and offence and with passions and propensities enabling them to supply their own wants. And I oppose the fact of races who are now actually in this state to your vague historical or traditionary records; and their gradual progress or improvement from this early state of society to that of the highest state of civilisation or refinement may, I think, be easily deduced from the exertions of reason assisted by the influence of the moral powers and of physical
Amb.—You appear to me in your argument to have forgotten the influence that any civilised race must possess over savages; and many of the nations which you consider as in their original state, may have descended from nations formerly civilised; and, it is quite as easy to trace the retrograde steps of a people as their advances; the savage hordes who now inhabit the northern coast of Africa are probably descended from the opulent, commercial, and ingenious Carthaginians who once contended with Rome for the empire of the world; and even nearer home, we might find in Southern Italy and her islands, proofs of a degradation not much inferior. What I contend for is the civilisation of the first patriarchal races who peopled the East, and who passed into Europe from Armenia, in which paradise is supposed to have been placed. The early civilisation of this race could only have been in consequence of their powers and instincts having been of a higher character than those of savages. They appear to have been small families—a state not at all fitted for the discovery of arts by the exercise of the mind; and they professed the most sublime form of religion, the worship of one Supreme Intelligence—a truth which, after a thousand years of civilisation, was with difficulty attained by the most powerful efforts of reasoning by the Greek sages. It appears to me, that in the history of the Jews, nothing can be more in conformity to our ideas of just analogy than this series of events. Our first parents were created with everything necessary for their wants and their happiness; they had only one duty to perform, by their obedience to prove their love and devotion to their Creator. In this they failed, and death—or
Onu.—I fear I shall shock Ambrosio, but I cannot help vindicating a little the philosophical results of human reason, which it must be allowed are entirely hostile to his ideas. I agree with Philalethes that it is the noblest gift of God to man; and I cannot think that Ambrosio’s view of the paradisaical condition and the fall of man and the progress of society is at all in conformity with the ideas we ought to form of the institutions of an infinitely wise and powerful Being. Besides, Ambrosio speaks of the reasonableness of his own opinions; of course his notions of reason must be different from mine, or we have adopted different forms of logic. I do not find in the biblical history any idea of the supreme Intelligence conformable to those of the Greek philosophers; on the contrary, I find Jehovah everywhere described as a powerful material being, endowed with organs, feelings, and passions similar to those of a great and exalted human agent. He is described as making man in His own image, as
Amb.—You have mistaken me, Onuphrio, if you think I am shocked by your opinions; I have seen too much of the wanderings of human reason ever to be surprised by them, and the views you have adopted are not uncommon amongst young men of very superior talents, who have only slightly examined the evidences of revealed religion. But I am glad to find that you have not adopted the code of infidelity of many of the French revolutionists and of an English school
Onu.—But you have not answered my objections with respect to the cruelties exercised by the Jews under the command of Jehovah, which appear to me in opposition to all our views of divine justice.
Amb.—I think even Philalethes will allow that physical and moral diseases are hereditary, and that to destroy a pernicious unbelief or demoniacal worship it was necessary to destroy the whole race root and branch. As an example, I will imagine a certain contagions disease which is transmitted by parents to children, and which, like the plague, is communicated to sound persons by contact; to destroy a family of men who would spread this disease over the whole earth would unquestionably be a mercy. Besides, I believe in the immortality of the sentient principle in man; destruction of life is only a change of existence, and supposing the new existence a superior one it is a gain. To the Supreme Intelligence the death of a million of human beings is the mere circumstance of so many spiritual essences changing their habitations, and is analogous to the myriad millions of larvae that leave their coats and shells behind them and rise into the atmosphere, as flies in a summer day. When man measures the works of the Divine Mind by his own feeble combinations, he must wander in gross error; the infinite can never be understood by the finite.
Onu.—As far as I can comprehend your reasoning, the priests of Juggernaut might make the same defence for their idol, and find in such views a fair apology for the destruction of thousands of voluntary victims crushed to pieces by the feet of the sacred elephant.
Amb.—Undoubtedly they might, and I should allow the justness of their defence if I saw in their religion any germs of a divine institution fitted to become, like the religion of Jehovah, the faith of the whole civilised world, embracing the most perfect form of theism and the most refined and exalted morality. I consider the early acts of the Jewish nation as the lowest and rudest steps of a temple raised by the Supreme Being to contain the altar of sacrifice to His glory. In the early periods of society rude and uncultivated men could only be acted upon by gross and temporal rewards and punishments; severe rites and heavy discipline were required to keep the mind in order, and the punishment of the idolatrous nation served as an example for the Jews. When Christianity took the place of Judaism the ideas of the Supreme Being became more pure and abstracted, and the visible attributes of Jehovah and His angels appear to have been less frequently presented to the mind; yet even for many ages it seemed as if the grossness of our material senses required some assistance from the eye in fixing or perpetuating the character of religious instinct, and the Church to which I belong, and I may say the whole Christian Church in early times, allowed visible images, pictures, statues, and relics as the means of awakening the stronger devotional feelings. We have been accused of worshipping merely inanimate objects, but this is a very false notion of the nature of our faith; we regard them merely as vivid characters representing spiritual existences and we no more worship them than the Protestant does his Bible when he kisses it under a solemn religious adjuration. The past, the present, and the future being the same to the infinite and divine Intelligence, and man being created in love for the purposes of happiness, the moral and religious discipline to which he was submitted was in strict conformity to his progressive faculties and to the primary laws of his nature. It is but a rude analogy, yet it is the only one I can find, that of comparing the Supreme Being to a wise and good father who, to secure the well-being of his offspring, is obliged to adopt a system of rewards and punishments in which the senses at first and afterwards the imagination and reason are concerned; he terrifies them by the example of others, awakens their love of glory by pointing out the distinction and the happiness gained by superior men by adopting a particular line of conduct; he uses at first the rod, and gradually substitutes for it the fear of immediate shame; and having awakened the fear of shame and the love of praise or honour with respect to temporary and immediate actions he extends them to the conduct of the whole of life, and makes what was a momentary feeling a permanent and immutable principle. And obedience in the child to the will of such a parent may be compared to faith in and obedience to the will of the Supreme Being; and a wayward and disobedient child who reasons upon and doubts the utility of the discipline of such a father is much in the same state in which the adult man is who doubts if there be good in the decrees of Providence and who questions the harmony of the plan of the moral universe.
Onu.—Allowing the perfection of your moral scheme of religion and its fitness for the nature of man, I find it impossible to believe the primary doctrines on which this scheme is founded. You make the Divine Mind, the creator of infinite worlds, enter into the form of a man born of a virgin, you make the eternal and immortal God the victim of shameful punishment and suffering death on the cross, recovering His life after three days, and carrying His maimed and lacerated body into the heaven of heavens.
Amb.—You, like all other sceptics, make your own interpretations of the Scriptures and set up a standard for divine power in human reason. The infinite and eternal mind, as I said before, fits the doctrines of religion to the minds by which they are to be embraced. I see no improbability in the idea that an integrant part of His essence may have animated a human form; there can be no doubt that this belief has existed in the human mind, and the belief constitutes the vital part of the religion. We know nothing of the generation of the human being in the ordinary course of nature; how absurd then to attempt to reason upon the acts of the Divine Mind! nor is there more difficulty in imagining the event of a divine conception than of a divine creation. To God the infinite, little and great, as measured by human powers, are equal; a creature of this earth, however humble and insignificant, may have the same weight with millions of superior beings inhabiting higher systems. But I consider all the miraculous parts of our religion as effected by changes in the sensations or ideas of the human mind, and not by physical changes in the order of nature; a man who has to repair a piece of machinery, as a clock, must take it to pieces, and, in fact, re-make it, but to infinite wisdom and power a change in the intellectual state of the human being may be the result of a momentary will, and the mere act of faith may produce the change. How great the powers of imagination are, even in ordinary life, is shown by many striking facts, and nothing seems impossible to this imagination when acted upon by divine influence. To attempt to answer all the objections which may be derived from the want of conformity in the doctrines of Christianity to the usual order of events would be an interminable labour. My first principle is, that religion has nothing to do with the common order of events; it is a pure and divine instinct intended to give results to man which he cannot obtain by the common use of his reason, and which at first view often appear contradictory to it, but which when examined by the most refined tests, and considered in the most extensive and profound relations, are, in fact, in conformity with the most exalted intellectual knowledge, so that, indeed, the results of pure reason ultimately become the same with those of faith—the tree of knowledge is grafted upon the tree of life, and that fruit which brought the fear of death into the world, budding on an immortal stock, becomes the fruit of the promise of immortality.
Onu.—You derive Christianity from Judaism; I cannot see their connection, and it appears to me that the religion of Mahomet is more naturally a scion from the stock of Moses. Christ was a Jew, and was circumcised; this rite was continued by Mahomet, and is to this day adopted by his disciples, though rejected by the Christians; and the doctrines of Mahomet appear to me to have a higher claim to divine origin than those of Jesus; his morality is as pure, his theism purer, and his system of rewards and punishments after death as much in conformity with our ideas of eternal justice.
Amb.—I will willingly make the decision of the general question dependent upon the decision of this particular one. No attempts have been made by the Mahometans to find any predictions respecting their founder in the Old Testament, and they have never pretended even that he was the Messiah; therefore, as far as prophecy is concerned, there is no ground for admitting the truth of the religion of Mahomet. It has been the fashion with a particular sect of infidels to praise the morality of the Mahometans, but I think unjustly; they are said to be honest in their dealings and charitable to those of their own persuasion; but they allow polygamy and a plurality of women, and are despisers and persecutors of the nations professing a different faith. And what a contrast does this morality present to that of the Gospel which inculcates charity to all mankind, and orders benevolent actions to be performed even to enemies! and the purity and simplicity of the infant is held up by Christ as the model of imitation for His followers. Then, in the rewards and punishments of the future state of the Mahometans, how gross are all the ideas, how unlike the promises of a divine and spiritual being; their paradise is a mere earthly garden of sensual pleasure, and their Houris represent the ladies of their own harems rather than glorified angelic natures. How different is the Christian heaven, how sublime in its idea, indefinite, yet well suited to a being of intellectual and progressive faculties; “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the joys that He hath prepared for those who love Him.”
Onu.—I confess your answer to my last argument is a triumphant one; but I cannot allow a question of such extent and of such a variety of bearings to be decided by so slight an advantage as that which you have gained by this answer. I will now offer another difficulty to you. The law of the Jews, you will allow, was established by God Himself and delivered to Moses from the seat of His glory amongst storms, thunder, and lightnings, on Mount Sinai; why should this law, if pure and divine, have been overturned by the same Being who established it? And all the ceremonies of the Hebrews have been abolished by the first Christians.
Amb.—I deny that the divine law of Moses was abolished by Christ, who Himself says, “I came to confirm the law, not to destroy it.” And the Ten Commandments form the vital parts of the foundation of the creed of the true Christian. It appears that the religion of Christ was the same pure theism with that of the patriarchs; and the rites and ceremonies established by Moses seem to have been only adjuncts to the spiritual religion intended to suit a particular climate and a particular state of the Jewish nation, rather a dress or clothing of the religion than forming a constituent part of it, a system of discipline of life and manners rather than an essential part of doctrine. The rites of circumcision and ablution were necessary to the health and perhaps even to the existence of a people living on the hottest part of the shores of the Mediterranean. And in the sacrifices made of the first fruits and of the chosen of the flock, we may see a design not merely connected with the religious faith of the people but even with their political economy. To offer their choicest and best property as a proof of their gratitude to the Supreme Being was a kind of test of devotedness and obedience to the theocracy; and these sacrifices by obliging them to raise more produce and provide more cattle than were essential to their ordinary support, preserved them from the danger of famine, as in case of a dearth it was easy for the priests under the divine permission to apply those offerings to the necessities of the people. All the pure parts of the faith which had descended from Abraham to David were preserved by Jesus Christ; but the ceremonial religion was fitted only for a particular nation and a particular country; Christianity, on the contrary, was to be the religion of the world and of a civilised and improving world. And it appears to me to be an additional proof of its divine nature and origin, that it is exactly in conformity to the principles of the improvement and perfection of the human mind. When given to a particular race fixed in a peculiar climate, its objects were sensible, its discipline was severe, and its rites and ceremonies numerous and imposing, fitted to act upon weak, ignorant, and consequently obstinate men. In its gradual development it threw off its local character and its particular forms, and adopted ceremonies more fitted for mankind in general; and in its ultimate views, it preserves only pure, spiritual, and I may say philosophical doctrines, the unity of the divine nature and a future state, embracing a system of rewards and punishments suited to an accountable and immortal being.
Phil.—I have been attentively listening to your discussion. The views which Ambrosio has taken of Christianity certainly throw a light over it perfectly new to me; and, I must say in candour, that I am disposed to adopt his notion of the early state of society rather than that of my Genius. I have always been accustomed to consider religious feeling as instinctive; but Ambrosio’s arguments have given me something approaching to a definite faith for an obscure and indefinite notion. I am willing to allow that man was created, not a savage, as he is represented in my vision, but perfect in his faculties and with a variety of instinctive powers and knowledge; that he transmitted these powers and knowledge to his offspring; but that by an improper use of reason in disobedience to the divine will, the instinctive faculties of most of his descendants became deteriorated and at last lost, but that these faculties were preserved in the race of Abraham and David, and the full power again bestowed upon or recovered by Christ. I am ready to allow the importance of religion in cultivating and improving the world; and Ambrosio’s view appears to me capable of being referred to a general law of our nature; and revelation may be regarded not as a partial interference but as a constant principle belonging to the mind of man, and the belief in supernatural forms and agency, the results of prophecies and the miracles, as one only of the necessary consequences of it. Man, as a reasoning animal, must always have doubted of his immortality and plan of conduct; in all the results of faith, there is immediate submission to a divine will, which we are sure is good. We may compare the destiny of man in this respect to that of a migratory bird; if a slow flying bird, as a landrail in the Orkneys in autumn, had reason and could use it as to the probability of his finding his way over deserts, across seas, and of securing his food in passing to a warm climate 3,000 miles off, he would undoubtedly starve in Europe; under the direction of his instinct he securely arrives there in good condition. I have allowed the force of your objections to that part of my vision relating to the origin of society, but I hope you will admit that the conclusion of it is not inconsistent with the ideas derived from revelation respecting the future state of the human being.
Amb.—Revelation has not disclosed to us the nature of this state, but only fixed its certainty. We are sure from geological facts, as well as from sacred history, that man is a recent animal on the globe, and that this globe has undergone one considerable revolution, since the creation, by water; and we are taught that it is to undergo another, by fire, preparatory to a new and glorified state of existence of man; but this is all we are permitted to know, and as this state is to be entirely different from the present one of misery and probation, any knowledge respecting it would be useless and indeed almost impossible.
Phil.—My Genius has placed the more exalted spiritual natures in cometary worlds, and this last fiery revolution may be produced by the appulse of a comet.
Amb.—Human fancy may imagine a thousand manners in which it may be produced, but upon such notions it is absurd to dwell. I will not allow your Genius the slightest approach to inspiration, and I can admit no verisimility in a reverie which is fixed on a foundation you now allow to be so weak. But see, the twilight is beginning to appear in the orient sky, and there are some dark clouds on the horizon opposite to the crater of Vesuvius, the lower edges of which transmit a bright light, showing the sun is already risen in the country beneath them. I would say that they may serve as an image of the hopes of immortality derived from revelation; for we are sure from the light reflected in those clouds that the lands below us are in the brightest sunshine, but we are entirely ignorant of the surface and the scenery; so, by revelation, the light of an imperishable and glorious world is disclosed to us; but it is in eternity, and its objects cannot be seen by mortal eye or imaged by mortal imagination.
Phil.—I am not so well read in the Scriptures as I hope I shall be at no very distant time; but I believe the pleasures of heaven are mentioned more distinctly than you allow in the sacred writings. I think I remember that the saints are said to be crowned with palms and amaranths, and that they are described as perpetually hymning and praising God.
Amb.—This is evidently only metaphorical; music is the sensual pleasure which approaches nearest to an intellectual one, and probably may represent the delight resulting from the perception of the harmony of things and of truth seen in God. The palm as an evergreen tree and the amaranth a perdurable flower are emblems of immortality. If I am allowed to give a metaphorical allusion to the future state of the blest, I should image it by the orange grove in that sheltered glen, on which the sun is now beginning to shine, and of which the trees are at the same time loaded with sweet golden fruit and balmy silver flowers. Such objects may well portray a state in which hope and fruition become one eternal feeling.
Onu.—This glorious sunrise seems to have made you both poetical. Though with the darkest and most gloomy mind of the party I cannot help feeling its influence, I cannot help believing with you that the night of death will be succeeded by a bright morning; but, as in the scene below us, the objects are nearly the same as they were last evening, with more of brightness and brilliancy, with a fairer prospect in the east and more mist in the west, so I cannot help believing that our new state of existence must bear an analogy to the present one, and that the order of events will not be entirely different.
Amb.—Your view is not an unnatural one; but I am rejoiced to find some symptoms of a change in your opinions.
Onu.—I wish with all my heart they were stronger; I begin to feel my reason a weight and my scepticism a very heavy load. Your discussions have made me a Philo-Christian, but I cannot understand nor embrace all the views you have developed, though I really wish to do so.
Amb.—Your wish, if sincere, I doubt not will be gratified. Fix your powerful mind upon the harmony of the moral world, as you have been long accustomed to do upon the order of the physical universe, and you will see the scheme of the eternal intelligence developing itself alike in both. Think of the goodness and mercy of omnipotence, and aid your contemplation by devotional feelings and mental prayer and aspirations to the source of all knowledge, and wait with humility for the light which I doubt not will be so produced in your mind.
Onu.—You again perplex me; I cannot believe that the adorations or offerings of so feeble a creature can influence the decrees of omnipotence.
Amb.—You mistake me: as to their influencing or affecting the supreme mind it is out of the question, but they affect your own mind, they perpetuate a habit of gratitude and of obedience which may gradually end in perfect faith, they discipline the affections and keep the heart in a state of preparation to receive and preserve all good and pious feelings. Whoever passes from utter darkness into bright sunshine finds that he cannot at first distinguish objects better in one than in the other, but in a feeble light he acquires gradually the power of bearing a brighter one, and gains at last the habit not only of supporting it, but of receiving delight as well as instruction from it. In the pious contemplations that I recommend to you there is the twilight or sober dawn of faith which will ultimately enable you to support the brightness of its meridian sun.
Onu.—I understand you, but your metaphor is more poetical than just; your discipline, however, I have no doubt, is better fitted to enable me to bear the light than to contemplate it through the smoked or coloured glasses of scepticism.
Amb.—Yes, for they not only diminish its brightness but alter its nature.
The same persons accompanied me in many journeys by land and water to different parts of the Phlegraean fields, and we enjoyed in a most delightful season, the beginning of May, the beauties of the glorious country which encloses the Bay of Naples, so rich, so ornamented with the gifts of nature, so interesting from the monuments it contains and the recollections it awakens. One excursion, the last we made in southern Italy, the most important both from the extraordinary personage with whom it made me acquainted and his influence upon my future life, merits a particular detail which I shall now deliver to paper.
It was on the 16th of May, 18— that we left Naples at three in the morning for the purpose of visiting the remains of the temples of Paestum, and having provided relays of horses we found ourselves at about half-past one o’clock descending the hill of Eboli towards the plain which contains these stupendous monuments of antiquity. Were my existence to be prolonged through ten centuries, I think I could never forget the pleasure I received on that delicious spot. We alighted from our carriage to take some refreshment, and we reposed upon the herbage under the shade of a magnificent pine contemplating the view around and below us. On the right were the green hills covered with trees stretching towards Salerno; beyond them were the marble cliffs which form the southern extremity of the Bay of Sorento; immediately below our feet was a rich and cultivated country filled with vineyards and abounding in villas, in the gardens of which were seen the olive and the cypress tree connected as if to memorialise how near to each other are life and death, joy and sorrow; the distant mountains stretching beyond the plain of Paestum were in the full luxuriance of vernal vegetation; and in the extreme distance, as if in the midst of a desert, we saw the white temples glittering in the sunshine. The blue Tyrrhene sea filled up the outline of this scene, which, though so beautiful, was not calm; there was a heavy breeze which blew full from the southwest; it was literally a zephyr, and its freshness and strength in the middle of the day were peculiarly balmy and delightful; it seemed a breath stolen by the spring from the summer. I never saw a deeper, brighter azure than that of the waves which rolled towards the shore, and which was rendered more striking by the pure whiteness of their foam. The agitation of nature seemed to be one of breathing and awakening life; the noise made by the waving of the branches of the pine above our heads and by the rattling of its cones was overpowered by the music of a multitude of birds which sung everywhere in the trees that surrounded us, and the cooing of the turtle-doves was heard even more distinctly than the murmuring of the waves or the whistling of the winds, so that in the strife of nature the voice of love was predominant. With our hearts touched by this extraordinary scene we descended to the ruins, and having taken at a farmhouse a person who acted as guide or cicerone, we began to examine those wonderful remains which have outlived even the name of the people by whom they were raised, and which continue almost perfect whilst a Roman and a Saracen city since raised have been destroyed. We had been walking for half an hour round the temples in the sunshine when our guide represented to us the danger that there was of suffering from the effects of malaria, for which, as is well known, this place is notorious, and advised us to retire into the interior of the temple of Neptune. We followed his advice,
The Stranger.—On these matters I had facts to communicate; on the geological scheme of the early history of the globe there are only analogies to guide us, which different minds may apply and interpret in different ways; but I will not trifle with a long preliminary discourse. Astronomical deductions and actual measures by triangulation prove that the globe is an oblate spheroid flattened at the poles, and this form we know, by strict mathematical demonstrations, is precisely the one which a fluid body revolving
Onuphrio said: “From the view you have taken, I conclude that you consider volcanic eruptions as owing to the central fire; indeed, their existence offers, I think, an argument for believing that the interior of the globe is fluid.” The stranger answered: “I beg you to consider the views I have been developing as merely hypothetical, one of the many resting places that may be taken by the imagination in considering this subject. There are, however, distinct facts in favour of the idea that the interior of the globe has a higher temperature than the surface; the heat increasing in mines the deeper we penetrate, and the number of warm sources which rise from great depths in almost all countries, are certainly favourable to the idea. The opinion that volcanoes are owing to this general and simple cause is, I think, likewise more agreeable to the analogies of things than to suppose them dependent upon partial chemical changes, such as the action of air and water upon the combustible bases of the earths and alkalies, though it is extremely probable that these substances may exist beneath the surface, and may occasion some results of volcanic fire; and on this subject my notion may, perhaps, be more trusted, as for a long while I thought volcanic eruptions were owing to chemical agencies of the newly discovered metals of the earths and alkalies, and I made many, and some dangerous, experiments in the hope of confirming this notion, but in vain.”
Amb.—We are very much obliged to you for your geological illustrations; but they remind me a little of some of the ideas of our friend Philalethes in his remarkable vision, and with which we may at some time amuse you in return for your geology should we be honoured with more of your company. You are obliged to have recourse to creations for all the living beings in your philosophical romance. I do not see why you should not suppose creations or arrangements of dead matter by the same laws of infinite wisdom, and why our globe should not rise at once a divine work fitted for all the objects of living and intelligent natures.
The stranger replied: “I have merely attempted a philosophical history founded upon the facts known respecting rocks and strata and the remains they contain. I begin with what may be considered a creation, a fluid globe supplied with an immense atmosphere, and the series of phenomena which I imagine consequent to the creation, I supposed produced by powers impressed upon matter by Omnipotence.”
Ambrosio said: “There is this verisimility in your history, that it is not contradictory to the little we are informed by Revelation as to the origin of the globe, the order produced in the chaotic state, and the succession of living forms generated in the days of creation, which may be what philosophers call the ‘epochas of nature,’ for a day with Omnipotence is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
“I must object,” Onuphrio said, “to your interpretation of the scientific view of our new acquaintance, and to your disposition to blend them with the cosmogony of Moses. Allowing the divine origin of the Book of Genesis, you must admit that it was not intended to teach the Jews systems of philosophy, but the laws of life and morals; and a great man and an exalted Christian raised his voice two centuries ago against this mode of applying and of often wresting the sense of the Scriptures to make them conformable to human fancies; ‘from which,’ says Lord Bacon, ’arise not only false and fantastical philosophies, but likewise heretical religions.’ If the Scriptures are to be literally interpreted and systems of science found in them, Gallileo Gallilei merited his persecution, and we ought still to believe that the sun turns round the earth.”
Amb.—You mistake my view, Onuphrio, if you imagine I am desirous of raising a system of geology on the Book of Genesis. It cannot be doubted that the first man was created with a great variety of instinctive or inspired knowledge, which must have been likewise enjoyed by his descendants; and some of this knowledge could hardly fail to have related to the globe which he inhabited, and to the objects which surrounded him. It would have been impossible for the human mind to have embraced the mysteries of creation, or to have followed the history of the moving atoms from their chaotic disorder into their arrangement in the visible universe, to have
Onu.—Having resided for a long time in Edinburgh, and having heard a number of discussions on the theory of Dr. Hutton, or the plutonic theory of geology, and having been exceedingly struck both by its simplicity and beauty, its harmony with existing facts, and the proofs afforded to it by some beautiful chemical experiments, I do not feel disposed immediately to renounce it for the views which I have just heard explained; for the principal facts which our new acquaintance has stated are, I think, not inconsistent with the refined philosophical systems of Professor Playfair and Sir James Hall.
The Unknown.—I have no objection to the refined plutonic view, as capable of explaining many existing phenomena; indeed, you must be aware that I have myself had recourse to it. What I contend against is, its application to explain the formations of the secondary rocks, which I think clearly belong to an order of facts not at all embraced by it. In the plutonic system there is one simple and constant order assumed, which may be supposed eternal. The surface is constantly imagined to be disintegrated, destroyed, degraded, and washed into the bosom of the ocean by water, and as constantly consolidated, elevated, and regenerated by fire, and the ruins of the old form the foundations of the new world. It is supposed that there are always the same types, both of dead and living matter; that the remains of rocks, of vegetables, and animals of one age are found embedded in rocks raised from the bottom of the ocean in another. Now, to support this view, not only the remains of living beings which at present people the globe might be expected to be found in the oldest secondary strata, but even those of the arts of man, the most powerful and populous of its inhabitants, which is well known not to be the case. On the contrary, each stratum of the secondary rocks contains remains of peculiar and mostly now unknown species of vegetables and animals. In those strata which are deepest, and which must
Onu.—I am not quite convinced by your arguments. Supposing the lands of New Holland were to be washed into the depths of the ocean, and to be raised according to the Huttonian view, as a secondary stratum, by subterraneous fire, they would contain the remains of both vegetables and animals entirely different from any found in the strata of the old continents; and may not those peculiar formations to which you have referred be, as it were, accidents of Nature belonging to peculiar parts of the globe? And you speak of a diluvian formation, which I conclude you would identify with that belonging to the catastrophe described in the sacred writings, in which no human remains are found. Now, you surely will not deny that man existed at the time of this catastrophe, and he consequently may have existed at the period of the other revolutions, which are supposed to be produced in the Huttonian views by subterraneous fire.
The Unknown.—I have made use of the term “diluvian,” because it has been adopted by geologists, but without meaning to identify the cause of the formations with the deluge described in the sacred writings. I apply the term merely to signify loose and water-worn strata not at all consolidated, and deposited by an inundation of water, and in these countries which they have covered man certainly did not exist. With respect to your argument derived from New Holland, it appears to me to be without weight. In a variety of climates, and in very distant parts of the globe, secondary strata of the same order are found, and they contain always the same kind of organic remains, which are entirely different from any of those now afforded by beings belonging to the existing order of things. The catastrophes which produced the secondary strata and diluvian depositions could not have been local and partial phenomena, but must have extended over the whole, or a great part of the surface, of the globe. The remains of similar shell-fishes are found in the limestones of the old and new continents; the teeth of the mammoth are not uncommon in various parts of Europe; entire skeletons have been found in America, and even the skin covered with hair and the entire body of one of these enormous extinct animals has been discovered in Siberia preserved in a mass of ice. In the oldest secondary strata there are no remains of such animals as now belong to the surface; and in the rocks which may be regarded as more recently deposited, these remains occur but rarely, and with abundance of extinct species. There seems, as it were, a gradual approach to the present system of things, and a succession of destructions and creations preparatory to the existence of man. It will be useless to push these arguments farther. You must allow that it is impossible to defend the proposition, that the present order of things is the ancient and constant order of Nature, only modified by existing laws, and, consequently, the view which
Onu.—I am convinced. I shall push my arguments no further, for I will not support the sophisms of that school which supposes that living nature has undergone gradual changes by the effects of its irritabilities and appetencies; that the fish has in millions of generations ripened into the quadruped, and the quadruped into the man; and that the system of life by its own inherent powers has fitted itself to the physical changes in the system of the universe. To this absurd, vague, atheistical doctrine, I prefer even the dream of plastic powers, or that other more modern dream, that the secondary strata were created, filled with remains, as it were, of animal life, to confound the speculations of our geological reasoners.
The Unknown.—I am glad you have not retreated into the desert and defenceless wilderness of scepticism, or of false and feeble philosophy. I should not have thought it worth my while to have followed you there; I should as soon think of arguing with the peasant who informs me that the basaltic columns of Antrim or of Staffa were the works of human art and raised by the giant Finmacoul.
At this moment, one of our servants came to inform me that a dinner which had been preparing for us at the farmhouse was ready; we asked the stranger to do us the honour to partake of our repast; he assented, and the following conversation took place at table.
Phil.—In reflecting upon our discussions this morning, I cannot help being a little surprised at their nature; we have been talking only of geological systems, when a more natural subject for our conversation would have been these magnificent temples, and an inquiry into the race by whom they were raised and the gods to whom they wore dedicated. We are now treading on a spot which contains the bones of a highly civilised and powerful people; yet we are almost ignorant of the names they bore, and the period of their greatness is lost in the obscurity of time.
Amb.—There can be no doubt that the early inhabitants of this city were Grecians and a maritime and commercial people; they have been supposed to belong to the Sybarite race, and the roses producing flowers twice a year in the spring and autumn in ancient times here, might sanction the idea that this balmy spot was chosen by a colony who carried luxury and refinement to the highest pitch.
Onu.—To attempt to form any opinion with respect to the people that anciently inhabited these now deserted plains is useless and a vain labour. In the geological conversation which took place before dinner, some series of interesting facts were presented to us; and the monuments of Nature, though they do not speak a distinct language, yet speak an intelligible one; but with respect to Paestum, there is neither history nor tradition to guide us; and we shall do wisely to resume our philosophical inquiries, if we have not already exhausted the patience of our new guest by doubts or objections to his views.
The Stranger.—One of you referred in our conversation this morning to a vision, which had some relation to the subject of our discussion, and I was promised some information on this matter.
I immediately gave a sketch of my vision, and of the opinions which had been expressed by Ambrosio on the early history of man, and the termination of our discussions on religion.
The Stranger.—I agree with Ambrosio in opinion on the subjects you have just mentioned. In my youth, I was a sceptic; and this I believe is usually the case with young persons given to general and discursive reading, and accustomed to adopt something like a mathematical form in their reasonings; and it was in considering the nature of the intellectual faculties of brutes, as compared with those of man, and in examining the nature of instinctive powers, that I became a believer. After I had formed the idea that Revelation was to man in the place of an instinct, my faith constantly became stronger; and it was exalted by many circumstances I had occasion to witness in a journey that I made through Egypt and a part of Asia Minor, and by no one more than by a very remarkable dream which occurred to me in Palestine, and which, as we are now almost at the hour of the siesta, I will relate to you, though perhaps you will be asleep before I have finished it. I was walking along that deserted shore which contains the ruins of Ptolemais, one of the most ancient ports of Judaea. It was evening; the sun was sinking in the sea; I seated myself on a rock, lost in melancholy contemplations on the destinies of a spot once so famous in the history of man. The calm Mediterranean, bright in the glowing light of the west, was the only object before me. “These waves,” I said to myself, “once bore the ships of the monarch of Jerusalem which were freighted with the riches of the East to adorn and honour the sanctuary of Jehovah; here are now no remains of greatness or of commerce; a few red stones and broken bricks only mark what might have been once a flourishing port, and the citadel above, raised by the Saracens, is filled with Turkish soldiers.” The janissary, who was my guide, and my servant, were preparing some food for me in a tent which had been raised for the purpose, and whilst waiting for their summons to my repast, I continued
Onu.—I believe all the narratives of apparitions and ghost stories are founded upon dreams of the same kind as that which occurred to you: an ideal representation of events in the local situation, in which the person is at the moment, and when the imaginary picture of the place in sleep exactly coincides with its reality in waking.
The Stranger.—I agree with you in your opinion. If my servant had not been with me, and my dream had been a little less improbable, it would have been difficult to have persuaded me that I had not been visited by an apparition.
I mentioned the dream of Brutus, and said, “His supposed evil genius appeared in his tent; had the philosophical hero dreamt that his genius had appeared to him in Rome, there could have been no delusion.” I cited the similar vision, recorded of Dion before his death, by Plutarch, of a gigantic female, one of the fates or furies, who was supposed to have been seen by him when reposing in the portico of his palace. I referred likewise to my own vision of the beautiful female, the guardian angel of my recovery, who always seemed to me to be present at my bedside.
Amb.—In confirmation of this opinion of Onuphrio, I can mention many instances. I once dreamt that my door had been forced, that there were robbers in my room, and that one of them was actually putting his hand before my mouth to ascertain if I was sleeping naturally. I awoke at this moment, and was some minutes before I could be sure whether it was a dream or a reality. I felt the pressure of the bedclothes on my lips, and still in the fear of being murdered continued to keep my eyes closed and to breathe slowly, till, hearing nothing and finding no motion, I ventured to open my eyes; but even then, when I saw nothing, I was not sure that my impression was a dream till I had risen from my bed and ascertained that the door was still locked.
Onu.—I am the only one of the party unable to record any dreams of the vivid and peculiar nature you mention from my own experience; I conclude it is owing to the dulness of my imagination. I suppose the more intense power of reverie is a symptom of the poetical temperament; and perhaps, if I possessed more enthusiasm, I should always have possessed more of the religious instinct. To adopt the idea of Philalethes of hereditary character, I fear my forefathers have not been correct in their faith.
Amb.—Your glory will be greater in establishing a new character, and I trust even the conversation of this day has given you an additional reason to adopt our faith.
Ambrosio spoke these words with an earnestness unusual in him, and with something of a tone which marked a zeal for proselytism, and at the same time he cast his eyes on the rosary which was suspended round the neck of the stranger, and said, “I hope I am not indiscreet in saying our faith.”
The Stranger.—I was educated in the ritual of the church of England; I belong to the Church of Christ; the rosary which you see suspended round my neck is a memorial of sympathy and respect for an illustrious man. I will, if you will allow me, give you the history of it, which, I think from the circumstances with which it is connected, you will not find devoid of interest. I was passing through France in the reign of Napoleon, by the peculiar privilege granted to a scavan, on my road into Italy. I had just returned from the Holy Land, and had in my possession two or three of the rosaries which are sold to pilgrims at Jerusalem as having been suspended in the Holy Sepulchre. Pius VII. was then in imprisonment at Fontainebleau. By a special favour, on the plea of my return from the Holy Land, I obtained permission to see this venerable and illustrious Pontiff. I carried with me one of my rosaries. He received me with great kindness. I tendered my services to execute any commissions, not political ones, he might think fit to entrust me with in Italy, informing him that I was an Englishman. He expressed his thanks, but declined troubling me. I told him I was just returned from the Holy Land, and bowing with great humility, offered to him my rosary from the Holy Sepulchre. He received it with a smile, touched it with his lips, gave his benediction over it, and returned it into my hands, supposing, of course, that I was a Roman Catholic. I had meant to present it to his Holiness, but the blessing he had bestowed upon it and the touch of his lips, made it a precious relic to me and I restored it to my neck, round which it has ever since been suspended. He asked me some unimportant questions respecting the state of the Christians at Jerusalem; and on a sudden, turned the subject, much to my surprise, to the destruction of the French in Russia, and in an exceedingly low tone of voice, as if afraid of being overheard, he said, “The nefas has long been triumphant over the fas, but I do not doubt that the balance of things is even now restoring; that God will vindicate his Church, clear his polluted altars, and establish society upon its permanent basis of justice and faith. We shall meet again. Adieu!” and he gave me his paternal blessing. It was eighteen months after this interview, that I went out with almost the whole population of Rome, to receive and welcome the triumphal entry of this illustrious father of the Church into his capital. He was borne on the shoulders of the most distinguished artists, headed by Canova; and never shall I forget the enthusiasm with which he was received—it is impossible to describe the shouts of triumph and
Onu.—The use you have made of this relic puts me in mind of a device of a very ingenious geological philosopher now living. He was on Etna and busily employed in making a collection of the lavas formed from the igneous currents of that mountain; the peasants were often troublesome to him, suspecting that he was searching for treasures. It occurred to him to make the following speech to them: “I have been a great sinner in my youth and, as a penance, I have made a vow to carry away with me pieces of every kind of stone found upon the mountain; permit me quietly to perform my pious duty, that I may receive absolution for my sins.” The speech produced the desired effect; the peasants shouted, “The holy man! The saint!” and gave him every assistance in their power to enable him to carry off his burthen, and he made his ample collections with the utmost security and in the most agreeable manner.
The Stranger.—I do not approve of pious frauds even for philosophical purposes; my rosary excited in others the same kind of feeling which it excited in my own bosom, and which I hold to be perfectly justifiable, and of which I shall never be ashamed.
Amb.—You must have travelled in Italy in very dangerous times; have you always been secure?
The Stranger.—Always; I have owed my security, partly, as I have said, to my rosary, but more to my dress and my acquaintance with the dialect of the natives. I have always carried with me a peasant as a guide, who has been intrusted with the small sums of money I wanted for my immediate purposes, and my baggage has been little more than a Cynic philosopher would have carried with him; and when I have been unable to walk, I have trusted myself to the conduct of a vetturino, a native of the province, with his single mule and caratella.
The sun was now setting and the temple of Neptune was glowing with its last purple rays. We were informed that our horses were waiting, and that it was time for us to depart to our lodgings at Eboli. I asked the stranger to be our companion and to do us the honour to accept of a seat in our carriage. He declined the invitation, and said: “My bed is prepared in the casina here for this night, and to-morrow I proceed on a journey connected with scientific objects in the parts of Calabria the scene of the terrible earthquakes of 1783.” I held out my hand to him in parting; he gave it a strong and warm pressure, and said, “Adieu! we shall meet again.”
The impression made upon my mind by the stranger with whom we became acquainted at Paestum was of the strongest and most extraordinary kind. The memory of his person, his dress, his manners, the accents of his voice, and the tone of his philosophy, for a long while haunted my imagination in a most unaccountable manner, and even formed a part of my dreams. It often occurred to me that this was not the first time that I had seen him; and I endeavoured, but in vain, to find some type or image of him in former scenes of my life. I continually made inquiries respecting him amongst my acquaintance, but I could never be sure that any of them knew him, or even had seen him. So great were his peculiarities, that he must have escaped observation altogether; for, had he entered the world at all, he must have made some noise in it. I expressed so much interest on this subject, that at last it became a source of ridicule amongst my acquaintance, who often asked me if I had not yet obtained news of my spirit-friend or ghost-seer.
After my return from Naples to Rome, I was almost immediately recalled to England by a melancholy event—the death of a very near and dear relation—and I left my two friends, Ambrosio and Onuphrio, to pursue their travels, which were intended to be of some extent and duration.
In my youth, and through the prime of manhood, I never entered London without feelings of pleasure and hope. It was to me as the grand theatre of intellectual activity, the field of every species of enterprise and exertion, the metropolis of the world of business, thought, and action. There I was sure to find the friends and companions of my youth, to hear the voice of encouragement and praise. There, society of the most refined kind offered daily its banquets to the mind with such variety that satiety had no place in them, and new objects of interest and ambition were constantly exciting attention either in politics, literature, or science.
I now entered this great city in a very different tone of mind—one of settled melancholy; not merely produced by the mournful event which recalled me to my country, but owing, likewise, to an entire change in the condition of my physical, moral, and intellectual being. My health was gone, my ambition was satisfied, I was no longer excited by the desire of distinction; what I regarded most tenderly was in the grave, and, to take a metaphor derived from the change produced by time in the juice of the grape, my cup of life was no longer sparkling, sweet, and effervescent;—it had lost its sweetness without losing its power, and it had become bitter.
After passing a few months in England and enjoying (as much as I could enjoy anything) the society of the few friends who still remained alive, the desire of travel again seized me. I had preserved amidst the wreck of time one feeling strong and unbroken: the love of natural scenery; and this, in advanced life, formed a principal motive for my plans of conduct and action. Of all the climates of Europe, England seems to me most fitted for the activity of the mind, and the least suited to repose. The alterations of a climate so various and rapid continually awake new sensations; and the changes in the sky from dryness to moisture, from the blue ethereal to cloudiness and fogs, seem to keep the nervous system in a constant state of disturbance. In the mild climate of Nice, Naples, or Sicily, where even in winter it is possible to enjoy the warmth of the sunshine in the open air, beneath palm trees or amidst evergreen groves of orange trees covered with odorous fruit and sweet-scented leaves, mere existence is a pleasure, and even the pains of disease are sometimes forgotten amidst the balmy influence of nature, and a series of agreeable and uninterrupted sensations invite to repose and oblivion. But in the changeful and tumultuous atmosphere of England, to be tranquil is a labour, and employment is necessary to ward off the attacks of ennui. The English as a nation is pre-eminently active, and the natives of no other country follow their objects with so much force, fire, and constancy. And, as human powers are limited, there are few examples of very distinguished men living in this country to old age: they usually fail, droop, and die before they have attained the period naturally marked for the end of human existence. The lives of our statesmen, warriors, poets, and even philosophers offer abundant proofs of the truth of this opinion; whatever burns, consumes—ashes remain. Before the period of youth is passed, grey hairs usually cover those brows which are adorned with the civic oak or the laurel; and in the luxurious and exciting life of the man of pleasure, their tints are not even preserved by the myrtle wreath or the garland of roses from the premature winter of time.
In selecting the scenes for my new journey I was guided by my former experience. I know no country more beautiful than that which may be called the Alpine country of Austria, including the Alps of the southern Tyrol, those of Illyria, the Noric and the Julian Alps, and the Alps of Styria and Salzburg. The variety of the scenery, the verdure of the meadows and trees, the depths of the valleys, the altitude of the mountains, the clearness and grandeur of the rivers and lakes give it, I think, a decided superiority over Switzerland; and the people are far more agreeable. Various in their costumes and manners, Illyrians, Italians, or Germans, they have all the same simplicity of character, and are all distinguished by their love of their country, their devotion to their sovereign, the warmth and purity of their faith, their honesty, and (with very few exceptions) I may say their great civility and courtesy to strangers.
In the prime of life I had visited this region in a society which afforded me the pleasures of intellectual friendship and the delights of refined affection; later I had left the burning summer of Italy and the violence of an unhealthy passion, and had found coolness, shade, repose, and tranquillity there; in a still more advanced period I had sought for and found consolation, and partly recovered my health after a dangerous illness, the consequence of labour and mental agitation; there I had found the spirit of my early vision. I was desirous, therefore, of again passing some time in these scenes in the hope of re-establishing a broken constitution; and though this hope was a feeble one, yet at least I expected to spend a few of the last days of life more tranquilly and more agreeably than in the metropolis of my own country. Nature never deceives us. The rocks, the mountains, the streams always speak the same language. A shower of snow may hide the verdant woods in spring, a thunderstorm may render the blue limpid streams foul and turbulent; but these effects are rare and transient: in a few hours or at least days all the sources of beauty are renovated. And Nature affords no continued trains of misfortunes and miseries, such as depend upon the constitution of humanity; no hopes for ever blighted in the bud; no beings full of life, beauty, and promise taken from us in the prime of youth. Her fruits are all balmy, bright, and sweet; she affords none of those blighted ones so common in the life of man and so like the fabled apples of the Dead Sea—fresh and beautiful to the sight, but when tasted full of bitterness and ashes. I have already mentioned the strong effect produced on my mind by the stranger whom I had met so accidentally at Paestum; the hope of seeing him again was another of my motives for wishing to leave England, and (why, I know not) I had a decided presentiment that I was more likely to meet him in the Austrian states than in England, his own country.
For this journey I had one companion, an early friend and medical adviser. He had lived much in the world, had acquired a considerable fortune, had given up his profession, was now retired, and sought, like myself, in this journey repose of mind and the pleasures derived from natural scenery. He was a man of a very powerful and acute understanding, but had less of the poetical temperament than any person whom I had ever known with similar vivacity of mind. He was a severe thinker, with great variety of information, an excellent physiologist, and an accomplished naturalist. In his reasonings he adopted the precision of a geometer, and was always upon his guard against the influence of imagination. He had passed the meridian of life, and his health was weak, like my own, so that we were well suited as travelling companions, moving always slowly from place to place without hurry or fatigue. I shall call this friend Eubathes. I will say nothing of the progress of our journey through France and Germany; I shall dwell only upon that part of it which has still a strong interest for me, and where events occurred that I shall never forget. We passed into the Alpine country of Austria by Lintz, on the Danube, and followed the course of the Traun to Gmunden, on the Traun See or lake of the Traun, where we halted for some days. If I were disposed to indulge in minute picturesque descriptions I might occupy hours with details of the various characters of the enchanting scenery in this neighbourhood. The vales have that pastoral beauty and constant verdure which is so familiar to us in England, with similar enclosures and hedge-rows and fruit and forest trees. Above are noble hills planted with beeches and oaks. Mountains bound the view, here covered with pines and larches, there raising their marble crests capped with eternal snows above the clouds. The lower part of the Traun See is always, even in the most rainy season, perfectly pellucid; and the Traun pours out of it over ledges of rocks a large and magnificent river, beautifully clear and of the purest tint of the beryl. The fall of the Traun, about ten miles below Gmunden, was one of our favourite haunts. It is a cataract which, when the river is full, may be almost compared to that of Schaffhausen for magnitude, and possesses the same peculiar characters of grandeur in the precipitous rush of its awful and overpowering waters, and of beauty in the tints of its streams and foam, and in the forms of the rocks over which it falls, and the cliffs and woods by which it is overhung. In this spot an accident, which had nearly been fatal to me, occasioned the renewal of my acquaintance in an extraordinary manner with the mysterious unknown stranger. Eubathes, who was very fond of fly-fishing, was amusing himself by catching graylings for our dinner in the stream above the fall. I took one of the boats which are used for descending the canal or lock artificially cut in the rock by the side of the fall, on which
Eub.—We must be many hundred feet below the surface, yet the temperature of this cavern is fresh and agreeable.
The Unknown.—This cavern has the mean temperature of the atmosphere, which is the case with all subterraneous cavities removed from the influence of the solar light and heat; and, in so hot a day in August as this, I know no more agreeable or salutary manner of taking a cold bath than in descending to a part of the atmosphere out of the influence of those causes which occasion its elevated temperature.
Eub.—Have you, sir, been in this country before?
The Unknown.—This is the third summer that I have made it the scene of an annual visit. Independently of the natural beauties found in Illyria, and the various sources of amusement which a traveller fond of natural history may find in this region, it has had a peculiar object of interest for me in the extraordinary animals which are found in the bottom of its subterraneous cavities: I allude to the Proteus anguinus, a far greater wonder of nature than any of those which the Baron Valvasa detailed to the Royal Society a century and half ago as belonging to Carniola, with far too romantic an air for a philosopher.
Phil.—I have seen these animals in passing through this country before; but I should be very glad to be better acquainted with their natural history.
The Unknown.—We shall soon be in that part of the grotto where they are found, and I shall willingly communicate the little that I have been able to learn respecting their natural characters and habits.
Eub.—The grotto now becomes really magnificent; I have seen no subterraneous cavity with so many traits of beauty and of grandeur. The irregularity of its surface, the magnitude of the masses broken in pieces which compose its sides, and which seem torn from the bosom of the mountain by some great convulsion of nature, their dark colours and deep shades form a singular contrast with the beauty, uniformity, I may say, order and grace of the white stalactical concretions which hang from the canopy above, and where the light of our torches reflected from the brilliant or transparent calcareous gems create a scene which almost looks like one produced by enchantment.
Phil.—If the awful chasms of dark masses of rock surrounding us appear like the work of demons who might be imagined to have risen from the centre of the earth, the beautiful works of Nature above our heads may be compared to a scenic representation of a temple or banquet hall for fairies or genii, such as those fabled in the Arabian romances.
The Unknown.—A poet might certainly place here the palace of the King of the Gnomes, and might find marks of his creative power in the small lake close by on which the flame of the torch is now falling, for there it is that I expect to find the extraordinary animals which have been so long the objects of my attention.
Eub.—I see three or four creatures, like slender fish, moving on the mud below the water.
The Unknown.—I see them; they are the Protei. Now I have them in my fishing-net, and now they are safe in the pitcher of water. At first view you might suppose this animal to be a lizard, but it has the motions of a fish. Its head and the lower part of its body and its tail bear a strong resemblance to those of the eel; but it has no fins, and its curious bronchial organs are not like the gills of fishes: they form a singular vascular structure, as you see, almost like a crest, round the throat, which may be removed without occasioning the death of the animal, which is likewise furnished with lungs. With this double apparatus for supplying air to the blood, it can live either below or above the surface of the water. Its fore-feet resemble hands, but they have only three claws or fingers, and are too feeble to be of use in grasping or supporting the weight of the animal; the hinder feet have only two claws or toes, and in the larger specimens are found so imperfect as to be almost obliterated. It has small points in place of eyes, as if to preserve the analogy of Nature. It is of a fleshy whiteness and transparency in its natural state; but when exposed to light, its skin gradually becomes darker, and at last gains an olive tint. Its nasal organs appear large, and it is abundantly furnished with teeth: from which it may be concluded that it is an animal of prey; yet in its confined state it has never been known to eat, and it has been kept alive for many years by occasionally changing the water in which it was placed.
Eub.—Is this the only place in Carniola where these animals are found?
The Unknown.—They were first discovered here by the late Baron Zois; but they have since been found, though rarely, at Sittich, about thirty miles distant, thrown up by water from a subterraneous cavity; and I have lately heard it reported that some individuals of the same species have been recognised in the calcareous strata in Sicily.
Eub.—This lake in which we have seen these animals is a very small one. Do you suppose they are bred here?
The Unknown.—Certainly not. In dry seasons they are seldom found here, but after great rains they are often abundant. I think it cannot be doubted that their natural residence is in an extensile deep subterranean lake, from which in great floods they sometimes are forced through the crevices of the rocks into this place where they are found; and it does not appear to me impossible, when the peculiar nature of the country in which we are is considered, that the same great cavity may furnish the individuals which have been found at Adelsberg and at Sittich.
Eub.—This is a very extraordinary view of the subject. Is it not possible that it may be the larva of some large unknown animal inhabiting these limestone cavities? Its feet are not in harmony with the rest of its organisation; and were they removed, it would have all the characters of a fish.
The Unknown.—I cannot suppose that they are larvae. There is, I believe, in Nature no instance of a transition by this species of metamorphosis from a more perfect to a less perfect animal. The tadpole has a resemblance to a fish before it becomes a frog; the caterpillar and the maggot gain not only more perfect powers of motion on the earth in their new state, but acquire organs by which they inhabit a new element. This animal, I dare say, is much larger than we now see it when mature in its native place; but its comparative anatomy is exceedingly hostile to the idea that it is an animal in a state of transition. It has been found of various sizes, from that of the thickness of a quill to that of the thumb, but its form of organs has been always the same. It is surely a perfect animal of a peculiar species. And it adds one instance more to the number already known of the wonderful manner in which life is produced and perpetuated in every part of our globe, even in places which seem the least suited to organised existences. And the same infinite power and wisdom which has fitted the camel and the ostrich for the deserts of Africa, the swallow that secretes its own nest for the caves of Java, the whale for the Polar seas, and the morse and white bear for the Arctic ice, has given the proteus to the deep and dark subterraneous lakes of Illyria—an animal to whom the presence of light is not essential, and who can live indifferently in air and in water, on the surface of the rock, or in the depths of the mud.
Phil.—It is now ten years since I first visited this spot. I was exceedingly anxious to see the proteus, and came here with the guide in the evening of the day I arrived at Adelsberg; but though we examined the bottom of the cave with the greatest care, we could find no specimens. We returned the next morning and were more fortunate, for we discovered five close to the bank on the mud covering the bottom of the lake; the mud was smooth and perfectly undisturbed, and the water quite clear. This fact of their appearance during the night seemed to me so extraordinary, that I could hardly avoid the fancy that they were new creations. I saw no cavities through which they could have entered, and the undisturbed state of the lake seemed to give weight to my notion. My reveries became discursive; I was carried in imagination back to the primitive state of the globe, when the great animals of the sauri kind were created under the pressure of a heavy atmosphere; and my notion on this subject was not destroyed when I heard from a celebrated anatomist, to whom I sent the specimens I had collected, that the organisation of the spine of the proteus was analogous to that of one of the sauri, the remains of which are found in the older secondary strata. It was said at this time that no organs of reproduction had been discovered in any of the specimens examined by physiologists, and this lent a weight to my opinion of the possibility of their being actually new creations, which I suppose you will condemn as wholly visionary and unphilosophical.
Eub.—From the tone in which you make your statements, I think you yourself consider them as unworthy of discussion. On such ground eels might be considered new creations, for their mature ovaria have not yet been discovered, and they come from the sea into rivers under circumstances when it is difficult to trace their course.
The Unknown.—The problem of the reproduction of the proteus, like that of the common eel, is not yet solved; but ovaria have been discovered in animals of both species, and in this instance, as in all others belonging to the existing order of things, Harvey’s maxim of “omne vivum ab ovo” will apply.
Eub.—You just now said that this animal has been long an object of attention to you; have you studied it as a comparative anatomist, in search of the solution of the problem of its reproduction?
The Unknown.—No; this inquiry has been pursued by much abler investigators: by Schreiber and Configliachi; my researches were made upon its respiration and the changes occasioned in water by its bronchia.
Eub.—I hope they have been satisfactory.
The Unknown.—They proved to me, at least, that not merely the oxygen dissolved in water, but likewise a part of the azote, was absorbed in the respiration of this animal.
Eub.—So that your researches confirm those of the French savants and Alexander von Humboldt, that in the respiration of animals which separate air from water, both principles of the atmosphere are absorbed.
Phil.—I have heard so many and such various opinions on the nature of the function of respiration during my education and since, that I should like to know what is the modern doctrine on this subject. I can hardly refer to better authority than yourself, and I have an additional reason for wishing for some accurate knowledge on this matter, having, as you well know, been the subject of an experiment in relation to it which, but for your kind and active assistance, must have terminated fatally.
The Unknown.—I shall gladly state what I know, which is very little. In physics and in chemistry, the science of dead matter, we possess many facts and a few principles or laws; but whenever the functions of life are considered, though the facts are numerous, yet there is, as yet, scarcely any approach to general laws, and we must usually end where we begin by confessing our entire ignorance.
Eub.—I will not allow this ignorance to be entire. Something, undoubtedly, has been gained by the knowledge of the circulation of the blood and its aeration in the lungs—these, if not laws, are at least fundamental principles.
The Unknown.—I speak only of the functions in their connection with life. We are still ignorant of the source of animal heat, though half a century ago the chemists thought they had proved it was owing to a sort of combustion of the carbon of the blood.
Phil.—As we return to our inn I hope you will both be so good as give me your views of the nature of this function, so important to all living things; tell me what you know, or what you believe, or what others imagine they know.
The Unknown.—The powers of the organic system depend upon a continued state of change. The waste of the body produced in muscular action, perspiration, and various secretions, is made up for by the constant supply of nutritive matter to the blood by the absorbents, and by the action of the heart the blood is preserved in perpetual motion through every part of the body. In the lungs, or bronchia, the venous blood is exposed to the influence of air and undergoes a remarkable change, being converted into arterial blood. The obvious chemical alteration of the air is sufficiently simple in this process: a certain quantity of carbon only is added to it, and it receives an addition of heat or vapour; the volumes of elastic fluid inspired and expired (making allowance for change of temperature) are the same, and if ponderable agents only were to be regarded it would appear as if the only use of respiration were to free the blood from a certain quantity of carbonaceous matter. But it is probable that this is only a secondary object, and that the change produced by respiration upon the blood is of a much more important kind. Oxygen, in its elastic state, has properties which are very characteristic: it gives out light by compression, which is not certainly known to be
Eub.—No one can be more convinced than I am of the very limited extent of our knowledge in chemical physiology, and when I say that, having been a disciple and friend of Dr. Black, I am still disposed to prefer his ancient view to your new one, I wish merely to induce you to pause and to hear my reasons; they may appear insufficient to you, but I am anxious to explain them. First, then, in all known chemical changes in which oxygen gas is absorbed and carbonic acid gas formed, heat is produced. I could mention a thousand instances, from the combustion of wood or spirits of wine to the fermentation of fruit or the putrefaction of animal matter. This general fact, which may be almost called a law, is in favour of the view of Dr. Black. Another circumstance in favour of it is, that those animals which possess the highest temperature consume the greatest quantity of air, and, under different circumstances of action and repose, the heat is in great measure proportional to the quantity of oxygen consumed. Then those animals which absorb the smallest quantity of air are cold-blooded. Another argument in favour of Dr. Black’s opinion is the change of colour of blood from black to red, which seems to show that it loses carbon.
The Unknown.—With the highest respect for the memory of Dr. Black, and for the opinion of his disciple, I shall answer the arguments I have just heard. I will not allow any facts or laws from the action of dead matter to apply to living structures; the blood is a living fluid, and of this we are sure that it does not burn in respiration. The terms warmth and cold, as applied to the blood of animals, are improper in the sense in which they have been just used; all animals are, in fact, warm-blooded,
Phil.—I conclude, from what you last said, that though you are inclined to believe that some unknown subtle matter is added to the organised system by respiration, yet you would not have us believe that this is electricity, or that there is any reason to suppose that electricity has a peculiar and special share in producing the functions of life.
The Unknown.—I wish to guard you against the adoption of any hypothesis on this recondite and abstruse subject. But however difficult it may be to define the exact nature of respiration, yet the effect of it and its connexions with the functions of the body are sufficiently striking. By the action of air on the blood it is fitted for the purposes of life, and from the moment that animation is marked by sensation or volition, this function is performed, the punctum saliens in the ovum seems to receive as it were the breath of life in the influence of air. In the economy of the reproduction of the species of animals, one of the most important circumstances is the aeration of the ovum, and when this is not performed, from the blood of the mother as in the mammalia by the placenta, there is a system for aerating as in the oviparous reptiles or fishes, which enables the air freely to pass through the receptacles in which the eggs are deposited, or the egg itself is aerated out of the body through its coats or shell, and when air is excluded, incubation or artificial heat has no effect. Fishes which deposit their eggs in water that contains only a limited portion of air, make combinations which would seem almost
Phil.—My own experience proves in the strongest manner the immediate connection of sensibility with respiration; all that I can remember in my accident was a certain violent and painful sensation of oppression in the chest, which must have been immediately succeeded by loss of sense.
Eub.—I have no doubt that all your suffering was over at the moment you describe; as far as sensibility is concerned, you were inanimate when your friend raised you from the bottom. This distinct connection of sensibility with the absorption of air by the blood is, I think, in favour of the idea advanced by our friend, that some subtle and ethereal matter is supplied to the system in the elastic air which may be the cause of vitality.
The Unknown.—Softly, if you please; I must not allow you to mistake my view. I think it probable that some subtle matter is derived from the atmosphere connected with the functions of life; but nothing can be more remote from my opinion than to suppose it the cause of vitality.
Phil.—This might have been fully inferred from the whole tenor of your conversation, and particularly from that expression, “that which commands sensation will not be their subject.” I think I shall not mistake your views when I say that you do not consider vitality dependent upon any material cause or principle.
The Unknown.—You do not. We are entirely ignorant on this subject, and I confess in the utmost humility my ignorance. I know there have been distinguished physiologists who have imagined that by organisation powers not naturally possessed by matter were developed, and that sensibility was a property belonging to some unknown combination of unknown ethereal elements. But such notions appear to me unphilosophical, and the mere substitution of unknown words for unknown things. I can never
Eub.—I am not a professed materialist; but I think you treat rather too lightly the modest doubts of Locke on this subject. And without considering me as a partisan, you will, I hope, allow me to state some of the reasons which I have heard good physiologists advance in favour of that opinion to which you are so hostile. In the first accretion of the parts of animated beings they appear almost like the crystallised matter, with the simplest kind of life, scarcely sensitive. The gradual operations by which they acquire new organs and new powers, corresponding to these organs, till they arrive at full maturity, forcibly strikes the mind with the idea that the powers of life reside in the arrangement by which the organs are produced. Then, as there is a gradual increase of power corresponding to the increase of perfection of the organisation, so there is a gradual diminution of it connected with the decay of the body. As the imbecility of infancy corresponds to the weakness of organisation, so the energy of youth and the power of manhood are marked by its strength; and the feebleness and dotage of old age are in the direct ratio of the decline of the perfection of the organisation, and the mental powers in extreme old age seem destroyed at the same time with the corporeal ones, till the ultimate dissolution of the frame, when the elements are again restored to that dead nature from which they were originally derived. Then, there was a period when the greatest philosopher, statesman, or hero, that ever existed was a mere living atom, an organised form with the sole power of perception; and the combinations that a Newton formed before birth or immediately after cannot be imagined to have possessed the slightest intellectual character. If a peculiar principle be supposed necessary to intelligence, it must exist throughout animated nature. The elephant approaches nearer to man in intellectual power than the oyster does to the elephant; and a link of sensitive nature may be traced from the polypus to the philosopher. Now, in the polypus the sentient principle is divisible,
The Unknown.—The arguments you have used are those which are generally employed by physiologists. They have weight in appearance, but not in reality. They prove that a certain perfection of the machinery of the body is essential to the exercise of the powers of the mind, but they do not prove that the machine is the mind. Without the eye there can be no sensations of vision, and without the brain there could be no recollected visible ideas; but neither the optic nerve nor the brain can be considered as the percipient principle—they are but the instruments of a power which has nothing in common with them. What may be said of the nervous system may be applied to a different part of the frame; stop the motion of the heart, and sensibility and life cease, yet the living principle is not in the heart, nor in the arterial blood which it sends to every part of the system. A savage who saw the operation of a number of power-looms weaving stockings cease at once on the stopping of the motion of a wheel, might well imagine that the motive force was in the wheel; he could not divine that it more immediately depended upon the steam, and ultimately upon a fire below a concealed boiler. The philosopher sees the fire which is the cause of the motion of this complicated machinery, so unintelligible to the savage; but both are equally ignorant of the divine fire which is the cause of the mechanism of organised structures. Profoundly ignorant on this subject, all that we can do is to give a history of our own minds. The external world or matter is to us in fact nothing but a heap or cluster of sensations; and, in looking back to the memory of our own being, we find one principle, which may be called the monad, or self, constantly present, intimately associated with a particular class of sensations, which we call our own body or organs. These organs are connected with other sensations, and move, as it were, with them in circles of existence, quitting for a time some trains of sensation to return to others; but the monad is always present. We can fix no beginning
Eub.—All your notions are merely ingenious speculations. Revelation gives no authority to your ideas of spiritual nature; the Christian immortality is founded upon the resurrection of the body.
The Unknown.—This I will not allow. Even in the Mosaic history of the creation of man his frame is made in the image of God—that is, capable of intelligence; and the Creator breathes into it the breath of life, His own essence. Then our Saviour has said, “of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.” “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” St. Paul has described the clothing of the spirit in a new and glorious body, taking the analogy from the living germ in the seed of the plant, which is not quickened till after apparent death; and the catastrophe of our planet, which, it is revealed, is to be destroyed and purified by fire before it is fitted for the habitation of the blest, is in perfect harmony with the view I have ventured to suggest.
Eub.—I cannot make your notions coincide with what I have been accustomed to consider the meaning of Holy Writ. You allow everything belonging to the material life to be dependent upon the organisation of the body, and yet you imagine the spirit after death clothed with a new body; and, in the system of rewards and punishments, this body is rendered happy or miserable for actions committed by another and extinct frame. A particular organisation may impel to improper and immoral gratification; it does not appear to me, according to the principles of eternal justice, that the body of the resurrection should be punished for crimes dependent upon a conformation now dissolved and destroyed.
The Unknown.—Nothing is more absurd, I may say more impious, than for man, with a ken surrounded by the dense mists of sense, to reason respecting the decrees of eternal justice. You adopt here the same limited view that you embraced in reasoning against the indestructibility of the sentient principle in man from the apparent division of the living principle in the polypus, not recollecting that to prove a quality
Phil.—I am pleased with your views; they coincide with those I had formed at the time my imagination was employed upon the vision of the Colosaeum, which I repeated to you, and are not in opposition with the opinions that the cool judgment and sound and humble faith of Ambrosio have led me since to embrace. The doctrine of the materialists was always, even in my youth, a cold, heavy, dull, and insupportable doctrine to me, and necessarily tending to Atheism. When I had heard, with disgust, in the dissecting-rooms the plan of the physiologist of the gradual accretion of matter, and its becoming endowed with irritability, ripening into sensibility and acquiring such organs as were necessary, by its own inherent forces, and at last rising into intellectual existence, a walk into the green fields or woods by the banks of rivers brought back my feelings from nature to God; I saw in all the powers of matter the instruments of the Deity; the sunbeams, the breath of the zephyr, awakened animation in forms prepared by Divine intelligence to receive it; the insensate seed, the slumbering egg, which were to be vivified, appeared like the new-born animal, works of a Divine
The Unknown.—Religion, whether natural or revealed, has always the same beneficial influence on the mind. In youth, in health, and prosperity, it awakens feelings of gratitude and sublime love, and purifies at the same time that it exalts; but it is in misfortune, in sickness, in age, that its effects are most truly and beneficially felt; when submission in faith and humble trust in the Divine will, from duties become pleasures, undecaying sources of consolation; then it creates powers which were believed to be extinct, and gives a freshness to the mind which was supposed to have passed away for ever, but which is now renovated as an immortal hope; then it is the Pharos, guiding the wave-tost mariner to his home, as the calm and beautiful still basins or fiords, surrounded by tranquil groves and pastoral meadows, to the Norwegian pilot escaping from a heavy storm in the north sea, or as the green and dewy spot gushing with fountains to the exhausted and thirsty traveller in the midst of the desert. Its influence outlives all earthly enjoyments, and becomes stronger as the organs decay and the frame dissolves; it appears as that evening star of light in the horizon of life, which, we are sure, is to become in another season a morning star, and it throws its radiance through the gloom and shadow of death.
I had been made religious by the conversations of Ambrosio in Italy; my faith was strengthened and exalted by the opinions of the Unknown, for whom I had not merely that veneration awakened by exalted talents, but a strong affection founded upon the essential benefit of the preservation of my life owing to him. I ventured, the evening after our visit to the cave of Adelsberg, to ask him some questions relating to his history and adventures. He said, “To attempt to give you any idea of the formation of my character would lead me into the history of my youth, which almost approaches to a tale of romance. The source of the little information and intelligence I possess I must refer to a restless activity of spirit, a love of glory which ever belonged to my infancy, and a sensibility easily excited and not easily conquered. My parentage was humble, yet I can believe a traditional history of my paternal grandmother, that the origin of our family was from an old Norman stock; I found this belief upon certain feelings which I can only refer to an hereditary source, a pride of decorum, a tact and refinement even in boyhood, and which are contradictory to the idea of an origin from a race of peasants. Accident opened to me in early youth a philosophical career, which I pursued with success. In manhood fortune smiled upon me and made me independent; I then really became a philosopher, and pursued my travels with the object of instructing myself and of benefiting mankind. I have seen most parts of Europe, and conversed, I believe, with all the illustrious men of science belonging to them. My life has not been unlike that of the ancient Greek sages. I have added some little to the quantity of human knowledge, and I have endeavoured to add something to the quantity of human happiness. In my early life I was a sceptic; I have informed you how I became a believer, and I constantly bless the Supreme Intelligence for the favour of some gleams of Divine light which have been vouchsafed to me in this our state of darkness and doubt.”
Phil.—I am surprised that with your powers you did not enter into a professional career either of law or politics; you would have gained the highest honours and distinctions.
The Unknown.—To me there never has been a higher source of honour or distinction than that connected with advances in science. I have not possessed enough of the eagle in my character to make a direct flight to the loftiest altitudes in the social world, and I certainly never endeavoured to reach those heights by using the creeping powers of the reptile who, in ascending, generally chooses the dirtiest path, because it is the easiest.
Eub.—I have often wondered that men of fortune and of rank do not apply themselves more to philosophical pursuits; they offer a delightful and enviable road to distinction, one founded upon the blessings and benefits conferred on our fellow-creatures; they do not supply the same sources of temporary popularity as successes in the senate or at the bar, but the glory resulting from them is permanent and independent of vulgar taste or caprice. In looking back to the history of the last five reigns in England, we find Boyles, Cavendishes, and Howards, who rendered those great names more illustrious by their scientific honours; but we may in vain search the aristocracy now for philosophers, and there are very few persons who pursue science with true dignity; it is followed more as connected with objects of profit than those of fame, and there are fifty persons who take out patents for supposed inventions for one who makes a real discovery.
Phil.—The information we have already received from you proves to me that chemistry has been your favourite pursuit. I am surprised at this. The higher-mathematics and pure physics appear to me to offer much more noble objects of contemplation and fields of discovery, and, practically considered, the results of the chemist are much more humble, belonging principally to the apothecary’s shop and the kitchen.
Eub.—I feel disposed to join you in attacking this favourite study of our friend, but merely to provoke him to defend it. I wish our attack would induce him to vindicate his science, and that we might enjoy a little of the sport of literary gladiators, at least, in order to call forth his skill and awaken his eloquence.
The Unknown.—I have no objection. Let there be a fair discussion; remember we fight only with foils, and the point of mine shall be covered with velvet. In your attack upon chemistry, Philalethes, you limited the use of it to the apothecary’s shop and the kitchen. The first is an equivocal use; by introducing it into the kitchen you make it an art fundamental to all others. But if what you had stated had really meant to be serious, it would not have deserved a reply; as it is in mere playfulness, it shall not be thrown away. I want eloquence, however, to adorn my subject, yet it is sufficiently exciting even to awaken feeling. Persons in general look at the magnificent fabric of civilized society as the result of the accumulated labour, ingenuity, and enterprise of man through a long course of ages, without attempting to define what has been owing to the different branches of human industry and science; and usually attribute to politicians, statesmen, and warriors a much greater share than really belongs to them in the work: what they have done is in reality little. The beginning of civilization is the discovery of some useful arts by which men acquire property, comforts, or luxuries. The necessity or desire of preserving them leads
Eub.—Really you are in the poetical, not the chemical chair, or rather on the tripod. We claim from you some accuracy of detail, some minute information, some proofs of what you assert. What you attribute to the chemical and mechanical arts, we might with the same propriety attribute to the fine arts, to letters, to political improvement, and to those inventions of which Minerva and Apollo and not Vulcan are the patrons.
The Unknown.—I will be more minute. You will allow that the rendering skins insoluble in water by combining with them the astringent principle of certain vegetables is a chemical invention, and that without leather, our shoes, our carriages, our equipages would be very ill made; you will permit me to say, that the bleaching and dying of wool and silk, cotton, and flax, are chemical processes, and that the conversion of them into different clothes is a mechanical invention; that the working of iron, copper, tin, and lead, and the other metals, and the combining them in different alloys by which almost all the instruments necessary for the turner, the joiner, the stone-mason, the ship-builder, and the smith are made, are chemical inventions; even the press, to the influence of which I am disposed to attribute as much as you can do, could not have existed in any state of perfection without a metallic alloy; the combining of alkali and sand, and certain clays and flints together to form glass and porcelain is a chemical process; the colours which the artist employs to frame resemblances of natural objects, or to create combinations more beautiful than ever existed in Nature, are derived from chemistry; in short, in every branch of the common and fine arts, in every department of human industry, the influence of this science is felt, and we may find in the fable of Prometheus taking the flame from heaven to animate his man of clay an emblem of the effects of fire in its application to chemical purposes in creating the activity and almost the life of civil society.
Phil.—It appears to me that you attribute to science what in many cases has been the result of accident. The processes of most of the useful arts, which you call chemical, have been invented and improved without any refined views, without any general system of knowledge. Lucretius attributes to accident the discovery of the fusion of the metals; a person in touching a shell-fish observes that it emits a purple liquid as a dye, hence the Tyrian purple; clay is observed to harden in the fire, and hence the invention of bricks, which could hardly fail ultimately to lead to the discovery of porcelain; oven glass, the most perfect and beautiful of those manufactures you call chemical, is said to have been discovered by accident; Theophrastus states that some merchants who were cooking on lumps of soda or natron, near the mouth of the river Belus, observed that a hard and vitreous substance was formed where the fused natron ran into the sand.
The Unknown.—I will readily allow that accident has had much to do with the origin of the arts as with the progress of the sciences. But it has been by scientific processes and experiments that these accidental results have been rendered really applicable to the purposes of common life. Besides, it requires a certain degree of knowledge and scientific combination to understand and seize upon the facts which have originated in accident. It is certain that in all fires alkaline substances and sand are fused together, and clay hardened; yet for ages after this discovery of fire, glass and porcelain were unknown till some men of genius profited by scientific combination often observed but never applied. It suits the indolence of those minds which never attempt anything, and which probably if they did attempt anything would not succeed, to refer to accident that which belongs to genius. It is sometimes said by such persons, that the discovery of the law of gravitation was owing to accident: and a ridiculous story is told of the falling of an apple as the cause of this discovery. As well might the invention of fluxions or the architectural wonders of the dome of St. Peter’s, or the miracles of art the St. John of Raphael or the Apollo Belvidere, be supposed to be owing to accidental combinations. In the progress of an art, from its rudest to its more perfect state, the whole process depends upon experiments. Science is in fact nothing more than the refinement of common sense making use of facts already known to acquire new facts. Clays which are yellow are known to burn red; calcareous earth renders flint fusible—the persons who have improved earthenware made their selections accordingly. Iron was discovered at least one thousand years before it was rendered malleable; and from what Herodotus says of this discovery, there can be little doubt that it was developed by a scientific worker in metals. Vitruvius tells us that the ceruleum, a colour made of copper, which exists in perfection in all the old paintings of the Greeks and Romans and on the mummies of the Egyptians, was discovered by an Egyptian king; there is therefore every reason to believe that it was not the result of accidental combination, but of experiments made for producing or improving colours. Amongst the ancient philosophers, many discoveries are attributed to Democritus and Anaxagoras; and, connected with chemical arts, the narrative of the inventions of Archimedes alone, by Plutarch, would seem to show how great is the effect of science in creating power. In modern times, the refining of sugar, the preparation of nitre, the manufacturing of acids, salts, &c., are all results of pure chemistry. Take gunpowder as a specimen; no person but a man infinitely diversifying his processes and guided by analogy could have made such a discovery. Look into the books of the alchemists, and some idea may be formed of the effects of experiments. It is true, these persons were
Eub.—We will allow that you have shown in many cases the utility of scientific investigation as connected with the progress of the useful arts. But, in general, both the principles of chemistry are followed, and series of experiments performed without any view to utility; and a great noise is made if a new metal or a new substance is discovered, or if some abstracted law is made known relating to the phenomena of nature; yet, amongst the variety of new substances, few have been applied to any trifling use even, and the greater number have had no application at all. And with respect to the general views of the science, it would be difficult to show that any real good had resulted from the discovery or extension of them. It does not add much to the dignity of a pursuit that those persons who have followed it for profit have really been most useful, and that the mere artisan or chemical manufacturer has done more for society than the chemical philosopher. Besides, it has always appeared to me that it is in the nature of this science to encourage mediocrity and to attach importance to insignificant things; very slight chemical labours seem to give persons a claim to the title of philosopher—to have dissolved a few grains of chalk in an acid, to have shown that a very useless stone contains certain known ingredients, or that the colouring matter of a flower is soluble in acid and not in alkali, is thought by some a foundation for chemical celebrity. I once began to attend a course of chemical lectures and to read the journals containing the ephemeral productions of this science; I was dissatisfied with the nature of the evidence which the professor adopted in his demonstrations, and disgusted with the series of observations and experiments which were brought forward one month to be overturned the next. In November there was a Zingeberic acid, which in January was shown to have no existence; one year there was a vegetable acid, which the next was shown to be the same as an acid known thirty years ago; to-day a man was celebrated for having discovered a new metal or a new alkali, and they flourished like the scenes in a new pantomime only to disappear. Then, the great object of the hundred triflers in the science appeared to be to destroy the reputation of the three or four great men whose labours were really useful, and had in them something of dignity. And, there not being enough of trifling results or false experiments to fill up the pages of the monthly journals, the deficiency was supplied by some crude theories or speculations of unknown persons, or by some ill-judged censure or partial praise of the editor.
The Unknown.—I deny in toto the accuracy of what you are advancing. I have already shown that real philosophers, not labouring for profit, have done much by their own inventions for the useful arts; and, amongst the new substances discovered, many have had immediate and very important applications. The chlorine, or oxymuriatic gas of Scheele, was scarcely known before it was applied by Berthollet to bleaching; scarcely was muriatic acid gas discovered by Priestley, when Guyton de Morveau used it for destroying contagion. Consider the varied and diversified applications of platinum, which has owed its existence as a useful metal entirely to the labours of an illustrious chemical philosopher; look at the beautiful yellow afforded by one of the new metals, chrome; consider the medical effects of iodine in some of the most painful and disgusting maladies belonging to human nature, and remember how short a time investigations have been made for applying the new substances. Besides, the mechanical or chemical manufacturer has rarely discovered anything; he has merely applied what the philosopher has made known, he has merely worked upon the materials furnished to him. We have no history of the manner in which iron was rendered malleable; but we know that platinum could only have been worked by a person of the most refined chemical resources, who made multiplied experiments upon it after the most ingenious and profound views. But, waiving all common utility, all vulgar applications, there is something in knowing and understanding the operation of Nature, some pleasure in contemplating the order and harmony of the arrangements belonging to the terrestrial system of things. There is no absolute utility in poetry, but it gives pleasure, refines and exalts the mind. Philosophic pursuits have likewise a noble and independent use of this kind, and there is a double reason offered for pursuing them, for whilst in their sublime speculations they reach to the heavens, in their application they belong to the earth; whilst they exalt the intellect, they provide food for our common wants, and likewise minister to the noblest appetites and most exalted views belonging to our nature. The results of this science are not like the temples of the ancients, in which statues of the gods were placed, where incense was offered and sacrifices were performed, and which were presented to the adoration of the multitude founded upon superstitious feelings; but they are rather like the palaces of the moderns, to be admired and used, and where the statues, which in the ancients raised feelings of adoration and awe, now produce only feelings of pleasure, and gratify a refined taste. It is surely a pure delight to know how and by what processes this earth is clothed with verdure and life, how the clouds, mists, and rain are formed, what causes all the changes of this terrestrial system of things, and by what divine laws order is preserved amidst apparent
Eub.—I am glad that our opposition has led you to so complete a vindication of your favourite science. I want no further proof of its utility. I regret that I have not before made it a particular object of study.
Phil.—As our friend has so fully convinced us of the importance of chemistry, I hope he will descend to some particulars as to its real nature, its objects, its instruments. I would willingly have a definition of chemistry and some idea of the qualifications necessary to become a chemist, and of the apparatus essential for understanding what has been already done in the science, and for pursuing new inquiries.
The Unknown.—There is nothing more difficult than a good definition, for it is scarcely possible to express in a few words the abstracted view of an infinite variety of facts. Dr. Black has defined chemistry to be that science which treats of the changes produced in bodies by motions of their ultimate particles or atoms, but this definition is hypothetical, for the ultimate particles or atoms are mere creations of the imagination. I will give you a definition, which will have the merit of novelty and which is probably general in its application. Chemistry relates to those operations by which the intimate nature of bodies is changed, or by which they acquire new properties. This definition will not only apply to the effects of mixture, but to the phenomena of electricity, and, in short, to all the changes which do not merely depend upon the motion or division of masses of matter. However difficult it may have been to have given you a definition of chemistry, it is still more difficult to give you a detail of all the qualities necessary for a chemical philosopher. I will not name as many as Athenaeus has named for a cook, who, he says, ought to be a mathematician, a theoretical musician, a natural philosopher, a natural historian, &c., though you had a disposition just now to make chemistry merely subservient to the uses of the kitchen. But I will seriously mention some of the studies fundamental to the higher departments of this science; a man may be a good practical chemist perhaps without possessing them, but he never can become a great chemical philosopher. The person who wishes to understand the higher departments of chemistry, or to pursue them in their most interesting relations to the economy of Nature, ought to be well-grounded in elementary mathematics; he will oftener have to refer to arithmetic than algebra, and to algebra than to geometry. But all these sciences lend their aid to chemistry; arithmetic, in determining the proportions of analytical results and the relative weights of the elements of bodies; algebra, in ascertaining the laws of the pressure of elastic fluids, the force of vapour as dependent upon temperature, and the effects of masses and surfaces on the communication and radiation of heat; the applications of geometry are principally limited to the determination of the crystalline forms of bodies, which constitute the most important type of their nature, and often offer useful hints for analytical researches respecting their composition. The first principles of natural philosophy or general physics ought not to be entirely unknown to the chemist. As the most active agents are fluids, elastic fluids, heat, light, and electricity, he ought to have a general knowledge of mechanics, hydrodynamics, pneumatics, optics, and electricity. Latin and Greek among the dead and French among the modern languages are necessary, and, as the most important after French, German and Italian. In natural history and in
During our stay in Illyria, I made an excursion by water with the Unknown, my preserver, now become my friend, and Eubathes, to Pola, in Istria. We entered the harbour of Pola in a felucca when the sun was setting; and I know no scene more splendid than the amphitheatre seen from the sea in this light. It appears not as a building in ruins, but like a newly erected work, and the reflection of the colours of its brilliant marble and beautiful forms seen upon the calm surface of the waters gave to it a double effect—that of a glorious production of art and of a magnificent picture. We examined with pleasure the remains of the arch of Augustus and the temple, very perfect monuments of imperial grandeur. But the splendid exterior of the amphitheatre was not in harmony with the bare and naked walls of the interior; there were none of those durable and grand seats of marble, such as adorn the amphitheatre of Verona, from which it is probable that the whole of the arena and conveniences for the spectators had been constructed of wood. Their total disappearance led us to reflect upon the causes of the destruction of so many of the works of the older nations. I said, in our metaphysical abstractions, we refer the changes, the destruction of material forms, to time, but there must be physical laws in Nature by which they are produced; and I begged our new friend to give us some ideas on this subject in his character of chemical philosopher. If human science, I said, has discovered the principle of the decay of things, it is possible that human art may supply means of conservation, and bestow immortality on some of the works which appear destined by their perfection for future ages.
The Unknown.—I shall willingly communicate to you my views of the operation of time, philosophically considered. A great philosopher has said, man can in no other way command Nature but in obeying her laws; and, in these laws, the principle of change is a principle of life; without decay, there can be no reproduction; and everything belonging to the earth, whether in its primitive state, or modified by human hands, is submitted to certain and immutable laws of destruction, as permanent and universal as those which produce the planetary motions. The property which, as far as our experience extends, universally belongs to matter, gravitation, is the first and most general cause of change in our terrestrial system; and, whilst it preserves the great mass of the globe in a uniform state, its influence is continually producing alterations upon the surface. The water, raised in vapour by the solar heat, is precipitated by the cool air in the atmosphere; it is carried down by gravitation to the surface, and gains its mechanical force from this law. Whatever is elevated above the superfices by the powers of vegetation or animal life, or by the efforts of man, by gravitation constantly
Eub.—Would not the consideration of the subject have been more distinct, and your explanations of the phenomena more simple, had you commenced by dividing the causes of change into mechanical and chemical; if you had first considered them separately, and then their joint effects?
The Unknown.—The order I have adopted is not very remote from this. But I was perhaps wrong in treating first of the agency of gravitation, which owes almost all its powers to the operation of other causes. In consequence of your hint, I shall alter my plan a little, and consider first the chemical agency of water, then that of air, and lastly that of electricity. In every species of chemical change, temperature is concerned. But unless the results of volcanoes and earthquakes be directly referred to this power, it has no chemical effect in relation to the changes ascribed to time simply considered as heat, but its operations, which are the most important belonging to the terrestrial cycle of changes, are blended with, or bring into activity, those of other agents. One of the most distinct and destructive agencies of water depends upon its solvent powers, which are usually greatest when its temperature is highest. Water is capable of dissolving, in larger or smaller proportions, most compound bodies, and the calcareous and alkaline elements of stones are particularly liable to this kind of operation. When water holds in solution carbonic acid, which is always the case when it is precipitated from the atmosphere, its power of dissolving carbonate of lime is very much increased, and in the neighbourhood of great cities, where the atmosphere contains a large proportion of this principle, the solvent powers of rain upon the marble exposed to it must be greatest. Whoever examines the marble statues in the British Museum, which have been removed from the exterior of the Parthenon, will be convinced that they have suffered from this agency; and an effect distinct in the pure atmosphere and temperate climate of Athens, must be upon a higher scale in the vicinity of other great European cities, where the consumption of fuel produces carbonic acid in large quantities. Metallic substances, such as iron, copper, bronze, brass, tin, and lead, whether they exist in stones, or are used for support or connection in buildings, are liable to be corroded by water holding in solution the principles of the atmosphere; and the rust and corrosion, which are made, poetically, qualities of time, depend upon the oxidating powers of water, which by supplying oxygen in a dissolved or condensed state enables the metals to form new combinations. All the vegetable substances, exposed to water and air, are liable to decay, and even the vapour in the air, attracted by wood, gradually reacts upon its fibres and assists decomposition, or enables its elements to take new arrangements. Hence it is that none of the roofs of ancient buildings more than a thousand years old remain, unless it be such as are constructed of stone, as those of the Pantheon of Rome and the tomb of Theodoric at Ravenna, the cupola of which is composed of a single block of marble. The pictures of the Greek masters, which were painted on the wood of the abies, or pine of the Mediterranean, likewise, as we are informed
Eub.—I have seen serpentines, basalts, and lavas which internally were dark, and which from their weight, I should suppose, must contain oxide of iron, superficially brown or red, and decomposing. Undoubtedly this was from the action of water impregnated with air upon their ferruginous elements.
The Unknown.—You are perfectly right. There are few compound stones, possessing a considerable specific gravity, which are not liable to change from this cause; and oxide of iron amongst the metallic substances anciently known, is the most generally diffused in nature, and most concerned in the changes which take place on the surface of the globe. The chemical action of carbonic acid is so much connected with that of water, that it is scarcely possible to speak of them separately, as must be evident from what I have before said; but the same action which is exerted by the acid dissolved in water is likewise exerted by it in its elastic state, and in this case the facility with which the quantity is changed makes up for the difference of the degree of condensation.
Phil.—Your view of the causes of devastation really is a melancholy one. Nor do I see any remedy; the most important causes will always operate. Yet, supposing the constant existence of a highly civilised people, the ravages of time might be repaired, and by defending the finest works of art from the external atmosphere, their changes would be scarcely perceptible.
Eub.—I doubt much whether it is for the interests of a people that its public works should be of a durable kind. One of the great causes of the decline of the Roman Empire was that the people of the Republic and of the first empire left nothing for their posterity to do; aqueducts, temples, forums, everything was supplied, and there were no objects to awaken activity, no necessity to stimulate their inventive faculties, and hardly any wants to call forth their industry.
The Unknown.—At least, you must allow the importance of preserving objects of the fine arts. Almost everything we have worthy of admiration is owing to what has been preserved from the Greek school, and the nations who have not possessed these works or models have made little or no progress towards perfection. Nor does it seem that a mere imitation of Nature is sufficient to produce the beautiful or perfect; but the climate, the manners, customs, and dress of the people, its genius and taste, all co-operate. Such principles of conservation as Philalethes has referred to are obvious. No works of excellence ought to be exposed to the atmosphere, and it is a great object to preserve them in apartments of equable temperature and extremely dry. The roofs of magnificent buildings should be of materials not likely to be dissolved by water or changed by air. Many electrical conductors should be placed so as to prevent the slow or the rapid effects of atmospheric electricity. In painting, lapis lazuli or coloured hard glasses, in which the oxides are not liable to change, should be used, and should be laid on marble or stucco encased in stone, and no animal or vegetable substances, except pure carbonaceous matter, should be used in the pigments, and none should be mixed with the varnishes.
Eub.—Yet, when all is done that can be done in the work of conservation, it is only producing a difference in the degree of duration. And from the statements that our friend has made it is evident that none of the works of a mortal being can be eternal, as none of the combinations of a limited intellect can be infinite. The operations of Nature, when slow, are no less sure; however man may for a time usurp dominion over her, she is certain of recovering her empire. He converts her rocks, her stones, her trees, into forms of palaces, houses, and ships; he employs the metals found in the bosom of the earth as instruments of power, and the sands and clays which constitute its surface as ornaments and resources of luxury; he imprisons air by water, and tortures water by fire to change or modify or destroy the natural forms of things. But, in some lustrums his works begin to change, and in a few centuries they decay and are in ruins; and his mighty temples, framed as it were for immortal and divine purposes, and his bridges formed of granite and ribbed with iron, and his walls for defence, and the splendid monuments by which he has endeavoured to give eternity even to his perishable remains, are gradually destroyed; and these structures, which have resisted the waves of the ocean, the tempests of the sky, and the stroke of the lightning, shall yield to the operation of the dews of heaven, of frost, rain, vapour, and imperceptible atmospheric influences; and, as the worm devours the lineaments of his mortal beauty, so the lichens and the moss and the most insignificant plants shall feed upon his columns and his pyramids, and the most humble and insignificant insects shall undermine and sap the foundations of his colossal works, and make their habitations amongst the ruins of his palaces and the falling seats of his earthly glory.
Phil.—Your history of the laws of the inevitable destruction of material forms recalls to my memory our discussion at Adelsberg. The changes of the material universe are in harmony with those which belong to the human body, and which you suppose to be the frame or machinery of the sentient principle. May we not venture to imagine that the visible and tangible world, with which we are acquainted by our sensations, bears the same relation to the Divine and Infinite Intelligence that our organs bear to our mind, with this only difference, that in the changes of the divine system there is no decay, there being in the order of things a perfect unity, and all the powers springing from one will and being a consequence of that will, are perfectly and unalterably balanced. Newton seemed to apprehend, that in the laws of the planetary motions there was a principle which would ultimately be the cause of the destruction of the system. Laplace, by pursuing and refining the principles of our great philosopher, has proved that what appeared sources of disorder are, in fact, the perfecting machinery of the system, and that the principle of conservation is as eternal as that of motion.
The Unknown.—I dare not offer any speculations on this grand and awful subject. We can hardly comprehend the cause of a simple atmospheric phenomenon, such as the fall of a heavy body from a meteor; we cannot even embrace in one view the millionth part of the objects surrounding us, and yet we have the presumption to reason upon the infinite universe and the eternal mind by which it was created and is governed. On these subjects I have no confidence in reason, I trust only to faith; and, as far as we ought to inquire, we have no other guide but revelation.
Phil.—I agree with you that whenever we attempt metaphysical speculations, we must begin with a foundation of faith. And being sure from revelation that God is omnipotent and omnipresent, it appears to me no improper use of our faculties to trace even in the natural universe the acts of His power and the results of His wisdom, and to draw parallels from the infinite to the finite mind. Remember, we are taught that man was created in the image of God, and, I think, it cannot be doubted that in the progress of society man has been made a great instrument by his energies and labours for improving the moral universe. Compare the Greeks and Romans with the Assyrians and Babylonians, and the ancient Greeks and Romans with the nations of modern Christendom, and it cannot, I think, be questioned that there has been a great superiority in the latter nations, and that their improvements have been subservient to a more exalted state of intellectual and religious existence. If this little globe has been so modified by its powerful and active inhabitants, I cannot help thinking that in other systems beings of a superior nature, under the influence of a divine will, may act nobler parts. We know from the sacred writings that there are intelligences of a higher nature than man, and I cannot help sometimes referring to my vision in the Colosaeum, and in supposing some acts of power of those genii or seraphs similar to those which I have imagined in the higher planetary systems. There is much reason to infer from astronomical observations that great changes take place in the system of the fixed stars: Sir William Herschel, indeed, seems to have believed that he saw nebulous or luminous matter in the process of forming suns, and there are some astronomers who believe that stars have been extinct; but it is more probable that they have disappeared from peculiar motions. It is, perhaps, rather a poetical than a philosophical idea, yet I cannot help forming the opinion that genii or seraphic intelligences may inhabit these systems and may be the ministers of the eternal mind in producing changes in them similar to those which have taken place on the earth. Time is almost a human word and change entirely a human idea; in the system of Nature we should rather say progress than change. The sun appears to sink in the ocean in darkness, but it rises in another hemisphere; the ruins of a city fall, but they are