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LIFE
NATURE, VARIETIES, AND PHENOMENA.
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y
L E O r< H : G R I N D O N ,
LECTURER ON BOTANY AT THE ROYAL SCHOOL OP MEDICINE, MANCHESTER;
AUTHOR OV "EMBLEMS," " FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE," ETC.
V
FIRST AMERICAN EDITION,
C PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO,
1867.
.J
PREFACE.
The object of this work is two-fold. First, it is proposed to
give a popular account of the phenomena which indicate the
presence of that mysterious, sustaining force we denominate Life,
or Vitality, and of the laws which appear to govern their mani-
festation; secondly, will be considered those Spiritual, or Emo-
tional and Intellectual States, which collectively constitute the
essential history of our temjjoral lives, rendering existence either
pleasurable or painful. The inquiry will thus embrace all the
most interesting and instructive subjects alike of physiology and
psychology : the constitution and functions of the bodies in which
we dwell ; the delights which attend the exercise of the intellect
and the affections ; the glory and loveliness of the works of God,
will all come under notice, and receive their fitting meed of illus-
tration. Especially will the practical value and interest of life
be pointed out ; the unity and fine symmetry of the True, the
Beautiful, and the Good; the poetry of "common things," and
the intimate dependence of the whole upon Him in whom " we
live, and move, and have our being. ' ' Man, as the noblest recipi-
ent, upon earth, of the divine life, will naturally be the principal
object of consideration; not, however, the only one. Seeing
that he is the Archetype of the entire system of living things,
the principles of a true doctrine concerning Mm become the
4 PEEFACE.
principles of Natural History in every one of its departments.
Animals, plants, even tlie inorganic world of minerals, mil all,
therefore, be taken account of, in so far as will be needful to the
general purpose of the volume. To those who care for the illus-
tration which physical science casts upon the science of mind,
and upon the truths of Revelation, there will probably be much
that is both novel and inviting. In fact, it has been sedulously
aimed to show how intimate and striking is the relation of human
knowledges, and how grand is the harmony of things natural and
divine. Some readers may regard the combination of ph
poetiy, and theology, so eminently characteristic of the -...^.
ters, as detrimental to their value, since the subjects in question
are commonly regarded as incongruous. It is sufficient to say,
in anticipation of such criticism, that one great aim of the entire
work is to show the essential consanguinity of every form of
human thought and human feeling. There has been no hesita-
tion in dealing with some of the most sacred of topics. The
physical and the spiritual worlds are in such close connection,
that to attempt to treat philosophically of either of them apart
from the other, is to divorce what Grod has joined together.
Though the authorized teacher of holy things undoubtedly has
his special office, it is no invasion, therefore, of his prerogative
to speak ' ' religiously' ' on themes so high and beautiful as the
attestations of the divine love expressed in nature. Science
without religion is empty and unvital. Tnie wisdom, finding the
whole world expressive of God, calls upon us to walk at all times
and in all places, in the worship and reverent contemplation of
Him. Wishful at all times to speak modestly, and upon sacred
matters always most reverently, if a single sentence in the
volume can be shown not to be in accordance with, or can be
proved contrary to a right and true interpretation of Scripture.
PREFACE.
it is here, once for all, acknowledged false, and declared un-
spoken.
The views which are set forth lay few claims to originality.
They are such as have been held by select thinkers in every age,
though perhaps never before expressed connectedly, or in similar
-terms. Not that the book is a mere compilation of time-worn
facts. Several of the chapters, such as those upon Rejuve-
nescence, and the Prefigurations of Nature, deal with subjects
hitherto scarcely touched. Neither are the views here offered
fin til -■ binding on a single reader; they are offered as opinions
fviTx- ictions rather than as dogmas. Certainly, most part of
the work is written affirmatively, but this must be taken only as
indicating earnestness of conviction ; anything like dogmatizing
is altogether disclaimed. They are views which have brought
inexpressible hapjDiness to the writer ; and they are offered in
the hope that, whUe they may render the strange mystery of life
less perplexing, they will help to render others happy likewise.
That the book is in many respects greatly deficient, no one can
become more sensible than the author is. It would be remark-
able were it otherwise, when the vast extent of the subject is
considered, and the impossibility of compressing it into moderate
limits. Ordinaril}'^, those subjects have been preferred for con-
sideration which are least commonly attended to. Some may
seem to call for more lengthy treatment than they receive ; but
they are designedly curtailed, because already discussed in extenso
by authors of repute. Such are Sleep, and the Brain. The
incompleteness of the remarks upon others is compensated in the
author's separate writings. A large number of quotations will
be found, ample reference being made to the authorities in all
the more important of them, and the remainder acknowledged
in the usual manner. The reader who is acquainted with the
6 PREFACE.
authors cited will not regret to meet old friends ; and to the
younger student, they may be valuable as pointing to new sources
of information. Inserted, as a considerable portion of them
have been, purely from memory, exercised over a long and diver-
sified course of reading, it has been impossible always to authen-
ticate minutely. For the benefit of the younger reader, copious
references to the literature of the subject are also introduced ;
the book forming, in this respect, a kind of index.
Appended will be found an appropriate adjunct to the subject
of Life, in the shape of a little essay on "Times and Seasons,''
CONTEI^TS.
CHAPTER I.
PAQg
General idea of Life, and universality of its presence — Latent life--
Value of the doctrine sought to be established ,..,,,, ,, 11
CHAPTER II.
The Source of life, and the rationale of life — The essence of life un-
discoverable — Laws of Nature.. .,...,,. 26
CHAPTER III.
The varieties of life — Organic life — The vital stimuli — Correlation of
forces 38
CHAPTER IV.
Food — Molecular death and reneAval of the body — Specialities of food
— Hunger the source of moral order — Hunger and love the world's
two great ministers 67
CHAPTER V.
The Atmosphere in its relation to life — Respiration — The Heart and
the Lungs — Respiration of plants — Trees in grave-yards 77
CHAPTER VL
Motion the universal Sign of life — -Motion in plants — Motion needful
to Beauty — The Sea and the Clouds — Repose 100
CHAPTER VIL
Death — Causes of physical death — The Blood — The nervous system —
Tenacity of Life — Death of plants 11]
5 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER virr.
PAGE
The various leases of life — Lease of life in plants — Trees — Death bal-
anced by reproduction 128
CHAPTER IX.
Duration of life in Animals — Leases of the Mammalia; of Birds ; of
Fishes and Reptiles; of Insects — Lease of Human Life 152
CHAPTER X.
Grounds of the various lease of life — Spiritual basis of nature — The
material world representative only — Materialism and Spiritualism.. 175
CHAPTER XI.
Grounds of the various lease of life, continued — Correspondence of
Nature and Mind — Leases of extinct animals and plants — The Pre-
Adamite world — Geology and Psychology „ 194
CHAPTER XIL
The spiritual expression of life — Nature and Seat of the Soul — The
Soul a spiritual body 207
CHAPTER XIIL
Soul, Spirit, Ghost — Meaning of these words — Philosophy of Lan-
guage — Anima and Animus — Psyche and Pneuma — Summary 227
CHAPTER XIV.
True idea of Youth and Age — Age no matter of Birth-days — The In-
tellect in advanced life — Life is Love 249
CHAPTER XV.
The affections in relation to life — -Love of Nature — Poetry of Com-
mon things — The Imagination — Natural History and the Pulpit —
Town versus Country ^ 261
CHAPTER XVL
The Intellectual faculties in relation to Life — True idea of Education
—Reading— The Friendship of Books 2S0
CONTENTS. 9
CHAPTER XVII.
PAGE
The Religious Element of Life — True idea of Religious Sects —
Worldly pleasures and Religion 298
CHAPTER XVIII.
Life realized by Activity — -Action the law of Happiness — Ennui —
Art of Conversation — -PJay .311
CHAPTER XIX.
Death in relation to the spiritual life — -Scriptural meanings of Death. 333
CHAPTER XX.
Rejuvenescence — Death an operation of Life — Sleep — Spring — The
Poem of Geology — Flowering plants and Humanity — New doc-
trines and old 344
CHAPTER XXL
Health and Disease — The miracle of Healing — Rationale of mira-
cles—Unity of Truth 366
CHAPTER XXIL
Mortality and Immortality — Life to be made the most of — Sorrow for
the Dead — Why is man immortal? — Doctrine of the immortality of
brutes 386
CHAPTER XXIIL
The Resurrection and the Future Life — True and false emblems of
Death — Dreams — The Spiritual World 406
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Analogies of Nature — Law of Prefiguration 425
CHAPTER XXV.
The Chain of Nature — Continuous and Discrete Degrees — Law of
Promotion 447
10 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXVI.
PAGB
The Unity of Nature — Homology- — True principles of Classification of
organized beings 470
CHAPTER XXVIl.
Man the Epitome of Nature — Three Kingdoms of the Human Body
— Three Degrees of Human Life 497
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Instinct and Reason — Instinct co-ordinate with Life — Specialties of
Instinct 509
CHAPTER XXIX.
Instinct and Reason, continued — Instinct in Man — Reason and Intelli-
gence ,.... 521
CHAPTER XXX.
Summary— Inspiration — Life epitomized in Genius 536
TIMES AND SEASONS 545
LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL IDEA OF LIFE, AND UNIVEBSAIITT OF ITS
FMESENCE.
1. Life is the loftiest subject of philosophy. There is no
place where life is not present; and there never was a time
when life was not. In the great composite fact of a Ckea-
TOE are involved the elemental facts of Omnipresence and
Eternity of existence; and these, in turn, involve Infinite
Creative Activity, which is the production and sustentation
of arenas of ever-renovated life. To suppose the Creator
ever to have been inactive or unproducing, would be to sup-
pose him inconsistent with himself. Doubtless every one of
the innumerable orbs of the universe had a beginning, —
some, probably, were created long subsequently to others,
and are comparatively in their childhood; but a period
when there Avere no worlds, — no terraqueous scenes of the
bestowal of the Divine Love, the mind is incapable of con-
ceiving. Ancient as our own world is, there were "morning
stars" which "sang together" at its nativity. That such
scenes of life do really exist, certainly we neither know, nor
is it probable that it lies within the power of man scien-
tifically to determine; but the affirmative is congenial alike
to reason, philosophy, and enlarged ideas of God. Truth
in such matters is determined by balancing probabilities,
rather than by rigid, mathematical demonstration. If the
11
12 PROPER MEANING OF THE TERM LIFE.
former proposition be admissible, namely, that an inactive,
unproducing Creator is a contradiction in terms, the "plu-
rality of worlds" is a corollary almost inevitable. "Life
was not made for matter, but matter for life. In whatever
spot we see it, whether at our feet, or in the planet, or in the
remotest star, we may be sure that life is there, — life physical
to enjoy its beauties — life moral to worship its maker — life
intellectual to proclaim his wisdom and his power." Doubt-
less, too, every shape of organized existence had its own
special era of commencement, as illustrated in the sequen-
tialism of the fossils beneath our feet ;* but those very fossils
show at the same moment, ttat organic life is contempora-
neous with the consolidation of the worlds which it embel-
lishes, and thus with the dayspring of Time.- The very
purpose of a world's creation is that it shall be at once
clothed and made beautiful with life. "For thus saith the
Lord that created the heavens, — God himself that formed
the earth and made it; He hath established it; He created
it not in vain ; He formed it to be inhabited."
2. Under the term Life, however, rightly regarded, is
comprehended far more than it is ordinarily used to denote.
We err, if when thinking of the habitations of life we
associate it only with ourselves, animals, and plants. Life,
in its proper, generic sense, is the name of the sustaining
* The non-geological reader may be apprised that the petrified
remains of animals and plants, which form so large a portion of col-
lections of natural curiosities, are not mixed indiscriminately in the
earth, but always occupy the same relative places, — that is, every
layer or stratum, or at least every group of strata, has its peculiar
fossils, showing that there must have been as many distinct creations
as there are changes in the character of the relics. When plants
and animals first appeared upon our planet, geology will probably
never be able to point out, nor even to calculate. Azoic rocks are no
proof of azoic periods.
ITS UNIVERSALITY. 18
principle by which everything out of the Creator subsists,
whether worlds, metals, minerals, trees, animals, mankind,
angels, or devils, together with all thought and feeling.
Nothing is absolutely lifeless, though many things are
relatively so ; and it is simply a conventional restriction of
the term, which makes life signify no more than the vital
energy of an organized, material body, or the phenomena in
which that energy is exhibited. Though in man life be at
its maximum, it is not to be thought of as concentrated in
him, nor even in " animated nature," outside of which there
is as much life as there is inside ; though not the same expres-
sion of life. "The life which works in your organized
frame," said Laon, "is but an exalted condition of the
power which occasions the accretion of particles into this
crystalline mass. The quickenmg force of nature through
every form of being is the same."* "The characteristic,"
observes another quick-sighted writer, "which, manifested in
a high degree, we call Life, is a characteristic manifested
only in a lower degree by so-called inanimate objects."t
Hufeland, Oersted, Humboldt, Coleridge, in his " Theory of
Life," Arnold Guyot, in "The Earth and Man," and many
others, express themselves in similar terms, none, however,
more explicitly than the distinguished Carus: — "The idea
of Life is co-extensive with Universal Nature. The indi-
vidual or integrant parts of Nature are the members; uni-
versal nature is the total and complete organism. The
relations of inorganic to organized bodies exist only by
reason of this; hence, too, the universal connection, the
combination, the never-ceasing action and re-action of all
the powers of nature, producing the vast and magnificent
* "Pantliea; or, tlie Spirit of Nature," by Kobert Hunt, p. 50,
1849.
f Herbert Spencer. — Westminster Reviev:, April, 1852, p. 472.
2
14 TESTIMONY OF LANGUAGE.
whole of the world ; — an action and re-action which would
be impossible, were not all pervaded by a single principle of
Life."* Strictly speaking, every atom of the constituent
matter of our globe is alive. "Inanimate matter," "dead
matter," often vaguely spoken of, matter waiting for the
breath of Deitj^ to give it life, exists only in fable. Matter
is not a hearth existing anteriorly to life, and independently
of life, and upon which the flame of life is sometime kindled.
In its very simplest and crudest forms it is a sign that the flame
is already burning. The language of poetry, or rather of
the poetic sentiment, — the golden key to the essential mean-
ings of words, and the teacher of their right applications,
has from ages immemorial shown that life is no mere term
of physiology ; and Scripture, which is the sum and immortal
bloom of all poetry, pronounces, in its usages, a divine con-
firmation. In the force and multiplicity of its figurative
applications, no word takes precedence of Life, — a fact
which mere accident or conformity to other men's example
would be quite insufficient to account for; the reason is that
what we ordinarily call "Life," namely, organic, physiolo-
gical life, is the exponent and explanatory phase of a prin-
ciple felt to be omnipresent, manifold in expression, but
uniform in entity. The profound, unerring perceptions of
the harmonies of nature, which were the original archi-
tects, and are the conservators and trustees of language,
acknowledged no private property in words; and though
conventionalism and contraction of vicAV may seek to enslave
particular terms. Life among the number, ever and ever do
those perceptions free them from their bonds, and pass them
on to their rightful inheritances. Hence it is that on the
* "The Kingdom of ISTature: their Life and Affinity," by Dr. C-
Ct. Cams. Translated from the German, in Taylor's Scientific Me-
moirs, vol. i., p. 223. 1837.
LIFE VARIOUSLY MANIFESTED. 15
lips of tlie poet; — that is, on the lips of every man who is
in closer alliance with God, and Truth, and Nature than are
the multitude; — words which with the vulgus have but one
solitary, narrowed meaning, are continually found serving-
varied and brilliant purposes, which Taste appreciates and
relishes delightedly. Strange and unnatural as its phrases
may sound to the unreflective mind, figurative language,
rightly so called, is Nature's high-priest of Truth. " Rightly
so called," because metaphors and similes founded upon
mere arbitrary or far-fetched comparisons, though often
confounded with figurative language, are generally but its
mockery and caricature. True figurative language is an
echo of the divine, immortal harmonies of nature, thus their
faithfiil expositor, the vestibule of Philosophy, and an epi-
tome of the highest science of the universe.
3. When it is popularly said, then, that one thing is ani-
mate, and another inanimate ; that life is present here, but
absent there; the simple fact of the matter is that a particu-
lar manifestation of life is absent or present. Such phrases
come of confounding Expression, which is variable, with
Principle, which is uniform. A particular presentation of
life is contemplated, and thus not only is the principle itself
misconceived, but everything which does not conform to the
assumed impersonation of it is pronounced contrary to that
which in reality has no contraries. Just as with popular
notions of what constitutes Religion, which it is impossible
rightly to apprehend and define, so long as it is confounded
with the forms of faith, and the modes and attitudes of wor-
ship, by which it is locally sought to be realized. It is a
mere assumption, for instance, that life is present only where
thei*e are physical growth, feeding, motion, sensation, repro-
duction, &c. Life confines itself to no such scanty costume ;
and as if it would rebuke the penuriousness of a doctrine
which so limits and degrades it, often forbears from all the
16 FUNGI AND SPONGES.
more striking phenomena of the series, in the very depart-
ments of nature of which they are asserted to be characteris-
tic ; and expresses itself so slenderly, that science needs all its
eyes and analogies to discern it. In the ftingi, for example,
and in the sponge, both of which forms of being, by reason
of their attenuated presentation of life, have been regarded
in time past as belonging to inorganic nature. Fungi have
been thought to be the extinguished relics or corpses of the
beautiful meteors called " falling stars ;" sponges have been
deemed mere concretions of the foam of the sea. " There is
found," says old Gerarde, " upon the rocks neare vnto the
sea, a certaine matter wrought together of the fome or froth
of the sea, which we call spuuges." It is proper to remark,
however, that by Aristotle, the father of natural history, the
animal constitution of sponges was at all events anticipated.*
So Avith the beautiful frondose zoophytes called Sertularia,
Thuiaria, Plumularia, Flustra, &c.f So late as a century
ago, the mineralogists disputed the zoological and botanical
claims to the possession of these beautiful organisms, con-
tending that they Avere " formed by the sediment and agglu-
tination of a submarine, general compost of calcareous and
argillaceous materials, moulded into the figures of trees and
* For a long and eminently interesting account of the opinions
and discoveries of the nature of Sponges, and of their situation and
rank in the scale of organized being, see the admirable " History
of British Sponges and Lithophytes," by the late lamented Dr.
George Johnson, the Gilbert White of the sea.
f Though these names may not be familiar, the objects they
designate are known to all Avho have interested themselves in the
curiosities and wonders of the shore. Resembling sea-weeds in
their general aspect and configuration, and commonly confounded
with them, they are, nevertheless, readily distinguishable by their
semi-crystalline texture, and whitish brown color ; the prevailing
colors of true sea-weeds being pink, green, or dark olive.
THE IDEA OF LIFE A PROGRESSIVE ONE. 17
mosses by the motion of the waves ; by crystallization (as
in salts), or by some imagined vegetative power in brute
matter. Ray himself seems not to have made up his mind
about them, for though in some of his writings he indicates a
correct apprehension of their nature, in the " Wisdom of
God manifested in the Works of Creation," he includes them
among " inanimate, mixed bodies," or " stones, metals, mine-
rals, and salts." " Some," says he, " have a kind of vegeta-
tion and resemblance of plants, as Corals, Fori, and Fun-
gites, which grow uidou the rocks like shrubs." The fact is,
the notions of life and of what lives, as of the Avhole, genuine,
truth in any matter, are things essentially of growth, and
modification for the better. The popular notion of life is
not a censurable one. It necessarily precedes ; the error be-
ing to remain in it after it has been shoAvn to be only jjart
of a truth. Partial truths everywhere form the beginnings
of knoAvledge. In science, in philosophy, in theology, it is
neither so much nor so often that positively /a&e doctrines are
held, as defective ones. The difference between the intellec-
tual conditions of childhood and maturity, and thus between
their counterparts, the uncultivated and the cultivated mind,
consists, mainly, in the ability to discriminate between what
is less true and what is more completely true. Unfortunately,
we are all of us too prone to rest content with our little
glimpses, and to deem them the absolute total. Tell the
dull-witted, uninformed man that the gray, leatherlike fun-
gus upon the old paling lives as veritably as he himself does,
and he will laugh at you. To him, eating, drinking, and
movement from place to place alone indicate life. You
may get his assent perhaps to the proposition that the beau-
tiful tree swaymg its branches there, is alive ; but to make
the same demand on behalf of the lichens, is to quench all
his belief in your sincerity, if not in your sanity. To the
perception of this higher theorem he must progress, as his
18 LIFE DOES NOT IMPLY VOLITION,
teacher did before him, and as that teacher also himself fu]--
ther progresses, when not shackled by a mistaken deference,
to the perception of a sustaining life even in inorganic
things. 'No estimate of facts in nature can be regarded as
just, consistent, and complete, which confines itself to a
fixed circumference, calling everything beyond, barbarian.
In his sphere, the philosopher who sees life only in organic
things, is no more advanced than the rustic and the child,
who allow it only to animals.
4. It needs very little observation of nature to perceive
that life does not necessarily imply consciousness or feeling.
If it did, the whole vegetable creation would be lifeless, to-
gether with many animal structures of humble kind, as the
sponge and allied beings. So with the mere circumstances,
separately taken, of volitional movement, feeding and
growth. As regards movement, for instance, no observa-
tion or experiment has rendered it even probable that plants
ever move volitionally, and the same may be said of the
humble animal organisms just alluded to. This might be
presupposed, indeed, from the utter absence from plants and
the sponge, of consciousness and sensation, seeing that with-
out these there can be no volition, and therefore no impulse
to move. The fascinatingly curious examples of movement
furnished in the different kinds of Sensitive-plant,* may
* There are many kinds of sensitive-plant besides the species
commonly so called, though nearly all are comprised in the great
family of plants called Leguminosce. The veritable Mimosa sensitiva
is a very different thing from the beautiful little Mimosa pudica, the
species ordinarily known as the sensitive-plant. The other exam-
ples of sensitiveness occur in different species of Oxalidece, a family
of which our English wood-sorrel is the type ; and in the extraordi-
nary plants known as the fly-catchers, comprehended in the family
of Droseracece, the most remarkable being the North American
Venus' fly-trap, or 3ionrea muscipida.
PHENOMENA OF VEGETABLE LIFE. 19
seem to be exceptional, but the whole of these are referable
to causes which involve no degree whatever of volition.
The most curious of all, namely, the play of the leaflets of
the Moving-plant,* may be compared with such movements
in the animal body as that of the heart, which is constantly
pulsating, yet quite independently of the will, and even out
of its control Exceptions may also seem to occur in the
closing and opening of m.any kinds of flowers, commonly
called their sleep and their waking ; also in the folding and
re-expansion of the leaves, and in the adva^nce of the sta-
mens of certain flowers toward-S the pistil. For all of these,
however, there is adequate explanation. Causes exciting
from without, manifestly elicit the chief part of the respec-
tive movements ; while others are purely mechanical.
Nothing is easier to perceive, for instance, than that the
leap of the stamens of the Kalmia from their niches in the
corolla, comes of the wider expansion of the flower, which
unfixes the anthers, and thus causes the filaments to ex-
change their constrained curvature for the straightness of
freedom.f The only other kind of vegetable movement ap-
parently volitional, is that of the minute aquatics called,
from the nature of their motion, Oscillatoria. Carpenter
compares this to the ciliary movement in animals, which is
'•^ The Moving-plant, or Desmodiuvi gyrans, is a native of Bengal,
and one of the family of the Leguminosse above mentioned. Its
leaves are somewhat like those of the clover, and the leaflets, under
given circumstances, keep moving up and down. An excellent
colored drawing of it may be seen in the " Icones Plantarum Eario-
rum" of Jacquin, vol. iii., tab. 565. Similar movements take place
in the Desmodiwn gyroides and D. vespertilionis.
f For particulars of various plant-movements of this nature, see
Balfour's "Class-Book of Botany," pp. 492-500; and on the subject
of plant motion in general, Carpenter's "Principles of General and
Comparative Physiology," chap. xv.
20 PHYSIOLOGICAL PHENOMENA.
SO independent of volition as often to continue after the
organism itself is dead.*
5. That the mere act of feeding is not an indispensable
testimony to the presence of life, is shown in deciduous trees,
or those which cast their foliage in the autumn, and hyber-
nate till sj)ring, seeing that without the presence of leaves,
no true vegetable nutrition can proceed. Insects, while in
the chrysalis form, exemplify the same thing, as do all kinds
of hybernating animals. So with the phenomenon of grow-
ing. That this is not needed in order to betoken life, is illus-
trated in every egg before it is placed under the hen, and in
every seed before put into the soil. Contemplating " latent
life," as the physiologists call it, or that which supports the
egg and the seed prior to hatching and germination, we dis-
cover in fact, that behind the scenes there is, if possible, even
more life than in front. Millions of beings enjoy complete
* For descriptions and colored drawings of the Oscillatoria, see the
"British Fresh- water Algse" of Hassall, (1849), wherein is shown
reason also for supposing the motion of these plants to have been
" misunderstood and exaggerated to such an extent as to have sur-
rounded them with an unnecessary degree of mystery.
"Ciliary motion" is that of the cilia, in animalcules the principal
organs of locomotion and of obtaining food ; but best to be under-
stood, perhaps, from what these organs and their movements are in
our own bodies. The human cilia are minute, transparent hairs,
ranging from l-oOOth to l-5000th of an inch in length, and covering
various interior surfaces, with which water, or other more or less
fluid matters are commonly in contact. They abound about the eyes
and ears, and cover the whole extent of the respiratory mucous tract.
Their office is to assist in propelling onwards, and usually outwards,
the fluid matters brought into contact with them ; and they do this
either by constantly waving backwards and forwards, or by whirling
round on their bases, so that the extremities describe circles — the
ixitural result being a continuous current in a determinate direction.
The waving and whirling are the " ciliary movement."
LATENT LIFE — VITALITY OF SEEDS. 21
and active life ; tens of millions lie potentially alive, crowd-
ing with intense vitality the very places which to appearance
seem most empty. When excavations are made in the
ground, the earth brought to the surface speedily becomes
covered with plants, the seeds of which, as they could not
possibly have been conveyed there at the moment, must
have been lying in the soil, accidentally buried at some re-
mote period, too deep to be acted upon by the rain and air.
This is rendered the more indisputable by the curious fact
that plants of different species from those common in the
neighborhood, not infrequently spring up among the others.
Ploughing deeper than usual will occasion similar resurrec-
tions, and the same when the surface soil of old gardens is
pared off. Often has there shone a lovely and unexpected
renewal of choice blossoms on removing the turf under the
walls of old, gray castles and abbeys, which for ages, ivy
and the faithful wall-fiower alone have solaced.* The water
contains similar stores, holding in suspension myriads of
germs of algae, ready to grow as soon as they meet with a
* For remarkable instances of the tenacity of life in seeds, espe-
cially when buried, see Jesse's "Gleanings in Natural History," vol.
i., p. 138, and ii., p. 135 ; Hooker's " Companion to the Botanical
Magazine," vol. ii., p. 293; Loudon's "Magazine of Natural His-
tory," iii. 418 ; viii. 393 ; x. 447, &c.
The well-known story of the grains of wheat taken from the hand
of the Egyptian mummy, germinating after thirty centuries' capti-
vity, though doubted by many, Schleiden at least is a believer in.
" How long," says he, " the vital power may slumber in the seed, is
shown by the fact that the late Count Von Sternberg raised healthy
plants of wheat from grains which were found in a mummy case
(which, therefore, must have reposed for three thousand years), and
laid them before the Assembly of Naturalists at Freyburg. This
experiment has also been made in England." ("The Plant," p. 71.)
Eggs have been found in a perfect state no less than three hundred
years old. »See "Gardeners' Chronicle," August 20th, 18i3, p. 54.
22 INVISIBLE FLOATING SEEDS.
suitable resting-place. "Before we have ke]Dt our Aquarium
a fortnight," says Mr. Gosse, " its transparent sides begin to
be dimmed, and a green scurf is seen covering them from
the bottom to the water's surface. Examined with a lens,
we find this substance to be composed of myriads of tiny
plants, some consisting of a single row of cells of a light
green hue, forming minute threads which increase in length
at their extremity, and become Confervas ; Avhile others dis-
play small, irregularly puckered leaves of deeper green, and
develope into Ulv^ and Enteromorphse." Even the atmos-
phere is charged with seeds — those minute bodies produced
in such amazing numbers by the aerial cryptogamia, and
which indicate their presence, like the algse in the water, the
instant that circumstances enable them to vegetate. Where-
ever vegetable mildew makes its appearance, it is owing to
the germination of these invisible floating seeds, the vital
energy of which, lying in abeyance only till a fitting sphere
of acting shall be offered, is one of the most wonderful things
in nature. The genera most largely represented are Penicil-
liura, Oidium, Chsetomium, Sporodyce, &c.* Not only do
the seeds of these and other microscopic fungi, along with
those of mosses and lichens, thus float in the atmosphere,
waiting their opportunity to grow ; there can be little doubt
that associated with them are myriads of germs of animal-
cules, especially Rotifera, which find a suitable nidus in
water containing organic matter in a state of decomposition,
one kind following another, according to the stage to which
the decomj)osition has proceeded, but which remain inactive
until such a nidus is afforded. It is not improbable that the
glittering motes seen in the sunbeam when it shines through
a small aperture into a dark room, consist in part, of these
* Mildew does not always consist of minute vegetable growth.
Sometimes, perhaps usually, in woven fabrics, it is referable to an
action purely chemical.
LIFE OF THE WORLD. 23
otherwise imperceptible eggs and seeds. Light, we well
know, is the great and universal Revelator. Give light
enough, and it is impossible to imagine Avhat might not
brighten into human view. The difficulty in microscopies
is not so much in obtaining lenses of increased magnifying
power, as in obtaining an adequate amount of light. It
may be- added that as life does not necessarily imply voli-
tional movement, feeding, sensation, &c., so neither is any
one of the instruments through which life is manifested,
universally present. No one instrument in particular can
be deemed therefore, as essential to life, or as absolutely
characteristic and mdicative of life.
6. That life does not necessarily imply organization or re-
production, is shoAvn in what may without impropriety be
called the Life of the World. Doubtless, there is an impas-
sable chasm between the mineral and the vegetable, as be-
tween the vegetable and the animal, and between the animal
and man. But this inorganic nature, which is represented
as "dead," because it has not the same life with the animal /-
or plant, is it then, to quote Guyot, destitute of all life ? " It
has all the sights of life, we cannot but confess. Has it not
motion in the water which streams and murmurs on the sur-
face of the continents, and which tosses in the waves of the
sea ? Has it not sympathies and antipathies in those myste-
rious elective affinities of the molecules of matter which
chemistry investigates ? Has it not the powerful attractions
of bodies to each other which govern the motions of the
stars scattered in the immensity of space, and keep them in
an admirable harmony ? Do we not see, and always with a
secret astonishment, the magnetic needle agitated at the
approach of a particle of iron, and leaping under the fire
of the Northern Light? Place any material body whatever
by the side of another, do they not immediately enter into re-
lations of interchange, of molecular attraction, of electnciry.
24 LIFE OF THE SOUL.
of magnetism ? In the inorganic part of matter, as in the
organic all is acting, all is promoting change, all is itself
undergoing transformation. And thus, though this life of
the globe, this physiology of our planet, is not the life of the
tree or the bird, is it not also a life? Assuredly it is. We
cannot refuse so to call those lively actions and reactions,
that perpetual play of the forces of matter, of which we are
every day the witnesses. The thousand voices of nature
which make themselves heard around us, and in so many
ways betoken incessant and prodigious activity, proclaim it
so loudly that we cannot shut our ears to their language."
Equally, too, may we recognize life as the central, governing
force of everything comprehended under the names of Intel-
lect and Will. The particular phenomena of animal and
plant life may not be present, but they are replaced by phe-
nomena no less truly vital. Indeed the life of the soul, or
that which is played forth as the activity of the intellect
and the affections, is the highest expression of all. Com-
pared with this life, the life of animals and plants, and the
life of the globe, are but mimicries and shadows.
7. It is this full, generic significance of the word life,
which we propose to recognize and illustrate in the following
pages; physiological life taking its place, not as life abso-
lutely and exclusively, but as one manifestation among many.
The doctrine which it involves is no mere hypothesis of the
fancy. It is dictated by nature ; it commends itself to com-
mon sense, to do Avhich is the chief glory of all that belongs
to imcommon sense; it is eminently practical; it is promo-
tive, in fact, of the highest aims of science and philosophy,
metaphysical no less than physical. Here is the great cer-
tificate of its soundness. For while the ultimate characte-
ristic and test of every true doctrine concerning nature is
that no phenomenon in the universe is absolutely beyond
the range of its powers of interpretation, the immediate and
VALUE OF OUR DOCTRINE OF LIFE. 25
proximate test lies in its capacity to illuminate every path of
human inquiry, whithersoever it may lead. Such a doctrine
has not only a local value and application, but is, directly
or indirectly, a clue to the whole mystery of creation. Other
doctrines may help more largely in particular provinces, but
no doctrine is so generally efficacious as this grand and com-
prehensive one of the omnipresence and the unity of life.
Life it is which gives to the universe all its reality as well as
^lendor, so that the larger our conception of life, the more
nearly do we approach both to a just appreciation of the
magnificence of nature, and to the solution of her stupen-
dous problems. Not the least of the advantages accessary
to the doctrine here set forth, is that the physiologist Avho
adopts it, instead of entering on his inquiries with the sense of
a great, unnatural gap between physiology and physics, finds
the latter not only adjoined, but an instructive introduction.
He ascends, as all rational philosophy advises, from the sim-
ple to the complex. Coleridge clearly exhibits this in his
"Theory of Life," above cited; Dr. Radcliffe well exemplifies
it in his " Proteus, or the Law of Nature." "As an earnest,"
he observes, " of the rich harvest which is to come when the
current separation of physiology from physics shall be for-
gotten, several phenomena which were once deemed peculiar
to living bodies are now explained by ordinary physical in-
fluences." Looked at through a single science. Life is unin-
telligible ; for the sciences, separately taken, are but like the
constituent portions of a telescope, we can only see properly
by connecting them. Physiology, for the same reason, be-
comes a pathway and preface to psychology, which inquired
into without reference to physiology, as its material represen-
tative, is but an intellectual ignis fatuus. Every true law
in metaphysics has a law corresponding to it in physical
nature, and the latter is often the surest clue whereby to
iind it.
3 B
CHAPTER II.
THE SOTTMCE OF LIFE, AND THE JtATJONALE OF EIFE.
8. Life is no part of God's tvorks, no created and there-
fore finite substance ; neither is it in any case detached from
him, or independent of him. As the rivers move along
their courses only as they are renewed from perennial
springs, welling up where no eye can reach, so is it with
life. Genuine philosophy knows of no life in the universe
but what is momentarily sustained by connection with its
source, with Him Avho " alone hath life in himself." The
popular notion, which sees an image of it rather in the
reservoir of water, filled in the first place from the spring,
but afterwards cut off", and holding an independent exist-
ence, is countenanced neither by science nor revelation.
How can independent vitality pertain even to the most
insignificant of created forms, Avhen it is said so expressly
that " in Him all things live, and move, and have their
being?" Even man has no life of his oivn, though of
nothing are peoj)le more fully persuaded than that they live
by virtue of an inborn vital energy, to maintain which, it
needs only that they shall feed and sleep. Not that men
deny the general proposition that life is from God, and in
the hands of God. Every one is willing to allow that he
received his life originally from the Almighty, and that the
Almighty takes it away from him when he pleases. Few,
however, are willing to regard themselves as existing only
by virtue of his constant influx, which, nevertheless, is the
26
THE ESSENCE OF LIFE UNDISCOVERABLE. 27
only way in which it can be true that " in Him we live, and
move, and have our being." It is wounding to self-love
and to the pride of human nature, to think of ourselves as
so wholly and minutely dependent as we are, moment by
moment, day and night, the senses all the while insinuating
the reverse. Moreover, in the minds of most men there is
a strong aversion to recognize physical effects as resulting
from spiritual causes. Towards everything, indeed, which
involves a spiritual element — which lifts us above the region
of the senses, there is a deep-seated dislike, such as mere
argument is perhaps incapable of overcoming, and which
can only give way, it would seem, under the influence of
higher moral feelings. Truly to understand anything of
God's government and providence, we must first of all be
faithful to his revealed law. We can form no right esti-
mate, either of nature or of life, till we strive, with his
divine blessing, to become in ourselves more truly human.
9. Uncreate and infinite, it follows that of the precise
nature of this grand, all-sustaining principle, this Life as
we call it, man must be content to remain forever unin-
formed. Man can obtain knowledge only of finite and
created things. No philosophy will ever be able to explain
life, seeing that to " exj^lain" is to consider a phenomenon
in the clearness of a superior light, and that life is itself
and already the highest light. However it may be mani-
fested, to man life can never be anything hut life. This is
no misfortune ; perhaps it is an advantage. It is imjDOSsible
to become either good or wise unless we can make ourselves
contented to remain ignorant of many things ; and the
grander the knowledges we must learn cheerfully to forego,
the more useful is the discipline. As there is " a time to
get and a time to lose," so is there a time to seek and a time
to refrain from seeking. The hypothesis of a "vital force,"
by which some have sought to account for life, does no more
28 NATURAL LAWS.
than jjLish the difficulty a little further back, since the ques-
tion immediately arises, What is the "vital force," and
whence derived ? Whether we contemplate it in inorganic
nature, or in organic, and by whatever name we may choose
to designate it, force is nowhere innate, nor is it originally
produced or producible by any combinations or conditions
of matter, visible or invisible. Everywhere in the consider-
ation of force, we are told of a power within and underlying
that which we are contemplatmg. Nowhere do we find the
poAver itself, but only the continent of the power ; perhaps
merely the sensible effect by which its presence is indicated.
No force, in a word, in the whole range of material nature,
is initial. The utmost point to which science can convey us,
even when dealing with the most occult and recondite phe-
nomena — those of electricity for example — never shows
where force begins. There is always a still anterior force,
which cannot be found except by the light of Theology. In
philosoiDhy, as in trouble and in death, willing or unwilling,
we must go to God at last.
10. Others refer life to the "laws of nature." This,
within certain limits, is perfectly proper. Life, in all its
varied phases and manifestations, does come, most assuredly,
of the " laws of nature." The error is to remain in the laws
of nature, and deem that life comes of these only. Laws
of nature, in themselves, have no more efficacy than "vital
force," and have as little independent existence. "In all
ages of the world," says Hitchcock, "where men have been
enlightened enough to reason upon the causes of phenomena,
a mysterious and a mighty power has been imputed to the
laws of nature. A large portion of the most enlightened
men have felt as if these laws not only explain, but possess
an inherent poAver to continue, the ordinary operations of
nature. But what is a natural law without the presence
and energizing power of the \'a,v^giver f Who can show how
GOD ALONE IS LIFE. 29
a law operates except through the influence of the lawgiver?
How unphilosophical, then, to separate a law of nature from
the Deity, and to imagine him to have withdrawn from his
works ! To do this would be to annihilate the law. He
must be present every moment, and direct every movement
of the universe, as really as the mind of man must be in
his body in order to produce movement there. The law
hypothesis supposes law caj)able of doing what only Infinite
wisdom and power can do. And what is this but ascribing
infinite perfection to law, and making a Deity of' the laws
which he ordains ?"* Law of itself could not cause or
maintain the existence of a single thing, though it was ac-
cording to law all things were created, and though it is by
the same primitive, immutable laws, that all phenomena,
both material and spiritual, are effectuated. It is the life
underlying the laAV which causes and sustains. The law is
merely the mode of the pu.tting forth of that life ; the rule
of its action ; the definite method in which the internal. Di-
vine, dynamic principle is projected. Nature has no inde-
pendent activity, no causality of its own. God is the only
independent existence, and he is the cause of all causes.
He alone hath life in himself Proximately, the universe,
and all that it contains, is ^ato-governed : but it is at the
same time fundamentally and essentially (roc^-governed.
Animals and plants, in their vital processes, the external
world and all its changes, alike declare a Divine beginning.
God it is who displays the manifold lovely phenomena which
render the earth, the air, the sea, and their vicissitudes,
pictures so vivid of human experience. The tossing of the
white-crested waves; the gliding of the clouds before the
wind ; the daily illumination, and the morning and evening
painting of the sky ; the glitter of the stars ; the rainbow,
■"■ Religion of Geology. Lecture ix.
3«
30 THE PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS OF MATTER.
these, and all other such things, come of the watchful and
benevolent activity of our living Father in the heavens, who
is never a mere spectator, much less an indifferent one, either
in terrestrial or m spiritual things ; still are they in no case
exercises of mere lawless fiat.
11. The very existence of the earth as a planetary mass
depends, but in a proximate sense, on the "laws of nature."
The same is true of the various materials wliich compose it;
water, for example, formed under the influence of the natural
law which science calls "chemical affinity." Let the affinity
be annulled, — in other words, let the Divine life cease to act
upon the constituent oxygen and hydrogen, no longer im-
pelling them to combine, — and every drop would instantly
decompose and disappear. Under a similar withdrawal
of sustaining energy, every solid and fluid of nature, even
the solids we call simple and primitive, would depart;
massive and impregnable as it seems, the Avhole of this great
globe would dissolve into thin air and vanish. For just as
water is resolvable into oxygen and hydrogen, so are these
latter, along with the solid elements, the metals, phosphorus,
iodine, &c., resolvable into yet finer elements, into which,
unless supported by the Divine life, they Avould similarly
decompose. The actually primitive elements of our earth,
instead of fifty-five or fifty-six, are probably only two. The
tendency, without doubt, if we look only at one dejDartment
of chemical inquiry, seems of late to have been towards an
increase of the number rather than to a diminution; the
l^rofounder investigations of natural philosophers dispose
them, however, more strongly every day, to refer back the
whole to a simple flagrant or inflammable body, and a pure
conflagrant body, or supporter of fire; in other words, to an
active substance and a passive. The analj'-sis of one will
lead to the reduction of all the rest, and establish the true
jyrincipia whereby the science of chemistry will be consum-
RELATION OF THE WORLD TO GOD, 31
mated. Science, be it remembered, has never made a single
step except in the wake of imagination ; the practical ideas
of one age have all been begotten of the impractical of a
former ; the morning star of all philosophy is poetr}- . Gold,
silver, oxygen, &c., probably come each one of them of a
special play of afhnity between the molecules of the two
primitives, having a corollary in the resulting products of
absolute and relative ductility, elasticity, &c., such as causes
gold to be where we find gold, silver where we find silver, as
accurately and inevitably as the afiinities which take place
between the atoms of gold, silver, oxygen, &c., give origin,
in turn, to oxides, acids, earths, alkalies. Whether there be
any yet earlier conditions of matter than these two can only
be reasoned upon from analogy. It is not within the ability
of man to compass with actual knowledge either the maxi-
mum naturcB or the minimum.
12. Though the Divine, by means of his life, be thus the
basis of all nature, even its minutest atom, we are not to
confound him with nature; — this would be even worse than
the ascription of everything to "Law." Superfluous as it
may seem after the distinct references that have been made,
it is well, perhaps, that upon this great and sacred point we
should have, before going any further, a full and explicit
understanding. The ancients described the world as a huge
animal, vitalized by an impersonal (['o-^^-rj y.oajioo, or anima
vnmdi. Even in modern times we have seen it taught that —
" All are but parts of one stupendous whole.
Whose body nature is, and God the soul."
Commonly termed "Pantheism," this is, properly speaking.
Atheism. Pantheism, rightly so called, is the doctrine which
sinks nature in God. "This was the pantheism of the
famous Spinoza, which some peojDle have been so foolish as to
call atheism. Spinoza was so absorbed in the idea of God, that
32 GOD AND NATURE DISTINCT.
lie could see nothing else." Pantheism is the most unreason-
able of doctrines; atheism the most mean and gross. God
is God, and nature is nature. Intimately connected with
each other, yet are they absolutely distinct. Nature is an
utterance of the divine mind, clothed in material configura-
tions and phenomena, — flowing from it as words from the
underlying thought, or the deeds of friendship from its sen-
timent; God himself reigns apart from it, in the heavens.
No true conception of nature can be attained, any more
than a true doctrine of the grounds and uses of religion,
till this great truth of the separateness, and therefore the
personality of God, be acknowledged and felt. For even to
think only of wisdom, power, omnipresence, &c., is not to
think of God; it is but to think of a mere catalogue of
abstractions; the terms are meaningless till impersonated,
till we connect them, in short, with Him who said, — "He
who hath seen me hath seen the Father,"- — "the man Christ
Jesus, who is over all, God blessed forever." It is the im-
mediate consciousness of a supreme and eternal unity, as
Carus finely remarks, which enables us to distinguish the
just, the true, and the beautiful; so that demonstrations of
true science exist, in fact, only for those who set out with
the idea of God in Christ as the beginning; studying nature
from him rather than toivards him. It is good to "look
from Nature up to Nature's God," but it is better and best
to look at nature from its framer and sustainer. There
would be no falling into pantheism, no forgetting the Creator
in the creature, were this always made the starting-point in
the survey. The humanity of Christ is the true beginning
of all wisdom and philosophy, no less than the immediate
avenue to redemption. Not that the idea of God can be
entertained irrespectively of nature; each idea is needful to
the apprehension of the other. "He," says Franz Von
Baader, "who seeks in nature, nature onlv, and not reason;
CREATION FOREVER IN PROGRESS. 33
he who seeks in the latter, reason only, and not God ; and
he who seeks reason out of or apart from God, or God out
of or apart from reason, will find neither nature, reason, iior
God, but Avill assuredly lose them all three."
13. In the "laws of nature," accordingly, we have not
" blind, unintellectual fatalities," but expressions of Divine
volitions. They appear to us independent and sufficient,
because God never discloses himself directly — only through
some medium. The world is full of apparent truths ; they
enter largely into our very commonest experiences ; a stick
immersed in water appears to be broken ; the banks of a
river seem to move as we sail past ; the coast seems to re-
cede from the departing ship ; a burning coal swung quickly
round seems a ring of fire. So with the "laws of nature."
To the eye of the senses they are one thing ; to the eye of
true philosophy quite another. Seeming to accomplish all,
in reality they accomplish nothing. Oersted never wrote a
finer truth than that " the conception of the universe is in-
complete, if not comprehended as a constant and continuous
work of the eternally-creating Spirit;" nor Emerson, in re-
lation to the same fact, that " it takes as much life to con-
serve as to created Because of these great verities is it that
to study the laws of nature is in reality to study the modes
of God's action ; that science is simply " a history of the
Divine operations in matter and mind;" that the world,
with all its antiquity, is every moment a new creation, the
song of the morning stars unsuspended and unsuspendable
to the ear that will listen for it, a virgin to every fresh
wooer of the Beautiful and the True.
14. How close does it bring the Creator to us thus to re-
gard him not so much as having made the world, as still
engaged in making it; i. e., by supplying the life on which
its laws, and thus its being and incidents, depend. It is an
ill-constructed theology which regards God as having created
B -
34 LiFE BEGINS IN ACTION AND REACTION.
only in past ages. A gorgeous sunset, the leafing of a tree
in the sweet spring-time, betokens the Divine hand no less
palpably than did the miracles which provided the hungry
multitudes of Galilee Avith food. " Depend upon it," says
an eloquent preacher, " depend upon it, it is not the want
of greater miracles, but of the soul to joerceive such as are
alloAved us still, that makes us push all the sanctities into
the far spaces we cannot reach. The devout feel that where-
ever God's hand is, there is miracle, and it is simply an un-
devoutness which imagines that only where miracle is, can
there be the real hand of God. The customs of heaven
ought surely to be more sacred in our eyes than its anomalies ;
the dear old ways of which the Almighty is never tired, than
the strange things which he does not love well enough to re-
peat. He who will but discern beneath the sun, as he rises
any morning, the supporting finger of the Almighty, may
recover the sweet and reverent surprise with wdiich Adam
gazed on the first dawn in Paradise ; and if we cannot
find him there, if we cannot find him on the margin of the
sea, or in the flowers by the way-side, I do not think we
should have discovered him any more on the grass of Geth-
semane or Olivet."
15. Uncreate and mfinite, it follows, in addition to conse-
quences specified, that Life as to its essence is no subject for
scientific consideration. All that science can do is to investi-
gate the circumstances under which it is manifested, and the
eifects which it produces. Carefully studying these, and
along with them, the processes of life, we may learn, how-
ever, the rationale of its action, next to the nature of life,
the grandest fact in its philosophy, and the centre and foun-
dation of all true and great ideas of life ; therefore a benign
and animating compensation. Narrowly looked at, under-
lying every phenomenon of the material world, and under-
lying every psychological occurrence, there is found a fixed,
UNIVEESAL DUALISM OF NATURE. 35
causative relation of Two things, or Two principles, as the
case may be, different and unequal, yet of such a difference,
and such an inequality, that like man and woman, who con-
stitute the type and interpretation of the whole of nature,
both visible and invisible, each is the complement of the
other ; one being gifted with energy to act, the other with
equal energy and aptitude to resict. All phenomena, alike
of matter and of mind, resolve into this dual virtus. Whether
physical or spiritual, animal or vegetable. Life always pre-
sents itself as communicated through this one simple for-
mula, the reciprocal action and reaction of complevientaries.
Where there are greatest variety and complexity of action
and reaction, all the results converging at the same time, to
one great end, as in plants, animals, and man, the presenta-
tions are the grandest ; where there is least of such variety,
and no such immediate reference, as in the phenomena of
inorganic chemistry, there the presentations are the humblest.
The great cosmic phenomena induced by Gravitation, Elec-
tricity, &c., comprising everything studied by the astronomer,
the meteorologist, and the electrician, form no exception.
Binary causes lie at the base of all. The sun and moon
cast their light upon us ; the rain falls and the waves roll ;
the spheres preserve their rotundity, and persevere in their
motions, all as the result of underlying dual forces. The
Fabric of nature, like its phenomena, resolves, everywhere,
into dualities. Land and water, male and female, the
straight line and the curve, do but express prominently, a
universal principle. The Elements, we have already seen,
are probably, only Two.
16. The ground of this wonderful, all-pervading dualism,
and concurrent action and reaction, producing the magnifi-
cent results we call Nature and Life, lies in the very nature
of God himself, who is not so much the ingenious deviser
and designer, displa.ying in the world the contrivances of
36 PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING THIS DUALISM.
Skill, as its Archetype aud Exemplar. That is to say, the
world is what we find it, not so much because he willed it to
be so, arbitrarily, as . because of his containing, in his own
nature, the first lorinciples of its whole fabric and economy.
It pictures in finites, Avhat he is in infinites. Infinite Wis-
dom and Infinite Goodness, or Love, as we have seen in
another place,* are shown both by natural and revealed
theology, to be the all-comprehending essentials of the Di-
vine ; omnipotence, omniscience, justice, mercy, and every
other attribute, inhering in, and manifesting and fulfilling
these tAvo. In these two principles all things have their be-
ginning ; in all things therefore are they embodied and re-
presented. Wherever there is life, the Divine Wisdom and
Goodness are consentaneously and fundamentally declared.
In one we may fancy the Divine Art shows most conspicu-
ous, in another the Divine Power ; but the true seeing finds
these no more than outer circles, enclosing Love and Wis-
dom as the inmost. In that admirable adaptation and
aptitude of things to act and react, and thus to enter into a
relation of which marriage is the highest exponent, consists,
accordingly, the whole principle of living action. There is
no other source of phenomena, either in the animated or the
inanimate Avorld, and Avherever it brings things and natures
into contact, reciprocally adapted each to the other, life im-
mediately appears, beautiful and exuberant. God made
things complementary on purpose that they should unite,
and open channels wherein his life should have new outlet ;
until conjoined, and they have opened such new channels,
they are everyAvhere restless and erratic; everyAvhere in
earth and heaven, equilibrium comes of Avell assorted mar-
riage, or union of complementaries, and there is no equili-
* " Sexuality of Nature," wherein the whole subject of the dualities
and reciprocal principles of nature is exhibited and illustrated
LIFE REPRESENTED IN MARRIAGE. 37
brium independent of it. Nothing, moreover, so surely
brings disorder and unhappiness, as interference with natu-
ral affinities, and neglecting to be guided by them. Using
the word in the high and holy sense which alone properly
attaches to it, i. e., as signifying the conjunction of princi-
ples and affections, and only in a secondary and derivative
sense, the conjunction of persons — the union 'of the proto-
typal, all-creative Wisdom and Goodness in the Divine, is
itself a marriage ; so that Life might not inappropriately be
described as the playing forth of the principle of which cor-
poreal marriage is the last effect. The development of a
new living creature, that is, of a new incarnation of life,
Avhen there is externalized love between man and woman
(who in matrimony rightfully so called, constitute the finite
picture and counterpart of the Almighty), is the very sym-
bol and emblem of the development of life. What the
babe is to its parents, such is life, as to its presentation in
phenomena, to the action and reaction of the two things or
two natures underlying it.
CHAPTER ill
THE VAItlETIES OF LIFE— ORGANIC LIFE-
STIMUIfl."
■ THE <' VITAL
17. Primarily, the manifestation of life is twofold, phy-
sical and spiritual. Physical life is life as expressed in the
constituents of the material or external world, giving exist-
ence to whatever is cognizable by the senses. Spiritual life
is that which gives vitality to the soul; underlying thought
and feeling, animating the intellect and the affections, and
sustaining all that is contained in the invisible, non-material,
or spiritual world. Spiritual life, so far as it is allowed the
finite mind to perceive, is expressed in only one mode: Phy-
sical life is expressed in two modes, namely, as observable,
(1) in the inorganic half of the material creation ; (2) in the
organic half The latter, which may be called Organic or
Physiological life, presents the further distinction of life as
it is in animals, (including the material body, or animal
half of man;) and life as it is in vegetables. Put into a
tabular form, the several distinctions may be apprehended
at a glance: —
A. Inorganic.
The expression
of Life is :—
1. Physical
or
Natural.
[B. Organic
[ 2. Spiritual
or
Psychological.
a. Vegetable.
b. Apimal.
Physiological.
38
LIFE COMMENSURATE WITH USE. 39
Inorganic life is the lowest expression ; Vegetable succeeds;
Animal life comes next; and highest is the Spiritual. Won-
derful and truly miraculous is it that a single and purely
simple element should be presented under such diverse
aspects, the extremes far apart as earth and heaven, though
it is not without some striking illustrative imagery in objec-
tive nature, where the same substance is occasionally found
under widely dissimilar forms, as happens with charcoal
and the diamond, both of which consist essentially of carbon.
There is a grand and beautiful law, however, in the light
of which the whole matter becomes intelligible; namely,
that the communication of life from God is always in the
exact ratio of the Use and Destiny of the recipient object in
the general economy of Creation. The more princely the
heritage of office, always the more beautiful and complex is
the Form of the object, and commensurately with this, the
more exalted is the presentation, and the more noble the
operation, of the life which fills it. This is the great funda-
mental principle to which are referable all diversity of
structure and configuration in nature, all dissimilitude of
substance and organization, and all variety in the force and
amount of Life. It may be illustrated by the operation,
under its various opportunities, of water, which in compo-
sition and inherent capabilities, is everywhere precisely the
same. In connection with machinery, which is like the
complicated and elaborate structure of organized bodies, we
see it either turning the huge mill-wheel by the river; or
heated into steam, making a thousand wheels whirl in con-
cert; and in either case promoting mightiest ends and uses.
Away from machinery, and merely gliding as a stream
towards the sea, it serves but to carry onwards the boat that
may be launched upon it. Lying as a still lake, among the
impeopled and silent mountains, its energy seems depressed
into inertia, though at any moment that energy is capable
40 INORGANIC LIFE.
of being played forth, in all its astounding plenitude, give it
but the adequate medium. So with the Divine life in the
universe. In the words of a powerful writer, " The material
world, with its objects sublimely great or meanly little, as
we judge them; its atoms of dust, its orbs of fire; the rock
that stands by the sea-shore, the water that Avears it away;
the worm, a birth of yesterday, Avhich we trample under
foot; the streets of constellations that gleam perennial over-
head ; the aspiring palm-tree fixed to one spot, and the lions
that are sent out free; these incarnate and make visible all
of God their natures will admit," that is, all of his Life
they are comj^etent to receive and play forth, by virtue of
their respective ofiices in the system of the world, and the
forms they hold in harmony therewith. Carbon in the
shape of diamond has a nobler destiny than carbon in the
shape of charcoal; therefore it receives that intenser com-
munication of life which is so exquisitely phenomenonized
in crystallization, and the concurrent translucency and
brightness. The soul has a nobler destiny than the body;
therefore has it the imperial life whereby it travels whither
it Avill, piercing space to its utmost bound, centrifugal as
light.
18. Inorganic life, the first-named of these three great
varieties or manifestations of the vitalizing principle, has
been illustrated in the preceding chapters. It will sufiice to
add here, that it has nothing in common with organic or
physiological life, much less with the spiritual ; nothing, that
is to say, except the Divine origin and sustentation. The
recipient forms occupy a plane of their own, in every sense
subordinate and distinct, and the phenomena which they
exhibit bear not the slightest similarity to those manifested
upon the superior planes, as regards any strict and essential
resemblance. The generalization by which it is associated
with the higher varieties, proposes to view it as that particu-
THE ORGANIC EXPRESSION OF LIFE. 41
lar expression of the uiiiversal Divine energy whereby inani-
mate things "have their being," just as under another ex-
pression, animate things have thews, and nothing more. Ihe
second variety, the Organic or Physiological expression of
Life, — that which vitalizes plants and animals, and the ma-
terial body of man, — is so called because of the playing
forth of its phenomena through the medium of special in-
struments or organs, as in animals, the limbs, the heart, the
brain, &c., and in plants, the leaves, the flowers, the stamens,
&c. Mineral substances, though they sometimes possess a
very beautiful configuration, and even a kind of internal
arrangement of parts, as seen in agates, never possess dis-
tinct organic members. These pertain peculiarly to plants
and animals, the sole subjects and recipients of organic life.
Taking the word in its literal and most general sense, the
phenomena of the Spiritual life are organic, being ^^layed
forth like those of physiological life, through special instru-
ments ; the very same instruments in fact. It is legitimate,
nevertheless, to restrict the name to johysiological life and
phenomena, seeing that the latter take precedence of the
spiritual, both in extent and diffusion, and in order of mani-
festation. The race of beings alone recipient of spiritual
life constitutes (as regards earth) the least part of living-
nature, and every member of it is animal before human.
The Organic is the expression of life which, as the prime
instrument of all man's temporal enjoyments, has in every age
allured his intensest interest. Its facts and mysteries have com-
mended themselves to his intellect as the peerage of science
and philosophy, the alpha and the omega of all natural
knowledge. If, says Aristotle, the knowledge of things be-
coming and honorable be deservedly held in high estima-
tion; and if there be any species of knowledge more exqui-
site than another, either upon account of its accuracy, or of
the objects to which it relates being more excellent or won-
4»
t2 DEFINITIONS OF LIFE.
derful ; we should not hesitate to pronounce the histoiy of the
ammating principle as justly entitled to hold the first rank.*
With all enthusiasm and assiduity accordingly, have chemis-
try, anatomy, and physiology, toiled at the splendid theme.
Theories innumerable have been devised with a view to its
elucidation; all however, in vain, because framed in the
sunless chambers of an exclusively secular philosophy.
Esteemed by some the cause of organization, by others its
consequence ; imagined at different periods to be fire,f light,
oxygen,! electricity,§ and galvanism, "still the exulting
Eureka has not been uttered, either in the laboratory, the
dissecting-room, or the schools of the savans. The enigma
has continued to baffle all the propounders of solutions; —
the heart of nature's mystery has not been plucked out,
even by the most vigorous of the wisest of her sons." Pur-
sued as a matter of purely scientific inquiry, researches into
* Tbiv KoKdv Kal Tijiuov K. r. A., Tvepi ipvxris, Book i., chap. 1, the Open-
ing sentence.
f Among those who held this very ancient doctrine was Hippo-
crates. He considered heat not only the foundation of life, but as
the Divinity itself, intelligent and immortal. — AoKki is fioi S KoXio^evou
Ocpfidv dddvarov re thai, Kai voziv fiavra, k. t. X. Works, SeC. iii., p. 249.
Fcesius' Edit., 1621. Relics of this belief survive in the phrasea
vital spark, the flame of life, &c. See for curious illustrations,
Bishop Berkeley's Siris, sections 152 to 214.
% As by Girtanner, Journal de Physique, &c., tome 37, p. 139.
See also Bostock's Elementary System of Physiology, vol. 1, p. 209,
1824.
\ This has been a very favorite hypothesis, and still meets with
approval. Abernethy, for one, regarded electricity "not merely as
the prime agent in sensation, but as even constituting the essence of
life itself." See his "Inquiry, &c., into Hunter's Theory of Life,"
pp. 26, 30, 35, 80, &c., 1814. It is singular to find this intelligent
writer sliding into materialism at the very time when he is directing
the force of his genius against it.
CHARACTERISTICS OF ORGANIZED BEINGS. 43
the mystery of life cannot jDOSsibly have any other termina-
tion, seeing that to follow such a course is to attend merely
to Effects, and to entirely disregard and disown the Cause.
Look at the results of the countless strivings to contrive a
descriptive name for the wily Proteus ; — vital principle, vis
vitce, vital spirit, impetum faciens, spirit of animation, organic
force, organic agent, vis plastica, materia vitce diffusa, &c.,
&c.; — what do they amount to Lcyond a tacit confession of
total inability? Look at the attempts, scarcely fewer, that
have been made at a definition of life. If they have not
been mere substitutions of many words for one, adding
nothing to our previous knowledge, they have been similarly
fruitless exercises in a few. When Bichat, for instance,
opens his celebrated "Recherches Physiologiques sur la Vie
et la Mort," by defining life as "the sum of the functions
by which death is resisted,"* what is it, as Coleridge well
asks, but a circuitous way of saying that life consists in being
able to live? As little to the purpose is Dr. Fletcher, when
he says that " Life consists in the sum of the characteristic
actions of organized beings, performed in virtue of a speci-
fic susceptibility, acted upon by specific stimuli;" or Rich-
erand, when he tells us that "Life consists in the aggregate
of those phenomena which manifest themselves in succession
for a limited time in organized beings." Neither of them
explains anything. Even the attempt, last in point of time,
and from the lesson of others' errors, presumable to be best
"' "La vie est I' ensemble des fonctions qui resistent a la mort." See
the remarks on this much criticized sentence in the edition of Bichat
by Cerise. Nouvelle Edition, Paris, 1852, p. 274. Auguste Compte,
a mere bookman in such sublets, devotes a long argument in his
Philosophie Positive (tome 3, p. 288,) to what he calls, with most
amusing complacency, the profonde irrationalite of his great country-
man.
44 DEFINITIONS OF LIFE.
ill execution, — that of Herbert Spencer, who devotes the
whole of the third part of his masterly Elements of Psycho-
logy to the consideration of the subject, bringing up by
careful and steady steps to the conclusion that "the broadest
and most complete definition of life will be the continuous
adjustment of internal relations to external relations," — even
this deals but, like the others, with the phenomena of life.
It is no "definition," — merely a statement of certain signs
of life. If we are to understand by the word " Life" simply
the attestations of its presence, — the signs, and nothmg
more, — these several authors have done as well, perhaps, as
the subject permits. But in that case we are left precisely
where we were. Life itself, the thing attested, has yet to be
defined, and requires a distinct and superior name. Some
"definitions" have been couched in a single word, "Assimi-
lation" for example. But as in the preceding cases, what is
assimilation more than a circumstance of life? Were assimi-
lation life itself, we should know all about the latter so soon
as we had noted the assimilating process, by means of a
little chemistry, in the green duckweed of the standing pool.
In no way is it more paramount than reproduction is. As
well might Life be defined to be Death, seeing that death is
the universal end.
19. In the phenomena just adverted to, namely, the As-
similation of food internally, and Reproduction of the
species in direct descent ; followed after a given period of
activity, by Death, consist the grand characteristics of Or-
ganized beings. However plants and animals may differ
among themselves, this threefold history pertains to every
species without exception. Functions, accordingly, even
more decidedly than organs, distii^iiish the members of the
Vegetable and Animal kingdoms from the Mineral. It is
important to observe this, because in many of the humbler
kinds of animals and plants, organs strictly so called, are
VITAL TISSUE. 45
not developed. In the Protococcus or red-snow plant, the
whole apparatus of life is concentrated into the compass of
a single microscopic cell. Assimilation and Reproduction
are performed there nevertheless, proving that separate and
complex organs are non-essential to them. It follows that
the absolute, unexceptionable diagnosis of organized bodies
consists' not so much in the possession of distinct organs, as
in the presence of vital tissue ; that is to say, cells filled with
fluid, at all events in their younger stages, and possessing,
every one of them, full powers of assimilation and repro-
duction ; so that although no more than a single cell may
be developed, it is still, to all intents and purposes, an or-
ganized body. This latter condition is what Ave witness in
the red-snow plant. The body of man is a vast mountain
of cells of precisely the same intrinsic character as those of
the Protococcus, only built into special members, and endued
with a more powerful vitality. AVhether members be de-
veloped or not, "vital tissue" is the basis of the entire
organic world, as markedly as it is absent from the mineral,
and forms the sedes ipsisswice of the whole of the vital pro-
cesses. That they are destitute of vital tissue is the reason,
accordingly, why minerals perform no fvmctions. Wanting
its sensibility and expansiveness, the stone, the metal, the
crystal, once formed, lie forever afterwards in perfect still-
ness, until assailed, that is, by new chemical agencies from
without, tending to decompose them. No alterations take
place within their substance ; they neither feed, nor breathe,
nor procreate ; their once active life has subsided into simple,
stationary existence. With the organized body it is exactly
the reverse. During the whole period of its tenure of life,
it presents, more or less evidently, the phenomena of growth,
and of change of form and substance, many of the most
important changes recurring in definite cycles of succession.
Things, in a Avord, Avhich are recipient only of the inorganic
46 ANIMAL AND VEGETATIVE FUNCTIONS.
degree of life, are marked by but one phenomenon — that of
the accretion of their particles into the mass ; those Avhich
receive the organic degree, present an assemblage of phe-
nomena, and these are both simultaneous and continuous.
The active life of the mineral ceases as soon as the mineral
is formed ; that of the organized body goes on unabatedly,
and is even more vigorous after the completion of the form
proper to it, than before. The diamond ceases from active
life as soon as it becomes a diamond; whereas the corre-
sponding period in the history of an animal is precisely that
of its highest energy commencing.
20. Animals contrasted with plants show distinctions
equally sharp, though in many points these two great classes
of beings are most intimately allied. In the former, the
organs, and therefore the functions are more numerous and
varied, and all those now appearing for the first time, have
peculiarly noble offices. Such are the eye and the ear, with
their respective powers of sight and hearing. The latter
kind are distinguished by physiologists as the "Animal"
functions; those which are common to both classes of
beings, are called the "Vegetative."* In man, for example,
the Vegetative functions are feeding, digestion, respiration,
&c., (all of which he has in common with the plant), their
central organ being the heart, or rather the heart and lungs
cooperatively; while the animal functions are those which
depend upon the brain. In animals, the organs of the
Vegetative functions fvre generally single, as the heart, the
stomach, and the liver ; those, on the other hand, of the
* Some authors call the Vegetative functions the "Organic." The
former is by far the better name, being definite and strict in its
application, whereas "Organic" properly denotes both classes of
functions. The latter is the sense invariably intended in the present
volume.
ANIMAL AND VEGETATIVE FUNCTIONS. 47
Animal functions, are for the most part arranged in pairs ;
that is, they are double and correspondent, as in the two
eyes and two ears ; or they have two symmetrical halves,
parallel with the mesian line of the body, as in the nose, the
spinal marrow, and the tongue. The functions of the Vege-
tative organs continue uninterruptedly; the blood, for in-
stance, ig in continual circulation; those of the Animal
organs are subject to interruptions. Still it is everywhere
the same life, essentially, which is played forth. The higher
and lower presentations come wholly of the peculiar offices,
and thence of the capability of the recipient organism to
disclose it. The loAvest degree of expression is in the sim-
plest forms of vegetables, such as the microscopic fungi,
known as moulds and mildew ; the highest is in the material
body of man. BetAveen these are innumerable intermediate
degrees, all referable, however, either to vegetable, or to
animal life. In the Vegetable, by reason of its less noble
destiny, the ojDeration of life is seen merely in the produc-
tion of a determinate frame-work of roots, stems, leaves,
and flowers, and the maintenance of these in a state of self-
nutritive and reproductive activity. In the Animal, it pro-
duces analogues of all the organs that the vegetable pos-
sesses, after a more elaborate mode, and superadds to them.
Nervous matter. This gives sensation, and the power of
voluntary motion, and introduces the creature into social
communication with the objects around it, such as to the
vegetable is utterly unknown. We shall see, further on,
hoAV such Avidely parted extremes are yet consistent with
singleness of idea ; also, in considering Discrete degrees and
the Chain of Nature, how along Avith the most beautiful
serial progression and development, there is absolute separa-
tion and distinctiveness, both as regards species, and the
great aggregates we call the Kingdoms of nature.
21. To the support of Organic life are needed Food, Air,
48 FOOD, AIR, AND THE VITAL STIMULI.
and the great dynamic substance or substances known as
Heat, Light, and Electricity.* The latter are what authors
call the "vital stimuli," their operation, either singly or
combined, having long been recognized as the first essential
to the manifestation of vital phenomena. Properly speak-
ing, the whole suite should be included under the name of
Food, seeing that they equally contribute to the stability of
the organism. They are not merely stimuli, or excitants of
vital action ; definite quantities of them must be introduced
into the organism, of which they are the imponderable ali-
ment, as food commonly so called, is the ponderable. This
is strikingly exemplified in the history of the Cerealia, or
Corn-plants, to which a long summer or a short one makes
no difference, provided they receive the same aggregate
amount of heat and light. Every one knows that if the
supply of natural, wholesome aliment be reduced below a
certain level, there is alike in plants and animals emaciation
and loss of vigor ; and that if totally deprived of food, they
speedily starve to death. Debarred from regular supplies
of Air, Light, Electricity, &c., though the supply of food
may be adequate, plants no less than animals, suffer as
severely as in the former case. Respiration, the circulation
of the blood, the flow of the sap, digestion, assimilation, all
stand in need of their united and complementary service.
Equally and as absolutely essential is it to the very genesis
of the organism, whether we take the child in the womb of
its mother, or its counterpart, the embryo seed in the pistil
of the flower, excepting, in the former case, the immediate
presence and operation of atmospheric air. We shall first
* To this list ■will perhaps have to be added odyle, the extraordi-
nary agent to which attention is invited by Eeichenbach. See his
Eesearches on Magnetism, Electricity, &c., translated by Dr,
Gregory, 1850.
INFLUENCE OF LIGHT UPON PLANTS. 49
consider the "Vital Stimuli ;" secondly, Food ; and thirdly,
the Atmosphere, in relation to life. This will prepare us to
understand the proximate causes and nature of Death ;
which will lead in turn to the consideration of the great
compensatmg laws of Renewal, and to the curious mysteries
of the diversity in the leases or specific terms of life.
22. The most striking illustrations of the importance of
Light to the play of life are furnished by the Vegetable
kingdom. Secluded from the solar light, plants, if they do
not soon die, become wan, feeble, and sickly. What few
leaves and shoots may be painfully put forth, are pale-yellow
instead of green; and the ordinarily firm and solid stem be-
comes watery and semi-translucent. If there be an' effort
made to produce flowers and seeds, that is, to become parents,
after self-preservation, the foremost, though it may be un-
conscious, desire of all living things, it is but to fail miserably.
The qualities of a plant are no less weakened by want of light
than its constitution is. The acrid become bland, the dele-
terious innocuous. In gardens and orchards, flowers and
fruits accidentally shaded by dense foliage, fail to acquire
their proper tint; while of the full sunlight come all the glow
and brilliance of the blossom, the purple hue of the peach,
the rosy one of the apple. Who has not observed the long-
ing and beautiful affection with which plants kept in par-
lors turn themselves towards the window; and how the
large, broad leaves of the geranium will even press their
bosoms to the glass ? The sunflower, the heliotrope,* the
* The delicious, vanilla-scented, lilac flower, which now bears the
name of Heliotrope is in no way specially deserving of it. Neither
is the great golden Sunflower of our autumn gardens, which is so
called, not, as often thought, because of remarkable sensitiveness to
solar attraction, but because of its vast circular disk and yellow
rays.
5 C
50 INFLUENCE OF LIGHT UPON PLANTS.
turnsole, the salsafy, are celebrated for keeping their faces
always fixed on " glorious Apollo." It would be much more
difficult to find a plant which does not turn towards the sun,
though its movement might be slower than is fabled. While
these confess the sweetness and the potency of the solar pre-
sence, that sullen troglodyte, the Lathrcea squaviaria, or tooth-
Avort, of our woods, where the botanist obtains it only by
excavating among earth and dead leaves, shows in its ske-
leton-like configuration and cadaverous hue, that life in the
dark is but a compromise with death. When the trees and
shrubs, beneath the shade of which it usually secretes itself,
are cut away, so as to expose the plant to the full action of
the light, like a morose and unsocial man made to laugh
against his will, it enlivens into a beautiful pink purple.
Superabundance of light, on the other hand, elicits the most
beautiful displays, both as to perfection of form, and height
of color. Tschudi, in his picturesque " Sketches of Nature
in the Alps," tells us that the flowers there have a wonder-
fully vivid coloring. " The most brilliant blues and reds,
with a rich brown, shading to black, are observable amidst
the white and yellow flowers of the lower districts, both
kinds assuming in the higher regions a yet more pure and
dazzling hue." A similar richness of coloring is reported
of the vegetation of Polar countries, where the hues not only
become more fiery, but undergo a complete alteration under
the influence of the constant summer light and the rays of
the midnight sun, white and violet being often deepened into
glowing purple. This happens not alone with the flowers.
Withui the arctic circle, the lichens and mosses shine in hues
of gold and purple quite unknown to them in lower latitudes.
The balsamic fragrance of the Alpine plants, likewise caused
by the brilliant light, is, according to Tschudi, no less remark-
able and characteristic. From the auricula down to the violet-
INFLUENCE OF LIGHT UPON ANIMALS. 51
scented moss (Byssus colithes), this strong aromatic property
is widely prevalent, and far more so in the high Alps than
in the lowlands. The strict physiological reason of the ill
development of plants when deprived of the proper amount
of light, at least of all green plants, is that plant-life, as re-
gards personal nutrition, is spent in the decomposition of
carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, from the proceeds of
which are manufactured the tissues and their contents ; such
decomposition bearing a constant ratio, cceteris paribus, to
the amount of light enjoyed. To certain kinds of sea- weeds,
it is proper to remark, light seems, by a curious exception,
to be unfriendly and distasteful. This is the case with many
of the Rhodospermese, as Delesseria sanguinea, D. ruscifolia,
and Rhodomenia laciniata, which instead of growing in the
open parts of the sea-coast, select obscure hollows", shadowed
by overhanging cliffs, and in such dark spots alone attain
their highest beauty. Some of this tribe will not grow at
all in shallow water, or where there is a full stream of solar
light ; and such as can bear to be so placed, usually show
the incongeniality of their location by degeneracy of form
and loss of brilliancy of tint. Delesseria sanguinea, made
mock of in a glass vase, speedilv loses its lovely crimson,
and becomes a mere white membrane. Fondness of seclu-
sion from the full sunlight is remarkable also in many ferns.
Under the shade of trees, or upon sheltered hedgebanks,
they alone reach their maximum of luxuriance.
23. The value and importance of light to Animal life,
though the immediate connection is not so obvious, all expe-
rience shows it impossible to over-estimate. There is some-
thing more than a metaphor in speaking of the " light of
life." Light, in poetic language, is life. When Iphigenia
in Euripides is reconciling herself to the death so happily
averted, she exclaims, ^uifJS juoi, ipdov <fdo^, " Farewell,
52 IMPORTANCE OF LIGHT TO HUMAN HEALTH.
beloved Light!"* Digestion, assimilation, circulation, the
functions also of the brain and of the nerves, proceed in a
more orderly and agreeable manner when we exclude our-
selves as little as possible from the light of heaven. No
dwellings are so pleasant, because so healthfid, as those
which have a southerly aspect : people who live in houses
looking chiefly to the North and East, suffer seriously, if not
sensibly, from the imperfect sunning of the air ; the unkind-
liness of the aspect imparts itself to the occupants ; that the
heart should look southwards, our windows should do so.
No one can say how much sickness and debility, how much
ill-temper and moroseness are not owing to self-imprisonment
in dark streets, and dull counting-houses, and back parlors,
into which a sunbeam never enters : " Truly the light is
sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the
sun." School-rooms, most of all, should be on the sunny
side of the house ; no sensilile school-master ever places them
anywhere else. The curious exception to love of light which
occurs in the pink sea-weeds, again occurs in marine Animal
life. Almost all the animals which inhabit the sea-side are
more numerous under the shelter of rocks than where the
coast is open. Compared with such localities, shadowless
sands and beaches are untenanted. The colours also of
marine animals, like those of the algse, are often brighter
when they dwell in comparative shade, as well exemplified
in the prawn. It is only in the gloom of deep holes and
rocky pools that the fine zebra-like hues of this pretty crea-
ture become fully developed. Fishes, especially those of
the sea, are well known to be fonder of night than of day,
probably because of darkness being more congenial ; and
* Iphigenia in Aulis, 1519. See in reference to the passage, The
Hieroglyphica of Pierius Valerianus, p. 490, de Lucerna; and vari'
ous citations from the Latin poets in Alciati's Emblemata, p. 720.
AGENCY OF HEAT. 53
the same is probably the reason of many animals being most
active in the winter. Here again we have a parallel with
the vegetable world; it is when the days are darkest and
shortest that the Christmas-rose expands its flowers. Sun-
shine has a wonderful influence even upon external form, as
we might anticipate indeed from the improvement it causes
in plants. Humboldt ascribes the frequency of deformity
among certain nations which clothe but scantily, more to the
free action of light upon their bodies, than to any peculia-
rities in mode of life. Those exquisite shapes which Art
has immortalized in marble, doubtless owed not a little to
the full and free exposure of the body to the light and air,
so agreeable in the fine climate of ancient Greece.
24. We may but read of what Light does for life, but we
feel what is the agency of Heat. Reduce the supply of
heat, and development is checked. Remove it wholly, and
the organism, whether animal or vegetable, (except in some
few very low forms,) is frozen to death. Hence the instinct-
ive avoidance of the imj)ending evil by the tender, migratory
birds and animals; and the behaviour and condition during
winter of the hybernating species. It is principally through
lack of heat that the frigid zones are nearly bare of vegeta-
tion; and that through the increase of temperature, as the
equator is aj)proached, the eye is delighted at every step, by
a richer luxuriance. "To the natives of the north," says
Humboldt, "many vegetable forms, including more espe-
cially the most beautiful productions of the earth, (palms,
tree-ferns, bananas, arborescent grasses, and delicately-
branched mimosas,) remain for ever unknoAvn; for the puny
plants pent up in our hot-houses, give but a faint idea of
the majestic vegetation of the tropics." The operation of
heat in the earliest periods of organic existence, is alone
sufficient to indicate how important this agent is to life. In
the incubation of birds, the warmth communicated by the
54 AGENCY OF ELECTRICITY.
parent to tlie egg, during her long and patient fidelity to her
nest, elicits that response on the part of the germ, which
leads on to the hatching of the chick. The seeds of plants
stand in similar need of the solar warmth in order to germi-
nate, and acknowledge it as promptly. So, indeed, with the
gestation of viviparous animals, as woman. The embryo,
embedded in the womb, amplifies into a fully-formed child,
not more through the contributions made to its substance by
the nutrient apparatus provided for the purpose, than
through the agency of the genial warmth which flows into
it from all sides, and without which neither limbs nor organs
could be moulded.
25. What may be the precise way in Avhich Electricity
assists in maintaining life, is as yet a profound secret. From
what has been observed, however, there cannot be a doubt
that it jDerforms a part fully as energetic as either light or
heat, and this Avhether we take animals or plants. As re-
gards the former, its peculiar relation appears to lie with
"nerve-force." Nerve-force is excitable by electricity, and
electricity may be produced by the exercise of nerve-force,
as exemplified in those remarkable creatures, the Torpedo
and the Gymnotus. Our personal sensations, which are an
unfailing index to the truth in such inquiries, tell us how
exhilarating is an atmosphere well charged with this magical
element, and how life languishes when it is deficient or ren-
dered inoperative. Plants receive a corresponding benefit.
The evolution of new tissue is greatly accelerated by a plen-
tiful supply of the electric fluid, manifesting itself in rapid
and lively growth. For particulars respecting its agency,
also concerning the relation of heat, light, and electricity,
generally, to Organic life, we must refer the reader to trea-
tises the scope of which allows more room than can be
afforded here ; giving what space remains to a notice of the
grand discovery, so ably set forth by Mr. Grove, that in-
DOCTRINE OF THE "CORRELATION OF FORCES." 55
stead of being three things, Light, Heat, and Electricity are
only one, variously set forth, and mutually convertible, the
doctrine in short of the " Correlation of the Physical Forces."
It is important briefly to consider this doctrine, seeing that
it provides, in the estimation of some of the most eminent
physiologists of our day, a solution of the great problem of
organic life. "That Light and Heat," says Carpenter, "be-
come transformed into Vital Force, is shown by the same
kind of evidence that we possess of the conversion of Heat
into Electricity by acting on a certain combination of
metals ; of Electricity into Magnetism by being passed round
a bar of iron ; and of Heat and Electricity into motion when
the self-repulsive action separates the particles from each
other. For just as Heat, Light, Chemical affinity, &c., are
transformed into vital force, so is vital force capable of
manifesting itself in the production of Light, Heat, Elec-
tricity, Chemical affinity, or mechanical motion; thus com-
pletmg the proof of that mutual relationship or ' correlation'
which has been shown to exist among the physical and
chemical forces themselves."* That without heat and elec-
tricity, life cannot for one instant be sustained, is indispu-
table; and that without them, the changes and phenomena
which disclose its presence can never occur. Equally true
is it that (as specially observable in the Cerealia above-
mentioned) there is a definite relation between the degree of
vital activity and the amount of heat, light, &c. supplied to
the organism. Curious and truly wonderful too is the con-
cord between these "forces" and the vital energy, as regards
their restorative powers; the warmth of the hand restores
the perishing fly, and the voltaic 'current reanimates the
half-drowned man. To say, however, that they are trans-
* "Principles of Human Physiology," p. 123. 1853. See also the
"Projet d'un Essai siir la Vitalite," of Andral, p. 35. Paris, 1835.
56 J. J. G. WILKINSON ON CORRELATION,
formable into a spiritual essence — ^for if life be derived from
God, vital force can be nothing else — seems to savor strongly
of such a perfect contentedness with the material as surely
does not consist with a pure and devout philosophy. The
dependence of life, proximately, ujDon physical causes, is not
questioned ; life is no miracle, in the special sense ; and it is
our plain and bounden duty, as investigators of nature, to
attempt to give to this dependence a clear and definite ex-
pression. But we are not to talk of "vital force" as if it
were a thing of merely terrestrial origin, heat and electricity
sublimed and transmuted. "According to this doctrine of
correlation"* (i. e., of the physical forces with vital force,)
observes an author of no common sagacity, "according to
this doctrine, heat has only to pass through a cell-germ to
be converted into vitality. This doctrine ends, therefore, in
fire-worshipping; for it makes the light and heat of the ma-
terial sun, the fountains of the force of organization; and
deems that these pass through vegetables, and become vege-
table life; through animals, and become animal life; through
brains, and become mind, and so forth. Therefore, a fine
day, poured into its vessel, man, becomes transmogrified
into virtues; dark nights are converted into felonies; dull
November days into suicides ; and hot suns into love. This
is materialism with spiritualism in its pocket. There is no
convertibility of forces between life and nature; there are
no cells by which heat can be filtered into vitality.""}"
* Ou the general subject of the Correlation of Forces see Mr.
Grove's admirable work bearing that title, and an excellent article
on the "Phasis of Force" in the National Eeview for April, 1857.
f "The Human Body, and its connection with Man," by J. J.
Garth Wilkinson, p. 389. 1851.
CHAPTER IV.
FOOD.
26. Wherever provided with instruments of action, life
requires for its maintenance unbroken supplies of food. ISTo
organized being can dispense with food altogether, though
some, from peculiarity of constitution — as reptiles, the car-
nivorous mammalia, certain hybernating creatures, and
trees — can fast for surprisingly long periods. Plants feed
in order that they may enlarge their fabric, and renew, pe-
riodically, their foliage and blossoms ; animals feed because
the exercise of their various organs is attended by decompo-
sition of their very substance, which consequently needs to
be repaired to the same extent. While the lungs, the heart,
the liver, the muscles, the nerves, perform faithfully the se-
veral duties assigned to or demanded of them, it is at th-e
expense of the material they are composed of; and were the
loss not speedily compensated, life would soon be necessi-
tated to depart, as it actually does in cases of starvation.
For life, in animals, is not merely living — it consists not
alone in the activity and vigorous exercise of the bodily or-
gans. In order to its energetic playing forth, there is
needed a nice balance and alternation of death and renewal
in every tissue concerned in the vital processes ; and only
where exchange of new for old is regularly and actively go-
ing on, can life be truly said to reign. We cannot live, in
a word, as to our total organism, unless we are always dy-
ing as to our atoms ; nor is there an instant in which death
C * 57
58 MOLECULAR DEATH AND RENEWAL OF THE BODY.
is not someAvhere taking place. Every effort and every
movement kills some portion of the muscles employed ;
every thought, even, involves the death of some particle of
the brain. As fast as devitalized, the atoms are cast out —
some through the lungs, others through the skin, &c. ; every
pore and passage of the body supplying means of exit. So
general and incessant is the decomposition, and along with
it the rebuilding, that a few weeks probably suffice for the
dissolving and reconstruction of the entire structure; cer-
tainly it does not occupy many years. In the course of a
life-time, " every individual wears out many suits of bodies,
as he does many suits of clothes ; the successive structures
which we occupy bear the same name, and exhibit the same
external aspect; but our frames of to-day are no more iden-
tical with the frames of our early youth than with those of
our progenitors." In this wonderful flux and replacement
of the atoms of the body, quite as much consists its admira-
ble adaptation to the purposes of life as in its exquisite me-
chanism and variety of organs. It is so perfect an instru-
ment of life, because composed of millions of delicate pieces,
so slenderly cohering that any one of them can be discarded
and replaced without difficulty. Hence, in the aged and
the diseased, in whom the tissues are hardened and conso-
lidated, in whom the renewal is slow, difficult, and irregular,
we see life proportionately feeble ; where, upon the other
hand, they are soft and delicate, and renewal rapid, it is in
the same ratio strong and beautiful. Historically viewed,
the periodical renewal, of the human body at least, is one
of the most venerable ideas in physiology. Long before
Cuvier's fine comparison of the human fabric to a whirl-
pool, and Leibnitz's simile of a river, it had been likened to
the famous ship of Theseus, which was always the same ship,
though from being so often repaired, not a single piece of
the original was left. Plato adverts to it both in the Ban-
PROXIMATE OBJECT OF FOOD. 59
quet and in the Timseus. Mark, for future use, the grand
and inevitable sequence that the essentiality of the body is
certainly not to be looked for in the matter of which it is
built, but must needs consist in a noble, imponderable, in-
visible somethmg, which the changing physical frame sim-
ply encloses and overlies. Mark, too, and alike for future
use, the fine analogy between the death and renewal of the
constituent elements of the individual human being, and
the death and renewal of the atoms of the human race.
27. The use of food, accordingly, is to meet this incessant
waste. A corresponding and continuous importation of new
material from without, available for the restoration of the
several organs, becomes, in consequence of the waste, rigor-
orously indispensable. That such new material may be pro-
cured, the loss of the old is signalled in the vehement longing
we call hunger: this leads to consumption of it in a crude form;
digestion and assimilation then come into play, promptly
turning what is consumed into blood, or liquid, circulating
flesh, and by the fixation of this wherever wear and tear
have been undergone, the process of reparation is completed.
Incessantly coursing through the body, the blood, as it ar-
rives at the various parts, gives itself up to the geniiis loci :
where muscle is out of repair, muscle is renewed from it ;
where bone is wanted, bone is renewed; cartilage, brain,
nerves, alike suck from this noble fluid their restoration, as
originally, from the same beautiful and overflowing cornu-
copia, their birth and substance. The proximate object of
food is thus to nourish the blood.* It is because the hlood
hungers and thirsts, that we feel impelled to eat and drink ;
* That the formation of blood is the use of food, appears to have
been a very early conclusion. "The gods," saj^s Homer, "neither
eat food nor drink the purple wine, wherefore they are bloodless." —
riiad, V. 341
60 TWOFOLD USE OF FOOD.
the hunger of the stomach is only the voice with which it
clamors. Itself the most wonderful substance in nature —
for the sake of the blood, everything else in nature subsists.
Light, heat, and electricity, animals, plants, and minerals,
all in some way subsidize and minister to it. Man is man
only by virtue of his blood, and nature is chiefly admirable as
supplying its ingredients. Wherever m the human body
there is most blood, there is greatest vital energy, and vice
versa; and in exact proportion to the decline from the
standard quantity and quality required in it, is the depar-
ture from the body of health and vigor.
28. Besides integrity of substance, a certain degree of
temperature must be kept up in the body, otherwise the
muscles would lose their poAver of contracting, and the
nerves their power of conveying impressions to and from
the brain. This is partly provided for by the ingress of
heat from withou.t, as noticed in the preceding chapter;
partly b j arrangements for the evolution of heat chemically,
within,— such arrangements, like those for rebuilding, being
immediately dependent upon supplies of proper food. Hence
in the raw material of nutrition, along with the substance
suitable for masonry, must be included substance that shall
be serviceable as fuel ; and organic chemistry seems to prove
that it is precisely such material which we instinctively select
for our diet. Human food, according to the researches of
Liebig, is always either nitrogenous or carbonaceous, or
both, — the first element serving to furnish flesh, the second
the means of warmth ; and it would further appear that it is
for the sake of procuring these two in sufficient quantity and
proportion, that we almost invariably compound our food,
mixing vegetables with meat, butter with bread. What
seems to be luxury, is simple instinct, acting through the
palate. During the period of groAA^th, or in childhood and
adolescence, an important additional source of demand for
COMPOSITION OF FOOD. 61
food is the increase which the various tissues are then under-
going. The sphere of the activity of the constructive powers
exceeds the actual dimensions of the body, which extends
itself, under their impulse, in every direction ; and induces,
while thus enlarging, a corresponding voraciousness. The
demand for food during this period is sill further promoted
by the circumstance of the tissues having not acquired the
degree of consolidation which they hold in adults, and being
therefore more readily susceptible of decomposition. Con-
sidered as a local affection of the body, hunger is referable
to the nerves of the stomach. No affection is more inti-
mately connected with the nervous system, or more power-
fully influenced by nervous states and emotions. Sudden
grief, anger, and fright, will oftenremove.it instantaneously,
and even change it into loathing. In plants, it is important
to observe, there is no decay of the ultimate or elementary
tissues, such as occurs in animal organisms, and which it is
the design of the nutritive processes in animals to compen-
sate. Instead of this, in the vegetable all is growth, till the
organ which the growth produces, having fulfilled its destiny,
ceases to act, and dies bodily. In plants, therefore, there is
no such thing, strictly sj)eaking, as nutrition, the true idea
of this process being, as above described, reparation of
molecular waste.
29. The form, sources, and composition of the food of the
two great classes of organized beings, involve varied and
most interesting considerations. Here it is unnecessary to
do more than indicate a few leading ideas upon the several
themes. The composition of food must necessarily always be
the same as that of the organism which lives upon it, — that
is, the crude material of food must needs contain ingredients
convertible respectively into blood and sap, and thence into
flesh, in its various forms, also bones, and in the plant what
are called the vegetable tissues. If such ingredients be not
6
62 FOKM OF FOOD.
present, the material cannot be called food. It follows that
those foods will be the most serviceable and nutritious which
contain in a given bulk the largest proportion of parts capa-
ble of being easily assimilated into the body of the eater.
More or less nutritious as it may be, the action of the diges-
tive organs always separates from our food precisely the
same elements. Eat what we will, the composition of the
body does not alter, — explaining the celebrated aphorism of
Hippocrates, that there is only one food, though there exist
many forms of food. With all the higher animals, and pro-
bably throughout the entire range of animal life, it is pre-
cisely the same.
30. ISText as to the form of food. The more complex the
structure of the organism, and the higher its powers, the
more complex must be the aliment on which it lives, and
also the more varied in its shape. Man needs a more com-
plex food than the brute races do, and animals in general a
more complex one than serves for vegetables. Animals,
again, need both solid and liquid aliment, while vegetables
take the whole of their food in fluid forms. Although
thirst is a violent desire, drink, how^ever, appears by no
means indispensable to animal life; for several kinds of
creatures, as quails, parrots, and mice, do not drink at all;
and individuals of our own species have lived in perfect
health and strength, scarcely ever tasting liquids. The
Sloth, Waterton tells us, "feeds on leaves, and scarcely ever
drinks." The doctrine, originally started by Mirbel, that
animals live upon organic matter only, and vegetables upon
anorganic, and Avhich is often thought to carry with it a valid
distinction between them, is defective; plants, though they
absorb the greater part of their nutriment from the atmos-
phere, and though they take up solutions of many purely
mineral matters, also consume dead organic substances; the
difference between their habits in this respect, compared with
FOOD OF PLANTS. 63
the custom of animals, being that the latter eat those sub-
stances in the bulk, while plants need that they shall firs L be
disintegrated and dissolved, — that they shall have already un-
dergone, in fact, the very process which it is the first office
of the animal stomach to effect. Parasites, such as the
mistletoe and Orobanche, so far from feeding on purely in-
organic substances, or even on dead or decomposing matter,
subsist on the living, circulating juices of the trees and
plants on which they fix themselves. An exacter distinction
is that animals destroy what is actually in possession of life,
in order that they may support themselves; while plants,
with rare exceptions, are innocent of such deeds. The ex-
ceptions occur in the singular plants called fly-catchers;
botanically Drosera, and Dioncea, inhabitants of bogs and
morasses, the former abundantly in England. Their leaves ^
are so constructed as to entrap midges and other little flies ;
the juices of whose bodies, or the gases yielded by their
decay, appear salutary and agreeable to them. Thus it is,
however, that everything in the world gets eaten sometime;
the ceaseless activity of nature is conversion of what is lower
into what is higher, — " above the lowest nature each thing is
eaten and eater, end and beginning in succession."
31. The particular diet, both of animals and of plants, is
a subject of inexhaustible interest. That of plants is the
leading idea of the new science of "Agricultural Chemistry."
Doubtless, the mechanical character of the soil has its influ-
ence; but it can hardly be from this circumstance alone
that we find the golden cistus, the vervain, and many deli-
cate grasses in perfection only when their roots can shoot in
calcareous earth ; that some plants thrive best on sandstone,
others upon clay; and that the sea-shore alone is found
possessed of the salsola, the sea-convolvulus, and the lovely
but formidable Eryngo, the blue touch-me-not of the sand
hills. Wheat and other cereals require silex ; the oak ia
64 FOOD OF ANIMALS.
reputed to love a soil with iron in it. Generally speaking,
however, there is a great uniformity in the tastes of plants,
as proved by their intermixture in the fields. Taking one
with another, two substances alone seem to suffice them —
water and carbonic acid. Widely different is it with ani-
mals. Here almost every species has an especial liking,
though all tastes may be classed under some few general
heads. Gregarious animals live mostly upon the fruits of
the earth ; solitary ones upon the flesh of other animals.
Among the latter, or the carnivora, there are feeders on fish,
flesh, and fowl respectively; among the herbivorous, some
feed on leaves, some on roots, some pick out the seeds, others
take the whole plant, the bees love only the honey. This
various choice, together with the selection of different species
of plants and animals by certain creatures, and the rejection
of others, allows of all finding a plentiful sujDply of what is
salutary, and this without interfering with the wants of
others. Linnaeus tells us, that after a careful course of trials
with the domesticated animals, and about five hundred
species of the ordinary plants of the fields, the horse was
found to eat two hundred and sixty-two, the cow two hun-
dred and seventy-six, the sheep three hundred and eighty-
seven. To this, says that observant old naturalist, Benjamin
Stillingfleet, is to be referred that capital economy which
knows that when eight cows have been in a pasture, and can
no longer get nourishment, two horses will do very well
there for some days ; and Avhen the horses have taken all
they care for, four sheep will still find supplies. There are
few things more curious in rural life than to watch a cow
while grazing, and see how she will push aside the butter-
cups. Some animals care only for what is harsh, as the
camel, whose greatest relish is an oasis of tough, prickly
bushes, such as the ass itself would turn away from. Thus
consumed, by one animal or other, it follows, that no plant
SPECIALITIES OF FOOD, 65
is absolutely uneatable, no plant, indeed, absolutely j^oison-
ous, but only poisonous to particular creatures. Probably
there is not a single species of the yegetable kingdom but is
eaten, or partly eaten, by a creature appointed to it, how-
ever distasteful and even deleterious it may be to others.
The horse gives up the water-hemlock to the goat ; the goat
leaves the monkshood for the horse ; if man eats of either
plant, he dies. Slugs eat that very poisonous toadstool, the
Agaricus musearius; also the Agaricus phalloides, a species
still more terrible from the rapidity of its deadly effect.
Though the leaves of the laurel are so obnoxious to insects
in general as to be the readiest poison for them with the
entomologist, the caterpillar of one kind, the Orgyia antiqua,
finds them Avholesome. "When driven by famine, it would
seem, nevertheless, that there are no creatures but what will
eat of other kinds of food than they ordinarily select, and
which they are fitted for by nature. Spallanzani made a
pigeon live on flesh, and an eagle on bread. Animals
domesticated by man, and thus leading a semi-artificial life,
will, apart from necessity, also curiously change their habits
as to food. In some parts of Persia, according to Fraser,
" the cattle have but little pasture ; . . . the chief article of
their food is dried fish, which, with pounded date-stones, is
all they get to eat for a considerable portion of the year."
Every one is acquainted with the extraordinary eating
powers of insects. With these creatures, eating seems
ordained less for the preservation of the individual than for
the destruction of effete organic matter, a fact peculiarly
observable in the Diptera and the Coleoptera. Some kinds
seem created chiefly to overpower other insects. Were it
not for the carnivorous lady-birds, the fat, green, vegetarian
aphides which infest the stalks of so many of our sweetest
flowers, would be a thousand times more troublesome.
66 FOOD or MAN.
" Exactly what browsing flocks and herds of deer are to the
quadruped of prey, the tribes of aphides are to the lady-
birds, and some two or three allies of the Coccinella race;
save for which destroyers, not a lover of sweet posies could
gather a rose or a honeysuckle undefiled." To the execution
of these offices by the insect tribe, the almost incalculable
number of their sj)ecies, the extremely rapid multiplication
of man}', the unparalleled voracity of others, and the quick-
ness with which digestion is carried in their very short intes-
tinal canal, all tend to contribute. Fishes, and marine
animals in general, perform the same offices for the sea that
insects subserve upon the land ; incessantly destroying and
devouring, they contribute immensely to the preservation of
its purity; some, as crabs, consuming indiscriminately both
dead and living prey, and in their cruel and greedy habits
reiterating those of the hyena and the wolf. The stomachs
of these creatures, like those of many fishes, not infrequently
contain abundance of beautiful little shells, principally
microscopic, gathered uj) during their travels in the country
of the mermaids.
32. Man, in a limited sense, is omnivorous; not absolutely;
he cannot eat many things which to inferior creatures are
pleasant, as bones, and the leaves of trees. Whether, as to
first intent, he is an herbivorous or a carnivorous animal, is
a question only for enthusiasts. His anatomical structure
supplies an equal argument for either side, Helvetius and
others deeming that it proves a carnivorous nature ; and the
modern school of vegetarians, an herbivorous one. Rous-
seau ingeniously urges, in support of the latter view, that
woman is a uniparous animal, and provided with no more
than two breasts, circumstances predominant among the
females of the brute herbivora ; while in the females of the
brute carnivora, the number is in both cases considerably
FOOD OF MAN. G7
higher.* Man is not intended to live upon either kind of
food by itself. Inhabiting every variety of climate, he
would have been ill provided for, if so restricted ; as it is,
he can dwell in countries which afford only animal food, or
only vegetable food. There are nations who have little
within reach besides dates, yams, and the ivory-nut; in the
extreme north, there is nothing to be had but flesh. Pro-
bably enough, the number of human beings who subsist on
fruits and farinaceous roots is preponderant. Though ani-
mal food is so largely consumed in cold countries, the inha-
bitants of the sunnier and warmer parts of the earth derive
their chief nourishment from trees and plants. This, how-
ever, is no proof of its superior adaptedness ; there can be
little doubt that human aliments prepared from the flesh of
animals, are, generally speaking, both more nutritious and
more digestible. The herbivorous creatures killed for the
table having already converted the nutrient substances of
the vegetable world into animal matter, our own digestive
organs are saved the labor. The cow, the sheep, the deer,
are natural bridges between the grass of the field and the
human body.
33. Not less interesting than the variety of the food of
different animals is the variety in the organs by which are
accomplished the two preliminary processes of nutrition, or
prehension and mastication. So rigidly, moreover, are they
modeled according to the character of the food upon which
the animal subsists, that we may infer what it eats by merely
observing its extremities and mouth. Feet, for instance, of
the kind called hoofs, are incapable of seizing living prey ;
so that all creatures which possess them are necessarily her-
bivorous. Indeed, there is scarcely an organ of the animal
* Sur V Origine de Vinegalite parmi les homines. Note 6. (Euvres,
tome iii., pp. 193 — 195, very curious and amusing.
68 HUNGER THE SOURCE OF MORAL ORDER,
frame but serves a more or less direct purpose in regard to
feeding, the wing, the fin, the claw, all are bestowed towards
this end ; so likewise is that amazing quickness of the senses
which makes the sight, the hearing, the smell of many pre-
daceous quadrupeds and birds so vastly superior to that of
man.* The organ peculiarly identified with the feeding of
animals, and which is commonly allowed to be a distinctive
characteristic when compared with plants, namely, the sto-
viach, is given them because of their powers of locomotion.
Vegetables, fixed in the soil, and feeding by their leaves
and spongioles on the matter which envelopes them, do not
require a special organ of digestion, into which food can be
received in bulk. Animals, on the other hand, are obliged
to take their food at intervals not so much suited to their
wants as to their opportunities of obtaining it. Between
the feeding of brutes and mankind, the only essential differ-
ence is, that while the former consume their food in the
state in which it is yielded by nature, man, even in his
rudest condition, subjects it, for the most part, to some kind
of cookery. Man, it has been said humorously, is "the
cooking animal."
34. The mere knowledge of the waste of the tissues, and
of the organic need for food thence arising, would not be a
sufficient provocative to eat. Absorbed in darling occupa-
tions, many men would never think of taking food, did not
hunger at last impel them. As a physical agent, hunger is
thus of an importance impossible to over-rate : and its moral
value is necessarily commensurate. It is the chief source
of social order ; for if mankind could do without food, they
would be out of reach of rule and control, and necessary
* See for illustration in detail. Sir T. C. Morgan's "Sketches of
the Philosophy of Life," chap, iii., " The Combination of Organs and
Functions."
LEGITIMATE ENJOYMENT OF FOOD. 69
subordination would not exist. " Hunger," says Bray,
" has been the chief source of man's progression, seeing that
it constitutes, principally, that necessity which is the mother
of invention. We might, perhaps, have been made to do
without eating and drinking; but instead of this being a bless-
ing, we should thereby be destitute of the most potent stimu-
lus of the mental powers, upon the action of which powers
happiness wholly depends. The privilege of requiring no
bread would not be equal to the advantages man derives
from the law of nature which compels him to earn it by the
sweat of his brow ; for nature has imposed no more labor
than is pleasurable and necessary to health — unjust laws
and regulations with respect to the distribution of the pro-
ducts of human labor, compel the majority to toil more
than is consistent with health and happiness — but more
fatal than unjust laws would it be to the well-being of soci-
ety, if all necessity for exertion were abrogated.* No one
need think ill of eating, or of any of its associations, except
the abuse. Good, substantial, wholesome food, properly
cooked, and neatly served up, is one of the highest proofs
and privileges of civilization ; it is a criterion of every well-
conducted household, and of every true and clever wife;
while the legitimate enjoyment of it is one of the most
honest and innocent of pleasures. All sensible and good-
natured people are fond of eating ; and one of the pleasant-
est things it is possible either to feel in one's self or to wit-
ness in another, is a healthy and natural readiness for the
bounties of the table. To satisfy nature without surfeiting
it, is one of the foremost of the " good works " we are re-
quired to enact. Thankful enjoyment of our daily bread is
no small part of Christianity. If "lying lips" "be an
abomination to the Lord," so is the ingratitude of asceti-
* " Philosophy of Necessity." Vol. i.
70 ENJOYMENT OP FOOD A DUTY.
cism ; and infinitely more so, the dyspepsia which disables
the intemperate from the great, universal duty of all man-
kind to have a good appetite. While all possible forms of
intemperance and excess are denounced both in the Old
Testament and New, the substantial viands gathered from
the fields and the vineyards, the firstlings of the flocks and
herds, the fig, the olive, and the pure juice of the grape, are
promised, over and over again, as the rewards of virtuous
toil, and catalogued with the blessings to be received in this
lower world. "I have no patience," says a wise writer,
" with those who pretend not to care for their dinner, or the
ludicrous assumption that 'spiritual' negations imply su-
perior souls. A man who is careless about his dinner, is
generally one of flaccid body and feeble mind. As old
Samuel Johnson authoritatively said — ' Sir, a man seldom
thinks of anything with more earnestness than he thinks
of his dinner; and if he cannot get that well dressed, he may
he suspected of inaccuracy in other things' When a man
is not basely insensible to hunger of soul, the keen intellec-
tual voracities and emotional desires, he is all the healthier,
all the stronger, all the better for a noble capacity for food —
a capacity which becomes noble when it ministers to a fine,
and not merely to a gluttonous nature."* Even a plain
diet is but half-good. It cannot be doubted that, on the
whole, refinement, in board as well as lodging — being a
fruit of intelligence — is favorable alike to health and lon-
gevity. There are advantages we little think of in those
culinary ingenuities which, not significantly adding to the
cost of our food — in fact, reducing it, by subserving to di-
minish waste — at once modify and neutralize ill flavour.?,
and so greatly augment its pleasant sapidity. The pleasure
of meal-times is one of the prerogatives of human nature.
"Sea-side Studies." Blackwood's Magazine, September, 1856.
EVILS OF INSUFFICIENT FOOD. 71
The lower mammalia — the only other animals who appear
to enjoy the flavour of their food — are insensible to haut-gout.
Granivorous birds and most kind of fishes not only have
cartilaginous tongues, which prevent them from tasting, but
swallow their food Avhole, guided probably to the choice of
it by sight rather than taste or smell. Fishes seem to de-
pend entirely on the eye, if we may judge from the readiness
with which they swallow artificial bait. Man's palate, in
short, was not given him for nothing; but to procure
pleasures for him commensurate with his patrician rank.
35. The benefits which accrue to the body from supplying
it with a sufficiency of wholesome food, show in the strongest
light the evils which result from wisufficiency. Disease is
one of the first. Many diseases are induced by it, many
are aggravated. Sanitary movements having reference to
the poor, cannot possibly effect any lasting amelioration of
their condition so long as they go short of proper aliment.
It is worthy the attention of philanthropists, that epidemic
and jDestilential diseases in particular are far more widely
fatal in their ravages among the ill-fed than among the
well-fed. Certainly there are several such diseases which
assail rich and poor alike — small-pox, measles, and scarlet-
fever, for example ; but even these are much more destruc-
tive when they attack persons who have been forced to sub-
sist on poor or too scanty nourishment. Legislators, no less
than the charitable, may find in this fact, a vitally import-
ant principle of action. Insufficiency overprolonged in-
duces the slow and miserable death of starvation, and no
physical calamity can be conceived of as more terrible.
Yet starvation — actual, killing starvation — is perhaps the
least part of the injury to the human race which comes of
privation of needful sustenance. Actual death from hun-
ger is only an occasional thing. The evils which accrue
ftora the debilitating effects of customary stint, life stUl drag-
72 EFFECTS OF A STARVING DIETARY.
ging on, are incalculably more extended and severe. Even
the physical disease which they engender is a slight evil
compared with the impeded meidal action which must needs
follow. A miserable, starving dietary, while it weakens the
body, half-paralyzes the soul, and not seldom leads direct to
insanity itself When we remember how entirely the brain
depends for its nourishment upon the blood, and that if this
sovereign pabulum of life and nervous energy be either di-
minished in quantity or deteriorated in quality, no organ of
the body can possibly work well, hoAV easy it is to see that
between insufficient, innutritions diet, and prostration of
mind, there is little less than an inevitable connection.
Every man has experienced the feeling of debility which at-
tends hunger but a little longer unsatisfied than nsual, and
how swift and lively is the revival of every function of the
mind as well as body which follows its j)roper gratification.
The difficulty of awakening the intelligence of a poorly-fed
child compared with that of the well-nourished one, is
known to every observant teacher in town Sunday-schools.
Intellectual productions which are born, not as literature
should always and only be, of the soul's going to it as the
hart to the water-brooks, but of the howling of the dogs of
hunger, betray no less plainly their miserable origin. Think-
ing, like acting, requires a good substratum of physical nou-
rishment. Genius, though it has sometimes turned to vege-
tarianism, is rarely found adhering to it; all its greatest
works have been achieved on a basis of generous diet. This
is not all. Where the body is debilitated by hunger, the
affections also are necessarily dull, and little excitable to
anything better than sensualities. Any man who has been
compelled to undergo the hardships of fasting, whether by
poverty, or the exigencies of travel in remote places, knows
the gradual inroad of cross-grained views, indolence, and
recklessness on an empty stomach. The crowning and
CHRISTIANITY BEGINS WITH PHYSICAL SUCCOR. 73
deadly evil which comes of insufficient nourishment is, ac-
cordingly, the vitiation of man's moral nature ; and what a
lesson is there in this for the Home Missionaries of Christia-
nity and their patrons ! It is no less vain than aggravating
to preach faith and loving-kindness where father and mother
and children lie huddled together in the pains and apathy
of hunger. To the starving, religion may well appear folly
and hypocrisy ; nor is it any marvel that it should fail to
interest them. So long as the gospel is proffered without its
proper preface of ministry to man's physical necessities, the
poor must not only be expected to decline it, but they are
not altogether unjustified in so doing, for God requires no
man to take sermons and benedictions as a substitute for
the bread which the body needs. Every one knows how
unamiable even the best-fed are liable to become if kept
too long waiting for their meals — how inaccessible they are
at such times to appeals which after dinner meet most gra-
cious response.* Is it surprising, then, that religious truth
should find more indifierence than welcome among the hun-
gry and half-nourished ? It is difficult for a famished man
to believe that there is a Father in heaven till he feels that
he has brothers on earth. If there be one farce more
wretched than another, it is the building a "Eagged
Church" and holding "special religious services" as the
first thing indispensable to the bettering the condition of
the poor.f
* Voltaire knew this well when he told place-seekers — " II faut
to uj ours prendre mollia fandi tempora. II y a une grande analogic
entre les intestines et nos passions, notre maniere de penser, notre
conduite."
f See for illustrative details on the general subject, "An Inquiry
into the Morbid Effects of Deficiency of Food, chiefly with reference
%o their occurrence among the Destitute Poor." By R, B. Howard,
M. D. London and Manchester, 1839.
7 I>
74 EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF EXCESS.
36. Too much food is as bad as too little. To sacrifice to
the stomach that nervous energy which ought to be devoted
to the brain, the organ of our most ennobling and most
pleasurable faculties, is, in fact, so far as regards the reten-
tion of genuine manliness, little better than to commit sui-
cide outright. Disease, though probably a third part of all
that there is in the world is attributable to this cause, is, as
in a former instance, the least of the evils that have to be
affiliated on ill-regulated eating : infinitely more dire are
the peevishness and ill-humor which it engenders, the gloomy,
hypochondriacal and dissatisfied tempers which generally
overtake the intemperate eater and drinker, and make him
a pest both to himself and to society. Many a man's fall
and ruin have come of the overloaded and thence disordered
stomach of another ; as many a man's rise and prosperity
of another's temperance and cheerful health. No less
destructive is intemperance to the intellectual energies.
The intellects which lie sunk in sluggishness through over-
loading the stomach, are incomparably more numerous than
those which are slow and stupid by nature. The authors
themselves of their condition, the cross and imbecile through
over-feeding, do not belong to society proper; they are not
human, yet neither are they brutes, for no brute is intem-
perate; no longer men, gluttons and drunkards form an
outside class by themselves, the nobleness of their nature to
be estimated, as in all other cases, by the quality and end
of their delights. It is worthy of remark, that nothing is
more speedily and certainly destructive also of the beauty
of the countenance. Diet and regimen are the best of cos-
metics ; to preserve a fair and bright com2:)lexion, the diges-
tive organs need primary attention.
37. It is a striking and highly-suggestive fact in human
economy, and one here deserving to be noticed, that the two
physical powers which have most intimate relation with life,
HUNGER AND LOVE THE WORLD'S MINISTERS. 75
tlie one, to its maintenance in the individual, the other to
its communication to new beings, should be precisely those
which, while they fill it with energy by right exercise, and
confer the keenest of sensuous pleasures, are contrariwise the
very powers through which may be inflicted, by abuse, the
deepest injuries it is susceptible of Eating and drinking,
attended to as nature directs, are the essential origin of
every animal pleasure, and the basis of moral and intellec-
tual happiness; similarly, the initiative of the sweet i^rivi-
lege of offspring invigorates both body and mind,* and is
the foundation of home and its smiling circle, Avith all the
dearest and most beautiful afiections of humanity. The
punishments, on the other hand, which fall upon abuse of
the first, are paralleled exactly in the intellectual dulness, the
melancholy, the pusillanimity and Aveariness of life which
form the inevitable retribution of excess in the other. By
Hunger and Love is the world held together and sweetened ;
by Hunger and Love is it disgraced and made wretched.
These are the two poles of the little world of human nature,
round which everything else revolves; the very structure of
the body in its relation to them corresponding with and
resulting from the polar idea. It may be added, that where
one of these great institutions is honored, there also, for the
most part, is the other; where either is profaned, the pro-
fanation extends to both. Though temperance and purity
may sometimes not coexist in nice balance, no two things
are ever more frequently in company than gluttony, over-
drinking, and immodesty. It is in the intimate relation
which they bear to life that the reason exists why in all
* See on the latter points, Feuchsterleben's "Principles of Medi-
cal Psychology," (Sydenham Society's vol., 1847,) sect. 67, p. 181.
The author cites an extraordinary instance in "Casanova, who at
euch moments solved the most difllicult mathematical problems."
76 SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF EATING.
ages there has been an intuitive reverence in rightly-ordered
minds for the seal of sexual love ; and why a species of sanc-
tity has from the earliest days of history attached to eating
and drinking, which in ancient times entered largely into
religious ceremonies, as they do now and will for ever in the
most sacred rite of Christianity. " Eating and drinking,"
says Feuerbach, "are themselves religious acts, or at least
otight to be so. With every mouthful, we -should think of
the God who gave it." It is but an amplification of the
custom, which commences every procedure of interest or
importance with a plentiful spread upon the table. It may
not be suspected, and is often dishonored, but the origin of
the practice at least was a devout one. Friendship pursues
the same course ; because, as life is the most precious of pos-
sessions, the highest act of goodness that generous sentiment
can perform is to provide means for its maintenance and
prolongation. To offer food is symbolical of sincerely wish-
ing health and longevity. How beautiful are affection and
the gift of nourishment united in the first tenderness of the
mother towards her babe! She loves and she feeds. Even
the plant, when it opens its seed-pods and lets its offspring
/ fall to the earth, bestows upon each little embryo an imita-
tive bosom in the milk-like farina which encloses it, and
which suckles it during germination.
CHAPTER V.
TBE ATMOSFHXmiS IK ITS MEIATION TO LIFE.
38. By the Air — in repose the atmosphere, in movement
the wind — "we live, and move, and have our being." So
with all other living creatures. The very word "animal,"
signifies "breather." "Animated nature" means breathing
nature; "inanimate" that which does not breathe. The
corresponding Greek terms {^woc and C,(^ov are similarly-
derived, through ^dio, to live, from duo, to breathe, and
the intensitive prefix ^a. Grateful for these expressive
figures, the poetic Greeks reflected them on to their source,
calling the summer breezes the zephyrs, literally the "life-
bringers." Zephyrus was emphatically the west wind, and
deified, was said to produce flowers and fruit by the sweet-
ness of his breath, charmingly alluded to by Homer in his
description of the gardens of Alcinous.* Zehq or Jupiter
* Odyssey vii. 119. Compare Virgil —
" Zephyris cum Iseta vocantibus sestas;"
" When gay summer comes, invited by the zephyrs."
Oeorgic iii. 322,
See also Lib. ii. 330. Modern poets have freely taken up the
idea, and often with great elegance and success, as in the " Paradise"
of Dante, —
In quella parte, ove surge ad aprire
Zeffiro dolce le novelle fronde
Di che si vede Europa rivestire. — Canto xii, 46-48.
" In that clime where rises the sweet zephyr to unfokl the new
leaves wherein Europe sees herself fresh clothed."
7 « 77
78 MCP.AL INFLUENCES OF THE ATMOSPHERE.
himself was originally only a personification of the air
whence it is that in the poets his names are not uncommonly
used in the place of aer and aura, as in the malus Jupiter,
sid> Jove frigido, &c., of Horace, and when Theocritus says
that Zshi; "is one while indeed fair, but at another time he
rains." Aratus styles the air Zeb;; (puaixbz, the physical
God. ^schylus gives it the epithet " divine." Virgil de-
scribes it as ovmipotens pcder jEther. "But can air," says
Cicero, "which hath no form, be God? For the Deity must
necessarily be not only of some form, but the most beau-
tiful." The mediate source of life to every occupant of
earth. Hare describes it beautifully as the "unfathomable
ether, that emblem of Omnipresent Deity, which everywhere
enfolding and supporting man, yet baffles his senses, and is
unperceived, except when he looks upwards and contem-
plates it above him."
39. The air is the great physician of the world. Health
confides in it as its most faithful friend. The weak it invi-
gorates, the weary it refreshes. What is more grateful than
to go from a close room into the pure, blowing breath of
heaven, even if it be but on a barren highway ! What more
animating and delicious than to exchange the hot, perspiring
streets for the breezes of the hills or of the sea! It minis-
ters largely even to our moral well-being. Children at
boarding-schools are always better disposed to be diligent
and Avell-behaved when the day has been commenced with a
walk in the fresh air. Under its genial stimulus we forget
our vexations and disappointments, we become cheerful and
vivacious, and thence— what without cheerfulness is impos-
sible — more willing "to refuse the evil and choose the good."
No wonder that the poets seem never in happier mood than
when the wind is perceived wafting through their verses —
THE ATMOSPHERE NEEDFUL TO BEAUTY. 79
This castle hatli a pleasant seat ; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
This guest of summer,
The temple haunting martlet, doth approve
By his lov'd mansionry, that the heavens' breath
Smells wooingly here.
Far more intimate than we suppose is the relation of the
atmosphere to the spiritual and intellectual. Nothing so
powerfully stimulates intellectual productiveness, where the
slightest capacity for it is present, as a walk in a gently-
blowing wind. To the brilliant purity of the atmosphere of
Athens, and of Greece in general, and the happy tempera-
ture of the gales which fanned its hills, so favorite a topic
with the panegyrists of that lovely country, are justly
ascribed "the preeminence in learning, taste, literature, and
the arts, in all that constituted aocpia in its widest accepta-
tion, which distinguished Athens among the nations of the
civilized world."* ^schylus enumerates among the bless-
ings of a highly-favored land, "the gales of the winds blow-
ing with clear sunshine." Pindar gives the same to the
Islands of the Blest, " where shine the golden flowers."
40. At all times and seasons, with all forms and condi-
tions of beings, it is no less the function of the Air to
embellish. Who so rosy in the cheek as they Avho oftenest
seek the pure country air! How does the plainest face
improve, as it blushes under the courtship of the summer
breezes ! Virgil, with the true poetic instinct, makes ^neas
owe his beauty to the heavenly breath of Venus —
* Consult, upon the connection of the Greek and Italian atmos-
phere with their sculpture, Winckelman's "History of Art among
the Ancient Greeks," Pai-t 1, section .3.
Sj) THE ATMOSPHERE NEEDFUL TO BEAUTY.
Namque ipsa decoram
Cffisariem nato genitrix, lumenque juventee
Purpureum, et Isetos oculis afflarat honores.
"For Venus herself had adorned her son with graceful locks,
flushed him with the radiant bloom of youth, and breathed a
sprightly lustre on his eyes."
The wind is necessary even to the vitalizmg of the aspects
of insensate nature. Scenes dull and uninviting in its
absence, become pleasant when we visit them under the
inspiration of a breeze ; the loveliest lose in charm if the
winds be asleep, though viewed by the light of summer.
For this is not merely because the zephyrs temper the too
fervent heat of the sunbeams, and by their physical action
on the lungs and system generally give buoyancy and elas-
ticity to the limbs, and thus enlarge our capacity for enjoy-
ment. Nature never shows so lovely when still as when in
movement; and it is by the wind that all her charms of
motion are produced, whether of the clouds, or the trees, or
the corn-fields, or the delicate stalks of the harebells. The
grandeur of the unceasing roll of the sea, though partly
OAving to another cause, proves in itself how mighty an ally
to whatever is competent to become beautiful or sublime, is
this viewless and marvelous visitant. Motion embellishes
nature thus largely, because it is an emblem and clmracter-
istic of life, to contemplate which, is one of the soul's highest
pleasures, by reason of its own vitality. It loves to behold
its immortality pictured in the outward world, be it ever so
faintly; and if it meet no reflex in its surveys, feels de-
frauded and unsatisfied. The correspondence of the forms
of nature with the particular elements of our spiritual being,
encourages this secret love of movement so strong within the
soul ; for the soul not only sees in external nature the
counterparts of its elements and qualities, but reflections
THE ATMOSPHERE AND THE SENSES. 81
likewise of its activities and deeds. The swaying of the
trees, the bending of the flowers, the waving of the corn,
severally" picture occurrences in the inner life — the one kind
promoted by the wind of nature, the other by the Spirit of
God.
41. We depend upon the atmosphere for the effectuation
of the powers of se7ise. Eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin or
seat of touch, would all be impotent without it. Our phy-
sical power of seeing, for example, depends on our inhabit-
ing an atmosphere competent to receive and diffuse the light
transmitted from the sun ; and our power of feeling in its
equal adaptedness to receive and diffuse the solar heat.
There is no feeling where there is no warmth ; what greater
antagonism than between cold and sensation? No sound
would exist in nature, if there were not an atmosphere
sensible to vibrations ; here is its needfulness to hearing.
So with odors and flavors, which it is only by inhalation Ave
distinguish and enjoy — here are smell and taste. If we
want to avoid the bitterness of physic, we hold the breath ;
if to feast on some rich bounty to the palate, we inspire.
How beautiful, again, is the imagery here disclosed ! As
the atmosphere gives ability to see and hear physically, so
does the divine life, as it flows into man's soul, fill him with
power to exercise Intellect and Affection, which are spiritual
sight and feeling. Love, or the will-principle, has from the
beginning been "warmth," and Intelligence, or the mental
eye, " light." Doubtless, man may j^ervert these inestimable
gifts ; just as the earth, which keeps fashion and pace with
nim in everything, applies the pure, sacred sunshine to the
production of thoi'ns and nettles as well as flowers. But he
has no intellectual or affectional jjoiver within him, but what
is communicated from God ; just as he has no power of see-
ing or of feeling but what he owes momentarily and con-
tinuously to the sun or its derivatives. All that man receives
D «
82 SPIRITUAL ANALOGIES OF LIGHT AND MUSIC.
is heavenly; only what he prepares in and of himself, is
bad. The atmosphere brings day-light though the sun be
obscured. However overcast the skies, there is yet pro-
duced sufficient illumination by the refracting properties of
the atmosphere to constitute day. Here is shown, that how-
ever thick the clouds which rise up to interpose between
God and our hearts, he himself is ever shining steadily
beyond them, and in his benevolence transmits to us suffi-
cient for our needs. God never deserts any one, not even
the most Avicked ; " He is kind even to the unthankful and
the evil ;" and though man, like the earth sending up its
dense vapors, may shut out the direct sunbeams which de-
scend towards him, he is still provided with a diffused light
of refreshing, energizing succor, brought by the all-per-
vading, all-penetrating Spirit. "Whither shall I go from
thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence ?" From
the same circumstance, i. e. the refracting properties of the
atmosphere, we enjoy the solar light for a long time before
the sun actually rises above the horizon, and for as long a
period after its setting. In the evening, when by the rota-
tion of the earth the sun itself is made to disappear, beams
of light are still passed into the higher regions of the air,
and thence diffused downAvards to the surface of the earth,
so that for a while we are unconscious of the loss. Except
for this beautiful provision, the evening sun would in a
moment set, and the earth be shrouded in sudden darkness.
In the morning, by a similar process of irradiation, the
atmosphere receives and sheds abroad beams which are not
yet visible.
42. The eye and the ear, or sight and heariug, are the
types and continents of the senses generally. So, in the
conveyance by the atmosphere of light and sound, is
summed up, representatively, all that it is the function of
the Divine life to communicate. For sound, when its tones
ANALOGIES OF LIGHT AND MUSIC. 83_
are agreeable and harmonious, is music, and music is objec-
tive or visible nature reiterated in a vocal form — the audi-
ble counterpart of whatever is lovely and perfect to the eye.
Hence the wonderful and enchanting variety in the sounds
of nature; a variety sufficient, as aa'c have elsewhere seen, to
furnish the foundations of all language.* The dashing of
waterfalls, the roar of the sea, the voices of the trees in their
different kinds, each intoning to the wind in a new mode,
together with the multitudinous diversities of utterance
proper to the animate part of creation, are not mere acci-
dental results of physical conformation, nor are they mean-
ingless or arbitrary gifts. Every one of them is inseparably
identified with the object that utters it, because of an origi-
nal and immutable agreement in quality. Music, in its es-
sential nature, is an expression of the Creator as truly as
his objective works. Expressed in forms, the air presents
him to the eye — the organ preeminently of the intellect:
expressed in sounds, it presents him to the ear — the organ
sacred to the affections. When we listen to a beautiful
melody or " air," it is surveying a charming and varied
landscape, vivid with life, and adorned with innumerable
elegances, only addressed to another sense- — heard instead
of seen. It is not only a sublime fact that God thus doubly
places himself before us — it is a necessary result of his very
nature ; for music stirs the soul so deeply because of its pri-
mitive relation to his goodness, and thus to everything con-
nected with our emotional life; objective nature, on the
other hand, so largely delights the intellect (having only a
secondary influence on the heart), because it is fashioned
after the ideas of his wisdom. Each, moreover, assumes its
loveliest when the other is in company, because in Him
* " Figurative Language : its Origin and Constitution," chapters
7 an€l 8.
84 A CHARACTERISTIC OF ORGANIC LIFE.
their prototypes are married. Never is nature so beautiftil
as when we view it in the hearing of true music; in no
place does music sound so sweet as amid her responsive and
tranquil retreats.
Why should we go in ?
My friend Stephano^ signify, I pray you,
Within the house, your mistress is at hand,
And bring your music forth into the air.
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears.
Echo, due like other sounds to the agency of the atmosphere,
exemplifies the same fine truths. The sympathy we feel
with the objective forms of nature is the equivalent of the
agreeable answers with Avhich she acknowledges our voice.
Echo, in her beautiful and undelayed replies, is the image
and emblem of the responses in which the emotions of man's
spirit, when he addresses himself to God, are immediately
reflected back upon himself, coming invisibly, he knows not
whence, but with a magical and most sweet power. No
wonder that the poets have in all ages given Echo a fond
and grateful mention.*
43. Let us pass on to the consideration of the air in its
immediate bearing upon the maintenance of organic life.
* What can be more beautiful than the following, in the " Per-
sians" of J^schylus {Itcu ye fitvroi k. r. X. 386-391) — "When Day,
drawn by white steeds, had overspread the earth, resplendent to be-
hold, iirst of all a shout from the Greeks greeted Echo like a song,
and Echo from the island rock in the same moment shouted back an
inspiring cry." Moschus, in his elegy on Bion, and Bion, in his own
sweet poem upon the death of Adonis, represent Echo as sharing in
their lamentations, as does Milton, bewailing Lycidas. Other ele-
gant allusions occur in Horace, Odes 1, 20; Tasso, Gerusalemme xi.
11 ; Euripides, Shakspere, Camoens, Shelley, and Byron, particularly
one in Manfred.
RESPIRATION IN AGREEMENT WITH VIGOR. 85
Grand as are the capacities of the vital stimuli, or heat,
light, and electricity, and invaluable as are the uses sub-
served by feeding, it remains incontestably true that without
continuous supplies of fresh air. Life cannot go on. We
are forever referred back to Respiration as the prime cha-
racteristic of a healthy, living creature. The assimilation
of food' may be suspended for a time ; darkness and severe
cold may be endured, the former even for years ; but respi-
ration must be steady, or the creature dies. Every living
thing breathes more or less ; only the lowest forms of animal
life can bear intermissions of breathing for any considerable
period ; even the foul parasites called Entozoa cannot live
without air, though secluded by their position from direct
contact with the atmosphere. Entophytal fungi, or those
which are found in the interior of other plants, and some-
times in the bodies of animals, are for the most part only
the mycelia of species which the imperfect supply of air
prevents from developing into the perfect form.
44. Not only is life, as a whole, inseparable from respira-
tion, but every variety in the manifestation of life. Where
respiration is vigorous, as in the feathered tribes, life is ener-
getic ; where it is feeble, as in the reptile, life is slow. Similar
phenomena pertain to the various epochs of life. "The rest-
lessness of the child, and the activity of the boy, correspond
with the vigor of their breathing : the calmness and power
of the man are combined with a usually tranquil respiration,
capable of being increased to the utmost as occasion calls
for the higher energies of life; in the old man, deliberate in
his movements, respiration is limited, and usually slow."
Breathing varies even with the condition of the body, and
its employments. We breathe differently in sickness and in
health ; differently asleep and awake ; differently in the per-
formance of every action of our animal organs. We breathe
in one mode when we walk, in another when we run. Breath-
8
86 OBJECT OF RESPIRATION.
ing, accordingly, is not only a physiological but a representa-
tive phenomenon. In the respiratory breast dwell, along
with its health, magnanimity and heroic courage; where the
breathing is languid, we look but for timorousness and de-
bility. In our own species, the face itself, the silent echo of
the heart, is not a more faithful index to our states, either
of body or mind, than is our breathing. As the emotions
manifest themselves in the play of the muscles and the light
of the eyes, as they are shown, too, in the tone of voice, in the
harshness, the tremor, the asjDcrity or the sweetness of the
uttered sound, and are interpreted thereby, so is it with the
attendant breathing. Let us but hear how a person is
breathing, and though he be out of sight we may infer to a
certain extent, how he is employed, and judge of his general
tranquility or the reverse. See what testimony to it there
is in Language ! To be " animated," to be " spirited," or
"full of sj)irits," is to have breath in plenty. To be "out
of spirits," " sjiiritless," or "dispirited," is to be destitute of
breath; literally in every case; for all agreeable, lively, or
"life-like" emotions, tend to raise and quicken the breath,
while dejDressing ones tend to lower and deaden it. Eager-
ness j)ants ; desjoondency sighs ; weariness yawns ; extreme
fear makes us breathless or " aghast."*
45. The object of resj)iration is closely allied to that of
Feedmg; nay, it is no other than that of feeding. Consist-
ing of an infinite number of little stomachs, closely asso-
ciated and connected, but feeding upon aerial and gaseous
food instead of terrestrial and solid, such as is received into
the cavity of the stomach proper, the Lungs are no less im-
mediately concerned in the maintenance of the health and
* See for an admirable development of the whole subject, Garth
Wilkinson's banquet-like chapter of the Lungs, in "The Human
Body, and its connexion with Man."
OBJECT OF RESPIRATION. 87
vigor of the blood than the great, proper stomach itself.
Not only does the blood require to be nourished with the
products of digestion, but to be freely and regularly aerated,
not to have air directly admitted to it, but to be brought
into that peculiar proximity to the air which is effected by
the process of natural breathing. This, in the mammalia,
takes place, as we are all aware, in the lungs. Immediately
the blood enters these organs, in the process of circulation,
the fact is signalled by certain nerves to the medulla oblon-
gata.^ In an instant, obedient to an imperious order sent
back through certain other nerves, the diaphragm and
muscles of the ribs expand the chest, and thus enlarge its
cavity. A vacuum would now be caused, but the air, rush-
ing down from without, fills every corner, and in so doing,
aerates the awaiting blood, feeding it with oxygen, and re-
ceiving carbon in exchange. Then the various muscles
renew their play; but this time so as to contract, instead of
expand the chest, the lungs ex'sjDire, instead of mspiring, the
carbon is ejected by the mouth and nostrils, and the series
of actions constituting a respiration is complete. Renewed
by the oxygen thus communicated, the blood now moves on
again to the heart, whence it was first propelled, and whence
it is again transmitted to the body, again to' be carbonized
and weakened, and in due course to be returned into the
lungs for refreshment as before. Thus is the history of the
lungs inseparable from that of the heart. Complementary
to one another, these two noble organs, the heart and the
lungs, and their functions, circulation and respiration, form
a beautiful duality in unity, representing in the body the
* Medulla oblongata is the name given by anatomists to a peculiar
organ contained within the skull, yet no part of the brain properly
so called, but intermediate between this and the spinal cord, upon
the summit of which it stands.
88 DUALITY IN UNITY.
understanding and the affections, and their cooperative play
in every action of the soul. The latter, as we have seen
above, represent in turn the all-supporting wisdom and good-
ness of God — the infinite, Divine essences which, expressed
as life, conserve the universe. They fall, accordingly, under
those two sublime, reciprocal principles of creation which in
their most externalized physical embodiment we term Male
and Female; and whose noblest presentation, or Man and
Woman, are the lungs and the heart of the world. As man
and woman, by reciprocity and cooperation, instrumentally
keep the human race alive; so, by harmonious, conjugal
action and re-action, the lungs and the heart instrumentally
keep the human body alive. If either fail to perform its
ofiice, the other sinks powerless, and the fabric dies. Let
the heart be as well-disposed to live as it may, unless its de-
sires be recognized and responded to by the lungs, all is in
vain; for though there is no life where there is no blood,
there is no proper, life-sustaining blood where there is no
air: conversely, the lungs are efficient for their part, as
stewards of life, only in so far as the heart cooperates with
them ; so grand and universal is the eternal fiat that nothing
shall exist for itself alone, but only as the husband or the
wife of some other thing; that the unions of each pair shall
be followed by the development and sustentation of some
form or mode of life; that celibacy shall be infertility, and
estrangement a gateway for death. Until the two organs
are conjoined in complementary action, by the lungs drawing
breath, the grand drama of existence, as we well know, does
not commence. In the womb, life exists only in potency.
Marriage is everywhere the real beginning; and there are
no real beginnings without it.*
* See the beautiful description of the marriage of the Heart and
Lungs, in Swedenborg's "Animal Kingdom," i. 398.
THE HEART AND THE LUNGS. 89-
46. It is not to be imao-ined that the heart and kmo-s do
the whole work of life. Just as marriage, which has for its
physical end the sustentation of the human race, requires
for its effectuation a variety of subsidiary and contributive
conditions, so the maintenance of the life of the body by
the heart and lungs, which is a representative of marriage
and its object, demands (intermediately through the nervous
centres) the contributive functions of the stomach, the skin,
the liver, and other organs. And more than this : if the
action of any one of them become deranged, neither heart
nor lungs can do their work for them ; just as with complex
machinery, Avhere, if a single wheel be thrown " out of
gear," the coordination of actions is so interfered with that
the Avhole apparatus comes to a stand. Every organ of the
body is in league with every other organ. Every one of
them has its OAvn peculiar province and vocation, but is in
treaty at the sarue moment, offensive and defensive, with
every other. Nothing is proper to any member in this
unique and truly royal society that does not go forth in turn
for the interest and advantage of that society. Local
benefits immediately become public ones ; what injures in
one part, is a calamity to the whole. " The cardinal life of
every organ," says Swedenborg — " the excellency of its life
over other organs — consists in the fact, that whatever it has
of its OAvn, still in a wider sense belongs to the community;
and whatever afterwards results from the community to the
organ, is the only individual property which the latter
claims." It is not that the heart and lungs are all, but that
life is preeminently effectuated through them ; the cessation
of their activity, or of the activity of either of, them, being
also, as we shall see presently, the most usual and imminent
cause of death. So far from any one organ, or set of organs,
being autocratic, there is nothing in the whole scope of the
natural history of the human body more wonderful than
90 SYMPATHY OF ORGANS AND FUNCTIONS.
the S}'mpathy and concurrent energy of its various parts,
unless it be the fine illustrative analogy afforded in the
relations of the senses, as intimated to our daily conscious-
ness. Not one of the senses can be exercised without sug-
gesting to the mind acts and objects which belong to one or
more of their colleagues ; and the highest pleasures we enjoy
through their medium, are those which result from our being
able to use soine two or three of them at once. The water-
fall, we love not only to see, but to hear ; and not only to
hear, but to see; the eye helps the palate to the higher
/ enjoyments of food, and the nose to be more gratified with
/ the smell of flowers ; who ever looks on the smooth cheek
of a little child, without seeking an enhanced pleasure in
patting it! True science is never science only. On the
same principle commences all true investigation. To know
any single and individual thing thoroughly, it needs that
we gather instruction concerning it from all things. To
learn the true nature of a primrose, we must uiquire of firs
and jDalm-trees, and every other plant that springs forth
from the earth's bosom. From the same facts, brought to
bear in yet another direction, may we learn how it is that
undue indulgence in any sensuality enslaves the whole being,
and gradually chains a man's every thought and wish to
the adopted habit of the sense given way to.
47. In the full sense of the term. Respiration is a far
grander performance than the mere inhalation of fresh air
through the air-]Dassages. Essentially, it is concurrent and
coextensive with the circulation, so that its seat is the entire
fabric. Numbers of animals have no lungs, commonly so
called ; many have no special respiratory organs whatever.
They breathe, nevertheless. Such, for example, are jelly-
fishes, and the lowest forms of Crustacea. In these, respi-
ration takes place through the medium of the skin. Not
that this is a ncAv arrangement for the purpose of breathing,
PECULIARITIES OF BREATHING APPARATUS. 91
now for the first time met with. Animals possessing a
special apparatus, have cutaneous respiration ; man has it,
in a slight degree. Here, however, it is only auxiliary;
whereas in the jelly-fishes it stands in lieu of the pulmonary
kind, and the creature depends upon it alone. The mecha-
nism of respiration in animals possessing lungs, is to be
regarded merely as the highest development of a respiratory
apparatus. It holds the first place because it is the mecha-
nism by which the greatest quantity of oxygen can be taken
into the system. There is no difierence in principle between
the two kinds ; it is a difference simply of vigor and com-
pleteness, the oxygen being admitted over an infinitely
larger surface in lungs than when it has to make its way
through the integuments. The positmi of the respiratory
apparatus, which, like its form, is most curiously diversified
in different creatures, is, generally speaking, regulated by
the medium in which the animal is intended to live — on
land, or in water. Terrestrial animals, breathing air in its
gasiform condition, have internal breathing apparatus ;
aquatic animals, collecting it from the water, have the
apparatus in or near the surface. By virtue of these
arrangements, neither class of animal can endure exchange
of natural location. The bird and the mammal drown if
submerged in water; the fish drowns if exposed to the
atmosphere. This is, in the former case, because water
cannot furnish an adequate supply of atmospheric air ; in
the latter, because the respiratory organs, from their external
position, rapidly become dry by evaporation. Aquatic
animals which have them partially covered, live longer out
of water than those which have them exposed. The activity
of life, in aquatic as well as in terrestrial animals, is univer-
sally in the ratio of the development of their respiratory
apparatus. The energetic habits of fishes, and the higher
Crustacea, such as crabs and lobsters, correspond with the
92 EESPTRATION AND ANIMAL HEAT.
higher development of their breathing organs ; the com-
paratively sluggish life of the moUusca, the annelida, and
the branchial amphibia, corresponds with the accompany-
ing loAver development. A creature j)ossessing both pul-
monary and cutaneous respiration, but able to live by
cutaneous respiration only, if prevented from breathing
through the lungs, sinks into the sluggishness and inactivity
which characterize the animals it is then leveled with in
regard to qualification for breathing.*
48. By respiration, accordingly, in the complete idea of
the process, and however effectuated, whether by lungs or
other apparatus, or cutaneously, oxygen is introduced to
every part, and carbon removed from every part. The
chemical process which goes on during the formation of the
carbonic acid in which the carbon is carried away, is at-
tended by the extrication of " animal heat." Here, then,
are three purposes served : renovation of the blood, purifi-
cation of it, and sustentation of temperature. Not that
" animal heat," even as commonly so understood, comes
exclusively of the combustion concurrent with respiration.
The evolution of animal heat is largely dependent on the
nervous energy. The loAver the nervous energy of an ani-
mal, the lower is its temj^erature ; the higher the nervous
energy, the higher is its temperature. It is not the larger
or smaller nervous system whicli is thus operative, but the
higher or lower nervous energy. Dr. Carpenter, in his large
work on Comparative Physiology, gives every kind of proof
and illustration. Mr. Newport's papers on the Temperature
and Respiration of Insects, published in the Philosophical
Transactions for 1835 and 1837, may also be usefully con-
'"' See for illustrations, an excellent paper on Respiration, by Dr.
Sibson, in the Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical
Association, vol. xvii., 1850.
RESPIRATION AND ANIMAL HEAT. 93
suited. "Animal heat," in the popular use of the phrase,
is not animal heat after all. What is so termed by the
physiologists is as purely " mineral" heat as any that radi-
ates from inanimate fire or candle. Animal heat, properly
so called, is the zeal which urges the creature to the active
exercise of its powers. There could not be a particle in the'
body of Avhat is commonly but erroneously so designated, if
the Divine Life did not already warm it with this, the true
animal heat. That which the mere combustion of oxygen
and carbon introduces is but supplementary and contingent.
Under all phenomena lies a profounder cause than chemistry
or anatomy can point out. The Divine Life everywhere
takes the initiative ; the apparent causes are secondary, and
are operative only as resting on it as a substratum. It
should be noted, too, that the lower we descend in the scale
of being, the more do these apparent, scientific causes seem
disused. While, for instance, the higher animals have their
blood propelled by the muscular engine we call the heart,
in many of the lower kinds, and in plants, there is no such
engine; the circulation goes on nevertheless. Besides the
quasi-chemical use of the air in respiration, there is a use in
the mechanical act of breathing it. There is no life where
there is no motion, and there is no vital motion but where
Air is passing to and fro, or indirectly actuating. The
lungs are the first to move under its impulse; the heart
beats time to them ; the brain falls as often as we inspire,
and rises with every expiration. In a child under two years
old, the latter may be felt as plainly as the pulse. Place
your hand low down on the body, and there too is found
constant and consentaneous movement Avith the lungs.
Respiration, in a word, keeps everything on the move, and
as soon as it ceases, comes the stagnation of death.
49. Respiration does more yet than bring in oxygen and
carry away carbon, and subserve the maintenance of vital
94 THE ATMOSPHERE A SOURCE OF FOOD.
warmth. It is itself a positive feeder of the body, with good
aliment or with bad, according to the kind of atmosphere
we inhale. The air is no mere compound of oxygen, nitro-
gen, and carbon, as such. "It is a product elaborated from
all the kingdoms of nature; the seasons are its education; it
is passed through the fingers of every herb and tree. Who-
ever looks upon it as one universal thing, is like a dreamer
playing with the words animal kingdom, vegetable kingdom,
and so forth, and forgetting that each comprises many genera,
innumerable species, and individuals many times innumera-
ble. The air is a cellarage of aerial wines, the heaven of
the spirits of the plants and flowers, which are safely kept
there till called for by the lungs and skin. The assumption
that the oxygen is the all, is ungrateful for the inhabitant
of any land whose fields are fresh services of fragrance from
county to county and from year to year." All the virtues
of the ground and of vegetation are in the atmosjjhere by
exhalation ; it is a kind of solution of some of everything
that the world contains, and from it, as from a fountain, all
come into the lungs and circulation. Not only does man
live in the world, but the >vorld, as to its essences, is con-
tained within itself, literally as well as corresj)ondentially.
Thus is our assertion not a meaningless one, that all nature
subsidizes and ministers to the blood. The ruins of the air,
when chemistry has pulverized it, may be no more than
what a brief formula of Roman letters will express ; but its
influence on us, while unmolested, comes of a compositeness
that no art can emulate. "Change of air" is something
more to the sick man than change of oxygen, and on the
other side of the picture are the dark, sad mysteries of air-
conveyed infections, and the endless evils produced by con-
fined, ill-ventilated abiding places. Dirty air is the source
of incomparably greater evils than dirty water. Many
complaints we are least apt to attribute to it, take their vise,
THE ATMOSPHERE IN RELATION TO PLANTS. 95
without doubt, in shut-up bed-rooms, and other domestic
stagnant air-pools, the contents of Avhich, were they out visi-
ble, would fill us with horror and disgust. The body is not
the only sufferer from impure air. Though vice and im-
pure air may be found in company, virtue and foul air are
incompatible. The temper of a public meeting is often in-
fluenced by the condition of the air Avhich it is breathing ;
to talk of a "moral atmosphere" is not altogether a figure
of speech. To the extreme and disgusting foulness of the
air which they commonly breathe is, probably, to be re-
ferred much of the indulgence of the poor in strong drink,
especially ardent spirits. They take it as a necessity,
claimed by nature as a kind of counterpoise to the ofiensive
and pernicious actions of bad smells. The best temperance
agent that can be got is a clean and well ventilated home.
No training, however skilfully conducted, no dieting or tee-
totalism, however rigid or prolonged, can bring a man into
good condition, either of body or mind, so long as he is con-
demned to breathe an impure atmos^^here. Sanitary asso-
ciations do well in teaching that the life is the blood, and
that without pure air, healthy blood is but a name.
50. The particular mode in which the air mmisters to
plant-life is found in the history of the growth or develop-
ment of the vegetable structure. The great mass of the ve-
getable fabric is derived, not from the soil, but from the air
which bathes the leaves. The strictly " mineral " part of its
food, as lime, silica, and potash, it undoubtedly sucks from
the earth, whence the value of manures, and the difference
produced by "good" and "bad" soils, but it is at the cost
of the carbonic acid, Avater, and ammonia of the atmosphere,
that it essentially lives, (p. 63.) Much, indeed, of what it
])roximately procures from under ground is virtually atmo-
spheric, because previously carried thither by the rain.
Thousands of plants have no connection whatever with the
96 PLANTS UNCONNECTED WITH THE EARTH.
/ ' earth, but grow upon the surface of other plants. Such are
the beautiful aerial flowers called Orchidese, which in their
wild state, live from first to last on the trees of their native
forests, and demand an imitative location when brought
into our hot houses and conservatories. They are not like
the misletoe, parasites — thieves of the substance of the tree
they perch upon, but simply " epiphytes" — bird-like lodgers
among the branches. Dendrobium, Epidendrum, Dendroli-
rion, are names ingeniously descriptive of their nature. Es-
sentially, without doubt, they feed as terrestrial plants do —
indebted largely to the various decaying organic matters
which accumulate round about them, both of animal origin
and vegetable. Lifted, however, as they are, so far above
the surface of the earth, they show, in the most beautiful
manner, how independently of direct connection with it ve-
getable existence may be maintained, and how thoroughly
at home it may be in the atmosphere. Two species of Or-
chidese, called Air-plants, find in it their entire nourish-
ment.* What epiphytes are in the air, Algse are in the
water, drawing from it their chief supplies ; for their roots,
so called, are little more than organs of adhesion. ISTot
wholly so, since many show a decided preference for certain
kinds of rocks, and for the branches of certain other Algse,
seated upon which, they attain higher perfection. Under
the influence of light, the leaves, both of terrestrial and
aei-ial plants, become the seats at once of respiration and as-
similation. If leaves be not developed, as in the cactus,
their place is supplied by the tender green skin of the gene-
ral surface, which is then so modified as to perform the fo-
* The trunks and branches of the trees in tropical Brazil, Mr.
Gardner tells us, abound not only with Orchidese, but with Bromelia-
cese, Tillandsias, Ferns, and various climbing species of Begonia, all
of course dependent upon the Atmosphere.
PLANTS AND ANIMALS OF MUTUAL SERVICE. 97
liar functions. Carbon, ammonia, and water are taken i:p,
and oxygen is set free. Hence the leaves are well styled the
"lungs" of plants; the lungs, for their part, being animal
trees clothed Avith innumerable foliage. The leafless plants
may be compared with the animals whose respiration is
wholly cutaneous. To enable respiration to take place, the
cuticle of every leaf is pierced wdth innumerable pores well
called by the vegetable anatomist, stomates, since mouths
they are, both in form and oiSce. The most ordinary mi-
croscoj)e will bring them into view, and show a wonderful
variety in their figure.
51. Absorbing carbon, and liberating oxygen, which is the
reverse of the animal process of res2Diration, plants are the
great purifiers of the atmosphere as regards animals. The
only exception to their use in this respect occurs in the
fungi — ^plants which, unlike the purifying tribes, are never
of a green color. What animal respiration exhales, vegeta-
ble respiration consumes, and vice versa. There is, however,
always some small amount of carbonic acid in the course of
disengagement from plants, especially at night, when also
they absorb oxygen. On this is founded the popular notion,
so immensely exaggerated, that plants kept in a bed-room
are injurious to the sleeper. Plants, by their assimilation,
purify the air much more than by their respiration they
vitiate it. They are breathers at once for their own interests,
and for those of animals. Plants live by animals, and
animals by plants. The girdling and encircling aif, their
common property, is that which truly makes the whole
world kin. "The carbonic acid with which our breathing
fills the air, to-morrow will be spreading north and south,
and striving to make the tour of the Avorld. The date trees
that groAV round the fountains of the Nile will drink it in by
their leaves; the cedars of Lebanon will take of it to add
to their stature; the cocoa-nuts of Tahiti will grow richer on
9 E
98 TREES AND PLANTS IN CBMETEEIES.
it; the lotus plants will change it into flowers. Contrari-
wise, the oxygen we are taking in was distilled for us, some
little time ago, by the magnolias of the Susquehanna, and
the great trees that skirt the Orinoco and the Amazon. The
rhododendrons of the Himalayahs contribute to it, the roses
and myrtles of Cashmere, the cinnamon and the clove trees
of the Spice islands." In recognizing this fine use of plants
in the economy of the world, we must be careful not to over-
estimate it. The primary use of plants is to supply food; the
purification of the air is but a subordinate use. For every
kindness they do to the lungs of animals there are a thousand
done to their stomachs.
52. In the fact that vegetation purifies the air by absorbing
from it what is deleterious, resides a capital argument against
intra-mural interments. There cannot be a doubt that the
beautiful, time-honored, and world-wide practice of shelter-
ing graves with trees, and adorning them Avith flowers, is
attended by valuable sanitary results, such as are wholly
precluded when burials are made amid streets and houses.
While the sight of evergreen trees, and of floAvers in their
season, soothes and consoles the mind, by virtue of their
associations and emblematic teachings, the atmosphere is
improved and renovated. So true it is that whatever is
practically wise is always in keeping with Avhat is poetically
beautiful, and an exemplification of it. Many of the trees
which poetical intuition has pronounced appropriate to the
side of the sepulchre, by reason of their evergreen or other
symbolical characters, are precisely such as scientific design
would approve. Witness the arbor-vitse, the Oriental cypress,
and certain kinds of coniferse ; all of them more or less narrow
and conical in form, neither covering a large sjoace Avith
their branches, nor casting too much shade Avhen the sun
sliines, and freely admitting the air and light. The beauty
of the cypress-planted cemeteries of the Turks is Avell known.
WAVING BOUGHS BETTER THAN MARBLE. 99
At Constantinople tlie chief promenade for Europeans is the
cemetery of Pera, delightfully placed on a hill-side, and
abounding with this handsome tree. "At Scutari," Miss
Pardee tells us, "preferred by the Turks to all other burial-
places, because of certain comfortable superstitions connected
with it, a forest of the finest cypress extends over an im-
mense space, clothing hill and valley, and seen far off at
sea, — an object at once striking and magnificent." In the
cemetery appropriated to the Armenians, instead of the
cypress, the Acacia is the prevailing tree. Marble is good,
but Avaving boughs are better. It will be one of the most
certain indications of progress in real, practical science,
when town burial-grounds shall be abolished for the sake of
rural cemeteries like gardens. Wherever such have been
formed, they have been regarded with satisfaction, and their
general establishment would unquestionably lead to a
marked diminution of average mortality, by removing a
deadly evil.
CHAPTER VI.
MOTION THJE VNIVERSAI. SIGN OF I.1FE.
53. Reviewing these various and wonderful processes,
we cannot fail to observe how, in its every phase and expres-
sion, the great sign and certificate of life is Motion. Use-
fully, then, may we pause upon the consideration of it as a
kind of summary and continent of vital phenomena. No-
thing exists independently of motion as its cause ; by reason,
likewise, of motion, all things hold together and preserve
their form. "Passive life," sometimes spoken of, is a con-
tradiction in terms ; certain states of being may be relatively
passive, but there is no such thing as absolute passivity. In
no case a state ipso facto, passivity is everywhere an incident
of motion, consequently to be referred to motion, and to be
explained by motion. Doubtless there is great diversity in
the degree and amount of motion ; also in its manifestation
to the eye. We must not confound it with moving about.
Motion, ordinarily so called, implying visible change of
place and position, and furnishing us Avith ideas of time,
does not comprise the All of motion. There is motion which
no eye can perceive, motion Avhich we are made aware of
only by witnessing its results. Of this kind, indeed, is the
chief part; the most wonderful and efficient movements in
the world are those which proceed in secrecy and silence.*
* Robert Boyle has an essay, well 1-nown to the curious, "On the
great effects of Languid and Unheeded Motion." See in particular,
chapters viii. and ix.
100
ANIMAL MOTION. 101
The feebler and briefer the exhibition of motion, especially
the latter, the lower is the expression of life ; the more ener-
getic and continuous it is, the higher is the life — so that apart
from structure, motion is a criterion of vital excellence, of
course under the reservation that the quality of life depends
primarily and essentially upon its End ; else would the sea
be more living than a plant ; and a watch, or other piece of
self-acting mechanism, commend itself as of nobler nature
than many animals. Inanimate as it is, the watch, by rea-
son of these relations, excites agreeable ideas of life, at least
in the minds of the intelligent; while by the child and the
savage, unacquainted with its construction, it is unhesita-
tingly pronounced " alive !" Experience rectifies the error,
but vindicates the principle upon which the mistaken judg-
ment was entertained.
54. Animals, as holding the highest offices in the economy
of creation, therefore the noblest forms, and the highest
degrees of life, present in their various history the completest
examples of vital motion. Their movements are both in-
ternal and external. The great mternal movement is the
circulation of the blood, and its familiar token, the beating
of the heart. This is the circumstance on which the very
name of Life is founded; its proximate root, the Anglo-
Saxon lyhhan, "to live," being ultimately assignable to the
Arabic hib, the heart, or the congenerous Hebrew name for
that organ, leh. Literally, therefore, "life" means "the
heart;" a fact beautifully in unison with the great funda-
mental truth, alike of religion and philosophy, that Life is
Love. It is for etymologists to determine how far the law
of transposition of letters may or may not show "lub" and
"life" in the Greek word (pc?'.-eco, "I love." The ancient
Egyptians used a heart, placed in the midst of a censer of
flame, for the hieroglyph of heaven, the source to the world,
as the heart is to the body, of all activity and life. Nothing
9 ®
102 MOTION IN PLANTS.
is easiei' than to verify that the life of the body consists in
its internal movements. How painful to sit perfectly still,
even for a few minutes, as when having one's likeness taken
by photography! The performers in tableaux vivans and
poses plastiques find that to play at statues is the hardest
trial of human nature. Dependent on the circulation, and
less admired only because of its deep privacy, is that won-
derful and incessant flux of the ultimate atoms of the body
which has been described above, and which led the genius
of Cuvier to compare it to a whirlpool, an intense and un-
ceasing stream, into which new matter is for ever flowing,
and from which the old is as steadily moving out.
55. External movement culminates in the grand preroga-
tive of locomotion, the highest terrene presentation of the
great omnipresent law of Attraction, — the law which, under
the formula and name of chemical afiinity, brings together
the atoms of the pebble ; and which, at the other extreme
of creation, under the formula and name of Love, impels all
creatures towards what they have need of or desire. Where
there is the greatest capacity for locomotion, there also is
Ingenuity at its maximum. The animals wdiich possess
least of the constructive instinct are the slow-paced reptiles ;
the expertest artisans in the world, are the birds and flying
insects — man, of course, excepted, who has more capacity
than either; not, indeed, of the same nature, nor corporeal
at all, but derived from the very instruments Avhich prove
his ingenuity also the highest, his railways and his ships.
56. As in the animal kingdom, so in the vegetable. Plants,
quiescent as they appear, depend for their existence on the
motion of the juices contained within their substance; the
force Avith which the sap flows onwards when the plant is in
tall vigor, is like the rush of a little river ; even in winter,
when visible vitality is suspended, motion is still going on,
though languidly; the process of development is nevei
MOTION IN PLANTS. 103
entirely arrested ; in the season of deepest torj)idity, a slight
enlai'gement of the buds, in preparation for the spring, is
still to be observed. Were we endowed with eyesight ade-
quately fine, and were the integuments and tissues of plants
made transparent, we should see in every twig and leaf of
every plant the most energetic and persevering activity; as
by means of a glass hive we may Avatch at our leisure the
working of its indefatigable little townsfolk. One class of
internal movements in j)lants does actually allow of obser-
vation, just as in certain reptiles, as the frog, it is possible
to observe the circulation of the blood-corpuscles. When a
small portion of the cuticle of the Vallisneria is submitted
to a sufficient magnifying power, in the interior of every one
of its delicate cells there is seen a beautiful swimming pro-
cession of little globules, round and round, sometimes faster,
sometimes slower, till the vitality of the fragment is ex-
hausted. A similar motion has been noticed in many other
plants, terrestrial as well as aquatic, and probably it is
general. Even the external movement of plants, induced
by the excitation of the wind, notwithstanding its purely
extraneous origin, is a highly important circumstance of
their economy. It is evident that the boughs of trees are
so arranged, and the leaves of plants in general so distributed
and poised, as to admit of the swaying and fluttering which
the wind promotes ; and that benefit results from such move-
ment, corresponding, as it does, to the exercise of their limbs
by animals, it seems unreasonable to doubt. How different
the condition of the captives in our green-houses and conser-
vatories, debarred from every opportunity of movement,
compared with that of the glad, free trees, Avaving through-
out the year in the breezes of the open country ! As exercise
gives strength and solidity to the animal fabric, so do the
vegetable denizens of the fields and hills wax sturdy through
the agitation of their branches. When Homer would indicate
104 MOTIONS OF INORGANIC NATURE.
unusual strength and toughness in his heroes' spear-shafts,
he calls them d,ve/j.OTp£(irj(^, "wind-nurtured," or "wind-
hardened." " Pine-trees," says the prince of arborists, " in
thick woods, where the high winds have not free access to
shake them, grow tall and slender, but not strong; while
others, placed in open fields, and frequently shaken by
strong blasts, have not only thick and sturdy stems, but
strike deep root, and raise beautiful and spreading branches."*
57. Astronomy, chemistry, meteorology, though their sub-
jects belong to an entirely different province of being, find,
like physiology, that all their phenomena com-mence in mo-
tion. Not only has it been placed beyond a doubt that the
group of worlds which includes our own is advancing
through the heavens, but it has been determined in what
direction it moves, and within certain limits, what is the
velocity of its motion. If true of one system of sun and
planets, it must be true of all. Every star that we espy is
unquestionably rolling onwards, and carrying with it the
spheres to which it is the local orb of day, the immeasurable
altitude alone preventing the eye from pursuing; as when
from the brow of a lofty clifi" by the sea we discern far-dis-
tant shij)S that we know by their .spread canvas to be sailing,
but which the extreme remoteness make ajopear to be at
anchor. " If we imagine," says Humboldt, " as in a vision
of the fancy, the acuteness of our senses preternaturally
sharpened, even to the extreme limits of telescopic vision,
and incidents which are separated by vast intervals of time,
compressed into a day, or an hour, everything like rest in
special existence will forthwith disappear. We sh^U find
the innumerable hosts of the fixed stars commoved in groups
in different directions; nebulae draAving hither and thither,
* Evelyn. Sylva, Book 2d, chap. 8,
MOTIONS OF INORGANIC NATURE. 105
like cosmic clouds ; the milky-way breaking up in particular
parts, and its veil rent; motion in every part of the vault
of heaven." It is the motion of our own little planet which
chiefly adorns the sky with its varied splendors, as sunrise
and sunset, and the shinmg and stately march of the con-
stellations. Of the agitation of its enveloping atmosphere
come 'the winds for health of body, and the magnificent sce-
nery of cloud-land for delight of soul; the rain, the tem-
pest, the Aurora, meteors, and those strange "fiery tears of
the sky" which Ave term falling stars, announce over again
that the realms of aerial space, all still and passive as they
seem, are yet realms of unresting life. The very substance
of the earth is ever-moving; the interior is incessantly in-
ducing changes upon the exterior ; waves of motion are con-
tinually passing through, indicated by the sinking of the
land in some parts of the globe, and its rising in others, so
that old beaches are left inland, and old high-water marks
sunk far out at sea; hot springs, volcanoes, earthquakes,
attest more vehemently still what agitation there is below.
" Could we obtain daily news of the state of the whole of the
earth's crust," continues the author of KosMOS, " we should
in all probability become convinced that some point or other
of its surface is constantly shaken." Yet all these greater
movements of the earth's substance are but stupendous
analogues of movements as incessantly going on among its
elements — visible, acknowledged movements. What life is
there in crystallization ! What energy in combustion ! What
vivacity in effervescence! True, some of them are of brief
duration, if we look only at a particular scene of their dis-
play; but taking the total of the world, they are unremit-
ting. Even in a given spot, they may be indefinitely pro-
longed, like the ever-burning fire of the Vestal Virgins, pro-
vided sufficient supply of their needful fuel be kept up.
A-niiTal movement itself could not be continued were sup-
E«
106 MOTION, A FIRST PRINCIPLE OF BEAUTY.
plies of what it depends on to be withlield. Collectively,
these movements express, as we have before styled it, the
Life of inorganic nature. Under the im]Dulse of the sustain-
ing and influencing energy of the Creator, every atom of
matter is full of moving life; the history of every particle
is a history of change, and that of the Avorld an ever-begin-
ning, never-concluding metamorphosis.
58. The moving of water is peculiarly like life. Hence the
continual application to streams and fountains, by elegant
minds, of the terms which pertain primarily to their own
nature. The basins at the Crystal Palace, it is announced,
are to be "alive with fountains and jets;" the river here,
says the author of Coningsby, w'as " clear but for the dark sky
it reflected, narroAV and winding, but full of life." Corinne's
delight was in "the fount of Trevi, whose abundant cascade
falls in the centre of Rome, and seems the life of that tran-
quil scene." Virgil has fiumine vivo, "in the living cur-
rent;" Ovid, e vivis fontibus, "from the gushing fountains."
Oersted devotes an entire chapter to the Life of the Fountain,
a chapter as elegant in narrative as the principle arrived at
is important. He shows us that while motion is the begin-
ning of life, it is likewise the first principle of Beauty.
"'What a rich variety of inward activity we beheld," he
concludes, "in that fountain! Were this to be separated
from it, all besides would leave but a faint impression. That
which is full of life arouses it in ourselves, and this feeling
of life appertains to the complete enjoyment of beauty. An
attempt to represent it in painting, if it were executed in a
masterly manner, might in some degree please the eye; but
the enjoyment which arises from the peculiar nature of the
object would be much diminished, because motion, lustre,
and the play of light can never be represented in a picture,
I have several times seen pictures of fountains, but the im-
pression they produced upon me was poor." To give in
THE SEA AND THE CLOUDS. 107
painting a sufficient idea of the ocean, to paint even rain or
falling snow, is well known to be an equally fruitless effort,
while nothing is easier than to sketch a still expanse of
flooded fields, which, for the same reason, are unattractive
and uninteresting, and incapable of exciting ideas of beauty.
These, as so lucidly set forth by the accomplished Dane, we
can realize only when movement is either present or forcibly
implied, . and thus only where the idea of life is secretly
placed before the soul, which loves it, and hungers for it,
and is depressed Avhen there is none to be seen, because of
its own innate, burning activity. How beautiful the waving
of the trees, and the quiver of the leaves before the wind l""'
With what delight do we watch the gliding of the clouds
across the sky, the heaving of the sea.
The river rushing o'er its pebbled bed.
Why are Ave never tired of looking upon the ocean? From
land-scenery, however charming, after a while, the eye turns
away, deliberately and content; the vSea, on the other hand,
holds the whole soul in immortal fascination. The meadows
and ferny lanes, even the woodland glades of perfect Spring,
sheeted Avith the Avild blue hyacinth, and sparkling with the
crimson lychnis, even at that earlier sweet season, Avhen the
trees, though they have leaves upon them, give no shade to
the chaste anemones, we can quit satisfied; but the beach,
though it offer nothing but high-water mark of Avithered
wrack, Ave never turn aAvay from Avithout reluctance. As in
a glass Ave see our features reflected, so in the mov^ement of
the waves, and their sound, Ave recognize an image of our
* HoAV largely the movement of trees contributes to their pictu-
resque, may be seen in Gilpin, Avho indicates more than once the
fulness, as well as the nicety of his appreciation of its A^alue. Forest
Scetiery,
108 MOTION AND EEPOSE COMPLEMENTARY.
life. So with the movements, though silent, of the clouds,
as, massively dark or softly brilliant, their swelling moun-
tains change, unite, separate, and unite again, unveiling in-
finite depths of calm, sweet azure, or if it be sunset, fields
of clear, burning brightness that seem to reach into heaven
itself. Looking at the clouds merely as aqueducts, we miss
the chief part of their beautiful ministry, which is to fill
the sky with the idea of Life. Rhymesters and parlor na-
turalists would have us believe the skies, to be perfectly
beautiful, must be "cloudless." It is not only not true, but
it would be contrary to the nature of things for it to be true.
The skies even of Italy are not cloudless, except as in our
own country, at certain periods, and derive their charm from
their transparency rather than from cloudlessness. Clouds
are to the heavens what human beings are to the earth.
They dwell in them, and move about them, various in their
aspect and their missions as men and women; and as of the
latter come all the true dignity and grace of earth, so of
the former comes every splendor that glorifies the sky.
59. Things even which are incapable of visible motion
mainly acquire what beauty they may present from in some
way referring us to it. We are so pleased, for instance,
with the undulating outline of distant hills, because they
unroll before the imagination the rising and falling of the
waves, and thus transport us into the very presence of life's
grandest emblem. There is no pleasure derived from the
view of a mere flat extended plain, unless relieved by waving
corn or the movement of animals. These being absent,
everything seems to have subsided into stagnancy, and the
pictured idea is death rather than life. We call it, without
a libel, " a dead level." Even the shadows in still water,
depending, as they do, on the most exquisite placidity of sur-
face, are no exception, for they seldom so powerfully appeal
as when the objects they depict are gently agitated by the
REPOSE IN REFERENCE TO ART. 109
breeze. Feeling how important it is that life shonld thus
be presented to the mind even in scenes of the profoundest
repose, the poets rarely delineate such without introducing
some delicate allusion that shall suggest it.
Homines, volucresque ferasque
Solverat alta qnies: nuUo cum murmure sepes
■ Immotseque silent frondes ; silet humidus aer ;
Sidera sola micant. — (Ovid, 3fet., vii. 185-188.)
" Men, birds, and animals lie dissolved in deep repose ; the mur-
mur of the woods is hushed ; the leaves are motionless ; the humid
air is still ; the stars alone twinkle."
ISTot that motion is sufficient to excite ideas of beautj^;
everywhere in nature there must be a combination of two
separate ideas, complementary to each other, before we can
realize satisfaction in the beholding; the second, in the pre-
sent instance, being the idea of Repose, as we may easily
perceive by considering the movements of animals, and
more particularly, those of man. Swimming, flying, walk-
ing, are graceful, and therefore pleasing, only when we
gather from them ideas of Rest, such as are conveyed by
that aspect of ease and security, resulting from a perfectly-
felt balance, which characterizes them when unlaborious and
unaffected. Attitudes, on the same principle, which com-
mend themselves as peculiarly beautiful and graceful,
though they seem to depend for their effect upon the exqui-
site arrangement of the body and limbs, derive the half of
it from their flowing, motion-hinting curves.
60. Repose is needful not only to physical beauty; it be-
longs as largely to the finest attitudes of the spiritual life,
and is the state in which the imagination is most exquisitely
unfolded. All true genius recognizes this. Shakspere would
not let the players "tear a passion to tatters." He directs
thpm, "in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say,
10
110 REPOSE IN REFERENCE TO ART.
whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a
temperance that will give it smoothness." "The turmoil,
the battle, the tumult of the Iliad is accompanied by the
repose of studied measure. Amid the carnage of men we
see the gods tranquil spectators, and when they are in the
conflict, Achilles rests." So in Art. The same beautiful
combination of action and repose in nature which reflects
from the verses of the poet, is the foremost quality of the
best efforts of the painter and the sculptor. The noblest
and loveliest statues are those Avhose pui-e white marble is
consecrated not more to life's emotions than to Repose.
CHAPTER VII
61. The cessation of the vital activities is Death, which,
though commonly spoken of as an actual existence, is simply
another name for discontinuance. All forms recipient of
life die some time. Some few may be privileged to survive
the rest, even for thousands of years, as happens with certain
trees, but the same death which in regard to the children of
men, while it surprises many, skips not one, at last over-
powers the most tenacious. "Come like shadows, so de-
part," is the law of the entire material creation, in fact, as
great a law as that it lives. For death is no accident of
nature, neither is it in the least degree punitive. It is an
essential and benevolent part of the very idea of material
existence, bound up with the original scheme and method
of creation as completely as gravitation is. Things die, not
because they have been sentenced to, judicially, the sentence
being effectuated, as often supposed, by a change superin-
duced upon their original constitution ; but because without
death, nature could not endure. Birth, growth, and arriving
at maturity, as completely imply decay and death as the
source of a river implies the termination of it, or as spring
and summer imply corn-fields and rea2:)ing. Hence, what-
ever the vigor and the powers of repair that may pertain to
any given structure, whatever resistance it may offer to the
shocks of Ages, Time, sooner or later, dissolves it; careful,
however, to renew whatever it takes away, and to convert,
111
112 DEATH IN CONNECTION WITH THE FALL.
invariably, every end into a new beginning. There is not a
grave in the whole circuit of nature that is not at the same
moment a cradle.
62. That death was brought into the world by Adam, we
by no means intend to deny. Nothing is more true. Let
us rightly understand, however, what kind of death it was.
For death is no unitary thing; there are as many ways of
dying as of living. Death commonly so called it certainly
was not. Scripture, the supposed authority for the popular
belief, rarely speaks of jjJiysiccd death. It uses the language
of the material world, but intends spiritual ideas. Concern-
ing itself primarily and essentially with the soul of man,
what it has to say about his body is but casual. Only in
purely biographical notices, as when it is said of Joseph that
" he died an hundred and ten years old," and in some few
such texts as "it is appointed unto all men once to die," is
physical death ever alluded to, or even compatible with a
just and practical interjoretation. "In the day that thou
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," was not a threat that
corporeal death should be inflicted; it signified that, break-
ing the commandment, he who had it given him, should lose
the high, lovely life which is union with God, and sink into
irreligiousness, which is infelicity and disquiet. He died to
the true life of the spirit the moment that he tasted ; but as
to his material body, he continued as he was before. "He
begat sons and daughters, and lived nine hundred and thirty
years." Equally unscriptural and groundless is the notion
that physical death was even an appendix to the "punish-
ment." Adam would have died had he never fallen, and so
would all of his jDosterity, though none, perhaps, would have
died of disease. Death probably would have resembled
sinking into an easy and gentle slumber, such as overtakes
us when agreeably fatigued ; it would have been that eutha-
nasia to all men which Augustus Csesar used so passionately
TESTIMONY OF GEOLOGY. 113
to desire, and wliich is so beautifully predicated of the
Christian in a well-known and lovely hymn : —
So fades a summer cloud away,
So sinks the gale, when storms are o'er.
So gently shuts the eye of day.
So dies a wave along the shore.
If the ' Fall bore in any way on physical death, it was in
leading to the sensualities which often hurry it on with pain ;
and to the violations of the laws of peace and order which
make so much of it unhappy and untimely. It is absolutely
needful that man should die as to his material body, in
order that he may rise into his eternal dwelling. He has
faculties which cannot possibly be developed here, and which
can only expand in heaven, or under purely spiritual con-
ditions, so that it is only by dying that he can become truly
himself.
63. What Scripture really tells us, is that physical death
was not brought into the Avorld by Adam ; and the testimony
of the inspired volume is supported by the incontestable
evidence of science. Geology proves that the world had
been familiar with death for ages before mankind Avas placed
upon it; every fossil in the museums of palaeontology is a
voucher that mortality and human sin neither had nor pos-
sibly could have the least connection ; to suppose otherwise,
is to place the effect before the cause. It is a simple evasion
to say, in order to reconcile the geological teaching, that it
was only man who became subject to death through his
moral defection; and that geology does not object to this
doctrine. Geology knows but of a single law of life and
death.* Assuming, however, that no geological discoveries
* See for the arguments set forth by upholders of the notion here
repudiated, the Quarterly Journal of Prophecy, vol. 4, p. 317. July,
1852.
10 ®
114 DEATH AND PROCREATION CONCURRENT.
had ever been made; assuming that no fossil shell or skele-
ton had ever been dug up, and that the pre-Adamic condi-
tion of the globe were still a secret ; the very history of the
creation of animals and plants, in the gateway of the Bible,
is sufficient to show that physical death is proper and con-
genital to nature. The command given both to animals and
man to "be fruitful and multiply," implies the removal of
successive races by death ; otherwise the world would long-
since have been overstocked; plants, for their part, are de-
scribed as created "yielding seed," which carries with it the
same inevitable consequence. The produce of so minute a
creature as a fly would, if unchecked, soon darken the air,
and render whole regions desolate; tlie number of seeds
ripened by a single poppy, were they all to grow and be
fruitful in their turn, would in a few years suffice to clothe
a continent. Of course it is easy to object, as done by a
certain class of reasoners, that this might have been cor-
rected by a supplementary "miracle," but to evade fair
philosophical deductions by inventing and ascribing miracles
where none are spoken of and none are wanted, is as weak
as it is irreverent. God does not perform his work so im-
perfectly or short-sightedly as to be obliged to interpose with
miracles to set it right ; nor are we at liberty to speculate on
the possibility of something supernatural in order to escape
our difficulties, when to industry and patience nature itself
is sufficient. Death, if not an absolutely necessary and
inalienable counterpart to procreation, or being fruitful and
multiplying ; is at least a concomitant of every scene of pro-
creation that the world contains, whether animal or vege-
table : there is not the slightest reason to suppose that the
animals and plants now existing are dissimilar to the first
individuals of their respective species, but every reason to
believe that they resemble in all points, and thus in the
power of procreating their like: hence may we be assured
CAUSES OF DEATH. 115
that with the creation of organized beings came also the
limitation of their life. Mankind could be no exception to
the rule, as Eve was created before the Fall, and the nuptial
benediction pronounced upon herself and consort.
64. The supposition that physical death was introduced
by human sin, requires our first parents to have been invul-
nerable: No moral state, hoAvever exalted, could possibly
■exempt a race of organized be'.ngs such as man, however
few in number, and though inhabiting the fairest and safest
of material worlds, from the casual injuries of which organi-
zation, from its very delicacy, is susceptible. The same fire
by which Adam " unfallen," must be supposed able to have
warmed himself, would have burned him had he approached
too near. Had he fallen from a tree, he was in no less dan-
ger of a broken limb than ourselves ; had he struck his foot
against a stone, he would have been no less easily bruised
or cut. From such injuries, he would probably have reco-
vered with an ease and rapidity which our present viti-
ated state of body debars us from conceiving, though faintly
memorialized in the ready cure of the child and the tempe-
rate man compared with the tedious and uncertain one of
the drunkard ; but that he was not liable to them cannot
for an instant be supposed, and if liable to them at all, of
course he was susceptible of injuries terrible enough to kill.
The more exquisite the capacity for life, always the readier is
the liability to injury, as the eye, which holds the highest ofiice
in the empire of sense, is the organ most easily hurt and lost.
65. Death has its proximate causes, and its remote causes.
The remote causes are thousand-fold ; they are connected,
directly and indirectly, with every solid and fluid in the
body, and will only be determined, therefore, when patho-
logy shall have become a perfect science. Every organ,
and member, and tissue, is a possible threshold of death,
and there is not one by which it may not enter unawares.
116 CAUSES OF DEATH.
Our life contains a thousand springs,
And ends if one start wrong ;
Strange that a harp of thousand strings
Should keep in tune so long !
The proximate causes, on the other hand, are few, and
easily understood, being resolvable into the negation of
these grand fundamental processes of life Avhich have been
described in the preceding chapters. Reduced to their
smallest denomination, we saw that the processes in question
are the Assimilation of food, and the Respiration of atmo-
spheric air. The former we found to have for its main ob-
ject, the nourishment of the blood, the organ with which
that fluid is pre-eminently identified being the heart. Re-
spiration we also found concerned with the blood, but iden-
tified peculiarly with the lungs. To facts, accordingly, con-
nected with one or other of these two organs, death, like life,
is in all cases proximately referable. We die, proximately,
either because the blood has lost energy and volume, or be-
cause atmospheric air is insufficiently admitted to it. Po-
pularly regarded, death consists simply in loss of breath;
and founded as the common idea is, upon external appear-
ances, it is not improper thus to speak of it. It always has
been, and always will be right to speak of things in our
common converse as they apjoear to the senses. We should
always seek to think with the philosopher — to understand
what is the genuine truth — but in our ordinary intercourse
with one another in daily life, it is proper and expedient to
speak of things as they seeyn ; to say, for example, of the
sun, that it " rises." So in the case of the dying. Here, to
appearance, the breath only is concerned. The breath, ac-
cordingly, do we alone take note of, and further, in truth,
we need not look. Whatever terrible disease may be ra-
vaging the frame ; v/hatever paral)^sis may hold the organs
of sense and locomotion in deadly torpor — if there be
" WHILE THERE IS BREATH, THERE IS LIFE." ll'i'
Breathing, we know that all is not over yet. " While there
is life, there is hope," is only a paraphrase of — while there
is breath, there is life. The primary cause of death may
date from years before ; it may baffle all physicians and
physiology to determine ; but in the final one there is no
enigma.
'Tis the cessation of breath ;
Silent and motionless we lie,
And no one knoweth more than this.
I saw our little Gertrude die ;
She left off breathing, and no more
I smooth'd the pillow beneath her head.
She was more beautiful than before.
Like violets faded were her eyes.
By this we knew she was dead.
Through the open Avindow looked the skies
Into the chamber where she lay.
And the wind was like the sound of wings.
As if angels came to bear her away.
Wedded to pictures and external shows of things, and
inaj)t to rise from the merely symbolical representations to
the holy presence of the thing signified, Pagan antiquity
deemed that the breath was the very life itself. So per-
suaded were they of the identity, that they even thought
that by inhaling the last sighs of their dying friends, to
suck the fleeting spirit into their own bodies. Many beauti-
ful allusions to this occur in the poets: Anna, lamenting
over Dido, exclaims as she expires, "And ah! let me catch
it with my mouth, if there be yet any stray breath about
her lips !" A collection of the references may be seen, in
Kirchman, who, in his little book, De Funeribus Romanorum,
devotes a chapter to the superstitions this people connected
with the breath of the dying. The elegy of Bion on Adonis
contains one of such far higher beauty than any of the Roman
poets afford, that it is surprising he makes no mention of it,
118 THE BLOOD THE ESSENTIAL SEAT OF DEATH.
"Eousethee a little, Adonis, and again tliis last time kiss me!
Kiss me just so far as there is life in thy kiss ; till from thy heart
thy spirit shall have ebbed into my lips and my soul, and I shall
have drained thy sweet love-potion, and drunk out thy love ; and
I will treasure this kiss, even as it were Adonis himself."
66. While legitimate to speak of death as "ceasing to
breathe," we must remember, therefore, that breathlessness
is only a part of the idea of death. Ordinarily the circula-
tion goes on a little longer, requiring, if death is to be affi-
liated on a single event, that it be referred to the heart
rather than to the lungs. Slowly and sadly does the blood
consent to death ; like the tenderness of woman, its ministra-
tion is first and last in the history of life; that which was
our safety, and stronghold, and delight in our noon-day
vigor, in our sunset is still sedulous and faithful.
O my love ! my wife !
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath.
Upon thy beauty yet hath had no power :
Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks.
And death's pale flag is not advanced there.
Both ideas are right in their own province and connection.
It is true that the heart is the last to die ; it is true that the
ceasing to breathe is death. The question to be answered is
simply, how is death most truly signified, and in what for-
mula of words is it most accurately described. Here, we
have already seen, there is no mystery. That which in
death arrests the attention of the bystander, and tells only
too surely that all anxieties and cares are over, is the ex-
ternal, visible circumstance, the ceasing to breathe, not the
invisible, secret circumstance of the blood ceasing to move;
and thus, though the latter may be last in point of time,
the former is death ostensibly ; and this is sufficient to vin-
dicate the expressions summed up in "the breath of life,"
the synonym in all ages of vitality. A true idea, of the
CHOLERA, 119
cause of death will of course include both circumstances ;
whichever occurs first, the other is sure to folloAV almost im-
mediately, just as they are themselves inevitably brought
on, though less rapidly and directly, by the stopj)age of any
other of the vital flinctions.
67. Essentially, then, death is the devitalizing and disor-
ganizing of the Blood. We showed, when speaking of food,
that it is from the blood that every tissue and organ of the
body is constructed and repaired ; and that as these are con-
tinually wasting away, there is a proportionate demand
made upon the fountain from Avhich alone they are renew-
able. It is obvious that if the needful supply of food for
the blood be withheld, the blood itself must diminish and
lose in virtue. It becomes too much reduced to circulate
vigorously, and to meet the demands of the wasted tissues,
and the body gradually withers away. This is most obvi-
ously shown in the lingering and miserable death induced
by starvation. But it is common also as the result of cer-
tain diseases, which prevent the digestive organs from assi-
milating a sufficient amount of food to maintain the required
quantity and quality of the vital fluid. To deficiencies of
this nature may be referred an endless variety of morbid
affections, one disease springing from another, as sickness
from drinking of poisoned wells. So with death proximately
connected with the oxygenation of the blood. If the natural
power of breathing be so affected, whether by disease of the
respiratory organs, or by mechanical hindrance, as to pre-
vent the inspiration of air in sufficient quantity to supply
the needful oxygen, the balance of action between the heart
and lungs is upset, and death ensues as surely as in
the former case. In cholera, according to one theory of
this direfiil malady, although the blood circulates freely,
and the patient breathes as in health ; from some unknown
cause connected with the nervous system, the blood fails to
120 THE NERVOUS SYSTEM IN CONNECTION WITH DEATH.
become aerated. The discoloration of the body is attributed
to its su]per-carbonized condition.* Not without reason then,
has the blood always been famous, and regarded as the very
seat of life. Blood and the life have in all ages been con-
vertible terms, and justly. In Hades, says Homer, "the
shades can neither speak, nor recognize the living, except
they first drink blood." But it does not appear ever to
have been used as a name for life. This has been the prero-
gative of the Air, just as the human race, though born of
woman, and nourished by her, is jDroudly called Man. The
only approach to such use is in such phrases as to " shed
blood," meaning to kill ; and calling death by the name of
" the sword." An oath with the ancient Scythians was " by
wind and sword," meaning "by life and death." The dignity
which has in all ages been connected with Red, as a color,
probably owes its ascrijDtion, in part at least, to the sanctity
of that of which blood is the chief sign and emblem.
68. Violent deaths similarly come either of arrested cir-
culation, as in the case of bleeding to death, and death by
lightning; or of arrested respiration, as m strangulation,
stifling, and suffocation by drowning, or by inhaling noxious
vapors, such as the fumes of charcoal. A violent blow on
the head, affecting the brain ; or upon the stomach, affecting
the ganglionic centres, although unattended by fracture,
kills by the shock to the nervous system, which is instanta-
neously followed by stoppage both of the circulation and
the breathing. Both of these great functions of course
require that the nervous system shall be in good order, and
* Cholera, say others, appears to kill by separating the serum and
the crassamentum of tlie blood. The former runs off by the bowels ;
the latter clogs the minute vessels, and causes the discoloration.
Assuming this to be the true theory, it is a no less beautiful illustra-
tion that death is induced by the rupture of a complementary
dualism.
PROXIMATE CAUSES OF DEATH.
121
thus, in tracing death to its profounder causes, we find that
we cannot sto]D till in the presence of that raighty sphynx,
the Brain, the fountain of nervous energy to the whole
body. What the lungs and heart are to the blood, the
lungs and brain are to the nervous fluid, which circulates
through the nerves as the blood does through the veins,
coexistent and coextensive with it. Any irregularity in the
stream, however it may be caused, is attended of course by
analogous evils to the system. Denied by some, the exist-
ence of this fluid admits nevertheless of demonstration, both
from analogy, and by inductions founded on experience. It
exists and acts according to laws similar to those which
regulate the existence and action of the blood, of which it
may be regarded as a higher and more exquisite species.
The following table of the proximate causes of death is
kindly furnished me by my friend, Dr. Henry BroAvne, of
the Manchester Koyal School of Medicine. It will be seen
that he at once recognizes the great division that has been
adverted to ; and in the spirit of true philosophy, reconciles
what in different authors appear to be conflicting views,
though essentially the same.
By BicHAT
to the
Heart —
Death is traced -{ Head
(Nervous
System)
Ltjngs-
By Watson
to
— Anaemia
(BloodUssness)
/'Asthenia-'''^
{Strengthless7iess)
By Alison
to the
—r Heart.
(Asphyxia or
Pulselessness)*
-Apncea Lungs.f
3rcathlessness)
* The term asphyxia is often misapplied to breathlessness. Pro-
perly, it denotes nothing more than the cessation of the pulse, o-^iifif.
t See on the proximate causes of death, and its phenomena, as
11 F
122 TENACITY OF LIFE IN THE LOWER ANIMALS.
69. Among the inferior animals death is referable to
analogous, if not identical hindrances to the due perform-
ance of the vital functions. Deprivation of food and air,
violent shocks to the nervous system, especially where a
brain is present, exposure to severe cold, are among the
more frequent causes; one circumstance or another being
more quickly and imminently fatal, according to the
idiosyncracy of the species. As we travel towards the
outermost circles of animal life, conditions which would
speedily destroy a human being, a quadruped, or a bird, are
borne, however, Avith astonishing indifference. It has often
been observed of desperately wounded soldiers, who have
nevertheless recovered, that while in most cases nothing is so
soon destroyed as human life, in others there is nothing-
harder to dislodge. Applied to many of the smaller races
of the animal world this almost becomes a rule. To say
nothing of those extraordinary animalcules which, accord-
ing to the experiments of Spallanzani,* may be dried into
mummies, kept indefinitely in that state, and then revived ;
creatures even so large as insectsf are in many cases nearly
proof against the ordinary agents of vital overthrow-
Several extraordinary instances of this may be read in that
amusing work "Episodes of Insect Life," vol. ii., pp. 162-
above briefly set forth, the excellent Outlines of Physiology and
Pathology of Dr. Alison. Eclinbui-gh, 1833.
* Tracts upon the Nature of Animals, vol. 1, p. xxxvi., &c.
f Insects are commonly cited to express ideas of smallness. But
to innumerable creatures they are what whales and elephants are to
ourselves. The animal which liolds the middle place in the scale
of size, reckoning from the Monas erepusculum, the minutest to which
our microscopes have yet reached, is the common house-fly. That
is, there are as many degrees of size between the house-fly and the
Monas, reckoning downwards, as, reckoning upwards, there are be-
t^veen the house-fly and the whale.
CAUSES OF DEATH IN PLANTS. 123
167, &c. It is worthy of note that these latter creatures,
like reptiles, can better endure intense heat than intense cold,
of which they always stand in dread. Tenacity of life is
wonderfully exhibited also in the tortoise family, and in
toads, which appear to be capable of living in a state of
torpidity for very considerable periods. The stories how-
ever, so common m newspapers, of their leaping out of
stones when suddenly broken in tAvo, and out of timber
when being sawn, seem to be none of them sufficiently
authenticated. Many naturalists positively deny that it ever
occurs. Experiments made by Dr. Buckland led him to
the conclusion that when totally secluded from the access
of atmospheric air, these creatures cannot live a year, and
that they cannot survive beyond two years if entirely pre-
vented from obtaining food.
70. Death purely from old age, whether in man or the
inferior animals, is of course not to be confounded with such
as comes of accident or disease. Here it is induced by the
gradual closing up of delicate vessels; the hardening and
ossification of tissues; the languid and imjDerfect action of
important organs. These changes promote others; by and
bye some principal part becomes affected, and lastly, where
present, the great dualism of heart and lungs. No creature
can exist without these changes taking place in it, and
superinducing, sooner or later, senility and dissolution.
Agerasia belongs only to the soul ; this alone lives in f)er-
petuity of youth.
71. In the Vegetable Kingdom, as in the Animal, death
is the stoppage of the process which maintains life. Starva-
tion, drought, exposure to intense frost, or to an atmosphere
infected with acids and other obnoxious chimney -products,
will arrest the functions of plant-life as effectually as the
opposite conditions encourage them. Plants suffer the more
sorely from such influences through their inability to move
124 DEATH IN THE INORGANIC WORLD.
away from the place of danger. To compensate this, they
are endowed with a tenacity of life far exceeding that of
animals, or at least, of animals of equal rank. The stricken
quadruped falls never to rise again ; the stricken plant buds
anew in calm endurance. " There is hope of a tree, if it be
cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender
branch of it will not cease. Though the root thereof wax
old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground ;• — ■
yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth
boughs like a plant."
72. In the mineral world, death is simply Decomposition.
All bodies resolve into their elements at the time of death ;
but whereas in plants and animals this occurs only as the
result and supplement of death, in minerals death and de-
composition are the same. Life, we must remember, is
expressed in the mineral simply as chemical affinity; — no
functions take place in it; death accordingly, consists simply
in the setting aside of that affinity. Some stronger affinity
coming into operation from without, one or more of the
constituent elements is drawn away, and the substance ceases
to exist. No mere melting, or crushing, or pulverizing, or
modelling by the hands of Art, affects the life of a mineral.
Though a piece of marble be ground into impalpable
powder, the atoms are living marble still; every fragment is
still animated by the life which holds together its component
lime and carbonic acid; the minutest particle as completely
represents and embodies the nature of the original mass as
a drop of spray from the advancing wave does that of the
sea. Such at least is it to the eye of the chemist. To the
unversed in his magical science, demolition is annihilation,
and in a limited sense, it is not erroneous thus to regard it.
Put side by side, the compact and solid stone naturally
speaks more of life than the mere heap of scattering dust;
the one preserves the chiselled writing of forty centuries, the
RUSKIN ON INORGANIC LIFE. 125
other disappears with the first curl of wind. Hence it is
that in Scripture, dust is the common name for what is
unvitalized or dead; wliile Stone or Eock, which give the
highest possible idea of solidity and permanence, characters
the very opj)osite to those of dust, are the equally common
appellations of the Fountain of Life. Mr. Ruskin explains
these beautiful metaphors on the principle that with consoli-
dation we naturally connect the idea of purity, and Avith
disintegration that of foulness. "The j^urity of the rock,"
says he, " contrasted with the foulness of dust or mould, is
expressed by the epithet 'living,' very singularly given to the
rock in almost all languages." Doubtless there is a truth in
this, for life and purity, both in the physical and the moral
world, are correlative, but as Mr. Ruskin himself acknow-
ledges in the next sentence, the deeper reason is the coherence
of the i^articles in the stone, and their utter disunion in the
case of the dust. The page is well worth turning to, not
merely for the philosophic views on the general subject of
inorganic life, but for the admirable commentary on the text
that "pureness is made to us so desirable because expressive
of the constant presence and energizing action of the Deity
in matter, through which all things live, and move, and have
their being; and that foulness is painful as the accompani-
ment of disorder and decay, and always indicative of the
withdrawal of Divine support."* Neither consolidation nor
purity are at all times intended in this remarkable epithet.
In Virgil, for example: —
Fronte sub adversa scopulis pendentibiis antrum ;
Intus aquse dulces, vivoque sedilia saxo.
Nympharum domus. — {jEn&id i. 16-18.)
" Opposite is a cave, the retreat of the wood-nymphs, formed by
over-hanging rocks ; inside are limpid waters, and seats of limny
stone."
"" Modern Painters, vol. ii., pp. 73-75.
11 *
126 THE PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS.
What then shall be the meaning here ? At first sight there
is none. But when we bethink ourselves that the cool, hu-
mid atmosphere of such sweet natural summer-houses and
grottoes as the poet describes, causes every surface upon
which the light can fall to clothe itself with green and most
delicate moss, in an instant the words become animated and
picturesque, we hear the trickling waters, and feel ourselves
sheltering from the fervid noonday sun, each great stone a
living cushion for our repose. The characteristic of true
poetry is, that by single words thus artlessly introduced, it
awakens all the most beautiful memories and associations
of the heart.
73. Hitherto we have spoken of inorganic compounds.
The life of the simijle substances, the fifty or sixty primitive
elements, or as-yet-undecompounded bodies, is much less
precarious. When, under chemical agency, a compound is
broken up, though the mass ceases to be, the constituents
are in no wise affected. As in the crowding together of a
multitude of men for some great social or political object,
though it is the assemblage which attracts our attention,
every member of it has an interior, unnoticed life of his
own, so is it with the several elements which in combination
form the acid or the salt. The compound has one life, the
elements have another ; and as the individuals which com-
pose the meeting live on, though the meeting itself dissolves
and dies Avith the conclusion of the business that brought it
together, so do the simple elements of destroyed compounds ;
they separate, not to perish, but to enter upon new activi-
ties. Though several even of the most solid of the simple
substances may, under the influence of heat, be volatilized
and altogether dissipated, zinc and potassium for instance
among the metals, no one can say that any one of these
substances is destructible absolutely. No one can assert that
like iodine vaporized and condensed in a Florence flask, or
THE PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS. 127
like camphor in a glass jar (which evaporates only to de-
scend again in glittering frost-work), they do not consolidate
afresh. That they would do so we should certainly expect,
though it is quite as likely that when so attenuated, new
changes and decompositions come into process, causing them
to return to the eyes of men in the form of some other " pri-
mitive element ;" for, as we saw in our second chapter, it is
not only possible, but extremely probable, that all the so-
called primitive elements are but different presentations of
two fundamental ones, their respective atoms being variously
associated, and giving us oxygen, gold, silex, &c., in turn,
according to the nature of the union. For anything we can
tell, the identical oxygen, gold, silex, &c., of the primaeval
world, are still in being, though in the course of ages they
may have undergone innumerable vicissitudes. For aught
we know, on the other hand, the primaeval gold, silver, &c.,
may in great measure have perished, and as many repro-
ductions have occurred in the secret but mighty laboratory
of inorganic nature, as there have been procreations of
plants and animals in its organic realm.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE VAUIOVS IjEA.SJES of IjIFE.
74. Though death is the universal end, nothing is more
curiously varied than the Lease of existence. The present
chapter will be devoted to the consideration of what is cer-
tainly one of the most interesting mysteries in the economy
of life — the question, why do things live for determinate
periods ? We do not mean, why do certain individuals die
earlier than others of their kind, as when infants and young
people are removed by death ; but why does the ordmary
maximum of age vary so immensely in regard to the differ-
ent species of things ; why do some come to maturity and
perish in less than a year, while others endure for three,
four, ten, twenty, a hundred, even for thousands of years ?
For that the duration of the different species of animals
and plants is thus determinate, is certain ; every one of them
has a lease of life peculiar to itself, though true that in the
greater part the exact term remains yet to be ascertained.
Did we know the minute history of horse and lion, thrush
and pelican, antelope and red-breast ; were we intimately
acquainted with the natural constitution of each brute and
bird, the duration of the different species of the organized
creation would unquestionably alloAV of being tabulated as
exactly as the daily rising and setting of the sun. AVe
might anticipate such a fixity of duration from the deter-
minate character of everything else which concerns living
beings. Every species of animal and plant has its deter-
12S
FIXED LEASES OF LIFE UNIVERSAL. 129
miuate form, size, and organization ; the period of gestation,
though it differs widely in the aggregate of the animal king-
dom, is invariably the same in the same species ; similarly,
the growing of seeds, which is vegetable incubation, and the
period of the floAvering of plants, are in any given species
uniformly the same ; it is but reasonable then to expect that
there are definite leases of existence, and observation proves
the opinion to be well-founded. Under hostile conditions,
the allotted periods of duration may doubtless be greatly
shortened, as experience shows us every day, while under
favorable ones they may sometimes be surprisingly extended.
As in the human species, mortality cuts down myriads before
puberty, while now and then we are called to Avonder at an
Old Parr, so in all other tribes of being, though the unusual
longevity is perhaps never so great in proportion. Making
all allowance for such exceptions, and giving everything fair
judgment, it still comes true that there is a fixed lease which
the mass of the healthy individuals of the species attain,
and beyond which the life of the mass is seldom prolonged.
Whether all or any living things at present reach, even in
exceptional cases, the full term of life originally allotted to
their race, it is impossible to know — the probability would
seem that few, perhaps none, reach their intended maximum,
except an individual here and there. That individuals do
sometimes prodigiously outlive their generation, certainly
does not seem explicable on any supposition but that in the
longffivals the native capacity is fully realized. We ought
perhaps to consider enormous ages less as exceptions to the
rule than as revelations of the lease with which the species
is potentially gifted by the Almighty. Thus, if a certain
percentage of mankind live to a hundred and fifty, and a
certain percentage of horses to sixty, are not these ages to
be esteemed the terms respectively prescribed in the begin-
ning? Very little is yet known with certainty as to the
F *
130 WIDELY VARYING LEASES OF LIFE.
periods of life ordinarily attained. Beyond some broad,
general peculiarities in the larger classes of living things,
and tolerably correct statistics respecting the animals man
is most familiar with, and the shortest and longest lived
plants, scarcely anything precise has yet been arrived at.
The literature of natural history is almost barren upon the
subject; physiologists generally dismiss it in a paragraph.
Buffon is the most copious in detached observations ; the
best summary, brief though it be, is contained perhaps in
the admirable and celebrated little treatise of Hufeland.*
The recently published work of the eminent Parisian savant
FlourenSjf to which attention has been so largely attracted
in intelligent circles, sets forth a masterly doctrine on the
relation between the period of attaining maturity and the
duration of life, amending the well-knoAvn theory of Buffon,
and jDlacing it on a sound physiological basis ; but in other
respects it has little really new. The whole subject is thus
in its infancy. The profounder and more interesting ques-
tion, or part of the question, namely, why the divine lease
of life varies so widely; why, for example, the rabbit is
ordained to live for only eight years, while the dog is al-
lowed to run on to twenty-four ; why the wheat-plant fruits
and dies in a few months, while the cedar is appointed to
watch the lapse of centuries ; this appears Avholly untouched,
probably from its involving a spiritual idea, usually the last
to be considered, though the first in importance and illu-
minating power. That there is a reason for the various
duration of life, we may be sure ; there can be nothing acci-
* The Art of Prolonging Life, excellently edited, in one volume,
by Erasmus Wilson, 1853.
f On Human Longevity, and the amount of Life upon tlie Globe.
From the French, by Charles Martel, 1855.
NO LEASES IN THE MINERAL KINGDOM. 131
dental or capricious about it ; what that reason may be, is a
magnificent problem for Christian philosophy.
75. The question applies of course only to organized
beings, at least in its fulness. In minerals, for reasons
already amply stated, duration is altogether irregular and
indeterminate. Ruled wholly by contingencies, no scale of
existence can be drawn up with regard either to simple or
to compound bodies. It cannot be said that the diamond
averages so many years; gold so many more; flint so many
less. The same with any composite substance, as a lump of
marble, or a mass of common salt; it lives as long as it is
not assailed by the particular chemical agencies which would
decompose it, and which nothing in the substance itself can
repel : it is liable to them from the first moment of its exist-
ence, and may thus be extinguished in an hour, or enjoy a
kind of immortality, conditional on its seclusion from
them. How vast the antiquity of many a little pebble, yet
how slender the tenure of its existence, which a few drops
of acid would overthrow in as few minutes! It is to be
observed, however, that, as if in prefiguration of the higher
kingdoms of nature — a beautiful subject, hereafter to be
illustrated at length — in the more exquisite and delicate
developments of the mineral world, or crystals, there are
species that actually seem subject to a kind of natural and
organic dissolution. After arriving at what may be esteemed
a kind of maturity, certain crystals decompose, (of course
under the influence of new conditions at variance with those
under which they were formed,) and decaying, give curious
skeletons of what they were in the bloom of their existence.
Such relics are found in mines, often with crystals of difierent
composition forming amid the ruins of the extinct one, just
as on the shoulders of an ancient oak we may sometimes see
sapling trees of other species, the products of seeds carried
thither by some bird or wafting wind, and which have fat-
132 LEASE OF LIFE IN PLANTS,
tened on its decaying heart. Vary tlie text-word to suit the
especial theme, and there is no part of creation to which
those fine philosophic verses of Pope's will not apply : —
See dying vegetables life sustain,
And life dissolving, vegetate again ;
All forms that perish, other forms supply;
By turns we catch the vital breath, and die.
There is no essential difference between the violent death of
the crystal in the laboratory of the chemist, and the quasi-
natural in the mine; only in the latter the idea of deter-
minate duration seems first to reveal itself.
76. To obtain clear and comprehensive ideas respecting
the duration of life, it is requisite that a tolerable acquaint-
ance should be formed with the particular circumstances
and phenomena of vital action, also with a fair number of
the species of things. No true advance can be made in any
department of the philosophy of nature while we rest in
such generalities as beasts, birds, and fishes ; we must learn
species minutely and accurately, watching them from season
to season, and from year to year, and penetrating, as far as
possible, into their anatomy. None are better for this pur-
pose, or so good, as our own common native plants, and
wild animals, winged and wingless, with which we can so
readily become familiar, and ignorant of which no one can
pretend to the name of naturalist. With such knowledge
in hand, the further steps can be taken pleasantly and
safely, but not before. We shall consider, primarily, the
phenomena connected with the duration of life in the Vege-
table Kingdom, seeing that this is essentially the outline and
prefigurement of the Animal, and thus the natural starting-
point of all high physiological inquiry.
77. No one has entered Nature through its "gate Beauti-
ful," the world of plants, without soon discovering that the
LONGEVITY OF TREE.S. 133
duration of life is here of three general denominations.
Some species are annual, or rather semi-annual, living from
spring only to the close of the autumn of the same year ;
others are biennial, living to the close of the second autumn,
but never beyond it ; the greater part are perennial, or com-
petent to live for a long series of years. Annuals include
many of the commoner garden flowers and culinary vege-
tables, as marigolds and lupines, peas and beans, which re-
quire accordingly to be freshly raised from seed every season :
biennials are likewise common in gardens: perennials com-
prise all those plants which form the staple vegetation of
a country, withering to a certain extent in the winter, and
even dying down to the roots, but sprouting afresh with the
return of spring; also the countless varieties of trees and
shi'ubs, whether deciduous or ever-green. The perennials
exhibit as great diversity in lease of life as the different
species of animals. Some decay in as few as four or five
years; others, often remarkable for their odoriferous and
balsamic qualities, as sage, balm, and lavender, endure for
ten or more; next come the larger and robuster kinds of
shrubs, as rhododendrons and azaleas ; then such trees as are
of rapid growth, and the substance of which is soft, as the
poplar and willow; and lastly, those mighty, slow-growing,
solid-wooded pillars of the forest, as the cedar and oak, at
whose feet whole nations rise and fall.*
"Noil hiemes illam, non flabra, neque imbres
Convellunt; immota manet, multosque per aniios
Multa viruni volvens durando secula vincit!"
* There are olive-trees in the supposed garden of Gethsemane
■which have been estimated at two thousand years ; but these are
probably mere descendants of those which are connected with the
narratives of the Gospels, put forth originally as suckers from their
roots, and thus to be regarded rather as restorations than as iden-
tically the same.
12
124 DATA FOR ASCERTAINING AGES.
How vast are the periods of life allotted to the longseval
trees may be judged from the following list of ages known
to have been reached by patriarchs of the respective
kinds : —
Cercis 300 years. Wahaut... 900 years.
Elm 335 " Oriental Plane... 1000 "
Ivy 450 " Lime 1100 "
Maple 516 " Spruce 1200 "
Larch 576 " Oak 1500 "
Orange 630 " Cedar 2000 "
Cypress 800 " Schubertia 3000 "
Olive SOOf " Yew 3200 "
Four and five thousand years are assigned to the Taxodium
and the Adansonia, and Von Martins describes Locust-trees
in the South American forests which he believes to have
begun their quasi-immortality in the days of Homer.
Whether or no, it may safely be asserted that the world
possesses at this moment living memorials of antiquity at
least as old as the most ancient monuments of human art.
How grand and solemn is even the thought of a tree coeval
with the pyramids of Egypt and the sculptures of Nineveh,
yet still putting forth leaves, and inviting the birds to come
and "sing among the branches!" Well might the old
preacher of Alexandria discern in a tree the terrestrial
image of heavenly truth.
78. The way in which the ages of these vegetable Nestors
have been ascertained leaves no doubt of their correctness.
In some few cases the data have been furnished by historical
records, and by tradition; but the botanical archaeologist
has a resource independent of either, and when carefully
used, infallible. The whole subject of the signs and testi-
monies of particular age is interesting, and deserves to be
here dealt with, but unfortunately scarcely anything is yet
known about it. The deficiency is much to be regretted 1,
DATA FOR ASCERTAINING AGES. 135
seeing that it is often of serious importance to the interests
of society that means should be possessed for determining
the exact period of a given life. The most important of all,
the data Avhereby the age of one of our own species may be
determined, are as yet altogether undiscovered. Though
long habits of social intercourse may enable us to guess
pretty nearly, by the altered form of the features, wrinkles
where once was smoothness, changes in the color and luxu-
riance of the hair, also in the gait and general physical
exterior, still it is only a guess; we cannot be sure until we
have consulted the register or the family Bible. With the
lower animals it is a little easier; the age of the horse, for
instance, to about eight or nine years old, may be told by
its teeth ; the horns of certain quadrupeds similarly announce
their ages up to a given epoch; in birds the age may some-
times be deduced from the wear and altered form of the
bill ; in the whale it is known by the size and number of the
lamina of " whale-bone," which increase yearly, and seem to
indicate a maximum of three or four hundred years to this
creature; the age of fishes appears to be marked on their
scales, as seen under a microscope; and that of molluscous
animals, such as the oyster, in the strata of their shells;
still, there is no certain and connected knowledge in refer-
ence to any but the first-named, and even this applies only
to the youth of the animal. Of all the forms of nature,
Trees alone disclose their ages candidly and freely. In the
stems of all trees which have branches, that is to say, in all
" Exogens," the increase takes place by means of an annual
deposit of wood, spread in an even layer upon the surface
of the preceding one. The deposits commence the first sum-
mer of the tree's existence, and continue as long as it sur-
vives; hence, upon taking a horizontal section of the stem,
a set of beautiful concentric circles becomes visible, each
circle indicating an annual deposit, and thus marking a year
136 VARIOUS RATE OF GROWTH IN TREES.
in the biography of the general mass. So much for the
felled tree; m the living and standing one of course the
circles are concealed from view ; to learn their number here,
therefore, some ingenuity is required. The simplest and
most certain method is to burrow into the trunk with an
instrument like an immense cheese-taster, which intersects
every layer, and draws out a morsel of each, sufficiently dis-
tinct for enumeration. Where this is not convenient, the
age may be estimated by ascertaining, as nearly as possible,
the annual rate of increase, then taking the diameter of the
trunk at about a yard from the ground, and calculating by
" rule of three." Thus, if in the space of an inch there be
an average of five annual layers, a hundred inches will an-
nounce five hundred years of life. The latter method
requires to be used, however, with extreme caution, because
of the varying rate of growth, both in individual trees, and
in their different species. In the earlier periods of life, trees
increase much faster than when adult; the oak, for instance,
grows most rapidly between its twentieth and thirtieth years ;
and when old, the annual deposits considerably diminish, so
that the strata are thinner, and the rings proportionately
closer. Some trees slacken in rate of growth at a very early
period of life; the layers of the oak become thinner after
forty, those of the elm after fifty, those of the yew after sixty.
Unless allowance be made for this, and also for the irregular
thickness of the layers, which vary both "with seasons and
with the position of the tree in regard to the sun, errors are
inevitable. The concentric circles are not equally distinct
in the different kinds of trees; the best examples occur per-
haps in the cone-bearers, as the fir, cedar, and pine. The
opinion not mfrequently held, that the trees of cold and
temperate countries show them better than those of the
tropics, is, however, a mistaken one. Certainly there are
equinoctial woods in which they are less decidedly marked
PALM TREES. 16 i
than in particular European species, but in others again
they are plainer. Indistinctness and emphasis in the rings
are phenomena independent of climate, being characteristic,
in fact, of particular species, genera, and even families.
There are trees which are altogether destitute of rings.
These belong to the class called "Endogens," of which the
noblest and typical form is the Palm. Here the sign of age
is furnished by the scars or stumps of the fallen leaves, which
are of enormous size, few in number, and produced only
upon the summit of the lofty, slender, branchless trunk. A
certain number of ncAv leaves expand every year, and about
an equal number of the oldest decay, so that by taking the
total of the scars, and dividing it by the average annual de-
velopment of new leaves, a tolerable approximation may be
come to. But it can rarely be relied upon ; it is a method
indeed by no means universally practicable, the scars of the
fallen leaves being very variable in their degree of perma-
nence in different species. The fan-leaved palms preserve
their scars only at the lowest part of the stem ; they lose
them as they increase in age and height, so that from the
middle to the top it is nearly bare. Sternberg says that the
fossil Lepidodendra are the only j^lants in which the scars
remain perfect throughout the entire length. Wood-sections,
neatly cut and polished, so as to display the concentric
circles, are highly ornamental objects, independently of
their scientific instructiveness. A collection of specimens
from the lopped boughs of the hedgerows and plantations,
and from the timber-yard of the furniture-maker, where
many rich exotics may be procured, rivals in beauty a
cabinet of shells or fossils, and quite as abundantly rewards
intelligent employment of the leisure hour.
79. Of the potential longevity of a tree or plant, a pretty
fair estimate may be arrived at from a variety of circum-
stances. For example, there are relations between the
12 «
1-j8 frl'itfulness in kelatton to longevity,
duration of life and the quality of the fruit which plants
produce. Those which give tender and juicy fruit, or at all
events such trees as do this, are in general shorter-lived than
those which yield hard and dry, and these are shorter-lived
than such as produce only little seeds. The apple and the
pear live shorter lives than nut-trees, which are out-lived in
turn by the birch and the elm, as these are by the major
part of the Coniferse, in which long-lived family there is
probably not a species that does not flourish for at least a
hundred years. The Alpine firs and larches frequently
attain five centuries, and even the common red pine and
the Scotch fir reach three to four. With a few exceptions,
the seeds of the whole family are noticeably small, though
the containhig cones may be of considerable size. One of
the greatest trees in the Avorld, the Wellingionia gigantea of
California, a member of this tribe, with an estimated maxi-
^ mum age of two thousand years, has a beautifully-formed
but remarkably small cone, and seeds in proportion. Such
trees as the birch, the elm, and the conifers, are useful to
man for their timber, a service rarely rendered by the fruit-
bearers. Trees again, that yield pleasant fruit, fit for human
food, ordinarily live for shorter periods than those of which
the produce is bitter and austere, and unserviceable to him
as an edible. Most, if not all of the plants on which man
in his civilized state depends for food, are exceedingly short-
lived. The Cerealia or corn-producing plants, as Avheat,
rice, barley, and oats, are annuals Avithout exception ; so are
nearly all kinds of pulse. The large classes of esculent
vegetables represented by the turnip, carrot, and cabbage,
are also either annual or biennial. How much man has
benefitted by this wise arrangement it is impossible to esti-
mate. Did his daily bread grow on longseval trees, like
acorns, asking no care and toil, the most efiicient means to
his development would have been Avanting, as is still evi-
BULK IN RELATION TO LONGEVITY. 139
denced in the lands of the cocoa-nut and banana ; but de-
pending, as he has been so largely obliged to do, on annual
plants, demanding incessant care, they may be gratefully
regarded as the prime instrument of his rise in intelligence
and morals.
80. The form or configuration of plants has most im-
portant relations with their lease of life. Those trees usually
live to the greatest age which attain the least vertical height
in proportion to the diameter of their trunks, and the lateral
spread of their branches. Size and substance have also to
be taken note of. Small and attenuate plants almost always
live for shorter periods than bulky ones, and tender and
delicate species than the stout and hard-grained. The latter
owe their longer lives, in a physiological point of view, to
the abundance of firm, fibrous matter which enters into
their composition, and without which it appears indeed impos-
sible that any considerable age can be arrived at, thovigh
there are instances where hard and durable wood is found
in trees of briefer life than some that are soft-wooded. The
lime-tree has softer wood than the walnut, beech, and pear,
yet lives longer than either of them ; and the Baobab of
Senegal, Avhich undoubtedly lives to a great age, though
some of the accounts of it are probably exaggerated, is said
to be so soft that it may be sliced with a knife. That bulk
should be accompanied by long duration, it is easy to under-
stand. The larger a plant or tree, the greater is the surface
which it exposes to the atmosphere; and as it feeds by every
leaf, the scope and opp)ortunity for the exercise of the vital
functions is proportionately extended. The more leaves a
tree can put forth, and maintain in healthy action, the firmer
Ls its hold upon the future. VieAved in regard to their an-
nual rejuvenescence, trees may be regarded as little worlds
in themselves, — solid masses from which a multitude of
separate and perfect plants is vernally put forth, every new
140 TEXTURE IN RELATION TO LONGEVITY.
shoot and twig being exactly analogous to an annual that
has risen from a seed. As the successive generations of
plants fill the earth more and more with the seeds of life,
and thus both maintain its actual richness in verdure and
blossom, and enlarge its potential, in reference to years to
come, so the annual crops of twigs and leaves that clothe
the tree, by their re-action tend to consolidate and strengthen
it. The more exuberant its fertility, the more does it aug-
ment in energy of life, — picturing therein, one of the finest
truths in our spiritual history; the soul energizes as it works.
But extent of leafy surface Avill not of itself induce longevity.
There are many annuals that develope an immense amount
of leaf, as the gourd and the melon. In such plants, it is
counteracted by their exceedingly rapid growth, and conse-
quent want of solidity; for while too great a degree of solidi-
fication of the tissues, whether in plants or animals, hinders
their proper vital activity, especially those great processes
on which life so eminently depends, namely, the free move-
ment of the juices, — the other extreme, or a too lax and
succulent texture, is no less surely fatal to stability and en-
durance. Such texture is almost always found in the short-
lived plants, coming, as in the gourd, of their rapid exten-
sion, while firm, dense, and compact texture is fully as
characteristic of the longsevals. Compare the wood of the
yew and the box-tree with that of the soft, sappy black
poplar, and the willows that "spring by the water-courses."
Fungi, mushrooms, and toadstools, which, as regards their
superterraneous portion, are the most raj^id in development
of any plants, often reaching their full size in the course of
a night, are also the loosest in texture, and the soonest and
speediest to dissolve. Some decay in a few hours ; while none,
perhaps, last longer than from seven to fifteen days, except-
ing the perennial Polypori and their congeners, the life of
which extends to several years. Beautiful specimens of
CLIMATE AND LONGEVITY. 141
these last, of a rich and glossy brown, have been sent to me
from New Brunswick, where they grow upon the birch and
maple trees.
81. The distinction of annual, biennial, and perennial, in
regard to the duration of plants, is liable to be affected by
certain accidents, but the changes are never so great or so
deeply-seated as for the principle of a fixed lease of life to
be abnegated by them. An inhospitable climate will shorten
the life of perennials to a single season, as happens with
mignonette, which in Barbary is shrub-like, and with the
Palma-Christi, which in India is a stately tree, though in
England neither survives a year in the open air; on the
other hand, unsuitable food, excess of wet, or any other cir-
cumstance by which the flowering of the plant is retarded,
will induce unaccustomed longevity. This brings us to the
consideration of one of the greatest truths in the philosophy
of nature, namely, that all living things exist, and feed, and
grow, and gather strength, in order that they may propagate
their race. Doubtless, things universally have their social
uses to subserve, and to perform which they were originally
created, and are sustained in their respective places by the
Almighty; but all these uses have reference, essentially, to
the great ultimate use of preserving the race extant upon
the earth, and multiplying it indefinitely, seeing that in the
maintenance and multijjlication without end of receptacles
of His Life, consists the highest glory of God. This is the
end and design not only of the physical, but even of the
moral and intellectual uses performed by mankind towards
one another, all of them tending, more or less directly, to
promote and adorn it. However unconscious we may be of
their influence and private agency, and however little Ave
may feel ourselves to be personally identified with the result,
the perpetuation of the race is at once the beginning and
the end of all the feeling-s incident to our nature. What-
142 DEATH BALANCED BY REPRODUCTIOIS^.
ever we may seem to ourselves to be working for, the secret
aspiration of the heart is always Home and one's own fire-
side, bright and sweet with filial conjugal afiection; every
virtue, desire, and passion, that stirs the soul, may finally be
referred hither; in a word, whatever is friendly to humanity,
in any of its needs, whatever gives life and solidity to ex-
istence, is a collateral means to reproduction, and was pur-
posely introduced to aid it, and without such aid reproduc-
tion would languish and at last fail. Why reproduction is
the great end of physical existence, is found in its needful-
ness as the counterpoise of Death. As the destiny of all
things is to die, were there no means established for their
replacement, the earth would soon become a desolate void;
but through the magnificent law of procreation, nothing is
ever extinguished, nor a gap ever caused that is not instantly
filled up. Though Time slays and devours every individual
in turn, whether animal or plant; by procreation the species
is preserved perfect and immortal, the whole of nature un-
changed and ever young.
States fall, Arts fade, but Nature doth not die !
By the continual succession of beings, all exactly resembling-
one another, and their parents and ancestors, the existence
of any one of them is virtually maintained in perpetuity ;
the balance and the relations of the different parts of nature
are kept intact, and to philosophic view. Time itself, rather
than the temporal, is the slain one. Thus looked at, with
the eyes of a large philosophic generalization, all the indi-
viduals of any given species that have ever existed, and all
that have yet to come into existence, form but one great
Whole ; the process of reproduction whereby they follow
one another in the stream that unites the living representa-
tives to the primajval Adam of the race, being only Nutri-
tion on a grand and perennial scale. Every individual, so
REPRODUCTION THE END OF LIFE. 143
long as it lives its little life, is the species in miniature,
reproducing all its tissues as fast as they decay, through
vital action and reaction, or marriage in its simplest form;
conversely, the aggregate of the individuals, or the race, is
as it were a single one, diffused over an immense area of
time and country, and nourishing and regenerating itself by
means of that highest and most complicated play of the
marriage-principle which the word marriage popularly de-
notes. Every man, for example, and every woman, con-
sidered physiologically, is the human race in little, every-
thing that belongs to the race being enacted, essentially and
daily, in their individual bodies ; at the same moment every
man and every woman is but as a molecule of one great
Homo, now some six thousand ye^rs of age, and spread
over the whole surface of the earth.
82, Feeding, growing, all the vital functions and phe-
nomena of the earlier stages of life are to be regarded
accordingly, as Nature's preliminaries to Reproduction.
Every part of organic creation illustrates this, but in the
plant it is seen in chief perfection, excepting only the but-
terfly, in whose little life the history is epitomized. In the
first or grub state, it is a creeping cormorant ; the alimentary
organs greatly predominate, and growth is rapid. In the
last or winged state, on the other hand, though it sips from
a thousand blossoms, it takes little or no sustenance, the
excess of intestinal canal has given Avay to the generative
organs, Avhich now assume the mastery, and up to the time
of its early death, influence almost exclusively its habits.
Many kinds of butterflies cannot eat indeed, if they would,
for they have no motdhs. Adorned in their bridal vestments,
love and pleasure, as they flirt their painted fans, form the
brief and brilliant pastime with Avhich they close' their days.
The A¥inged state of the butterfly is what the period of
flowermg is to jilants, and the reason why longer life is
144 PROLONGATION OF VEGETABLE LIFE.
occasioned to plants by delay in flowering, as above alluded
to, is that in the flowers are contained their organs of pro-
creation. Hence until they have bloomed they must needs
remain childless, or with the consummation of life unreal-
ized and unattained. Procreation, or the production of
seed, is made to actuate plants with a vital impulse so
wonderful and so like the instinct of animals towards the
same end, that no other name conveys an adequate idea of
it; they prepare for the effectuation of it from the first
moment of existence, and until they have accomplished
their purpose, unless killed by intense cold, or sudden and
absolute deprivation of nourishment, will keep their hold
£»n life with a tenacity almost invincible. It may be taken
as an axiom in vegetable physiology, that cceteris paribus, no
plant dies a natural death till it has ripened seeds. If its
life be endangered, by penury of food or mutilation, the
entire vital energy of the plant concentrates itself in the
production of a flower, it ceases to put forth leaves, and
expends its whole force in efforts to secure progeny. This
is strikingly exemplified in hot, dry gardens, and by sum-
mer waysides, where, as if conscious of the impending
danger, plants ordinarily of considerable stature, begin to
propagate while scarcely an inch high. Delay in flowering,
attended by prolonged life, is usually the result of excess of
nourishment. Thus, if a plant grow in too luxurious, or
too watery a soil, causing it to become unduly succulent, or
if it be subjected to an atmosphere too warm for it, and
thus unnaturally stimulated, instead of producing flowers,
it "runs to leaf;" it passes into the condition of an over-
fattened or pampered animal, and is similarly unfitted for
the reproductive function ; and like the animal again, to
re-enter upon it, must become deplethoric. No plant can
suffer from phyllomania and be fruitful at the same moment.
Diclinous plants, when growing in wet localities, are re-
PROLONGATION OF VEGETABLE LIFE. 145
markable for the excess of male flowers over female. De-
lay in flowering and consequent prolongation of life beyond
the usual limit, also occur through insufficiency of nourish-
ment, and want of kindly climatic aid. Many plants live
longer in our gardens than in their native countries simply
for want of the encouragement to blossom which they are
accustomed to at home. In Mexico the great American
Aloe comes into bloom when four or five years old, and then
dies, while in England it drags a kind of semi-torpid exist-
ence for so long before the flowers appear, that it is a pro-
verb for a hundred years' preparation. Some plants may
have their lives prolonged a little while by nipping off" the
flowers as soon as they begm to fade. Here, however, so
much of the vital energy has been expended in the produc-
tion of the floral organs, that they never properly recover
themselves. When the flowers of a plant, under cultiva-
tion, become double ; that is, when they have their repro-
ductive organs changed into petals, and are thereby pre-
vented from seeding, their life is considerably prolonged ;
annuals even become perennial ; Tropceolum minus, when
double, has endured for twelve years. The life of annuals
may also be prolonged by grafting them upon perennials.
Many annual Solanacese will live for years when grafted on
ligneous species of the same genus, as the annual kinds of
Tobacco, when grafted on the ISTicotiana glauca, that beau-
tiful woody species which grows to a greater height than a
man. A similar extension of life may be given to some of
the annual species of Dianthus. Lastly, as regards the
relation of procreation to the lease of life, it is a universal
law, both in animals and plants, that the earlier the puberty,
the earlier is the death. Annuals, which flower when only
a few Aveeks old, die in a few months ; those plants only live
long which do not blossom till their fifth or sixth year ; the
highest ages invariably pertain to those which are the
]3 G
146 RESULTS OF CULTURE.
slowest to celebrate their nuptials. Very young forest trees
are never found in flower.
83. Many of the conditions Avhich affect the duration of
vegetable life, are thus results or accompaniments of Culti-
vation. The object of cultivation is, for the most part,
gveatev fimitfubiess ; few plants are cultivated merely for the
sake of their wood or foliage ; the aim is to procure either
more flowers to delight us with their beauty, or more seeds
to make use of as food. In either case, the stimulation
which they receive at the hands of the gardener tends to
hasten them on towards maturity, and to excite the repro-
ductive energy to the utmost. The consequence is that the
conservative power is reduced, and the organism prema-
turely exhausted. Cultivation, therefore, as a rule, may be
regarded as a shorten er of plant-life. Of course it is only
the life of the individual that is abbreviated ; the absolute
lease of life in the species is unaltered and unalterable, and
is completed Avherever the individuals enjoy their existence
unmolested.
84. The result of 07ie of the arts of culture makes it seem
as if there Avere no such thing as a fixed lease of life in
plants, viz., the art of propagation by sHjds and cuttings,
which, when, carefully detached and placed in the soil,- will
grow into counterparts of the original, and (they themselves
being extensible after the same manner) effect for it a kind
of perpetuity. Vines of the time of the Roman empire,
have been thus transmitted to the present day, gifted as it
were, by man with a longevity unknown to their state of
nature. Many herbaceous perennials, especially in gardens,
possess in this aptitude such amj)le and efficient means of
propagation as to incline to the belief that their flowers and
seeds are of quite secondary importance, dedicated rather to
the heart and appetite of man. The lily of the valley, for
example, and the strawberry.
INDIVIDUALITY OF PLANTS 147
85. To see how this curious phenomenon harmonizes with
the indubitable law of specific lease, we have to consider the
peculiar structure or organic composition of plants, and, as
flowing from this latter, the nature and amount of their in-
dividuality. The organic composition of a plant is very-
different from that of an animal. In all except the very
lowest forms of animals, there is but one of each kind of or-
gan, or of each set of organs, as the case may be, as one
heart, one mouth, one set of limbs, one system of bones.
Every organ is more or less in connection with every other,
and not one of those which are preeminently "vital" can
be removed without causing instant death to the whole
fabric. The animal, in a word, is an absolute Unity, every
part being reciprocally dependent upon every other part,
and the springs of its life centralized. In the tree, on the
other hand, there is no centralization ; no organ occurs only
once ; everything is a thousand times recapitulated ; there
are as many lungs as there are leaves, as many procreant
parts as flowers. Like an arborescent zoophyte, a Sertu-
laria, for example, a tree is a vast congeries of distinct or-
ganisms, every one of them as independent of the others as
one sheep is independent of the remainder of the flock, only
that all are organically united, and contribute, by their
union, to the general welfare, and to the building up of a
magnificent social edifice. Every sejDarate twig is a little
plant in itself; consociated with the others, but still inde-
pendent of them, it feeds, grows, and procreates in its own
person. A tree, therefore (and any plant old enough to
have thrown out buds and shoots), is at once an Individual
and a Community. It is an Individual in respect of its
presentation of the physiognomy and characters of the spe-
cies, the form, the altitude, and the gracefulness or robust
dignity ; aiso as standing alone, and dying at the expiration
of an allotted term ; it is a Community in respect of its consist-
148 TREES ARE INDIVIDUALS AND COMMUNITIES.
ing of innumerable minor trees. So long as the constituent
twigs remain seated on the bough, they are subject to the
laws and vicissitudes of the general mass, sharing its life,
and dying when it dies ; detached from it, every one of them
is competent to strike root, and by degrees become the pillar
of another such edifice. A fuchsia may be multiplied into
a hundred, in the course of a single season, without destroy-
ing the original stem ; and every one of these hundred may,
three years afterwards, be multiplied into as many more.
Such division of one organism into many is possible only
where the fountains of life are not centralized — where there
are neither brain nor heart, the means and tokens of con-
centration ; hence it is practicable as regards the animal
kingdom only in those humble tribes from which these or-
gans appear to be absent, and the nature of which approxi-
mates to that of plants. The analogy, we may add, be-
tween trees and the arborescent zoophytes is in various
other ways most curious and attractive. Here we cannot
do more than advert to their wonderful correspondence in
respect to the longevity of the general mass. Ehrenberg
judges that certain enormous corals which he saw in the
Red Sea, and parts of which are still tenanted by working
polyps, were alive in the time of the Pharaohs, and have
been groAving and enlarging ever since. Others, of equally
vast age, have been observed in the waters of tropical
America.
86. Dr. Harvey, in his most ingenious little book on
" Trees and their Nature," revives the hypothesis originally
propounded by De La Hire, and subsequently held by Dar-
Avin, Mirbel, Du Petit Thenars, Gaudichaud, and others,
that a tree is merely a mechanical and passive structure, as
regards the trunk and AA'oody portions, these serving simply
to support the annual twigs, and to alloAV the passage of
fluids to and from the latter, by exosmose and other physi-
PHYSIOGNOMY OF TREES. 149
cal and chemical laws. The tree, in its totality, he views,
with these authors, simply as a collection of living yet per-
fectly distinct annual tree-plants, the produce of the year,
and of the dead remains of a still larger number, the pro-
duce of preceding years ; the living plants evolved from
buds, and growing as parasites on the organic remains of
the dead plants. According to this view, the stem has no
intrinsic vitality ; and all plants whatever are annuals, those
commonly so called differing from such as grow on trees
merely by having their connection directly with the soil, in-
stead of indirectly through a woody pillar. A corollary is
that there is no natural limit either to the life of trees, or to
their size. Schleiden holds similar opinions. After citing
examples of old trees, he observes : — " These examples are
quite sufficient to prove the probability of a compound
plant living on without end. These plants die ordinarily
in consequence of mechanical injuries. A storm breaks off
a branch ; the broken surface is exposed to the action of
rain-water; decay takes place; the firmness of the heart-
wood becomes affected ; a new storm casts the whole tree to
the ground, separates the trunk from the roots, and it per-
ishes of hunger." (" Principles of Scientific Botany," j).
538.) Let us see how this consists with facts. Every spe-
cies of tree, like every species of animal, has its definite con-
figuration and physiognomy, by which we recognize it
whether covered Avith leaves or in the bareness of winter,
and attains, under fair circumstances, a certain maximum
size and height. Neither of these would be the case were
the tree gifted with indefinite powers of life. The period of
the culmination of the life of a tree is that when it shows its
perfect and characteristic outline ; and this being acquired,
though for awhile there may be little change in aspect, and
though crops of new twigs may be annually produced for
]3 *
150 MR. knight's theory of trees.
some years, declension as inevitably follows as with a man
aftei' he has reached his meridian.
87. Thus independent — actually as regards themselves,
potentially as regards the tree — healthy cuttings are equiva-
lent to seedlings. Strictly without doubt, the new individu-
als procured by taking slips from a given plant, are but
portions of it, since those plants alone can legitimately be
called new which come from seed. There are no absolute
beginnings anywhere in nature except as the direct produce
of sexuality. To view them, however, with Mr. Knight, as
portions of a whole, disconnected merely, and involved in a
common destiny, is quite incorrect. This eminent man
went so far as to account for the extinction of certain varie-
ties of apples and other fruits, on the hypothesis that when
the original tree died, the extensions of it raised from cut-
tings, though firmly rooted, and grown into large trees
would die likewise. According to this hypothesis, an indi-
vidual can exist in many places at once ; the willow, for ex-
ample, which shades the first tomb of Napoleon at St.
Helena, is the same as that which at Ermenonville weeps
over the ashes of Rousseau. The original and the deriva-
tives form a Avhole only in a historical point of view. In
regard to the lease of life, a vigorous cutting is in the same
position as a seed, and the tree raised from it enjoys a com-
plete and indejDendent term of being. It has nothing to do
with the lease of its predecessor, but commences life de
novo, and attains the age proper to the species. Probably
enough, a cutting taken from an old and enfeebled tree, past
its climacteric, may be unable to develop itself luxuriantly,
and may die almost as soon ; but taken from a young and
healthy one, its lease runs to the full term. Plants, it
should be observed, are not equally capable of jDropagation
in the way described. As regards trees, those of which the
wood is light and white succeed the best, the willovV, for ex-
LEASE OF LIFE IN ALQM. 151
ample ; while with pines, oaks, and trees in general that
have dense and resinous wood, the reluctance is extreme.
Reviewing the whole matter, it will appear that so far from
the principle of a fixed lease of life being invalidated by the
facts of horticulture, it is verified with new illustrations.
88. Sea-weeds, like terrestrial plants, are annual, biennial,
or perennial. The common green Ulva is an example of an
annual; the great black fuci wLich hide the rocks on many
coasts with their curious bladdered drapery, are perennial ;
the biennial include, among others, the Rhodomenia pal-
mata, or dulse, and the Delessaria sanguinea, that lovely
translucent plant which carries the palm with no less
justice in the gardens of the sea, than the rose, which it emu-
lates in color, in those of the land.
CHAPTER IX.
DUMATION OF I^IFE IN ANIMALS.
89. In Animals, the lease of life is comparatively short.
Though many species live longer than the generality of
plants, none attain to ages so prodigious as occur among
the patriarchs of the forest; neither are so many species
longseval in proportion to the whole number. The elephant
and the swan outlive myriads of shrubs and flowers; but
when they have themselves waned into senility, the leafy-
pride of many trees has scarcely begun. Fcav of any tribe
of animals live more than forty years ; whereas trees, almost
without exception, endure for at least a century.
90. The physiological or proximate reason of this disparity
is, that in the animal kingdom, taken as a whole, life is pre-
sent in a higher degree of concentration. This involves a
more elaborate and complex organization, and a greater in-
tensity of vital action; sustained, moreover, in unbroken
continuity, and in every portion of the fabric at once — the
very conditions which, as illustrated in the machines con-
structed by human art, are identified with fragility and early
exhaustion. In plants, without doubt, the organization is
exquisitely fine, and the vital functions are various and
wonderful. The microscopist well knows how beautiful is
the system of cells, and tubes, and spiral vessels, constituting
the internal substance of a plant; and the physiologist, how
admirable and profound is that vital economy which enables
it to grow, to put forth leaves and blossoms in their proper
152
INDIVIDUALITY OF ANIMALS. 153
season, and to prepare sugar, oil, farina, and the thousand
other products which render the vegetable kingdom so inva-
luable to man ; still, it is not such an organization as per-
tains to Animal life, which demands both new varieties of
tissue and new forms of organic apparatus. For while the
animal is the completion of the design so marvellously sha-
dowed forth and prefigured in the plant, it is not merely the
plant more nobly and curiously developed. It is a recon-
struction of the plant, effected, certainly, with the same
crvide materials, but wrought into forms more rare and com-
posite, and with an entirely new set of ideas superadded. It
is a mistake to suppose, as some have done, that plant and
animal exactly agree, even in a single circumstance of their
respective natures. There are organs of digestion, respira-
tion, reproduction, and so forth, in both; and there is a
general correspondence between the functions which these
organs severally fulfill ; but they are never the same organs,
nor the same functions, in the strict and proper meaning of
the word. The animal dwells on a higher platform, and all
the phenomena of its history are in keeping.
91. The intenser life of the animal gives it a completer
individuality, and to this, as the end for wliich it is gifted
Avith intenser life, is properly to be ascribed its shorter lease
when compared with the durability of the plant. The end
for which a thing is designed is always the noblest feature
of its being, and therefore the most useful as well as philo-
sophical to keep uppermost in view. ''It is for the sake of
sustaining its individuality that the organization of an
animal is so complex and elaborate; it is for the same rea-
son that the vital functions are so varied, ceaseless, and in-
terwoven ; and further, that they are so universal as to the
theatre of their performance. For they are not exercised
only at certain periods, or in certain portions of the organ-
ism, but unceasingly, from birth to dissolution, and as vigo-
154 ACTIVITY THE GREAT CHARACTERISTIC.
rously in one part as another. Certain great duties are
assigned to special organs as head-quarters, it is true; but
practically and in effect, every organ is diffused throughout
the body, and every function is everywhere performed. The
heart is wherever there is blood ; the brain wherever there
is feeling. The great characteristic of concentrated life, or
of Individuality in high j)erfection, is this vivid, ceaseless,
omnipresent Activity. In all the forms of nature which
are endowed with it — that is, in all animals of any com-
plexity of organization, as we saw when considering the sub-
ject of food — there is a continual drawing-in of nutrient
matter from without, and conversion of it into living tissue,
and as continual a decomposition of Avhat has previously
been assimilated, and concurrent expulsion of the fragments.
Every moment, in the life of an animal, Avitnesses a new
receiving, appropriation, and giving back; old age and
rejuvenescence revolving upon each other; death destroying
over again, and creation beginning afresh. On the excreting
part of the process, the maintenance of the vital condition
is more closely and immediately dependent than it is even
upon the supply of new aliment. Feeding may be suspended
for a considerable period without causing anything more
than debility: but the removal of the effete particles gene-
rated by the decomposition of the tissues, cannot be checked
even for a few minutes, at least in the warm-blooded animals,
without inducing a fatal result. For every act of respira-
tion is in effect one of excretion, and to stay the breathing,
as we all know, is to quench the life.
92. In trees and plants, on the other hand, M'here the con-
centration of life is slight, the individuality faint, and the
organization comparatively simple, so simple that no part
of the organism is absolutely dependent upon another part,
where there are no consecrated vital centres, no heart, lungs,
brain, or digestive cavity, existence no longer depends upon
ANALOGIES OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS. 155
incessant and total change of the very substance of the
fabric, and the vital activity is proportionately low. The
bulk of the tree, that is, all the consolidated or woody por-
tion, and every other part which has been finally shaped
and hardened, instead of living by perpetual decomposition
and reconstruction, and depending on these processes as the
very condition of existence, remains fixed and unalterable
till the lease of the entire organism has run out. Those
parts only which are immediately employed in the vital pro-
cesses, as the flowers, and leaves, and the extreme ends of
the rootlets, in which parts there is also more concentration
of life, are subject to such decay as takes place in the body
of an animal. In these it occurs in close and striking cor-
respondence, along with as complete a renovation. What
the tissues are to the animal, the foliage is to plant and tree;
every perennial plant, like every animal, dies innumerable
molecular or leafy deaths prior to its total, somatic death ;
and, as the years roll by, is reinstated in as many molecular
or leafy lives. Autumn and spring are to the tree, by cor-
respondence, what every day of its existence is to a living
animal; all that is concerned in keeping it alive withers
away, but all is rapidly renewed. The difierence as to the
ime that elapses between the respective deaths and renova-
tions, i. e., of the molecules of the animal frame, and the
leafy atoms of the tree, in no wise robs the phenomena of
their essential unity. That which is most concentrated is
always most vivacious, as the mountain-rivulet runs faster
than the broad river of the plain. It was no mere play of
fancy that led the ancients to call man arbor inversa. Man
is not only man; he is all things, every part of the universe
in turn, according to the point of view from which we look.
The fable of Proteus is but a description of human nature :
" First indeed he became a lion with noble mane, and then
a dragon, and a leopard, and a great bear; and he became
156 LEASES OF LIFE IN THE MAMMALIA.
liquid water, and a lofty-leaved tree." Flesh and blood to
our first or anatomical ideas, under the alchemy of the ima-
gination, the human body transmutes into tree, fountain,
temple, and all things in succession that are beautiful and
glorious. Things are intelligible in fact, and truly seen,
only in the degree that we discern ourselves in them, and read
them through the lens of human nature. " To describe any
scene well," says Richter, "the poet must make the bosom
of a man his camera obscura, and look at it through this ;"
similarly, to enter into the full, philosophic understanding
even of the simplest objects and phenomena of the world,
we must take that " choice optic glass," the human body and
its life.
93. On a general survey of the ages reached by animals,
when not shortened by violence or disease, the area of time
which they cover is found but small compared with that of
plants. With a few exceptions, forty, as before said, is
about the maximum age, and three or four alDout the mini-
mum. ISTo such exact division can be made among them as
that of annuals, biennials, and perennials, among plants,
unless certain insects correspond to the first named. It is
to be observed, however, that there is an ordinary maximum
age, and an extra-ordinarj. Every known lease of life, at
least in the vertebrate animals, appears capable of renewal,
or rather of extension, even to the doubling of the ordinary
period; that is, while every creature has its customary or
natural term, it appears competent to live, under certain
favorable circumstances, for an extraordinary or additional
term of the same, or nearly the same, extent. Thus, while
the ordinary life of man is three score and ten, he is capable
of an extraordinary life of seventy years more ; the ordinary
life of the camel is forty or fifty, but individuals sometimes
last out the century. Query, then, which is the actual and
original lease? And if the longer one be the original (as
LEASES OF LIFE IN THE MAMMALIA. 157
all the probabilities favor the belief of its being), why is it
cut short by one-half in all but a few memorable cases ?
94. The longest-living Mammal, after the whale, already
mentioned, appears to be that affectionate, docile, and saga-
cious creature, the elephant. Nothing is known positively
as to its lease, but the estimate of one hundred and fifty
years is certainly not beyond the mark.* The rhinoceros
and the hippopotamus are reputed to come next, a maxi-
mum of seventy or eighty being assigned to each of these
huge brutes; then, it is said, follows the camel, a meagre,
dry, active, exceedingly hardy animal, whose useful life ex-
tends not infrequently to fifty. The period, reckoning by
decrements, between fifty and thirty, is reached by few.
The stag, longseval only in romance, dies at thirty-five or
thereabouts ; the leopard, bear, and tiger, fail fully ten years
earlier; twenty-five or thirty is the ordinary maximum of
the horse and ass, though the severe treatment of man rarely
allows them to reach even this. The mule, it is worthy of
notice, is stronger-lived and becomes older, a circumstance
anticipated in plants, where hybrids frequently live longer
than their parents. The cause is probably the same in both,
and to be found in their infertility, whereby their whole
vigor is left at liberty for self-maintenance, instead of being
expended in two directions. Many leases expire between
twenty and ten. The former seems to be the ordmary maxi-
mum of the lion, as reached in menageries, though when
unconfined it evidently lives longer, for it has sometimes
been found Avithout teeth. Twenty is the limit also with the
bull, despite his great strength, size, and solidity; the dog
and the wolf seldom pass eighteen ; the sheep, the goat, and
* An elephant aged one hundred and twenty years was put to death
ia London, in July, 1855. — Times, July 23d.
14
158 AGES ATTAINED BY BIKDS.
the fox, rarely live more than twelve. The maximum of
the domestic cat is said to be ten ; that of the rabbit, hare,
and guinea-pig, seven or eight; that of the mouse, five or
six, and of other such little animals about the same. As to
the leases of the remainder of the four-footed creatures of
our planet, excepting a dozen or so, zoology is entirely unin-
formed, and until they shall have been ascertained, of course
nothing like a proper list can be constructed. The animals
which have been mentioned are certainly among the chief,
and indicate the scope and limits which a table of ages,
when completed, will exhibit ; but so far, the list is only like
a boy's first map, unfurnished except with the names of the
seas, the metropolis, and his native town. One thing is
plain, that Man, regarded as a member of the animal king-
dom, has no occasion to murmur at the shortness of his
lease of life, but should rather congratulate himself, seeing
that he enjoys a considerably longer term, even in his ordi-
nary duration, than the great mass of his physiological fra-
ternity, while it is pretty certain that there is not an animal
of his own size that does not return to di]^st before half as
old.
95. The scale of ages attained by Birds is much about the
same as that of mammals; but taking one with another,
they probably live longer in proportion to their bulk. No
creatures are better adapted for longevity; they are pecu-
liarly well clothed, for no covering can be more complete,
or better calculated to preserve warmth, than their soft,
close-lying feathers; and as these are rene^wed periodically,
they are maintained in the best possible condition. Many
birds also cast their bills, and acquire new ones, a most ad-
vantageous exchange for them, since they are thereby ren-
dered so much the better able to feed themselves. Besides-
these peculiarities, birds live almost entirely in the fresh air,
and their habits are cheerful and sportive, conditions emi-
AGES OF FISHES. 159
nently conducive to long life. As to tlie particular terms
of life which obtain among them, Flourens says he knows
"nothing certain." There is plenty of evidence, neverthe-
less, that such birds as the eagle, the vulture, the falcon, and
the swan, far surpass all others in longevity, and attain ages
so remarkable as often to exceed very considerably that of
man. . Even the crow is reputed to live a hundred years,
and the raven no less than ninety. There have been in-
stances of the parrot living for sixty years a prisoner, and
its age, when captured, Avould have to be added. Pelicans
and herons are said to reach forty to fifty years; hawks,
thirty to forty; peacocks, goldfinches, and blackbirds, about
twenty; pheasants and pigeons, about the same; nightin-
gales, fifteen; the robin, a little less; domestic fowls, about
ten; thrushes, eight or nine; wrens, two to three.
96. Concerning the ages of Fishes, even less is known
than about birds. It is vaguely believed of them that they
are longseval. The reasons for this opinion are, that the
element in which they live is more uniform in its condition
than the atmosphere, and that they are less subject in conse-
quence to those injurious influences which tend to shorten
the lives of terrestrial creatures; and secondly, that their
bones, being of a more cartilaginous nature than those of
land animals, admit of almost indefinite extension, so that
the frame is longer in growing to maturity. Gesner gives
an instance of a carp, in Germany, which was knoAvn to be
a hundred years old; other writers assign to this fish as
much as a hundred and fifty, and to the pike a longevity
even greater. Hufeland remarks that natural death occurs
among fishes more rarely than in any other part of the ani-
mal kingdom. "The law of the transition of one into
another, according to the right of the strongest, prevails
here far more generally than elsewhere. One devours
anotlxer, — the stronger the weaker. This regulation," he
160 AGES OF REPTILES.
continues, " is a proof of divine and exalted v^isdom. If the
innumerable millions of the inhabitants of the waters were
to remain when they died a single day unentombed, they
would speedily diffuse abroad the most dreadful pestilential
evaporation. But passing, while scarcely dead, into the
substance of another living being, death exists less in the
water than on land, — the putrefaction takes place in the
stomachs of the stronger."
97. Reptiles attain surprising ages. The tortoise, which
is so slow in growing that in twenty years an increase of a
few inches is all that can be detected, has lived even in cap-
tivity above a century. One placed in the garden of Lam-
beth Palace, in the time of Archbishop Laud, lived there
till the year 1753; and its death was then induced seemingly
through misfortune rather than old age. The enormous
creatures of this kind, natives of the Galapagos, undoubt-
edly live twice or thrice as long as the common species; an
individual possessed some years back by the London Zoolo-
gical Society, had every apj)earance of being at least a
hundred and seventy -five. Even these immense ages were
probably far exceeded by the great fossil testudinata of the
Himalayahs. It is easy to see the cause of such longevity.
The same law which obtains in the mechanics of inanimate
matter, operates in the organisms of vitalized matter,
namely, that what is gained in time must be lost in power.
The active habits which in shorter-lived animals accelerate
the vital processes, and bring the lease to an early close,
here are no longer found. The tortoises have no excitable
nervous system to wear out the durable materials encased in
their impenetrable armor; they spend the greater part of
their lives in inactivity, and exist rather than live. By
analogy, it may be infeiTed that the loricate and ophidian
reptiles reach an age fully as advanced as the tortoises.
LEASES OF LIFE IN INSECTS. IGl
The crocodile, large, strong, vigorous, enclosed in a hard coat
of mail, and incredibly voracious, is, without doubt, exceed-
ingly long-lived. The larger serpents, also slow in growth,
and passing a considerable portion of their lives in semi-
torpor, are also unquestionably longseval. Feeding vora-
ciously, at long intervals, so familiar in the case of serpents,
seems invariably associated with prolonged life. As regards
the Amphibia, Smellie refers to a toad known to have been
at least thirty-six. The frog, which, by reason of its slow
growth, in this climate at least, is incapable of producing
young till its fourth yeai", reaches, however, what in propor-
tion to this late puberty is the very inconsiderable age of no
more than from twelve to about sixteen.
98. Insects, for the most part, are short-lived, especially
after their last transformation. Some, after acquiring their
wings, live only for the remainder of the day. In calculat-
ing the ages of insects, of course they must be reckoned
from the hatching of the egg. Different species exist two,
three, and even four y^ars in the grub state; then a con-
siderable time in the chrysalis; the winged state being
merely that of completed maturity. That which especially
marks the latter is the fitness of the creature for propaga-
tion ; and this, as the period of its bloom, is also the briefest.
The Ephemerae, in their winged state, are not even creatures
of a day. Scarcely a single gnat, as such, survives a week ;
not half the beetles, nor any of the grasshoppers nor Tipulse,
those long-legged dancers of the autumn, enters on a second
month; a fortnight sees the death of almost every kind of
butterfly and moth. One of the longest-living insects is that
brilliant beetle, the Scarabceus auratus, or Rose-chaffer, the
only one that feeds upon the flower from which it takes its
English name. After four years spent as a grub, and a
fortnight as a chrysalis, it has lived in captivity from two to
14*
162 GENERAL CAUSES OF _ LONGEVITY.
three years more.* That curious but treacherous and cruel
creature, the Mantis religiosa, or Praying cricket, which
holds up the foremost pair of its long, desiccated, skeleton
legs, as if in the act of prayer, is said to attain a full
octave.
99. Whatever errors there may be in the particular
figures above quoted, the general principles which they
illustrate are indisputable. Whatever class of organisms
we may take, the ground of longer or shorter life lies uni-
versally in the structure, the temperament, and the less or
greater vital energy. We have seen how this is manifested
in regard to the aggregate of organic nature ; also how it is
verified in respect to plants ; it obtains with animals, in their
several tribes and species, after precisely the same manner,
only that the phenomena are played forth in greater variety,
and in costumes appropriate to the nobler stage. All the
diversities in the duration of animal life may be referred
perhaps to the two general heads — of Size, as regards the
substance of the creature, and Ene»gy, as regards its vital
powers. Other circumstances are but adjuncts, though in-
separably connected with and conditional on them. All
the longseval creatures, like all the longseval trees, are con-
siderable in their bulk ; at all events they are the largest
forms of their respective tribes, the swan, for example,
among birds,f and the crocodile among reptiles ; the
smallest forms, on the otber hand, are always the shortest-
lived. The reason coniists in the ampler command which
they possess over the world around them. As the colossal
tree owes its longCAity to its immense feeding-surface of
* See for an entertaining account of the keeping this beautiful in-
sect as a pet, "Episodes of Insect Life," voL ii., p. 76.
f The ostrich, as the largest of birds, is undoubtedly the longest
liver, but nothing is known with certainty as to its lease.
GENERAL CAUSES OF LONGEVITY. 163
green leaf, so the largely-developed animal lives longer than
the little one, because it possesses more vital capacity, more
contact with external nature, more scope and opportunity
for acquiring strength of every kind ; there is also greater
power of resisting what is inimical to life, as intense cold,
though marvelous examples of the latter property occur
among those living riddles, the animalcules. Great size,
however, does not carry long life with it necessarily. More
intimately connected with longevity even than bulk, is the
greater or less intensity of the vital action ; in proportion
to the rapidity with which an animal lives, is invariably the
brevity of its lease. That is, of two animals, alike in
regard to bulk, that one will have the shortest duration
which lives the fastest, and that one the longest which lives
slowest. The expression "fast living," now so commonly
applied to extravagant expenditure of the resources, involv-
ing premature stoppage and decay, is not a mere phrase of
gay society ; it denotes a condition of things Avhich in nature
is sometimes normal. The two great kingdoms of organ-
ized nature are physiologically characterized in fact, by this
very thing. It is because trees live so slowly that they
endure for centuries, and because animals live so fast that
few of them reach fifty. All the longseval animals have a
relatively lower vital energy ; all the short-lived (or at least
such as attain any considerable bulk) possess it in excess.
As a result of this condition, we usually find the longseval
creatures deliberate and stately in their movements, and
leading calm and placid lives, as the elephant, the giraffe,
and the swan ; while the short-lived ones are as remarkable
for their sportive restlessness, as they course about the fields,
or sail through the sky or water. Creatures that run much
are rarely, if ever, long-lived. In the vegetable kingdom it
is the same ; the longaeval tree is like the elephant it shades,
tranquil and august ; the gourd that dies Avith the close of
164 REPRODUCTION AND LONGEVITY.
summer is rampant and wanton. In the whole compass of
nature, perhaps there is nothing more full of quiet grandeur
than the sacred, ever-verdant cedar of twenty centuries.
100. The circumstances of animal life which bear inti-
mate relation to its lease, though not immediately promotive
or preventive of longevity, are chiefly, as in plants, those
connected with Eeproduction. Early pubertj'-, which in
plants forebodes an early death, similarly announces it in
animals, for it shows that maturity will soon be reached,
and we scarcely need the proverb* to learn what happens
next. Contrariwise, those creatures live the longest which
are latest in acquiring ability to procreate. The long life
of man, for example, follows as a natural sequence upon his
protracted infancy. Other animals of his size begin to pro-
pagate after a much earlier anniversary of birth than he
does ; they attain their puberty in a few years, or even
months ; waiting for it the seventh part of a century, man
is compensated at the end. The period occupied in gestation
is remarkably correlative with the term of life. The longer
time an animal requires for its formation in its mother's
womb, the more extended is its life ; the shorter the period
between conception and birth, the less is the lease extended.
The duration of gestation is of course largely determined
by the creature's size and organization in general. The
bulky elephant goes with young no less than twenty months,
and lives a century and a half; the puny rabbit requires
only thirty days, and dies in eight years. What is reputed
concerning the long life of the swan becomes credible when
tested by this law; for incubation in birds corresponds to
gestation in mammals, and no bird, unless the ostrich, is so
slow in hatching its eggs. The law, like all others, belongs
* Quod eito fit, cito peril. "That which is quickly formed, quickly
perishes." Vulgarly, " Soon ripe, soon rotten,"
GESTATION AND LONGEVITY. 165
as mucli to jDlants, wherein the gestation of animals is pre-
figured in tlie rijpening of the fruit. The longseval trees are
among the first to open their flowers (the instruments of
vegetable coition), yet their seeds are the latest to become
ripe, the whole season, from early spring to the close of
autumn, being required for their proper maturation. Thus,
though the yew blossoms in March, or several weeks before
the apple, its berries are not ripe till the end of October ;
the box-tree opens its flowers at the same time, but is
scarcely parturient till winter. Many kinds of pine-trees,
also the cedar, and several oaks, as Quercus Cerris, suber,
and rubra, all of them long-lived, require two seasons to
bring their fruits to jDerfection. On the other hand, the
short-lived perennials, and annuals universally, complete the
whole process of reproduction, from the opening of the
flowers to the ripening of the seed, in the course of some six
or seven weeks. In the mistletoe occurs a curious excep-
tion. Like the yew and the box, it blossoms early in the
spring, and ripens its berries certainly no sooner, perhaps
not till near Christmas, yet it is by no means a longseval
plant. How are we to account for this ? May it be refer-
able to the parasitic nature of the plant, being dependent
on plunder for its sustenance ?
101. The number of young produced at a birth is again
correlative with the duration of life. The longest-living
animals produce the fewest, while the shortest-lived are also
the most prolific. The female elephant, rhinoceros, hippo-
potamus, and camel, never have more than one at a birth ;
the horse, the ox, the stag, one, and occasionally two ; the
goat and the sheep have from one to three or four ; the leo-
pard and tiger, four or five ; the dog, the fox, and the cat,
three to six ; the rabbit, four to eight ; the guinea-pig, the
most prolific of the mammalia, four to twelve. In the hu-
man race, where the lease of life is considerable in propor-
166 FECUNDITY AND LONG LIFE.
tion to tlie size of the body, twins come only once in every
seventy oi' eighty births ; trijDlets only once in seven thou-
sand.* About fifteen seems the highest number of young
ever produced at one birth among the warm-blooded ani-
mals ; in fact, a larger number would be incompatible with
the economy of utero-gestation, and subsequently with that
of the maternal nourishment, the fountains of which are
visually about double the number of the young produced at
a birth. It would be incompatible, also, with the fair
sharing of the earth's surface, and thus with the fine ba-
lance, harmony, and proportions of nature. The economy
of incubation puis a similar limit to the number of eggs
that a bird hatches at once, which is seldom less than two
or three, and never above sixteen. The most astonishing
cases of fecundity occur among fishes and insects. In the
genus Cyprinus among the former, comprising the carp, the
barbel, the tench, the bream, &c., hundreds of thousands of
ova have been counted ; and in the common cod, several
millions. Crustaceous animals often jDroduce many thou-
sands ; and the Batrachians, some hundreds at the least.
Like the preceding, this great principle is exemplified also
in plants. The number of seeds produced by annuals and
short-lived plants is infinitely greater than trees usually
yield ; for though in the aggregate of their crops of fruit
trees are so fertile, in the strict physiological sense they are
few-seeded, and not infrequently onl}' one-seeded. In com-
paring plants and animals as to their productiveness, we
must remember that a tree is a nation, every bough a pro-
vince, every branch a large district ; we have to consider,
therefore, not the sum total of the produce of the entire
* This proportion is not universal, varying with different nations.
Tlie Greenland women scarcely ever have twins ; whereas among
the people of Chili they are remarkably common.
LEASE OF HUMAN LIFE. 167
number of flowers — the total, for instance, of the acorns
upon an oak — but how many seeds are produced by each
separate and independent flower, which is the real equiva-
lent of the animal, the tree itself being equivalent to a
whole herd of quadrupeds, or a whole city-full of mankind.
Thus, the flowers of the oak-tree, which lives above a thou-
sand years, j)roduce, like the elephant, only one at a birth ;
the flowers of the apple-tree, about ten ; those of the straw-
berry-plant (a perennial), more than a hundred ; those of
the poppy (an annual), eight thousand. That there is an
exact ratio between the productiveness of a plant and the
period to which it lives, is by no means asserted. There
are plenty of few-seeded annuals, and of many-seeded peren-
nials ; but, as a rule, the formep are more fecund. Pufl*-
balls and parasitic fungi, the most ephemeral of plants, cast
their seeds into the atmosphere like impalpable dust, agree-
ing in their fecundity with fishes. The quantity of fruit
produced by the entire tree or plant, corresponding as it
does to the population of a country, has its own laws of in-
crease and fluctuation, and is a different matter altogether
from fertility of the species, as correlative with lease of life.
When we find longsevals very fecund, it is probably because
their produce is an important food to some creature of supe-
rior rank. How few^ acorns ever become oaks.
102. What may be the lease of Human life, is a question
for which the Psalmist is almost universally acknowledged
to have provided a final answer: "The days of our years are
three score years and ten, and if by reason of strength they be
four score years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow, for it is
soon cut off', and we flee away." There are plenty of examples,
however, of longevity far exceeding even the higher figures,
accompanied by retention of all the faculties and poAvers
the exercise of which forms the true life of man. Arguing
from these, it has been thought that, by using proper means.
168 LEASE OF HUMAN LIFE.
an age of no less than two centuries may be attained ; less
ambitious minds have been content to hope for a century
and a half; in Genesis itself one hundred and twenty years
are fixed, (vi. 3.) Buffon considered that the maximum
need never be under ninety or a hundred, which " the man,"
says he, " who does not die of accidental causes, everywhere
reaches." Flourens, the latest writer upon the subject, con-
curs in the opinion of his famous countryman : A hundred
years of life is what Providence intended for man; it is true
that few reach this great term, but lioiv feiv do what is neces-
sary to attain it ! With our customs, our passions, our mi-
series, man does not die — he kills himself. If we observe
men, we shall see that almost all lead a nervous and conten-
tious life, and that most of them die of disappointment.
How few, comparatively, number even the three score and
ten! The weakness of infancy, the intemperance of the
adult period, the violence of diseases, the fatality of acci-
dents, and other circumstances similarly inimical to long
life, prevent more than about seventy persons in every thou-
sand attaining natural old age. There is great solace, never-
theless, in the thought of what may be reached. Haller,
who has collected a great number of examples of long life,
reckons up more than a thousand instances of individuals
having attained the age of one hundred to one hundred and
ten, sixty of one hvmdred and ten to one hundred and twenty,
twenty-nine of one hundred and twenty to one hundred and
thirty, fifteen of one hundred and thirty to one hundred and
forty, six of one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty,
and one of one hundred and sixty-nine. Curtis, but without
the credibility of Haller, cites one hundred and seventy-two,
one hundred and eighty-five, and two hundred and seven.
As regards the life of the Antediluvians, before the question
is examined physiologically, it may be well for those who are
curious about it to be sure what the inspired narrative really
RELATION OF MATURITY TO TERM OF LIFE. 160
means. When the belief that the names of the patriarchs
denote communities rather than individuals, shall be shown
to be more at variance with the sjDirit and the object of the
sacred records than the popular opinion is, it will be time to
take it up as a matter of science. A noted living theologian
suggests from out of one of the darkest caves of literalism,
that our first parents did actually eat of the Tree of Life,
and that its virtue Avas transmitted through several successive
generations, till at last it became dissipated and lost, and
man was reduced to a miserable tithe of his first possession.*
103. Flourens fixes a hundred as the normal life of man
on the principle that there is an exact ratio between the
period occupied in growing to maturity and the full term or
lease of existence, a principle which he shows pretty conclu-
sively to prevail throughout the whole of the mammalia.
Aristotle was the first to enunciate this great doctrine; Buf-
fon the first to throw it into coherent shape. As set forth
by the latter, it teaches that every animal lives, or at least
is competent to live, from six to seven times as many years
as it consumes in growing. The stag, he tells us, is five or
six years in growing, and lives thirty-five or forty in all; the
horse is about four, and lives to be twenty-five or thirty. " One
thing only," says Flourens, " was unknown to Bufibn, namely,
the sign that marks the term of growth." This is the essen-
tial point ; it is by having determined the sign that Flourens
has vitalized the doctrine, which, so long as it lay undisco-
vered, was little better than a speculation. There might be
no hesitation in conceding the theory; but until the basis
of the calculation could be indisputably shown, there could
^ See, on the non-literal character of the statements respecting the
ages of the Antediluvians, Eev. E. J). Eendell's "Antediluvian
History," chapter xviii., (1850), also the " Prospective Eeview," vol.
ii., p. 251.
15 H
170 MATURITY MARKED IN THE BONES.
be no security felt in the conclusions. Still, it was a grand
idea — one of those fine truths in outline which nature seems
to delight in sketching on the thoughts of imaginative men,
and filling up gradually and at leisure. The maturity of
the body in general of course consists in the maturity of all
its parts, but the period of such maturity diflfers almost as
raiich as the parts themselves. The muscles, the composition
of the vocal apparatus, even the eye-brows, have their re-
spective periods of perfect development, and Avere we mi-
nutely acquainted with every jDarticular of the body, each
would probably furnish the sign required. Flourens finds
it in the Bones. The bones are the basis of the whole sys-
tem ; they are the first principle, so to speak, of its configu-
ration; they support, defend, and contain the nobler organs.
To fulfill these functions, they uniformly require to be pos-
sessed of the three mechanical properties of firmness, light-
ness, and tenacity, and in order to these it is needful that
they be exquisitely organized. We are apt to suppose, from
the hardness and durability of bones, that even in the living
body they are scarcely vital; that they should be subjects
of gradual and delicate growth, seems almost impossible to
conceive. But minute anatomy, the most pleasing and re-
warding part of the science of the human fabric, shows
bones to be as full of life, in their degree, as any of the
softer parts, and that the organization is inferior to none.
In order that they shall possess the three properties alluded
to, bones are formed of two principal ingredients, an animal
matter and an earthy matter, intimately interblended. In
the bones of the infant the quantity of earthy matter is com-
paratively small, and the animal substance itself is softer
than at later periods. As it grows, however, the proportions
change; the animal matter becomes firmer; earthy particles
are deposited in it abundantly, and the bone gradually as-
sumes its proper density. The total of the process consti-
HOW OSSIFICATION PEOCEEDS. 171
tutes "''ossification." The proportion of earthy to animal
matter is not the same in the different bones. The maximum
occurs in those of the head; the long bones of the limbs
have the next largest quantity, those of the upper limbs ex-
ceeding the lower; and last of all come the bones of the
trunk. Thus, the
Earthy matter. Animal matter.
Temporal bone contains 63"50 36"o0
Humerus " 63-02 36-98
Femur " 62-49 37-51
The earthy matter is not deposited in every part at once ; it
spreads, so to speak, from ossific centres, gradually diffusing
itself throughout the mass. This is of the utmost import-
ance to observe, for it is upon this apparently trifling cir-
cumstance that the whole of the conclusions are primarily
founded. In all the long bones, as those of the legs and
arms, there are portions at the extremities which, at first, or
in the child, are united to the intermediate portion only by
the cartilage or animal matter of which the bone then prin-
cipally consists. These end-portions of the bone (called its
epiphyses) are ossific centres — points at which the deposition
of earthy matter commences, and from which it gradually
extends. As growth proceeds, ossification progresses from
the middle part of the bone towards the epiphyses, and
from the epiphyses towards the middle ^ixi% till at last they
are joined into one continuous mass of hard, completed
bone. As soon as the junction is effected, and the bone
consolidated, growth is completed, and the sign of matu-
rity established. "As long," says Flourens, " as the bones
are not united to their epiphyses, the animal grows ; when
once the bones and their epiphyses are united, the animal
grows no more." Not that growth is completed and matu-
ritv established, in that strict sense of the words which
172 MAN FITTED TO LIVE A HUNDRED YEARS.
would imply an absolutely stationary condition thencefor-
wards, or at least of the whole body. There is no period
when the system is absolutely stationary ; it is always either
advancing to a state of perfection, or receding from that
state. The skeleton alone remains fixed. " It is true that
at the adult age, the determinate height and figure, the set-
tled features, and in man, the marked moral and mental
character, naturally gave rise to the supposition that a fixed
point has been attained ; but a little inquiry soon teaches us
that the individual is still the subject of progressive changes.
The capability of powerful and prolonged muscular exer-
tion increases for some years ; there must consequently be a
change in the muscular tissue. The intellectual faculties
have not attained their maximum, although we do not hesi-
tate to consider them mature ; we must therefore infer that
there is a corresponding development in the substance of
the brain." In the camel, Flourens goes on to say, the
union of the epiphyses to the bones is completed at eight
years old, in the horse at five, in the ox at four, in the eat
at eighteen months, in the rabbit at twelve months, and in
every case the duration of life is five times, or pretty nearly,
the age of- the creature when this process is accomplished.
Flourens does not differ essentially from Buffon in saying
five times instead of six or seven times the period of matu-
rity, because Buffon fixed maturity at earlier epochs. It is
the same thing in the end to say seven times five with Buf-
fon, or five times seven with Flourens. In man, the union
of the epiphyses to the bones takes place at twenty years of
age, and as observation appears to establish five as the le-
gitimate number by which to multiply in regard to the re-
mainder of the mammalia, the conclusion is that five times
twenty, or a hundred, is the normal lease in our own spe-
cies. If the j)rinciple be sound — and there is no reason for
distrust — to determine the lease of life in animals where it
LONGEVITY INFLUENCED BY SEX AND MARRIAGE. 173
will apply, will be, for the future, a comparatively easy
matter. A few careful examinations of the bones in grow-
ing individuals will enable the period of maturity to be
learned with certainty, and five times this period may be
inferred to be the lease.*
104. Numerous facts of a miscellaneous character invite
our notice in regard to the duration of human life. Cceteris
paribus, large men are said to live longer than little ones ;
married men longer than bachelors. Celibacy as well as
marriage has its advocates in this respect, the fact probably
being that there is plenty of illustration of both opinions,
though on the whole, matrimony certainly has the advan-
tage. We may reconcile the different views by considering
that in the one case there is less w-ear and tear of the vital
energy ; and that in the other the weakened frame is re-
stored and replenished by the tender offices of affection.
" If two lie together then they have heat, but how can one
be warm alone?" As a rule, longevity is greater in women
than in men. Childbirth and its antecedents occasion in-
deed a considerable loss of life ; the age of j)uberty carries
off" eight per cent, more maidens than youths ; the propor-
tion of deaths in parturition is one in one hundred and
eight ; the difference, however, which these losses would
seem to produce disappears in the general average. Either
sex may calculate their jjrobability of life by reckoning the
difference between the age already attained and ninety.
* For a variety of other and curious details on the subject of the
duration of life, both in man and the lower animals, such as it is
unnecessary here to introduce, the student may refer to the works
of Flourens, Hufeland, and Buffon, above cited, and on the particu-
lar subject of maturity, to the article "Age," in Todd's Cyclopsedia
of Pliysiology. See also the reviews of Flourens in Blackwood for
May, 1855, and Colburn for July of the same year.
15 «
174 LONGEVITY AFFECTED BY PURSUITS.
Half that difference is what the assurance offices would call
their " expectation." For example, a man of forty years
old has fifty between his age and ninety; half of that fifty is
twenty-five ; and provided he is free from any undermining
disease, he may trust that for those twenty-five years he will
continue, with God's blessing, to enjoy the honor and privi-
lege of existence. One thing it is important to remember —
the period of maturity is the only one that admits of pro-
longation. Infancy, childhood, and youth, have certain
limits, which are seldom come short of or exceeded. The
same in old age — it cannot endure beyond a certain length
of time, and when once it begins, it speedily leads to the
grave. In other words, neither childhood nor old age can
be arrested ; middle life alone can be stretched out. Of the
three conditions of life we cannot possibly alter the first and
third, for they are out of our control ; the middle one we
may abbreviate or prolong, since it is left for us to deal
with as we choose. The influence of jyursuits and occupa-
tions on the duration of life has often been illustrated. The
average is said to be with clergymen sixty-five years ; with
merchants sixty-two ; farmers sixty-one ; military men fifty-
nine ; lawyers fifty-eight ; artists fifty-seven, and so on. Po-
verty and destitution tend to shorten life ; comfort and
happiness to prolong it.
CHAPTER X.
GHOirWDS OF THE VARIOUS JLEASJE OF ZIFE. SPIRITJIATj
JSAS2S OF JSTATITRE.
105. The primary, essential reasons of the diversity in
the duration of life (as distinct from the proximate or phy-
siological), ai"e comprised in the law of Correspondence,
and the law of Use, the tAvo great principles which furnish
the whole rationale of existence. Correspondence un-
folds the relation of the material world to the spiritual, and
shows the first Causes of visible nature ; Use instructs us
as to the particular Ends for which the various objects of
creation have been designed, and the necessity there is for
every one of them. Springing out of these laws, and de-
pendent on them, is the condition of Form, by which term
is to be understood not merely the configuration of a thing,
but the total of the circumstances which establish its iden-
tity, such as the size, organization, and vital economy; and
according to these last, according to the peculiarities of the
Form, is eventually determined the duration of the life.
The inmost, original causes of the diversity in the lease of
life we thus discover in spiritual philosoj)hy, the last, con-
cluding ones, in the philosophy of nature. We should
accustom ourselves thus to trace things to their first begin-
nings, whatever may be the subject of investigation. Our
mental progress is immensely contingent upon it ; desire to
discover, and success in finding them, are the surest signs
of enlarging intellectual empire. For the true philosophy
175
176 THE SPIRITUAL WORLD.
of cause and effect does not consist in the simple determina-
tion of immediate antecedents, nor is it satisfied to remain
in them. Every cause is itself only the effect of a still finer
cause, Avhich again results from a yet finer, no longer phy-
sical, necessarily, and the whole chain, from beginning to
end, must be considered, if we would acquire a just notion
of the last effect. Nowhere is it more needful to investigate
these successive causes than in regard to the duration of
life. To see the reasons of longer and shorter life purely in
its organic apparatus, is to see the cause of Language in the
movements of the lips and tongue. It is a truth, but not
the whole, nor the vital truth. Every physical fact is the
last issue and expression of something spiritual, which must
be sought before the former can become properly intelligible,
and to which reason will direct its steps, though half-reason
may stand indifferent and mocking.
106. With Correspondence, accordingly, or the relations
of the material world Avith the Spiritual, lies our first con-
cern. To enter successfully upon the consideration of it,
obviously requires that we should hold clear ideas of what
the material and the spiritual respectively are. Concerning
these we must therefore primarily inquire, and especially
concerning the spiritual world. Strictly, the consideration
of the spiritual expression of Life should precede that
of the spiritual World. The obligation to take the latter
before its time comes of the fact that all great truths have
many points of contact, whereby it becomes impossible to
treat intelligibly of any one of them without approaching
and anticipating others. The truth, however, of the general
system which comprises them is declared by it, since in order
to the harmony of a whole, every part must be in alliance,
and the insulation of any one part impracticable. The
spiritual world is no mere abstraction. Viewed tlieologieally,
it is the place in which Ave shall consciously reside after the
THE MATERIAL WOKLL REPRESENTATIVE ONLY. 177
death of our material bodies, enjoying its sunshine, or walk-
ing wretched in its gloom, according as we have adapted
ourselves during our time-life ; — viewed philosophically, it is
the same old beautiful world of God with which we are
familiar under the name of earth and sky, only on a higher
plane of creation, and prior to it. When we would think
accurately of "Nature," we must not confine ourselves to
the visible world. "Nature," in the full sense of the word,
denotes whatever exists externally to the Creator, not having
been planned by human contrivance, or executed by human
labor, thus not only earth and sky, but the heavenly man-
sions also. The one is physical nature ; the other, spiritual
nature ; and the former presupposes the latter. The world,
say rather the worlds, — those sjoarkling spheres we call the
planets and the stars, — are not independent and original
creations. Every one of them is derived and representa-
tive, a sequence and disclosure of some anterior sphere in
the spiritual world. Every object they contain is of similar
history and origin, a figure demonstrating the spiritual, and
supported by it. Not that the physical world is destitute
of Reality. By no means the mere illusion of the mind
which certain metaphysicians would have us believe, — for
there are no quintessential metaphysics that can gainsay
common sense, — the material world is emphatically a Real
one. On the other hand, it is quite as wrong and unphilo-
sophical to think of it, as many do, as primitive, independent,
self-supporting. When we look on a beautiful landscape,
we see mountains, trees, rivers, real and substantial as re-
gards the material universe; nevertheless, only images of
forms originally existing in a world which we do not see, and
from which they are derived; — forms that are neither com-
prised within material space, nor related to terrestrial time, — ■
forms which are as real, therefore, as the material; yea,
infinitely more so, since the material is local and temporary,
H »
lY8 SPIRITUAL AND NATURAL SUBSTANCE.
wliereas the spiritual is unlimited, and the home of immor-
tality. Nothing exists except by reason of the spiritual
world; whatever pertains to the material is purely and
simply Effect ; — a fact in itself commending the spiritual to
our philosophic curiosity and affection, since, — as all well
know who are ever so little in the habit of meditating upon
things not present to the bodily sight, — it is only by think-
ing of the invisible 'productive powers, in connection with
the resulting products, that the latter acquire true being, life,
beauty, and physiognomical expression. Seeing how the
material world changes, yet how permanent it is, we cannot
persuade ourselves but that there must be an indestructible
and vigorous something which underlies and from time to
time refashions it, — something which is the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever. Whatever shape a material organism
may possess, nothing but spirit, we are well assured, can act.
Only by virtue of force communicated from something
spiritual, is matter, under any circumstances, consolidated
and configured. In itself matter is unable to effect any-
thing; it passes indifferently from mould to mould without
retaining the shape of any. That invisible, potent some-
thing cannot be a mere Energy either. A Cause, that is to
say, an active, productive force, cannot be efficient unless it
operate from and through a substance. If there be a spirit-
ual world at all, it must be like the material world, substan-
tial. Substance must not be confounded with matter. Sub-
stance is a generic term ; matter is one of the species Avhich
it includes. Substance is that which is indispensable to the
being of a thing, as the continent of its sustaining life. For,
to be is the same as to be alive, which is to be a recipient of
life ; and wherever life is received, whether in the material
w^orld or the spiritual, there must needs be a substance to
receive it. Granted, the substance of the spiritual w^orld
cannot be detected or defined scientifically. But that there
SUBSTANCE AND MATTER. 179
is such a substance may nevertheless be affirmed, just as
reasonably as when we hear Echo, we may affirm an echo-
producing instrument. Spiritual substances are none the
less real because out of the reach of chemistry or edge-tools,
or because they are inappreciable by the organs of sense.
Indeed it is only the grosser expressions of matter which can
be so treated, and Avhich the senses can apprehend. Heat
and electricity are as truly material as flint and granite, yet
man can neither cut, nor weigh, nor measure them ; while
the most familiar and abundant expression of all, the Air
which we breathe, can neither be seen nor felt till put in
motion. As for invisibility, which to the vulgar is the proof
of non-existence, no warning is so incessantly addressed to
us, from every department of creation, as not to commit the
mistake of disbelieving simply because we cannot see.
When we reflect how many things there are Avhich cannot
be measured and comprehended even by Thought, which
nevertheless are true, visibility to the material eye, as the
test of reality, sinks to the least and lowest value. Each
class of substances is real in relation to the world it belongs
to; — material substances m the material world; spiritual
substances in the spiritual world; and each kind has to be
judged of according to-its place of abode. Distance in nature
from the material no more disproves the existence of the
spiritual, than distance in space disproves the existence of
the bottom of the sea. The common notion of spirit is that
of an attenuate form of matter; that it is what matter would
become were it rarified into a perfectly free, fluent, unfixed,
unbounded condition; and conversely, that matter is con-
gealed or concreted spirit, bearing to it something of the
same relation that ice does to steam, or a pastile to the
fragrance into which it burns. Spirit and matter are utterly
and incommensurably distinct; under no circumstances are
180 ART DERIVED FROM THE SPIRITUAL WORLD.
they transformable or convertible.* To deny the existence
of spiritual substance, is to assert that heaven is an empty
void, whereas St. John represents it as a plenitude of objects
and scenery, of the most substantial kind. It is to depopu-
late it also of its angels, who if they be real enough to be
persons, must assuredly be real enough to consist of sub-
stance. Unless always upon the wing, they must likewise
have a substantial surface whereon to stand.
107. Lying thus, at the back of the visible and sensible,
the spiritual world is the universal fountain. Therein are
contained "the invisible things of God," which are "clearly
seen by the things that are made." Therein, likewise, are
contained the "patterns" which Avere shown to Bezaleel in
the mount. That history of Bezaleel has wonderful instruc-
tion in it. What the spiritual world is to the spontaneous,
objective forms of nature, it is also, we may gather from it,
to Art, which like those forms, is not an oi'nament placed
upon the surface of the world from without, or purely by
man, but an outbirth from the unseen universe within ; just
as the verdure of the fields is not a carpet laid down and
spread over them, but an outvegetation of hidden seeds.
All the men who have been greatest in Art have been dis-
tinguished by their consciousness that they were merely reve-
lators of spiritual facts. "Appeal to an artist, and ask him
why he so painted any given heroic head, without any
old "family portrait" to guide him. If he be a true artist,
a race not numerous, he will say, "I could not do otherwise.
That man had such a temper, such a life, in him. I, there-
fore, mastering the inward spirit of the man, found his
"•^ See, on the grossness of the popular error, its prevalence, and
its evil tendencies, Barclay's " Inquiry into the Opinions, Ancient
and Modern, concerning Life and Organization," chap, iii., sec.
11. (1822.)
NATURAL THEOLOGY OF ART. 181
fashion and liis features created for me and given to me."
Because such is the ultimate origin of the products of true
art, of such, that is, as are something more than mere ser-
vile, tradesmen's copies of familiar physical objects, there is a
JSTatural Theology of Art. For Art, rightly understood, is a
portion of nature, and genuine Natural Theology cannot
take either part without the other.* Briefly, as the Soul is
the essential Human Body, so is that grand, invisible, im-
perishable fabric we call the spiritual, the essential World.
The spiritual world is the total of Essential nature ; this
visible, material world is a portion of Representative nature,
a j)ortion only, because the little planet we call our oAvn is
the covering of a very minute part indeed of the infinite
spiritual realm which is its parent. Here we have but a
few detached sketches of the panorama which belongs there,
and what few we have, albeit they are so lovely, we see but
" as through a glass, darkly." It will not be so always.
The spiritual world known to philosojDhy is no other, as said
before, than the spiritual world of the hopeful Christian —
the very same which we shall consciously inhabit when by
death we cease to be conscious of the present. Our intro-
duction in this life to mineral, vegetable, and animal, to
air, and sky, and sun, is the beginning of a friendship that
will never be dissolved, only that hereafter we shall view
things as they really are, instead of their efiigies and pic-
tures. In this world we do not so much live as prepare to
live, nor enjoy nature's sweet amenities so much SiS prepare
to enjoy them. We shall leave it, but we shall not lose its
beauty; we shall learn rather how most thoroughly to de-
light in it, often turning in pleased remembrance to those
* Excellently set forth in an article in the North American Ee-
view for July, 1854, "On the moral significance of the Crystal
Palace."
16
182 EVIDENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD.
early days which now we reckon as our "life-time," and to
that little sphere which was our birth-place and education.
108. Philo Judseus calls upon us to observe that the deri-
vation of the physical world from an anterior spiritual world
is expressly taught in the book of Genesis : " These are the
generations of the heavens and the earth, . . . and of every
plant of the field before it was in the earth, and of every
herb of the field before it greiv ;" wdiich words, says Philo,
" do manifestly teach that before the earth was green, ver-
dure already existed ; that before the grass sprang in the
field, there was grass, though it was not visible. The same
must we understand from Moses in the case of everything
else which is perceived by the external senses ; there were
elder forms and motions already existing, according to which
the others were fashioned and measured out. The things
which he has mentioned are examples of the nature of all."*
109. The evidence that there is a spiritual world under-
lying the material, is quite as ready and plentiful as of the
material world itself, if men will but look for it in the right
place, and consent to receive it, for spectacles are less needed
than willingness. It is rarely that incapacity hinders the
reception of truth ; rather is it want of cordiality to give it
Avelcome. We speak now, of course it will be understood,
of the spiritual world as a truth of Philosophy, i. e., as the
basis, as to first principles, of terrestrial nature. Most men
believe in it under the name of " Heaven," or as a country
which they will enter after death. Few, however, think of
it in its relation to existing nature ; yet so to regard it is little
less important to enlarged and encouraging views of Life,
for it brings heaven into our daily thoughts, as a living,
familiar, and practical Reality, a thought for the present, for
the fields and the woods, for the hills and the valleys, instead
On the Creation, Chap. xliv.
EVIDENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL WOELD. 183
of only for the future, at church on Sundays, and nothuig
so fills the soul Avith bright ideas. How differently ihe
minds of men are constituted with regard to particular kinds
of truth, we are perfectly aware. Some are made to super-
stition, some to enthusiasm, others are inapt for either ; so
that what in many cases men fancy to be contest for " truth,"
is simply comparison of their mental tastes, just as they
compare their physical likings over the dining-table, and
fancy they are contending for what is best. Oftentimes,
without question, this will account for their insolicitude.
" Inductive minds," says Whewell, " those which have been
able to discover laws of nature, have also commonly been
ready to believe in an Intelligent Author of nature ; while
deductive minds, those which have employed themselves in
tracing the consequences of laws discovered by others, have
been willing to rest in laws without looking beyond to an
Author of laws." So with the views men take of the
material world, its substance, derivation, and life. Deduc-
tive minds are content with the study of matter ; inductive
minds feel themselves invited to look further. But it is still
a question of willingness, since nothing is ever sought except
from the heart. There is something more even than willing-
ness wanted. Before we can thoroughly recognize and ap-
prove a truth superior to the region of the senses, our moral
character must have risen into harmony with it. It follows
that the spiritual Avorld is not a thing to be argued about.
We should never argue with a man about things which
require for their understanding a higher plane than he has
risen to ; until he has lifted himself into the requisite soul,
he cannot be expected to see with similar eyes. Show him
how and where to learn, but do not argue with him till he
is on a level Avith your own vision. Hence, too, the utter
worthlessness of the usual objection to the doctrine of the
spiritual world, that it has no place in popular systems of
184 PROOF IN ITS VARIOUS KINDS.
philosophy. Some men reject it unconditionally — they
simply " do not believe." It is very convenient to conceal
incuriousness and ignorance under the name of scepticism,
and thus invite the community to suppose that superior
acuteness has detected unsoundness in what actually has
never been even looked at.
110. Certainly, the joroofs of spiritual things are not of
the same kind as those of material ones. A man must not
exjDect the same species of proof that there are angels, as
of the existence of a railway or a tree. What visible, sen-
suous proof is to the material, philosophical induction is to
the spiritual, and when this is assisted and borne out by
Revelation, it is not merely as good a kind of proof, but an
incomparably better and more cogent one. Not from the
substance, time, and space of the material Avorld, is the
spiritual world to be judged of. Like the soul, which is a
dweller in it, it must be thought of purely fro7n the soul.
This is the indispensable course in every inquiry that seeks
to end in something better than grossest materialism. It is
because people will persist in carrying their material ideas
with them, wherever they go, that the soul itself has become
a mere tradition, and the idea of immortality profaned into
a supposed rebuilding of the rotten carcase of flesh and
blood. While we should unceasingly strive to be men of
sense, we should remember that this is not to be simply
creatures of the senses. The external senses are among
man's richest inheritances, still are they only the
Fine stej^s whereby the Queenly Soul
Comes down from her bright throne to view the mass
She hath dominion over.
The man who attends only to what his senses inform him
of, imprisons and kills the better half of his nature. He
may acquire tolerable knowledge of outlines, weights. Hn(i
THE SENSES AND THE IMAGINATION. 18o
colors, but a pliiloso^^her he can never be. With the dia-
grams he may become conversant, but not with that sublime
geometry and universal arithmetic, the constructions of
which form the real history of nature. The philosophy
which the outer senses teach, dwells where they do, on the
surface of nature. Their business is simply with effects.
Causes, and spiritual things are seen by the internal, poetic,
seventh sense — that divine faculty which men call the Ima-
gination, the clear-seeing spiritual eye whereby the loftier
and inmost truths of the universe, whether they be scientific,
or religious, or philosophical, can alone be discerned. We
are apt to suppose that to acquaint ourselves with nature, dili-
gent observation and experiment will sufiice. Not so. Na-
ture has secrets which Imagination only can penetrate. So
grievously has the imagination been perverted — so widely
has the fancy been mistaken for it — so bad, in consequence,
is its current repute as to its relation to Truth, that the
mere mention of it, in connection with the subject in hand,
will probably provoke many a smile, and in the charitable
awaken compassion. It will be found, nevertheless, that all
the greatest minds the world has produced, in any depart-
ment of inquiry or of wisdom, have been so by virtue of
their imagination. The imagination is not, as many sup-
pose, hostile to truth. " So far from being an enemy to
truth, the imagination," says Madame de Stael, " helps it
forward more than any other faculty of the mind." Of
course there are such things as diseased and prostituted
imaginations, but the abuse of the faculty is neither its qua-
lity or design. Imagination rightly so called, presupposes an
enlarged and tranquil mind, which having in its command
a wide property in living nature and its laws, steps to un-
discovered things from the standard of the knoAvn. " That,"
says Goethe, " is no true imagination which goes into the
vague, and devises things that do not exist." Reason, or to
16*
186 FUNCTIONS OF THE IMAGINATION.
use a preciser term, common sense, the very arbiter of
Truth, and, imagination, rightly regarded, are each other's
coDi'plement. To esteem them as contrary comes of the very
same mistake as that which asserts reason and faith to be
foes. As the perfection of human nature is, in the body,
the union of strength and beauty, so in the intellect is it the
union of common sense and imagination. Again deceiving
themselves, many suppose that the imagination is constantly
needing a check. Say rather that it constantly needs the
spur. Especially is this the case in Science and Religion,
"which instead of having suffered, as it has been taught, from
excess of imagination, sutler rather from not being as hos-
pitable to it as they ought. What is idolatry, but inapti-
tude to rise, on the pinions of the imagination, from the
symbol to the thing symbolized ? What other than imagi-
nation is the soul and. centre of the very highest act of reli-
gion, or faith ? To science, to philosophy also, imagination
is nothing less than pioneer. The Columbus of the human
mind, imagination opens the way for observation and. expe-
riment, which left to themselves, know not in what direc-
tion to proceed, and find their way, if at all, slowly and by
accident ; it j)rovides us with the clue to what we seek, and
enables us to anticipate the answer we shall receive. Every
true investigation is the working out of some noble idea of
the imagination ; no great discovery was ever made without
employing it. It is the vital characteristic of the Davys,
the Owens, the Faradays, the Herschels — of all to whom the
world is indebted for its highest scientific wealth. Genius
itself might be defined as imagination well directed and well
regulated. With all his science, so called, the ^m-imagina-
tive man gives us only the osteology of the rainbow; it is the
imaginative or poetic one who delineates its life and beauty.
Like prisms, the men of imagination convert colorless light
into exquisite hues ; in their hands does the merest matter
THE HIGHEST TRUTHS BEYOND PROOF. 187
of prosaic detail become lustrous and glorified. Witness
Garth Wilkinson's noble book on the Human Body, which,
were it re-written in verse, would be the finest poem in the
world. Like its subject, it is matter and spirit united, and
" common sense" from beginning to end.
111. To attempt, therefore, to j)rove that there is a spiritual
world, i. e., in the way that a material or physical thing is
proved, is, after all, superfluous. Those to whom it is inte-
resting are conscious of it of themselves ; and the opposite
class logic Avould make no wiser. In a certain sense it is
above and beyond proof; yet not strangely and peculiarly so.
Not one of the greatest truths admits of proof commonly so
called. We feel them. The highest of all, or the conscious-
ness of God, we ascend into intuitively from our conscious-
ness of self That God exists, and that it was he who created
the world, and who sustains it, we can neither "prove" to
another, nor have "proved" to ourselves; and the same with
the soul, and the spiritual world, and the life to come. For
what, in fact, is it " to prove," but to trace a subordinate
proposition up to a higher, or rather, to a primary truth ?
The nearer that proposition is to God and heaven, the further
is it away from Avhat is proveable. Were we, in short, to
refuse to receive anything until "joroved," we should remain
strangers for ever to the noblest and most animating subjects
of contemplation. Proof, rigid, mathematical proof, belongs
only to inferior truths, and it is only inferior minds that
make it the condition of their acceptance. If such minds
be often characterized by their credulity, they are still
oftener marked by their fncredulity. "Ignorance is always
incredulous; the amplest knowledge has the largest faith."
It is right, without doubt, to desire proof; it is a man's duty
to desire it; but then he must remember that many things
are itnproveable, or rather, that things are proveable in dif-
ferent ways. The lieart and imagination have their eyes as
188 SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD.
well as the head and the understanding. Great minds, or
those in which the capacity for reading truth is quickest and
highest, are not simply " intellectual" minds. They know
what they have to believe on the showing of the feelings and
the imagination, and of such things they never demand
" proof." Not he is the wise man who cunningly thinks to
take nothing on the word of the imagination, but he who
takes what nature intends he should. The proof, the essen-
tial and best proof of the divine origin of Christianity and
the Bible, does not consist in those weary piles denominated
the Evidences, historical, archseological, and so forth, which
commend themselves only to low and unenviable schools of
thought, but in its felt adaptation to the needs and aspira-
tions of the soul.
112. Scientific considerations may be adduced notwith-
standhig, both in proof of the Spiritual world, and of its
causative action into the johysical. Why have many ani-
mals, especially the saurians, the power of reproducing
amputated members? How is it that when the foot or the
tail of a lizard is torn off, a new one sprouts in its place ?
One of two things, either " nature performs a miracle,"
which is an indolent hypothesis ; or else, which is a sufficient
and reasonable explanation, material substances mould them-
selves universally upon preexistent spiritual forms, as upon
a model, and wait upon them as servitors. The reason
usually assigned, namely, that the lower we descend in the
scale of organization, the more is life diffused throughout
the organism, is correct to a certain jDoint, but it leaves the
enigma where it was. It is not enough to be told that in
the lower animals the vital mass which appears as brain in
the higher kinds, is dispersed throughout the body ; and that
it is owing to this dispersion of the great centre of life into
many small, separate centres, that the tentacula of polyps,
the rays of the star-fish, the entire head of the snail, wili
PLANTS IN RELATION TO THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. 189
grow again if cut off. The question still remains — nhj?
Life, like any human constructive power, cannot work with-
out a pattern ; nervous centres are but instrumental.* Why
the wonderful privilege of replacing lost members of the
body is enjoyed only by the lower tribes of animals, and not
by the higher, is that the latter are enabled to make them-
selves amends for such losses in other ways. The office of
one limb or member, to an extent sufficient to the necessities
of life, can, in effect, be executed by another; while man,
for his part, has the resources of mechanical contrivance in
addition. The more helpless a creature is, the more amply
is it always befriended with compensating gifts.
113. So with plants. Why does the acorn always produce
an oak, and never an elm or an ajople-tree ; why the bulb
of the hyacinth always the verisimilitude of its fragrant
cluster, and never a cowslip or fleur-de-lis? Simply because
in the acorn the spiritual substratum of the oak already in
effect exists ; and in the bulb, in like manner, the spiritual
form or vegetable soul of the flower. Hence the multifor-
mity of the beautiful pictures in wood and field, and their
return to us, year by year. Every wild flower comes back
in its perfect lineaments; in the early spring the golden
celandine and the coltsfoot; then the MayfloAver and the
Avoodruff, then the forget-me-not, bathing its feet at the
water-side; and so onwards till the purple crocus of October.
True, they unfold themselves from roots and seeds, lying
concentrated as it Avere till their proper season; but Avanting
a spiritual form to clothe Avith stem and leaf, a seed could
* The power of reproducing lost parts which made that beautiful
little creature the Hydra such a miracle to first observers, and sug-
gested its zoological name, appears to exist in scarcely inferior de-
gree in the Actinias or Sea-anemones. On its prevalence in the Star-
fishes consult Forbes.
190 tiPlRITUAL FORMS UNDERLYING MATERIAL.
no more grow than a grain of sand. The real reason of the
flowers is that every line of beauty in nature is the expres-
sion of a divine thought, and inherits the immortality of its
first development in the spiritual world. It is in spiritual
philosophy, and in this only, that we have an answer also to
the puzzling question, why it is that the mules, or hybrids,
both animal and vegetable, cannot permanently produce
themselves ; why also the graft will only consort with a tree
of the same species as itself Material forms may be coupled,
and a cross be procured for a brief period, but it is impos-
sible in the same way to establish sjm'itual forms, and with-
out these, as their prototypes, material forms cannot be pro-
pagated. The best introduction to knowledge of what con-
stitutes a "species," either in Zoology or Botany, is to be
sought in the philosophy of spirit, and its relation to matter,
114. So even with inorganic forms. Why do salts and
metals always crystallize in determinate shapes, their pro-
portions and angles invariably the same? Let a number of
different salts be dissolved in water, and they will sort
themselves out, unassisted, and re-adjust and re-crystallize
their particles in the precise polyhedra they originally pos-
sessed. Clearly, as in the former case, this is because there
are underlying spiritual forms, sustained by the Divine life,
and which, by virtue of that life, draw the particles together,
each to its own body. The terms chemical afiinity, chemical
attraction, power, property, agency, vis formatrix, &e., cur-
rently used Avhen speaking of the consolidation of inorganic
matter, denote nothing more than the action of the Divine
life, i;nder difierent methods, through the medium of spiritul
creations in the first place.
115. On the dim and half-traditional perce]Dtion that or-
ganic forms repose upon an interior spiritual form, was built
the Alchemists' beautiful doctrine of the palingenesis, or
resuscitation by art, of the spirits of plants and flowers.
THE alchemist's DOCTRINE OF PALINGENESIS. 191
"Never," says the historian of the Curiosities of Literature,
"was a philosophical imagination more beautiful than that
exquisite jyalingeneds of the admirable school of Borelli,
GafTarel, and Digby." The way in which the resuscitation
was supposed to be brought about, was to burn a flower to
ashes, and place them in a phial; then to add a certain
chemical mixture, and warm it; when there would slowly
rise a delicate apparition of stalk, and leaf, and blossom,
successively, fiiithful as the lovely transcripts of scenery in
still water, "the phantastical j)l^iit" disappearing into no-
thingness as the heat gradually declined. Southey, in the
second volume of the " Omniana," gives a full account both
of the doctrine and of the manij^ulation requisite to pro-
duce these curious phantoms. That they were actually
exhibited by the alchemists, there would seem to be no
doubt; having been produced, it is not unlikely, by tracing
the figures of the plants and flowers on the glass reputed to
contain their spirits, with chloride of cobalt, drawings made
with which salt are invisible till brought near the fire. So
firmly was the doctrine held by the honest, that it was
adduced as an argument for the resurrection of man.*
Perhaps the Hamadryads of ancient poetry, uymphs who
were born with trees when they rose out of the ground, who
lived in them, and Avho died when thexj died, Avere but their
spiritual forms, separated and j)ersonified by fancy. " Trees,"
■^ Disraeli's account of the Palingenesis is under the head
" Dreams at the Dawn of Philosophy." On the practical part of it,
see Boyle's Philosophical Works, abridged, vol. i., p. 69, "Surpris-
ing things performable by Chemistry," and the Philosophical Trans-
actions for 1674, vol. ix., p. 175. Palingenesis, as a word, is simply
the Greek for resurrection, learnedly illustrated by Mr. Trench in
his New Testament Synonymes. Tlieodore de Kycke applies it to
the revival of letters, "Oratio de palingenesis Literarum in Terris
nostris." Leyden, 1672.
192 MATERIALISM AND SPIRITUALISM.
says a lively Frenchman, "are animated; they ha.ve their
enjoyments, their grief, their sleep, and their loves. The
ancients placed a nymph under their rind. To be sure she
is there-! Life is a very pretty nymph; Ave ought to love
her wherever she is found." How beautifully does another
of the same country allude to his love of trees, and their
influence on his imagination, regretting that there are no
longer any Dryads, or it would have been among these that
he would have formed an attachment in which his heart
should find its home.*
116. In fine, recognition of the spiritual world, as the
foundation of the material one, and in connection with it,
of the momentary influx of the Divine life into every ob-
ject and atom of creation, the spiritual world receiving that
life primarily, and the material world by derivation from it,
is the beginning of all genuine philosophy. Unperceiving
these two great, fundamental truths, the whole kingdom of
truth is beclouded : only as men learn to appreciate and to
apply them, does their knowledge begin to live. "What
but apparitions," says Coleridge, "can belong to a philoso-
phy which satisfies itself when it can explain nature me-
clmnically, that is, by the laws of Death, and brands with
the name of Mysticism every solution grounded in Life?"
"As Nature," says Dr. Braun, "without man, presents
externally only the image of a labyrinth without a clue,
scientific examination which denies the internal, spiritual
foundations of nature, leads only to a chaos of unknown
matters and forces. From this dark chaos no bright path
leads up." Yet, ordinarily, it is precisely the live facts
from Avhich men of science turn away! "Nothing is more
evident," says one of the shrewdest writers of our day,
" than that the men of facts are afraid of a large number of
* Kosseau. Confessions, book ix.
MATERIALISM AND SPIRITUALISM. 193
important facts. All the spiritual facts about us, of which
there are plenty, are denounced as superstition. Not only
are they not received by that courtesy which takes off its
grave hat to a new beetle or a fresh vegetable alkaloid, but
they are treated by it worse than our vermin." "We do not
seek to disparage the efforts of the non-spiritual. Whoever
faithfully explains one of "the things that do appear,"
assists in explaining the hidden and invisible ones which
are not seen, and deserves approbation and gratitude accord-
ingly. Let him, with equal courtesy, not undei-value the
efforts of the "spiritual;" falling into the error of those
"fools" and "blind" of old, who knew not whether was
greater, the gold of the temple, or the temple that sanctified
the gold. The "spiritualist" may seem mad to the material-
ist, — and mad he is, if merely a spiritualist; but how much
more sane is the mere man of science, who seeking the living
among the dead, values the tabernacle more than the occu-
pying spirit?
17 I
CHAPTER XI
GROTJJSTDS OF THE VAIilOZTS LEASE OF I^IFE— Continued,
CORJtESFOKDENCE OF NATUItE AND MIND.
117. Correspondence, or the science of the relation of
the two worlds, i. e., of the objects and phenomena of the
material, to the typical forms and noumena of the spiritual,
is the key and Open Sesame! to every species of human
knowledge. With correspondence for our guide, perhaps
nothing is absolutely unintelligible; without it, the com-
monest things are clouded. To right conceptions of the un-
seen it is indispensable at the very outset. Most of the
metaphysical difficulties which surround revealed theology,
really originate in neglecting the light which Correspondence
is fitted to throw upon them ; the phenomena of the senses
find in it their only true solution. Vast as nature itself, of
course it can here be only commended to minds zealous in
pursuit of genuine wisdom, except in so far as relates to the
lease of life.
118. To this end it will suffice that we consider the pa7'ti-
cular correspondence, derived from the general, which nature
holds with the faculties and emotions of the Soul, that won-
derful and delicious concord whereby the sunshine, the sea,
everything in nature is so companionable, and which gives
to the soul a kind of omnipresence. The ground of this
concord is that man, as to first principles, is a synthesis of
the spiritual world, and thus of the material world which
clothes and represents it. As a concave mirror contains
194
NATURE A SECOND HOMO. 195
pictures in little of all the thousand objects of a beautiful
landscape, so in the soul of man is contained an epitome of
all the forces and principles that underlie tlie works of God,
whether visible or invisible. The poets and philosophers
call him a microcosm, or " little world ;" " the kingdom of
heaven," says holy writ, "is within you." External nature
is not the independent thing, having no connection with
man, which we are apt to suppose. It is at once a second
logos, and a second homo. It is so varied, so lovely, so ex-
quisitely organized, because of the variety, the loveliness,
the exquisite composition, primarily of the spiritual world,
secondly of the human soul. The sun, the stars, trees,
flowers, the sea, rivers, animals, exist, not irrespectively and
independently of man, but because of him. In him are all
of these, along with spring, summer, autumn, and winter,
light and darkness, heat and cold, all natural objects and
phenomena whatever, only after another manner, felt instead
of seen, as sentiments and emotions, instead of physical in-
carnations. Were they not in him, there would be none of
them anywhere else. "Had I not had the Avorld in my
soul from the beginning," says Goethe, "I must ever have
remained blind Avith my seeing eyes, and all experience and
observation would have been dead and unproductive. The
light is there, and the colors surround us, but if Ave bore
nothing corresponding in our OAvn eyes, the outAvard appa-
rition Avould not avail." When, therefore, aa'C admire
nature, Avhen Ave loA^e it, it is Adrtually admiration of the
spiritual and immortal, and this is Avhy the love of nature is
so powerful a help toAvards loAdng God. Hence also the
concurrence of Science and Metaphysics, Avhich are con-
cerned with things essentially the same, only presented under
different aspects and conditions. So intimate is the corres-
pondence even betAveen the body of man, and the faculties
of the soul, that Klencke has built upon it an entire system
196 THE UNIVERSE A HIEROGLYPH.
of organic psychology, incited perhaps by the hint of Lord
Bacon, when he says that "unto all this knowledge of the
concordances between the mind and the body, that part of
the inquiry is the most necessary Avhich considereth of the
seats and domiciles which the several faculties do take and
occupy." We little think how near, by correspondence, the
body is like the soul, and the soul like the spiritual world.
Novalis says truly that " we touch heaven when we lay our
hand on a human body." Think how the face is the epi-
tome of the body, repeating in little its every organ and
every function, and we see why the face is of all natural
mysteries the very grandest. That plants and animals were
created, and light and darkness ordained prior to the crea-
tion of man, is no objection to their being effects or results
of him, because although the last to be actually moulded,
he was the first in conception and plan, all the works of
Almighty wisdom being prefigurative of His own image and
likness.
119. It is no new doctrine that such a concord or corres-
pondence exists between nature and the soul of man ; it is
no new discovery ; neither is it a deduction from any new or
narrow circle of experiences. " The world at large is the
school that believes in it, and daily life, in all its immense
detail, is the theatre of its exemplification." Language
rests entirely upon the sublime fact that the universe is a
hieroglyph and metaphor of human nature; there is no
poetry that has not sprung from the deep feeling of it, and
that does not owe to it all its eloquence and graces ; all
philosophy implies and unconsciously proclaims it ; the
magic, idolatry, and mythology of the primsevals ; the
" language of flowers," emblems, fable, allegory, the rites
and ceremonies of religion, are all founded upon it, and are
alone explicable by it. It is no less the ground of our most
living enjoyments. The sweetness of a kind look, the solace
CORRESPONDENCE THE GROUND OF FRIENDSHIP. 197
of a loving smile, come purely of tlie correspondence of the
features with the soul within ; the pleasure we derive from
music, scenery, flowers, comes of our feeling, when in their
presence, the " sweet sense of kindred." The light of the
soul, like the light of the sun, makes everything beautiful
on which it shines, but it is by being reflected from it. As
we can only give to others what they can take, so can we
only be affected by what is congenerous to ourselves — the
secret of all loves, friendshijJS, and social unions. The in-
most spring of our attachments to one another is our Cor-
resjDondence. Hence, too, that beautiful innate image in
the heart of the beings we most deeply and permanently
love, which gives to our first sight of them almost a sense
of recognition.
Some are never strangei's,
But soon as seen, the soul as if by instinct
Springs towards them with resistless force, and owns
Congenial sympathy.
120. Save for the unity of the mind with the inmost,
spiritual essence of the world, nature would not only be in-
comprehensible to man — not only be no object of his intelli-
gence, but not even an object of his consciousness. Only
by virtue of our correspondence with nature do we become
familiar with it. There can be no reciprocation where there
is no similarity. Were it not a mirror, it would be a void,
as to the brutes it really is, since they see it not, and feel it
not. Not that there is any of our proper life in the things
of nature. They are instinct with sjDiritual vitality, but
only in man is spiritual vitality exalted into spiritual Life,
since he alone is intelligent of God. Doubtless there is
great diversity in men's estimate and appreciation of natural
objects, and thence in the pleasure derived from them, but
this so much the more substantiates the principle. Why
17*
198 CORKESPONDENCE A MORAL AGENT.
some minds are most delighted by flowers, others by birds,
others by mountains, others by trees, even by particular
species of living things, as when one loves above all other
birds the industrious, sociable rooks, it is that the corre-
spondent spiritual principles are in those minds preeminently
developed. The whole of nature is in every mind, but some
one part of it more actively than the remainder ; while all
men are joint heritors of the total of the world, every man
has a little piece of it to himself. Every man has a secret
affinity, a secret love, a secret pleasure, known in its fiillness
and rewards, like his conscience, only to himself and to his
Maker. Were we wise, this great principle would be made
the basis of Education, which should never fail to respect
the correspondences of individual minds, and cannot be ex-
pected to be efficient till it is recognized. The efficacy of
C( rrespondence is truly wonderful. While new feelings are
awakened, old, familiar ones are heightened and improved
by the presence of the natural object that represents them.
Beneath the still skies of night we become more reverent ;
looking at the green leaves of spring, more young in hope.
Why do the tenderly-attached find such happy hours in
sweet, sequestered, rural pathways, where the wild flowers
blow, and the clear streams ripple, if it be not that nature
mirrors and echoes their affections, and enriches them with
a new enthusiasm ? Hence it is also that those who love
tenderly always feel peculiarly endeared to one another
while participating in the admiration of works of Art,
which, fulfilling the highest end of Art, namely, to excite
emotions, and not merely awaken recollection, speak to the
soul by their true grandeur. A chief reason why so much
originally good feeling becomes chilled and debased, is that
we do not oftener quit the world that man has made, for the
company of our kindred in the world that God made. Im-
muring ourselves in the narrow boundary of our parlors,
SIGNIPICANCE OF EXTERNAL NATURE. 199
we cannot properly expand ; " in the presence of nature we
feel great and free, like that which we have before our eyes."
Things again, which away from their correspondent imagery
seem weak and trifling, in its presence become beautiful and
noble. " Love-scenes," says an amiable writer, " such as in
a parlor look foolish and absurd, assume a very different
aspect when seen amid the soft hush and spiritual beauties
of an evening river-side, or in tl; ; light of an autumn moon.
We feel then that the beautiful picture has received its
proper setting. Who has forgotten the moonlight scene in
the Merchant of Venice, or the interview of Waverley and
Flora near the waterfall ?" Lastly, it is in the convergence
towards him of all its nature and attributes, that the
thoughtful man finds the dignity of the world consist. " He
reads the mystery of human existence in the relations of
the forms which encompass him ; and discovers the solution
of nature's problems in his own physical and mental activi-
ties." Lie sees that it is the same life which connects events
and phenomena, whether in him or without him, and with
the change from terrestrial to human, finds it glorify.
121. External nature being then what we find it, by vir-
tue of previous ideas and affections in the world of spirit,
and of its synthesis, the human soul, the phenomena,
changes, and vicissitudes which take place in it, will be so
many correspondences and translations of what occurs there.
Here, accordingly is the first solution of the problem of the
lease of life. Why the oak and the elephant live so long ;
why the gourd and the insect die so soon, is that the princi-
ples, sentiments, and emotions in the human soul to which
these things severally correspond, are of the same relative
constitution and capacity of endurance. How many are the
emotions which we feel, year by year, growing and strength-
ening within us, like noble trees ; how many others do we
feel spring up, blossom, and pass away like the day-lily !
200 THE LAW OF USE.
The whole matter of the "growth of the mind" is translata-
ble into the history of the growth of nature, its changes, de-
cays, and rejuvenescences. What is longseval in the soul, is
longaeval also in nature; what is ephemeral in the world, is
the picture of something ephemeral in ourselves.
122. The law of Use, wherein consists the second grand
cause of the diversity in the lease of life, is like Correspond-
ence, vast as creation itself, seeing that subserviency to an-
other's wants and happiness is the purpose for which all
things have been designed, and the world framed and me-
thodized so admirably. The greater the amount of the dif-
ference between any two or more objects, the stronger is the
proof of their necessity as regards the general welfare, and
thus of their having some special use in their respective
spheres, whether Ave can perceive the exact nature of it or
not. The difference, for example, between an elephant and a
rose, and between a rose and a pebble, is the precise measure
of their value and importance in the collective economy and
constitution of things. Wherein these two qualities consist,
of course is a separate matter of inquiry, and falls to the
province of the accurate observer of nature.
123. All uses are referable to one or other of three great
ends ; they were designed for these ends, and they are per-
petually promotive of them. The first is the physical wel-
fare of the living organisms of our j)lanet ; the second, the
instruction and delight of man; the third, which presupposes
and ensues upon the other two, is the glory of God who or-
dained them, and for whose " pleasure " all things were cre-
ated. Physical uses comprise all those by which things
reciprocally sustain one another in health and comeliness,
and jDreserve their respective races extant upon the earth.
The soil supports the plant ; the plant feeds the animal ;
both repay all that is rendered them, and Avith interest; and
strengthened by Avhat they have received, succor their OAvn
DEATH NEEDFUL TO HUMAN HAPPINESS. 201
species. According to tlie needs of each superior thing is
the adaptation of every inferior one that supports it, as re-
gards structure, configuration, and vital economy; every
plant and animal, every bird and tree, every mineral even,
is so constituted as to enable it to minister to a nobler na-
ture ; the term of its life is exactly adequate and proportion-
ate to its office, and concludes when the duties of that office
have been fulfilled. The tree that provides timber lives for
centuries ; the corn required for food is ripe in a summer.
124. Nature ministers to the instruction and delight of
man by shadoAving intellectual and religious truth ; and this
great use it most efiiciently subserves in the circumstance
of its incessant change. Change, at least in the material
world, implies death ; and death, for its full efiicacy and im-
pressiveness as a monitor, needs to be various and wonderful
as life. Were there no such thing as external nature, man
would be an irremediably ignorant savage ; he becomes ci-
vilized and intelligent by the just contemplation of its mys-
teries. Nature is the grand, rich book of symbols which we
prove it, not simply in the significance of its forms, but in
the significance and lessons of the phenomena of its mortal-
ity. Were all things like the granite mountain-peaks, that
have caught the first beams of immemorial morning suns,
enduring forever, though we might wonder more, our love
and true spiritual activity would be less. The very frailty
of things excites a tender interest in them, and when to this
is joined an almost endless diversity as to the period of their
stay, they become to us store-houses of curious Avisdom and
satisfaction. Where would be the gladness of the spring if
the primroses blossomed throughout the year, or the gran-
deur of the ancient woods if the trees were but children of
the summer ? Man is a thousand times happier from the
fact of some plants being annuals, others perennials, others
longseval trees, than were all to die at a common age.
I*
202 DEATH A BENEFICENT ORDINATION.
125. Finally is the use of all things in reference to the
glory of their Almighty Framer ; and this, as in the pre-
ceding case, is exalted by what to a small and narrow view,
is their very weakness. Why the mass of organic nature is
so brief-lived, why it seems to exist only to die, is that,
taking a thousand years together, the amount of enjoyment
(or of picturesque on the part of what is not competent to
enjoy), shall be greater than were it to survive for the whole
period. The larger the number of beings that enter the
world, whether by fertility of individuals, or by successive
renewals, one generation after another, so much the more
scope is there for that happiness and j)hysical beauty which
it is the Divine "pleasure" to communicate and sustain.
Doubtless, a solitary tree, a single animal of each kind, or
of any kind, attests the hand of God as powerfully as a
world-full, and a single generation as powerfully as a hun-
dred ; but God is essential Love, and the nature of love is
to give ; its satisfaction is to surround itself with receptacles
for the blessings which it burns to bestow, and in a finite
kingdom such receptacles are best multijDlied — perhajDS only
BO — by the magnificent' institutions of Death and Renewal,
whereby myriads are successively introduced upon the scene,
instead of a few antique and venerable ones remaining al-
ways. It is infinitely more to the glory of God that ten
men should live for seventy years a-piece, one after another,
than that there should be only one instead of ten in the
same period. It makes ten happy lives instead of only one,
for seventy years properly used, are as good as seven hun-
dred. In a word, whatever advantage it is to man's wel-
fare, either physical or moral, that the lease of life should
be various, is also a glory to God, because all human en-
lightenment and delight shine back upon the heaven of
their origin.
126. A question yet remains in connection Avith this sub-
LEASES OF EXTINCT ANIMALS AND PLANTS. 203
ject, namely, — Let the maximum duration of the individuals
constituting a species be what it may, — a few months or a
thousand years, — does a period arrive in the history of the
species when, like a title of nobility without an heir, it abso-
lutely "dies out," every individual becoming extinct? Geo-
logy makes it plain that during the infinite past, species of
animals' and plants now no longer existing, successively
occupied the surface of the earth, in considerable variety
and amazing numbers; the legitimate conclusion is, there-
fore, in favor of the afSrmative. How long the particular
species now alive have been upon the earth, how long they
will continue, man can neither know nor surmise ; it is suf-
ficient for the principle that they can be shown to have had
pi'edecessors, and that those predecessors have wholly dis-
appeared from the ranks of the living. The highest interest
attaches to the existing organic population of the world,
both as to its beginning and its final destiny. The origin of
noxious plants and animals; the descent of the various
races from a single individual or a single pair of each kind,
or on the other hand, from a plurality ; their dispersion over
the earth's surface; the extermination of different species by
the hand of man ; and many similar matters, treated as they
deserve, would suffice to fill whole volumes. Here they
must be dismissed Avith the bare mention.
127. The general question as to the lease of life in species
being answered, there arise upon the solution other and more
curious problems : — What were the leases of those anterior
species? — Why have they not continued to the present time?
-^Under what laws were the new and superseding forms in-
troduced? Geology solves them in part, or as regards the
proximate, physical reasons; and no portion of this noble
science is more interesting and satisfactory. But Geology of
itself is insufficient; we are compelled to fall back, as in
everything else, on the spiritual laws of which physical ones
204 THE PRE-ADAMITE WORLD.
are Effects. Then we find that the same laws which pri-
marily determine the duration of the individuals of a
species, determine also the duralLon of the species as a whole.
They are problems no less magnificent than vast, if only
from the immensity of time covered by the events and
changes they have reference to. Six thousand years, or
thereabout, the period we are accustomed to regard as com-
prising the history of life, and as taking us to the beginning
of creation, is in reality but the pathway to a point from
which we look forth on an expanse without horizon. Yet
not hopelessly, because with all the sublime antiquity in the
works of the Almighty, stretching so far back, and upon a
scale so grand, there is indissolubly connected the fact of his
TJnchangeableness, assuring us that he was always employed
as now; that we shall find all in perfect harmony; that all
that exists, as worlds, systems of worlds, contents of worlds,
to-day, is but a continued exemplification of original and
eternal principles; thus that all lies within the reach and
compass of our understanding.
128. The spiritual laws alluded to are again those of
Correspondence and of Use, which apply to the ante-hominal
world no less than to the existing state of things. The pre-
Adamite plants and animals, like those which now surround
us, were material shows of forms contained in the spiritual
world, flowing from them in the same manner, and possessed
therefore of similar afiinities with principles and affections
in the soul of man, which is the spiritual world in little.
For though later in production, as to time, man virtually
and essentially preceded every Spirifer and Trilobite, every
Coralline and Conferva. Prior to all worlds, man is the
oldest idea in creation ; nothing was ever moulded into form,
or vitalized by the Divine bi-eath, that had not a prefigura-
tive reference to something eventually to be exhibited in
hi7n. The geological history of our planet is the biography
GEOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY. 205
of human nature, told in the imagery of correspondence;
all those great phenomena of stratification, disruption,
change of surface, and succession of living being, which
make the annals of our earth such glorious reading, are to
the true reader a narrative in symbol of his own emotional
and intellectual development. From the time when darkness
was upon the face of the deep, through all the grand sequences
of light, land and water, vegetation and animal life, the
record is of man's advance from the state of vacant infancy
up to that of ripe and opulent maturity. Did we know
the particular correspondence of the extinct plants and ani-
mals that once lived upon the earth, we should discern in
every one of them a picture of something in the mind or
heart of childhood; we should comprehend the scheme of
sequence in which they successively appeared, the ground of
their various duration, why they were of such and such
figure, habits, and degree of bulk. The great size of many
of the pre-Adamite animals, and their strange and unshapely
forms, consist, we may see at a glance, with the wild, am-
bitious phantasies of early youth, when the Arabian Nights
are thought to be solid facts ; — the small number of distinct
species, relatively to the present numbers, corresponds with
its scanty stock of emotional experiences and ideas. Who
is there that, wandering through the museums of memory,
is not reminded of the time when the plains of his little
world were trod by gigantic Mastodons and Dimotheria, and
when in place of its now innumerable flowers and fruit-trees,
there were only huge Calamites and Sigillarias. Thus will
it be that Correspondence, in the ratio that men study this
matchless science, will throw light on the history of the fossil
fauna and flora of our globe. Its companion law, the great
principle of Use, rightly brought to bear, will supply what
more is wanting. For all these ancient forms of life had
their uses to subserve, and doubtless their respective leases
18
206 LEASES COMMENSURATE WITH USES.
were adapted to them. The plants, for example, whose
compacted and bitumenized relics constitute Coal, must have
been gifted with a duration and a prolific power commen-
surate with the use they were destined to in the remote
future; and the magazmes once filled and covered in they
would cease from living occupancy of the soil.
CHAPTER XII.
TBLID SPIBITUAL EXPRISSSION OF I.IFE, — NATT7ItE AND
SEAT OF THE SOUL.
129. The spiritual expression of life is the prerogative of
MAN. It is tlie gift which distinguishes him from all other
animals; just as the organic life is that which distinguishes
those animals, together with plants, and his own material
body, from earth and stone. By virtue of his spiritual life,
man is an emotional and intellectual being. By virtue of
this he thinks, speaks, sings,* worships, loves, pities, weeps,t
hopes, laughs, marries ; performs, in a word, the innumerable
actions, internal and external, which the observation of
thousands of years has never once detected in any of the in-
ferior orders of creation, but has established as the noble
diagnosis of human nature. This also is the primary ground
of his physical peculiarities. By virtue of his possessing a
Soul, animated with spiritual life, the spine of man has those
wonderful curves in it, and that curious pyramidal arrange-
ment of bones, whereby he is enabled to stand erect. The
more complicated brain than any other of the mammalia
have; the smoothness and nakedness of his skin; the pecu-
liar muscle for the extension of the fore-finger; the capacity
for being tickled, and for blushing; smiles and kisses; the
* Birds only whistle ; tliey do not sing.
J The occasional flow of a few tears from the eyes of certain quad-
rupeds, is not iveeping, the true idea of which implies intelligent
emotion, and strength rather than weakness.
207
208 THREE DEGREES OF LIFE IN MAN.
breast of woman, so exquisitely unlike that of any other
female animal, both in its shape during the flower of her
age, and the longer retention of its normal form after the
period of lactation; all these have their essential origin in
that inner and regal life which links earth to heaven.
Flowing from God cotemporaneously, the spiritual and the
organic life are the same in essence, the difference between
them is simply one of expression. As played forth by the
body, it is Organic life; as played forth by the soul, it is
Spiritual life. Man, while a resident in the material world,
is a recipient, therefore, not merely of one, nor even of two,
but of three expressions of the Divine sustaining energy.
Chemical afiinity, cohesion, molecular attraction, &c., which
are its lowest expression, sustain the elemental ingredients
of his frame, the carbon, water, lime, and so forth. Organic
life arranges and builds ujd those ingredients into apparatus,
and impels the several jDortions to the due performance of
some fixed duty. Spiritual life, which is the highest expres-
sion, vitalizes and energizes his soul ; impelling it, after the
same manner, to the exercise of its intellect and affections.
The knowledge of the lowest expression of life constitutes
Physics ; that of the organic, Physiology ; that of the highest
or spiritual, Psychology. The latter may be defined as the
science of the Life of God in man's soul; physiology as that
of the Life of God in his body. And as that life is essen-
tially One, psychology and physiology, in their high, philo-
sophic idea, are connected as soul and body, and each is an
exponent of the other. What in relation to physiological
life, are called the "functions of the body," or the "functions
of organization," re-appear in relation to the spiritual life,
as the "intellectual powers," the "operations of the mind,"
&c., which are the same thing essentially, only expressed
after a higher manner, according to the law of discrete de-
grees. Functions in the body, faculties in the soul; the
NATURE AND SEAT OF THE SOUL. 209
terms alter as the theatre changes. Doubtless there are
broad distmctions m the mode of their procession. The
phenomena of "which physiology takes cognizance are both
simultaneous and successive; those which belong to psycho-
logy are successive only. "Physiological phenomena ex-
hibit themselves as an immense number of series bound up
together; psychological phenomena as but a single series.
Thus, the continuous actions of digestion, circulation, respi-
ration, &c., are also synchronous; but the actions constituting
Thought occur, not simultaneously, but one after another."
Taken together, physiology and psychology meet as Philo-
sophy, or the science of the antecedent unity of which the
spiritual and the material are the dual development.
130. The spiritual expression of life is a perfectly distinct
thing from the soul; which is no mere "principle," either of
intelligence as regards this world, or of immortality as
regards the next; but a definite, substantial entity, as much
a part of created nature as a flower or a bird ; and so far
from being Life, or even possessing any inherent or separate
life, depends for existence, no less than the body which en-
closes it, on continually renewed supplies from the Creator.
"The inner man drops into metaphysical dust, as the outer
man into physical, unless the parts be kept in coherence by
some sustaining life; and that latter is no other than the
life of the living God." In itself, the soul is neither immor-
tal nor indestructible. However common such epithets may
be in books and sermons, the Bible knows nothing of them ;
though it unquestionably teaches that God having once
created a soul, it pleases him to sustain it with life for ever ;
and to allow it to exercise that life freely, as if it were its
own, just as the free exercise of the organic life is allowed to
the body. The possession respectively of independent life
and of derived life, constitutes the grand characteristic by
which we distinguish at all times and in all places, between
18 »
210 POrULAR IDEAS CONCERNING THE SOUL.
the Creator and the created. If not a generally-received
distinction, even among philosophers, that the soul is one
thing and its life another is at least the doctrine of the New
Testament, where the Divine, vitalizing essence is discrimi-
nated as C^'f], while the vessel into which it is communicated
is called by some such name as (po-^r]. Thus, Tiveufia ^corji;
ix TOO dedo ecarjXdev iv auzdc:;, "the spirit of life from
God entered into them;" (Rev. xi. 11,) r«c ^f5)f«C tmv
7ie7ie,le'Ac<TfjLEVU)V, " the souls of them that were beheaded.''
(Rev. XX. 4.) The body is distinguished as (rcofjta, as in
Matthew x. 28, "Fear not them which kill to awjua,
but are not able to kill rrju ipoy_-fjv, but rather fear Him
who is able to destroy both (poyrf^ and atofia in hell."
131. Rightly to conceive of the spiritual life, it is needful,
accordingly, first to obtain clear ideas of its receptacle, the
soul; just as in order to the conception of physiological life,
it is needful first to inquire into the composition of the body.
If we are to judge by the loose, indefinite notions ordinarily
entertained respecting the soul, even by intelligent people, a
positive, coherent idea of it is one of the greatest desiderata
of the age. How common is it to hear the soul alluded to
as a mere abstract intellection; an ethereal, unimaginable,
immortal something, located nobody knows where, but sur-
mised to be in the brain, and capable of subsisting, in the
trans-sepulchral world, in the most independent and isolated
condition, free from any kind of connection with any kind
of body. This is not philosophical, to say the least of it.
Granted, the nature of the soul is a mystery ; a mystery, too,
of Avhich all the most grand and sacred part futurity alone
can reveal. We shall compass it when, and not before, our
"eyes behold the King in his beauty," Him who is "the end
of problems and the font of certainties." We should be
thankful, indeed, that we feel it to be a mystery, for the
mind that repudiates or is insensible to the mysterious, is in-
KNOWLEDGE OF THE SOUL ATTAINABLE. 211
accessible to the sublime. But to be mysterious is not neces-
sarily to be inscrutable. The prime feature of mystery is
that it recedes before Vidse and calm interrogation. Mystery,
therefore, should never be allowed to deter. It ought rather
to incite, especially when, as in the present instance. Reve-
lation stands ready to shed its clear and willing light, and
assures us that to the earnest disciples of truth " it is given
to hnoiv the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven," of which
the Soul is indisputably one of the sublimest. "It is the
essential mark of the true philosopher," says Coleridge, " to
rest satisfied with no imperfect understanding, so long as the
impossibility of attaining a fuller knowledge has not been
demonstrated." While we reverently attempt not to be
"wise above that which is written," one of our highest duties
is to strive, and that most studiously, to be wise "ttp to that
which is wi-itten." The reward is abundant, if we do but
discover the nature of the difficulties, and what is within,
and w^hat beyond, the scope of our powers.
132. That a most partial and defective interpretation of
the mystery is all that purely secular philosophy can
achieve, may be as readily conceded as the enigmatical
character of the theme itself; and recognizing this, it is no
matter of surprise that Pagan antiquity bequeathed to us
nothing but a mass of shapeless and contradictory hypothe-
ses. The ancients' ignorance of physiology was likewise a
serious, perhaps fatal, impediment.* That a people claim-
ing to be enlightened Christians, in a country like England,
should not hold a single fixed and positive opinion on the
* Anaximenes taught that the soul was nothing more than air.
Socrates, in the Phsedo, jocosely remarks to the disciples of this
doctrine, that surely their souls will be run away with by the wind,
when they die, if of no better composition, and warns them against
residing in an open and windy country !
212 No ESTABLISHED DOCTRINE OF THE SOUL.
nature of the soul, to say nothing of an established doctrine,
is, however, truly astonishing, and not a little reproctchful.
An exalted theology, like a sound philosophy, never rests
content with general, indefinite ideas. It avails nothing to
know the ancients' deficiencies if Ave are careless about our
own. Only by making the detection of their errors the
means of true knowledge for ourselves, do we acquire a
right to pity the ignorance of our predecessors, and to lay
claim to an enlightenment which they had not. One would
think that though no one else cared to do it, those at least
whose entire solicitude is presumed to have reference to the
soul, and whose studies and occupation so peculiarly qualify
them, namely, the priests and ministers of religion, would
never rest till they had enabled themselves to propound
something intelligible and satisfactor3^ So far from it, the
pulpit is mute, and its companion literature is barren.*
Affirmations of the general fact of immortality are plentiful
enough, we are aware. But this is not the question, nor is
it a question at all. No one from his heart disputes the
general proposition of immortality ; and it is notorious that
even those who affect to deny it with their lips, confess it in
their fears. The belief in immortality is a natural feeling,
an adjunct of self-consciousness, rather than a dogma of
any particular theology, or of any particular age or country,
and is concurrent Avith the belief in an Infinite, presiding
Spirit, AA'hich is alloAved to be spontaneous and universal.
What Ave AA^ant to be instructed in is, not that man is im-
mortal, but AAdaat the Soul is ; and this not so much as
regards our future, as our present existence. This is the
* With the exception of the Rev. J. Clowes' " Letters to a friend
on the Human Soul, as being a Form and Substance deriving its
life continually from God," 1825, and the excellent little work of
the Eev. W. Mason "On the Human Soul."
THE SOUL OP MAN A SPIRITUAL BODY. 213
knowledge with regard to which intelligent curiosity seems
dead, and which is so beclouded by error, yet which even
the pulpit takes no trouble to purify and correct, and place
before the world in its proper, illustrious beauty; as if it
were quite unimportant that what is philosophically false
can never be theologically true.
133. The soul of man, considered in its true character,
namely, the seat and immediate organ of his emotional and
intellectual life, is his spiritual body. The body of flesh
and blood is only half the human being. Another body
underlies it. " There is a natural body," says the Apostle,
" and there is a spiritual body." By " spiritual body" he
plainly means a body altogether different from the "natural,"
which is the material, or as Wiclif calls it, the " beestli"
body ; yet by speaking of both in the present tense — saying
of each that it noAV t's— he gives us to understand that the
two bodies are cotemporaneous and co-existent, so long, that
is, as the natural one may endure. By adding that it is to
be " raised," he intimates that this " spiritual body" is the
immortal portion of our being.* In this glorious revelation
* It is scarcely necessary to point out to the intelligent reader that
the "it" in the English translation of these verses does not and
cannot mean the dead material body, but man as to his personality,
or consciousness of himself. He knows himself as "a natural body"
while in this world; as "a spiritual body" in the next. This is
proved by the word " sown," which refers, not as careless readers
suppose, to the interment of one's corpse in the grave, but to the
birth of our living into the world. " The time," says Locke, " that
man is in this world, affixed to this earth, is his being sown, and not
when, being dead, he is put in the grave, as is evident fr&m St.
Paul's own words. For dead things are not sown ; seeds are sown,
being alive, and die not till after they are sown." &c. Paraphrase
and Notes on the Epistles, AVorks, vol. 3, p. 207. Ed. 1714. We sliall
see this more plainly in a future chapter.
214 THE TRANSFIGURATION.
is thus furnished the " key to the mystery ;" for everything
which philosophy asserts to be constitutional to the soul is
involved in the idea of a spiritual body, of a nature superior
to the material one, and continuing to exist after that body
expires ; and conversely, everything which is said by the
Apostle concerning the spiritual body, is exactly what we
should expect from an inspired writer, seeking to communi-
cate a general notion of the soul and its destiny. But so
far we have little more than a substitution of one name for
another. What t's this " spiritual body?" Here historical
Scripture comes to our aid. It is an admirable character-
istic of the Bible that there is not a single doctrine enunci-
ated in its didactic portions, but is somewhere illustrated in
its histories; either in the actual histories, including the
biographical notices, or in the qudsi-hxstoviQS,, as the para-
bles. Take, for instance, the history of the Transfiguration.
During its progress, there were seen by the disciples,
dvdpei^ duo, " two men, which were Moses and Elias, who
appeared in glory." The event in question took place more
than eighteen hundred years ago ; the bodies, therefore, in
which the patriarchs appeared, could not have been the
resuscitated and transformed material bodies which it is
commonly supposed will be re-attached to the soul at the
day of judgment, " when the graves are opened, and the sea
gives up her dead." They must, nevertheless, have been
real and substantial bodies, or they would not have been
identified as Moses and Elias by spectators, who it is ex-
pressly stated, were " awake." Elias (or Elijah) certainly
is stated, in another place, to have been taken up into
heaven by " a chariot and horses of fire ;" but to the en-
lightened reader of the Word of God, it is evident that he
did not go as fl.esh and blood, seeing that these " cannot in-
herit the kingdom of heaven ;" and in any case there is no
authority for supposing Moses to have gone in such a form.
LAZARUS AND THE RICH MAN. 21f:
So in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. Here too
the several actors are represented as being perfectly well
known to one another, and as holding the perfect human
form, implied in their possessing the customary corporeal
organs. The time of this parable is laid, it will be remem-
bered, as prior to the "day of judgment" and the "resur-
rection . of the body," as popularly thought of (suggesting,
by the way, an enormous discrepancy between the popular
notions and the doctrine of the parable), the rich man's
father and brethi'en being still alive upon the earth. Here
again, therefore, there is no material body present ; nothing
but the soul; yet all the circumstances of the narrative
imply bodies no less real, and no less truly organized and
sensitive. What, then, is the inference to be drawn from
these facts and divine teachings ? Clearly this ; that what
is popularly called the " soul" is what the Apostle terms the
" spiritual body;" and that the latter is a substantial, organ-
ized form, exactly correspondent with the external, physical
frame; that it presents a precisely similar assemblage of
parts and features ; and that when disengaged from it at
death, it still holds intact both the human configuration, and
every lineament on which personal identity depends, and by
Avhich individuals are recognized and distinguished from one
another. Thus that the soul is no " will-o'-th'-wisp in the
swamps of the cerebrum," but an internal man; a body
within a body ; " a life," as Aret^eus says of the womb,
"within a life;" in the material body as God is in the uni-
verse — everywhere and nowhere; everywhere for the en-
lightened intellect, nowhere for the physical view ; no more
in the brain than in the toes, but the spiritual " double" of
the entire fabric. All the organs of the material body have
soul in them, and serve the soul, each one according to its
capacity, yet is the soul itself independent of them all,
because made of another substance. "And though it fill
216 man's body a series of bodies.
the whole body, yet it taketh up no room in the body; and
if the body decrease, if any member be cut off or wither,
the soul is not diminished, only ceaseth to be in that mem-
ber it was before, and that Avithout any hurt or blemish to
itself"* A beautiful image of their interconnection is sup-
plied in the structure of hones, which consist of inanimate
earthy matter, and living gelatine, so intimately incorpo-
rated that although the parts are really tivo, the seeming is
of only one, atom answering to atom so completely that the
whole of the earthy matter may be dissolved away by acid,
or the whole of the gelatinous matter be burned by calcina-
tion, and yet the form of the bone remain entire. The inner,
spiritual body is represented in the gelatine ; the outer,
material one in the earthy matter.
134. It may assist us to form an idea of the spiritual
body, if we consider the various parts and systems of organs
of which the outer or material body is constructed. Man is
in reality a series of human forms, one wrapped within the
other, and successively more perfect and comj)lete as we ap-
proach the seat of his highest powers. Begin with the ske-
leton. In this we have the rude image of a man, correct as
far as it goes, showing his bulk, his stature, his general out-
line. It is a skeleton, we may remark in passing, distinctly
and absolutely human. E"o single bone of it exactly agrees
wdth a bone of any other animal whatever. Next take the
muscles. Separate these, and we again have a man, more
perfect and substantial than the former, but still only an
approach to the true idea, wanting the fullness of contour.
Then take the veins. Here is a human figure again ; a
drawing of the venous and arterial system includes the
whole area of the body. Taking, however, lastly, the brain
aii^l nerves, we have a much closer resemblance. If every
* Psychosophia, by N. Mosley, p. 18. 1653,
GHOST-BELIEF, 2l7
nervous thread could be extracted and exhibited in its natu-
ral position, the perfect human outline would be delineated.
These several elementary structures, the skeleton, the mus-
cles, the vems, the nerves, woven and interlaced together,
form in their total the material body, the skeleton being
least like the total, the nervous system the most like it.
The Spiritual body lies within again, but higher and more
exquisite in every circumstance and particular; formed, not
of material substance, but of spiritual ; invisible therefore,
and intangible, except to organs formed of substance similar
to its own. What the skeleton is to the muscles, what the
muscles are to the veins, Avhat the veins are to the nerves,
what all these together are to the man in his full physical
integrity, as the continent of the whole, such is the material
body in its totality to the spiritual. Hence, if we want to
see what the soul is like, mstead of taking a microscope, or
an Essay on Immortality, all we have to do is to contem-
plate the living and moving beauty of a human figure in its
ripeness and perfection. The true ehojv ^o.adcxj is the
human body.
135. That the soul or spiritual body is a form in exact
correspondence with the external, material body; that it
presents a similar assemblage of parts and features; and
that it undergoes no change in these respects when it casts
off the material envelope, and enters the eternal world — un-
less to acquire infinite access of beauty or distortion, accord-
ing to its governing principle of conduct, good or evil — is
involved in ghost-belief; a belief which, when rightly directed,
has infinitely more truth in it than the dogmatic nonsense
which describes the soul as a mere " principle." How often
do we find men's actual, secret faith, ahead of their spoken
Creeds and Articles ! The former comes of the truth-telling
intuitions of the heart ; the latter are the manufacture of
the less trustworthy head. Every one knows that there is
19 K
218 UNIVERSALITY OF THE BELIEF IN GHOSTS.
such a thing as feeling a proposition to be true, though the
understanding may be unable to master it. The feelings, it
has been well remarked, are famous for " hitting the nail on
the head." Unlike the conclusions of the intellect, which
are shaped more or less by education and country, their
voice is no solitary sound, but the utterance of essential and
universal human nature. It is to our feeling rather than to
our thinking, that all the sublimest arguments in the universe
are primarily addressed. Where logic works out one truth,
the heart has already realized twenty ; because love, which
is the heart's activity, is the profoundest and nimblest of
philosophers. All things that live and are loveliest are
born of the heart. This is why the ancients regarded the
heart as the seat of wisdom — not of knowledge, but of that
primary, intuitive wisdom to which knowledge is only an
appendix. Hence then the value of the fact that in all
ages and nations there has existed an intuitional conviction
that the spirit of the dead immediately enters the eternal
world, carrying with it an unmistakable corporeal personal-
ity ; and that it can re-appear, under certain circumstances,
to the survivors.* It is obvious that the reappearance of the
dead requires, as a necessary condition, that there shall be
'" " ' That the dead are seen no more," said Imlac, " I will not un-
dertake to maintain, against the concurrent and unvaried testimony
of all ages, and of all nations. * * * This opinion,
which prevails so far as human nature is diffused, could become
universal only by its truth." — Rasselas.
" From Avhat remote source universal tradition may have derived
this idea, would be a curious inquiry, and might be rendered im-
portant. It is a pleasing subject, and imbued with that tender me-
lancholy which peculiarly befits it for a mind of sensibility and fine
taste. Its universality, independently of the testimony afforded it
by revealed religion, is no small presumption of its being founded
in fact." — Dr. Good, Book of Nature, Series iii., Lect. 1.
^LL MEN ARE GHOSTS. 219
a spiritual body, perfect in form and feature, as in the case
of Moses and Elias. Unfortunately, the actual, solemn
truth of the matter has had so much that is Mse and foolish
heaped upon it, as to be in itself well-nigh smothered.
Rightly understood, ghosts are no mere offspring of vulgar,
ignorant superstition and credulity. Our prejudices and
education may dispose us to think otherwise, but we should
be sloAV in chiding opinions which have been embraced by
any considerable j)ortion of our fellow-men ; since the fact
that a given doctrine has been widely accepted, and ear-
nestly contended for, is a presumption that it contains a
truth, or an aspect of a truth, essential to the complete ra-
tional life of man. Most opinions are right up to a certain
point, but with few men do they go far enough, or straight
enough, to reflect the wliole truth. All human beings are
at this very moment ghosts ; but they do not so appear to
you and me ; nor do you and I, who are also ghosts, so ap-
pear to our neighbors and companions, because we are all
similarly wrapped up in flesh and blood, and seen only
as to our material coverings.* Literally and true, the
ghost of a man is his soul or spiritual body ; and in or-
der that this may be seen, it must be looked at with ade-
quate organs of sight, namely, the eyes of a spiritual body
* " Could anything be more miraculous than an actual, authentic
ghost? The English Johnson longed all his life to see one, but
could not, though he went to Cock-lane, and thence to the church-
vaults, and tapped on cofhns. Foolish Doctor ! Did he never, with
the mind's eye, as well as the body's, look round him into that full
tide of human life he so loved^ — did he never so much as look into
himself? The good Doctor was a ghost, as actual and authentic as
heart could wish ; well-nigh a million of ghosts were traveling the
streets by his side. What else was he, what else are we ? * *
It is no metaphor ; it is a simple scientific fact."— Carlyle, Sartor
Resartus, Book 3d, chap. 8th. «
220 SPIRITUAL SIGHT.
like itself. We have such eyes, every one of us; but during
our time-life, they are buried deep in flesh and blood, and
thus it is only when specially opened by the Almighty, for
purposes of his providence, that it is possible for a ghost or
spiritual body to be beheld. Much as our material eyes en-
able us to see, they prevent our seeing inconceivably more.
" The sight of man," says Lord Bacon, " carrieth a resem-
blance with the sun, which openeth and revealeth the ter-
restrial globe, but covereth and concealeth the stars and
celestial globe. So doth the eye discover natural things,
but darken and shut up divine." Such an opening of the
spiritual sight took place at the Transfiguration, when the
ghosts or spiritual bodies of Moses and Elias were seen.
Such also takes place when the ghosts or spiritual bodies of
the dead are now seen, and without it, it is impossible they
can be viewed. Material eyes to material substances ; spi-
ritual eyes to spiritual ones. Hence it is that in accounts
of spiritual appearances, both Scriptural and secular, how-
ever many persons may be present, it is rarely that more
than one perceives the figure. The narrative in 2 Kings vi.
14 — 17, is a remarkable instance : — " And Elisha prayed
and said. Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes that he may see.
And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he
saw" — what previously was visible only to the prophet. So
in Daniel x. 7 : — "And I, Daniel, alone saw the vision, for
the men that were with me saw not the vision." Tasso in-
troduces the vision of Michael and his warrior angels to
Godfrey only. Shakspere represents the spirit of Banquo
as unseen by any one at the supper table except Macbeth.
The popular or vulgar notion, that before a spirit can be
seen it must assume our material nature, so far, at least, as
to reflect the light of this world, is exactly the reverse of
the truth ; which is that the change must be made in our-
selves, i. e., by opening our spiritual sight.
PHYSICAL THEOKY OF GHOSTS. 221
136. Gliosis, therefore, so far from being mere phantoms
or ajDparitions, the terrif3ung illusions of a heated imagina-
tion, are far more real than our bodies of flesh and blood.
They endure forever, whereas the latter are but temporary
consolidations of a little atmosphere, with a few pounds of
phosphate of lime. The invisible world is populated by them
just as the visible one is occupied by material things ; and
as that world is all round about us, so are they too closely
present.
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth,
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.
They have their similitude in those glorified and imperish-
able languages which we are accustomed to account and
speak of as " dead." True, they have ceased to be alive in
the vulgar sense, or as spoken languages ; yet are they living
and immortal, to man's intelligence; and one of our greatest
privileges is to be sensible of their presence and their influ-
ence on us. Would men but ascend to this high, and true,
and most sacred understanding of the inhabitants of the
unseen world, there would be no more fear of ghosts, nor
would ghost-belief lay itself open to the ridicule which now
it too often deserves. They would be relieved, too, of the
embarrassment Avhich, when scepticism stands mocking, often
seduces to an insincere denial. Ghost-belief, in a word, not-
withstanding its bad reputation, is coincident with belief in
spirits and angels, who are themselves the risen souls or
spiritual bodies of mankind; and to know that there are
angels, and to have so beautiful and salutary a subject of
meditation, is one of the chief privileges and blessings of the
Christian. Pity but it were dwelt upon more frequently.
"There have been times, we know, when men thought too
much of the dead. Such is not among the faults of the pre-
sent age." It is quite likely that many supposed spiritual
19*
O09
TESTIMONY OF POETRY.
ajopearances may be explained on strictly physical principles,
as shoAvn byDrs. Ferriar and Hibbert;* and especially in
some kinds of disease it is likely that men fancy they see
ghosts. But whoever is disposed to laugh at and repudiate
the general proposition, should first read Mrs. Crow's
" Night-side of Nature," applying to its narratives the prin-
ciples we have laid down.f When spiritual bodies are really
alloAved to mortal view, it is probably not to the diseased,
but to the healthy mind ; and coming under the providence
of God, as they always must, they may furthermore be con-
sidered as vouchsafed, like the miracles of the New Testa-
ment, and all the spiritual appearances therein recorded,
not to the immoral or the unbeliever, " because of their un-
belief," but only to those who are prepared to receive and
appreciate intelligently.
137. Poetry witnesses that "there is a spiritual body."
Poetry is not, as some deem it, mere "privileged lying;"
neither is it, in its essential nature, the simple embodiment
of elegant but illogical fancies. The tales which the poet
tells, as wilful and deliberate, may be, and doubtless are for
the most part, fables. But the sayings and phraseology in
which those tales are told, flowing half-unconsciously from
the poet's heart, and altogether beside the mere Art of poetry,
take place with the eternal verities of the universe. As
regards scientific matters, and the minutiae of Natural His-
"" An Essay towards a Theory of Apparitions, by John Ferriar,
M. D. London, 1813.
Sketches of the Philosophy of Apparitions, or an Attempt to
trace such ilhisions to their physical causes, by Samuel Hibbert,
M. D. Edinburgh, 1824.
t See also a Review of Mrs. Crowe's work in Ainsworth's Maga-
zine for February, 1848, wherein the claims of this depai-tment of
knowledge are mildly and intelligently enforced.
TESTIMONY OF POETRY, 223
tory, doubtless there are errors in poetry as well as in prose.
But the truth of poetry is independent of blunders in learn-
ing; no less than of the imperfect science of its era. The
supposition equally common, that poets must be dreamers,
because there is often much dreaminess in poetry, is, again,
purely gratuitous. "Vulgarly considered deficient in the
reasoning faculty, the poets are remarkable rather for hav-
ing it in excess. They jump the middle terms of their
syllogisms, it is true: and assume premises to which the
world has not yet arrived ; but Time stamps their conclusions
as invincible." Especially is the true and great poet a pro-
found metaphysician ; a far profounder one, in general, than
the metaphysicians by profession. "I have found more
philosophic knowledge," says Dr. Millingen, "in the pro-
ductions of our poets, than in all the metaphysical disquisi-
tions of the learned." The only diiference between the
poet's reasoning and that of other men, is that it is a reason-
ing more from feeling than from induction. Therefore is it
that to those who approximate, and thus understand him,
the true and great poet is not only a musical singer and a
painter of beautiful pictures, but a speaker of Wisdom and
Truth, To such, his utterances commend themselves as an
apocalypse of human nature. Take, for instance, the lines
in Twelfth Night, where Viola asks Sebastian if he is "a
spirit :" —
"A spirit I am indeed,
But am in that dimension grossly clad,
Which from the womb I did participate."
Here, whatever may be attributed to the poet's imagination,
we have at least the calm conclusion of the philosopher, for
the character of Sebastian is one which fully justifies the
belief that of two possible answers Shakspere would assign
to him the one which he himself considered tlie more sensi-
224 TESTIMONY OF POETRY.
ble.* Coleridge, Wordsworth, Bailey, (in "Festus,") all
our best English poets, unite in teaching the same truth to
the understanding that can rise to it. Shelley has an ex-
quisite passage : —
"Sudden arose
lanthe's soul ! It stood
All beautiful in naked purity,
The perfect semblance of its bodily frame.
Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace.
Each stain of earthliness
Had passed away ; it fe-assumed
Its native dignity, and stood
Immortal amid ruin."
How finely the self-disengagement of the soul at death, in
the form of the body it leaves behind, is spoken of by the
ancient poets, the scholar is well aware. When, for example,
in the 11th -^llneid, Camilla is described as extricating her-
self from her corpse, after the spear of Aruns has brought
her exploits to an end: — ■
Tum frigida toto
Paulatim exsolvit se corpore; lentaque colla,
Et captum letho posuit caput, &c.
"Then of vital heat bereft, she disengages herself from the whole
body by degrees, and reclines her drooping neck and head, capti-
vated by death."
It is not simply her life, or her "principle of volition," that
goes, but se, herself The souls of the dead, as ferried by
Charon across the Styx, Virgil elsewhere designates corpora,
"bodies."
* See an "Essay on the Ghost-belief of Shakspere, by Alfred
RofTe," (Hope, London, 1851,) in which admirable performance,
says one of his reviewers, "we have the first beginning of a study
of Shakspere according to facts and nature."
TESTIMONY OF LANGUAGE. 225
138. The facts before us are borne out also by Language,
which is a form of Poetry. "It is good," says an able
writer, "to look to the ordinary language of mankind, not
only for the attestation of natural truths, but for their sug-
gestions; because common sense transfers itself naturally
into language; and common sense, in every age, is the
ground of the truths which can possibly be revealed. If we
set our ideas before the glass of language, they receive, to
say the least, a cordial welcome." By language we do not
mean the mere art of speaking and writing according to
some specific, arbitrary mode, Avhich though intelligible in
one country, is unintelligible in another. We mean that
beautiful and inevitable flowering forth in speech of the
inner living intellect of man, which, older and more excel-
lent than all prosody and spelling, is an integral work of
nature; and which, were it possible for the accidental forms
which it may hold at any given epoch, as English and
French, Latin and Greek, to be suddenly and totally
abolished, would in itself be unaffected, and speedily incar-
nate afresh, unchanged save in the extrinsic circumstances
of costume. Looking into Language, we find accordingly,
that whatever is vitally and essentially human, whatever
distinguishes man from the brutes, it attributes, in all ages
and countries, to "the soul" or "the spirit." It recognises
the latter, not as a mere abstract principle, which is imjDotent,
but as a living, active, substantial entity, such as alone can
effect the deeds ascribed to it. It is " the spirit" that moves,
prompts, withholds, and inclines us; that is grieved and
troubled; that is elated and depressed. David exclaims,
"Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou
disquieted within me?" We speak also of the rejoicing,
triumphing, and despondency of the spirit; of having no
spirit for a thing, and of being dispirited. Also of a poor
spirit, a mean spirit, and a great spirit; a good soul, a kind
226 FIGURES OF SPEECH.
soul, aud a willing soul. Every one of thes^. affections or
qualities, as they are ordinarily termed, is a disposition for
the time being, of the true, immortal, spiritual man, who,
underlying the material body, is the real thinker and the
real emotionist. Call the expressions "figures of speech"
if you will. But take care first to understand what are
figures of speech, in their projoer, essential nature; whence
they arise-; and why they are the same with all people, in
all parts of the globe, independent of any instruction or
compact. Men who seek to escape from a truth which
presses inconveniently by beginning to talk about "figures
of speech," only betray their ignorance of the first principles
of language. Figures of speech, rightly so called, are the
profoundest texts philosojDhy can start from.
CHAPTER XIII.
SOUjO—SPIJRIT—GSOST.
139. Not a little of the confusion prevailing in the popu-
lar mind with regard to the Soul, may unquestionably be
referred to the fact of our having three distinct words for it,
a proof at the same time of the inestimable value of an en-
larged and accurate appreciation of the nature of Language
in the determination and establishment of Truth, and of the
evils that arise from inattention to it. Ordinarily, the
"soul" of man, his "spirit," and his "ghost," are imagined
to be three separate and distinct things. Directly we look
to the inherent meaning of the several words, we find them,
however, synonymous and convertible, and originally of a
single signification and a single application. The soul of
man is his spirit, and his s|)irit is his ghost; neither word
meaning more or less than the Spiritual body. Undoubt-
edly a conventional distinction has been made between the
three terms, and a very proper and useful one it is, but un-
fortunately it is not observed. "Soul" is well applied to the
spiritual body during our residence ui the flesh: "spirit," by
metonymy, to that deep, interior, intellectual and emotional
consciousness which is evidence to us of our spiritual life:
"ghost" to the spiritual body when, casting off its material
vesture, it becomes an inhabitant exclusively of the spiritual
world, and if pure, an angel. Were they always thus
limited and applied, the words would carry meaning. As
matters stand, they carry none, since no two writers use
227
228 NATURAL FOUNDATION OF LANGUAGE.
them alike. That psychologists should have been content
to go on discussing about the soul, year after year, and yet
have allowed the sense of their text-word to go irreclaimably
adrift, certainly is no credit to them; nor is it surprising
that they have made so little way. Till a man is prepared
to state the exact significance which he attaches to his
terms, and till he has learned to be consistent in the use of
them, it is better both for himself and for the world that he
should fling away his pen.
140. Together with the equivalent words in Hebrew,
Greek, Latin, Sanscrit, and other languages, soul, spirit, and
ghost literally denote Air or Breath. The metaphor is emi-
nently just and beautiful, seeing that the air is the physical
image and rei)resentative of Life; and that it is in the invi-
sible, spiritual part of man that Life is supremely throned.
It is a truth alike of Scripture, philosophy, physiology, and
poetry, that the Breath is the representative of Life. It
stands in the first place as symbol of the organic life;
secondly, and in superior degree, as symbol of the spiritual
life. What language, by its intuitional usages, broadly
asserts, the expositors of truth ratify and substantiate.
Language indeed, or Philology, in its highest sense, is only
another name for Philosophy. We have seen above how
intimately the air is connected with organic life; that Respi-
ration is the beginning, and ceasing to breathe, the end.
Because of this connection, all the primitive names applied
to organic life were simply transfers of the current appella-
tions of the wind; subsequently, by virtue of the corres-
pondence of the organic with the spiritual, the same names
were extended upwards to the soul. Every one of these
names denotes accordingly, in addition to air or wind, the
life of the body, and is thus possessed not merely of a two-
fold, but of a triple meaning. There is nothing singular in
this. It exemplifies a general principle. No word either
MEANING OF THE WORD SOUL. 229
does or can denote a spiritual thing without at the same
time denoting both a physiological or organic, and a phy-
sical or inorganic thing. The reason is, that language rests
universally upon objective Nature, and that objective Na-
ture, in turn, is universally representative of spiritual things,
proximately in its organic forms, remotely in its inorganic
ones. The spiritual universally carries with it the physio-
logical, and the physiological the physical, just as the
capital of a column involves the shaft, and the shaft the
pedestal. The physical and physiological meanings of words
denoting spiritual things may be obsolete, but they are there,
nevertheless, palpable and instructive to the philosophic eye,
to which nothing that has ever had a meaning for mankind,
ever absolutely dies.
141. To place these great principles in the clear light sup-
plied by facts, let us briefly examine the etymologies of the
several words. If it serve only to give an agreeable variety
to the general subject, the time will not be spent in vain.
" Soul," as the most celebrated and familiar, naturally comes
first. Soul, (Anglo-Saxon sawle, German seele,) is coinci-
dent with the Latin Aafitus, breath, derived from hahve, to
breathe, a root familiar in the words ex.hale, inhale, and
itself only an enlarged form, (like aaoi;, salv^,) of the earlier
word aeco or dco, a beautiful onomatopoeia, expressive in its
long, open vowels, of the very act which it designates. Per-
mutation of initial sounds, as in halitus and soul, a sibilant
taking the place of an aspirate, a dental of a labial, &c., is
one of the most common phenomena of spoken language.
Colloquially, and in miscellaneous literature, soul is not
now used in the sense of "breath;" but in the authorized
version of the Scriptures, or the English language of 1611,
it often has this meaning. In 1 Kings xvii., for instance,
"There was no breath left in him; and
the Lord heard the voice of Elijah, and the soul of the child
20
230 MEANING OF THE WORD SOUL.
came into him again, and lie re-vived." The second or phy-
siological sense is also exhibited in the Bible, but more fre-
quently in secular authors, as when they term the life of
brutes the "animal soul." "There are," says Mr. Blakey,
"in a certain sense, two souls in man. We give the name,
first, to that physical life and organic power which we pos-
sess in common with the animal and vegetable creation;
secondly, to the principle of sensibility and thought, the soul
which thinks, feels, reasons, and judges, and exists only in
man." (Vol. 1, p. 61.) In the original, physical sense of
the word soul, all creatures whatever have souls, inasmuch
as they live by inhalation or breathing; so that to be "a
living soul" is nothing peculiar to man, if we judge by the
Avords alone, without exploring their philosophy. Many
people, naturally ambitious, and unwilling to observe so
many agreements as there are between themselves and the
lower forms of creation, make it a matter of pride that our
first parents were formed, as they supjDose, in a manner dif-
ferent from the parents of other animals. "God," they
remind us, "breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life,
and he became a living soul," a circumstance not mentioned
of the progenitors of any other species of creature. But
neither is it mentioned of the first species of any other crea-
ture that they were created "male and female." This, how-
ever, can well afford to be let pass, when compared with the
fact that the distinction apparently established by the words
"living soul," presents itself only in the translation. There
is no such distinction in the Hebrew, which in this instance
applies identically the same terms to man and to brute.
Each was made rrn ty^J (nephesh ehayah,) "a living soul;"
only our translators have rendered the references to the
brute creation (Gen. i. 21, 24,) "liying creature." Either
word might legitimately be substituted for the other. It is
amusing that while many have entrenched themselves in
MEANING OF THE WORD GHOST. 231
this phrase of "living soul," and found in it man's inalien- i. r
able characteristic, the exactly opposite conclusion has been | ||ffl
arrived at by some of those whose curiosity had led them to | |h|
the original. Both brutes and man being called "living ft'''''
creatures," or "living souls," some have inferred that brutes
are as immortal as man; others that man is mortal as
brutes. Man differs from the brutes not in respect of his
being a "living soul," which is simply to be a "breather,"
such as they are; but in respect of his being so constituted
as to be recipient of the knowledge of God, and of power to
love him. Shakspere accredits the word soul with its full,
final meaning, namely, the spiritual body when set free from
flesh and blood: —
Where souls do couch on flowers, we'll hand in hand.
And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze.
142. Ghost, (Anglo-Saxon gast, German geist,) shows its
physical meaning in the cognate word " gust," as " a gust of
wind ;" also in the term used to designate the aeriform sub-
stance called " gas." In Old German, the grand-parent of
English, geisten signified to blow. In a German Bible of
the year 1483, " the breath of life" is translated " der geist
des lebens." To " give up the ghost" is literally, to sur-
render the breath ; the " Holy Ghost" is literally the breath
of the Lord, as implied in his own words, when " He
breathed on his disciples, and said. Receive ye the Holy
Ghost." Where the English version of the Scriptures has
"ghost" and "spirit," the Anglo-Saxon reads "gad."
Wiclif, in his New Testament, spells " the holi goost." The
" gist" of a subject, like the "spirit" of a book, or the animus
of an action, signifies its soul or inmost principle. In Ger-
man, geist continues to be used in many of the meanings
which, with ourselves, are conveyed by " spirit." Thus —
232 SPIRIT.
Was der Geist versprecht leistet die Natur. — Schiller.
" What the Siiirit promises, Nature performs."
143. Spirit, (Latin spiritus,) takes us to the very origin
of words, resting on the beautiful lisp or whisper with which
the breezes quiver the leaves. All words, we may observe,
are expansions of a few hundred primitive onomatopoeias,
more or less obviously preserved in them, and which, like
the sp in spirit, constitute their ultimate " roots."
Fresh gales and gentle airs
Whisper' d it to the woods. — Paradise Lost.
And there is heard the ever-moving air
Whispering from tree to tree. — Shelley.
In solitudes
Her voice came to me through the tvhisp'ring woods. — lb.
Virgil shows the etymology at a glance, for who that knows
aught of the sweet music of nature does not perceive that
the bare idea of blowing is the least part of his auras spi-
rantes f The Greek form of the word, ^tdupcafxa., is one of
the most beautiful onomatopoeias extant in any language.
^'Ad'j, sings Theocritus —
"AJi Ti rd ipiBvpiiTna Kal a Trtrv;."
" Sweet is the whisper of the wind among the fir-trees !"
Whoever wrote that little gem of the Orphica, the hymn to
the Zephyrs,
avpai TTOi'TOytviXg Zc(l>vpiTiSs;, t'lcpo/potroi,
flivTTVOOi, ipidi'pal, K.T.X.,
the introduction of this one word is enough to announce
him Poet. Now-a-days a man can adopt epithets from a
thousand predecessors ; the Greek had only nature, and his
own apt, living, luxuriant heart. Virgil not only illustrates
the origin of the word spirit, but its several applications.
SPIRIT AND ITS COGNATE TERM. 233
Thus, as given to the breath, in that charming description
where Iris, mingling with the exiled Trojan ladies as they
walk mourning by the sea, though she has laid aside her
goddess' vestments, and personates a decrepid old woman, is
still unable to conceal herself:
Non Beroe vobis, non hsec Rlioeteia, matres
Est Dorycli conjux : divini signa decoris,
Ardentesque notate oculos : qui spiritus illi,
Qui vultus, vocisve sonus, vel gressns eunti.
" Matrons, this is not Beroe who stands before you, not the wife
of Doryclus. Mark here the characters of divine beauty ! See how
bright her eyes ! What fragrance in her breath ! What majesty in
her looks ! Or mark the music of her voice, and the graceful mien
with which she moves !"
It denotes Life where JEneas is heard protesting fidelity
to the too-coufiding, ill-requited Dido :
Nee me meminisse pigebit Elisse
Dum memor ipse mei, dum spiritus hos reget artus !
"Never shall I be slow to think of Dido, while I retain any
recollection of myself, or life to actuate these limbs !"
144. In connection with the word spirit, it is interesting
to note the cognate term " spiral," seeing that it involves
the same idea. Similarly derived from spiro to blow, its
flmdamental allusion is to the well-known phenomenon of
the spiral movement of the wind. Now this peculiar move-
ment, the spiral, delineates a Form, which form thus be-
comes an emblem or pictorial representative of the wind,
and thence of what the wind itself represents, namely, Life.
All forms are representative, and their significance is the
science of sciences. There are lower, highei', and highest
forms. Forms made up of straight lines, and thus angular,
with flat surfaces, as crystals, are of the lowest degree, and
accord with what is inorganic, inanimate, and basal gene-
20 «
234 THE SPIRAL FORM.
rally. Next comes the form of which the sphere and the
circle are the type— a form derived from the extension of
the primitive point in all directions, and which is essentially
connected with the organic and animate. Whatever in the
universe exhibits a totality, is always a solid circle or sphere.
Portions of circles, or curves, conjoined with the straight
line and angle, give that innumerable variety of profiles
and configurations which we see among animals and plants.
Rarely is the curve found in the inorganic department of
creation. Only perhaps in the S]3herules of quicksilver, on
the convex side of drops of water and other liquids, in bub-
bles, and in some few minerals. In the degree that crystals
multiply their surfaces, and thus lose their great angles and
facets, they approach the spherical or organic form. The
dodecahedron, for example, approaches the sphere more
noarly than the octohedron ; the octohedron more nearly
than the cube. Highest of all is the Spiral form, which in
its own highest kind, or as produced by winding a thread
round a cylinder, is the circle infinitely continued. The
circle returns into itself, ending where it began ; but the
possible beginning and ending of a spiral the imagination
cannot conceive. The sj)iral, therefore, rather than the
circle, is the true symbol of eternity. The spiral form is
identified with no department of creation in particular,
because an emblem of the omnipresent principle which
equally sustains all. It shows itself most remarkably in
the Vegetable kingdom, where it is the law of the arrange-
ment of the leaves, and thus of the buds and flowers.
Almost all the wonderful diversities in the contour of j)lants
come of their spirals of development being more or less
stretched or contracted. Thus, alternate leaves become
opposite by a slight contraction ; opposite ones become ver-
ticillate by a greater. Flowers universally are produced by
the contraction of the spiral into a series of concentric
ANIMA AND ANIMUS. 235
rings, the highest part of the spix'al becoming the centre,
and its lowest part the circumference. Certain fruits, as fir-
cones, show the spiral in the most beautiful manner. In-
ternally, plants abound Avith a delicate kind of veins known
as " spiral vessels." Stems, again, which are too slender to
stand upright, lift themselves into the air by twining spirally
round a stronger neighbor. As respects the animal king-
dom, the spiral is a frequent and beautiful feature in uni-
valve shells ; where also, as in plants, much of the wonderful
variety comes of the spiral being more or less contracted.
In the lovely genera Cerithium, Pleurostoma, Fusus, Tur-
ritella, &c., one extreme is shown ; in Cyprsea, Conus,
Strombus, &c., the other. The beautiful spiral by which
the Vorticellse extend and retract themselves gives to the
movements of these little creatures an elegance and spright-
liness unsurpassed. In human organization the spiral is
less observable, except that it adorns the head with curls
and ringlets. Human life, on the other hand, is one un-
broken, endless spiral, and here we realize the greatness and
amplitude of the significance of the spiral Form. Life
winds its little circles, hour by hour, day by day, year by
year, faithfully concluding each before another is begun, but
never failing to commence afresh where it left ofi*, and so
goes on evei'lastingly, ring rising upon ring, every circle
covering and reiterating its predecessors, on a higher level,
nearer and nearer to the heavens. The material body drops
away, like dead leaves, but Life goes on, in beautiful and
ceaseless aspii'ation. Nowhere in nature is there a more
charming emblem of Life than the common scarlet or
twining bean of our gardens, while rising to its maturity.
145. Animus, the usual Latin Avord for the soul, short-
ened in French into dme, is the same word as anima, the
wind, in Greek dusjuoi;, whence the pretty name anemone,
or wind-flower The subordinate senses are preserved, like
236 PSYCHE.
those of qnritus, in the Latin authors. Thus, " aurarumque
leves animce," " the light breezes of the winds ;" (Lucretius
V. 237.) "Ah miseram Eurydicen, animd fugiente, vocabat,"
"Ah, unfortunate Eurydice, he cries Avith his fast-fleeting
breath." (Georgic iv. 526.) The earlier etymological his-
tory is found in the Sanscrit language, in which breath is
called anas and cinilas, the root being an. Though essen-
tially the same word, a useful practical distinction is made
in Latin between the two forms anima and animits; the for-
mer being restricted, in its figurative ascent, to the organic
life, whence it is usually translated " life," " vital principle,"
or " animal soul ;" while to the latter is allowed the higher
meaning of spiritual life, whence it is generally translated
" rational soul :" —
Mnndi
Principio indulsit communis conditor illis
Tantum animas, nobis animum quoque, &c.
Juvenal, Sat. xv. 147.
" In the beginning of the world, the Creator vouchsafed to brutes
only the principle of vitality ; to us lie gave souls also, that an in-
stinct of affection, reciprocally felt, might urge us to seek, and to
give, assistance."
146. Wu-^Yj, the Greek word generally understood to
mean " soul," comes from (poj^M to blow, and would seem
to be of kindred onomatopoetic origin with spiritus. Katpol
dvaipu^sco;:, " the times of refreshing," (Acts iii. 19) is lite-
rally " the times of the blowing of the cool wind." There
is a good deal of misconception as to this famous word.
What it ordinarily intends in Greek literature, both sacred
and secular, is not the spiritual, immortal part of man, but
his animal or time-life. " Take no thought for your life" — ■
fih iJ.epcftvd.re zyjci ifioy^iov bpcov, with the context, well illus-
trates its ordinary New Testament significance. In Kev.
xvi. 3, fishes are called (puiaz. Conformably with these
PNEIIMA. 237
usages, " the natural body," i. e., the material body, endowed
with organic, animal life only, and belonging exclusively to
the temporal world, is termed by St. Paul, mofia itjo-^abv,
while the spiritual, immortal body he calls acofxa 7TU£0fj.aT!-
xou. Undoubtedly, "soul" in its high, metaphysical and
theological senses, is occasionally intended by (po-^rj; but its
most useful signification is simply the life which animates
the temporary, material body. Many of the ancients attri-
buted to the latter all that is psychological as well as physi-
ological in our nature. With these, accordingly, (pu')(^f] in-
cludes both "life" and "mind," or anima and animus, and
is their collective appellation.*
147. What is generally intended in to-day's English by
" soul," i. e., the immortal, thinking part of man, is in Greek
mostly called Tivsu/jLa. Translators render it " spirit." The
primary or physical sense is illustrated by St. John — " the
vnnd hloweth where it listeth;" and the secondary or physi-
ological one by St. Matthew — " Jesus yielded up the ghost,"
(xxvii. 50,) Tiveufw. being the Greek word in both cases.
When in the New Testament (j-'O-/^-/] and Tcveufxa occur in
juxtaposition, the sense is tantamount to the colloquial
phrase " life and soul." But they are translated soul and
spirit," as in Heb. iv. 12, fostering the popular mistake that
the soul (theologically so called) and the spirit are distinct
things. Nothing can exceed the confusion into which even
intelligent people are often unconsciously drawn, through
the want of a clear understanding of the great truth, so sub-
lime in its simplicity, " that there is a natural body, and
there is a spiritual body," — not there will he, but there is,
and that this spiritual body is the ever-living soul or spirit.
If any doubt the existence of such confusion, let them read
■* On Homer's use of the word, see a learned paper from the Ger-
man of Voelcker, in the Classical Museum for 1845.
238 SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY.
Wesley's 41st hymn — "And am I born to die ?" and see if
they can shut the book with the least glimmering of com-
prehension of what it means. " Spirit, soul, and body," as
in 1 Thess. v. 2'3, is a Scriptural perij)hrase for the whole
man, as he exists during his time-life; "spirit" denoting the
life of the intellect and affections, or of the internal man ;
"soul" the life of the body, as exercised in the appetites and
animal instincts ; " body" the sacred instrument with which
those lives are enabled to be played forth into the world.
Soul and body, or (puyji and acopta, have reference to this
world only ; spirit, or Tivzufjia, belongs also to the world to
come. Consentaneously with this, man is Scripturally
called " flesh" when his mortality is the subject of discourse ;
"soul" when his animal propensities are chiefly alluded to ;
" spirit" when his intellectual or emotional nature or the in-
ternal man, is the theme. The ghosts, or disengaged spirit-
ual bodies of the dead, are called Tiveofioxa, or " spirits," by
the inspired writers, on a principle already set forth.
148. The Hebrew words corresponding with soul, &c., of-
fer precisely similar histories, nil (ruahh) denotes the wind
in Gen. viii. 1 ; breath, frequently ; temporal life, in the his-
tory of Samson — -" when he had drank, his spirit came
again ;" spiritual life, and life in the general sense, or the
all-sustaining energy of the Creator, also very often. lysj
(nephesJi) and riDtyj {neshcmiah) are equivalents in every
way. A minute exposition of the application of these
words, constitutes, along with relevant matter, an invalu-
able little book by the Kev. George Bush, Professor of He-
brew at New York — " Soul, or an Inquiry into Scriptural
Psychology." New York, 1845.
149. Comparing these various facts, the conclusion we
come to is, that Avhile on the one hand, tlie soul is no mere
appendage to human nature, shapeless and incomprehensi-
ble, or at best, "life;" on the other hand, that wondrous
THE BODY THE APPENDAGE TO THE SOUL. 289
spiritual body in which we find it, is the veritable, essential
Man — ipse — " the man in the man." Rightly regarded, it is
not the soul that is the appendage, but the body. As a mate-
rial body, it is admirable and incomparable ; but placed be-
side that which alone gives dignity and glory to the idea of
man, it confesses itself no more than a piece of mechanism,
spread over him for awhile, in order that during his reten-
tion of it, he may act on the material world and its inhabit-
ants, and fashion his intellect and moral character. It is
the strong right arm with which he is impowered to enforce
his arbitrations. Man is created for heaven, not for earth ;
therefore he is mndamentally a spiritual, and only provi-
sionally a material being. The ecoo^ of his nature is the
spiritual body; the material is only its ecdcoXov.'^^ The
Bcd(oXov is first to mortal eyes and understanding ; but the
spiritual elooi; is the first to fact and truth ; just as the ut-
tered word is the first to the listener, but the invisible,
underlying thought the first to the speaker. Truly and
beautifully has man been called a "word" of the Creator.
The spiritual body is the seat of all thought, all emotion,
all volition ; excepting, of course, such purely animal voli-
tion as belongs to the organic life, and is participated in by
the brutes. The material body does no more than fulfill the
instincts of its own proper organic or brute life, save when
the spiritual body gives forth a mandate. Intimately com-
bined with its envelope till the latter wears out, or falls
sick, and dies, the sjoiritual body then renounces all connec-
tion with it ; throws it back into its native dust, as
* The difference between il'iJoj and diwXov is not generally discri-
minated by the lexicons as it deserves ; — sWoj denotes the true, es-
sential form of a thing ; zUo>\ov, on the contrary, the apparent,
painted, or external : sUw\ov is the diminutive of diog not in reference
to extent or bulk, but in respect of perfection and essence.
240 SLEEP OF THE S(J"UL.
the snake casts his enamell'd skin :
or as
The grasshoppers of the summer lay down their worn-out dresses,*
and becomes conscious of the Better Land. Its own life
goes on as before. At least there is not the slightest reason
to suppose, either on Scriptural or philosophical grounds,
that its vital activity is for one instant suspended. The
notion that the soul falls into a kind of sleep or lethargy, on
the death of the body, though a very common one, is indeed
utterly at variance both with the deductions of philosophy
and the intimations of Holy Writ, which plainly informs us
that the spirit rises immediately after death, as in the para-
ble of Lazarus and the rich man, and in the address of our
Saviour to the crucified thief, " This day shalt thou be with
me in Paradise;" a prophecy, moreover, impossible on any
other understanding than that of a spiritual body. Just
what the soul is, when it shakes off the material envelope, it
continues to he, retaining all its loves, desires, and inclina-
tions, be they good or evil, pure or impure; and uiDon these
it goes on expending its life, the only difference being in the
immediate results to the individual, seeing that the sphere
wherein those loves, &c. are now played forth, is absolutely
spiritual, and governed by laws and conditions of its own.
Of the origin of the notion of the soul's sinking into a state
of torpor after death, there can be no doubt. Like most
other falsities in psychology, and like many in theology, it
comes of false physiology, and is directly traceable to the
materialist's figment that life is a function of organization,
the corollary of which is, that as there is no visible organi-
* ut olim
Cum veteres ponunt tunicas sBstate cicadse.
LxJCRETius, Lib. iv. 55-56.
MAN A DENIZEN OF TWO WORLDS. 241
zation but that of matter, therefore matter is essential to
man's existence ; and thus, that when denuded of it at death,
his soul collapses into an insensate, motionless, incompetent
nothing, so to remain till reclothed with flesh and blood.
But this, as we have seen, is altogether fallacious. Man is
a thinking, feeling, immortal creature, not by virtue of his
material body, but by virtue of his spiritual body. From
the first moment of his existence, he is an inhabitant both
of the material and of the spiritual world. He dwells con-
sciously in the one, unconsciously in the other; and the
change induced on him by "death" is simi^ly that this state
of matters is reversed. That is, he then dwells consciously
in the spiritual world, but is no longer a percipient of the
material one. Why, during his first state, he sees and
knows nothing, consciously, of the spiritual world, is that he
is blindfolded by the "muddy vesture of decay." Why he
is afterwards unconscious of the material world, is that in
order to realize it, he must possess an appropriate material
organism. We live in the spiritual world, all of xis, as per-
sons blind from birth live in the pi'esent material one, i. e.,
in it, but not seeing it; and the death of the material body
(Avhich involves the permanent opening of the spiritual
sight) is like the couching of the eyes of such persons by an
oculist, and enabling them to see what surrounds them. In
our chapter on the Future State, this will receive its due
meed of illustration.
150. That there are many and great difiiculties in con-
ceiving of the mystery of the spiritual body, that is, of the
Soul, has already been amply conceded. He who would
afiect to deny them would only betray his ignorance both
of himself and his subject. Embedded as we are in the
material, the mind needs first to assume the doctrine, and
then gradually ascend to the verification. FolloAving a clue,
and knowing what we are looking for, the evidence is found.
21 L
242 DIFFICULTIES IN REGARD TO THE SOUL.
We act no differently, day by day, when we enter on the
study of any new and comprehensive subject in physical or
physiological science. Not that this is a new doctrine, but
only an unfamiliar one. "It is a venerable creed, like a
dawn on the peaks of thought, reddening their snows from
the light of another sun, the substance of immemorial reli-
gions, the comfort of brave simplicity, though the doubt of
to-day, and the abyss of terrified science." It is hard, for
instance, to think at first of spiritual form, because all our
ordinary experience of form presses upon us the idea of ma-
terial solidity. It is hard, likewise, to think how the spiritual
body is circumstanced with regard to what in the material
world are called Time and Space. Accustomed as we are
to regard space and the spiritual as antithetical, we are at
first quite indisposed to admit that a spiritual being can be
bounded by space. It is true, nevertheless. Nothing but
Deity can be everywhere at once. There must be portions
even of the spiritual world where a given spirit is not.
Therefore the spiritual body is subject to a condition at all
events cmsivering to sj^ace. Again, it is hard, nay, it is im-
possible, to conceive of what may be called the procreation
and birth of the spiritual body, and in what mode and
respect these are concurrent with the procreation and birth
of the material body. We can satisfy ourselves of nothing
more than that God creates the soul when needed, and not
before.* The organization of the spiritual body is equally
* For opinions on the subject, see Dickinson's Physica Vetus et
Vera, cap. 11 ; Blakey's History of the Philosophy of the Mind, vol.
1, p. 197 ; and Clowes' Fourth Letter on the Human Soul. The
famous doctrine of the "pre-existence" of the soul, it is beside our
present purpose to discuss. See, for an enthusiastic defence of it,
" Liox Orientalis, or an Enquiry into the opinions of the Eastern
Sages, concerning the pre-existence of the Soul." 12mo., 1662.
DIFFICULTIES ARE NO OBJECTION, 243
beyond the range of man's present powers. There can be
little doubt, however, that instead of a simple homogeneity,
as commonly supposed, the soul is eminently composite.
" There are some things in Paul's description of the spiritual
body," says Dr. Hitchcock, "which make it quite probable
that its organization will be" (or rather is) "much more
exquisite than anything in existence on earth. He repre-
sents the spiritual body as far transcending the material
body both in glory and power; and since the latter is 'fear-
fully and wonderfully made,' nothing but the most exquisite
organization can give the spiritual body such a superiority
over the natural." (Religion of Geology, Lect. xiv.) Then
there is the nature of the sex of the spiritual body, which is
as immortal as itself, albeit that in heaven "there is neither
marrying nor giving in marriage." Sex, in its true idea,
belongs to the soul, not to the body, in which it is only
representatively and temporally present. This fine subject
the reader may see treated with admirable delicacy and
philosophy in Haughton's " Sex in the Future State."
151. Because of such difficulties, and because too intensely
accustomed to the material to welcome such propositions as
have been set forth, some will not improbably receive them
wath a laugh, and tax us at least with superstition.* Good.
If superstition it be to hold such views, it is a superstition
far more valuable and fertilizing to the mind than all that
some men esteem the truth. Putting faith before charity in
all they do, and deceiving themselves by substituting nar-
* It is scarcely necessary to repeat that the vulgar notion respect-
ing ghosts, including "haunted houses," "spirit-rapping," white
sheets, &c., &c., is altogether apart from the doctrine of the spiritual
body. The latter is Scriptural and philosophical, whereas the for-
mer is neither, but utterly contemptible, and does not even call for
the disclaimer which would asknowledge it to deserve one.
244 FACTS AND HYPOTHESES.
row and exclusive notions for a comprehensive and benign
belief, many men's "truth" is nothing but traditional, barren
error. We ask no one to accept uninquiringly, and should
be sorry for any one who did. "What a man takes upon
trust," remarks Locke, "is but shreds, which however well
they may look in the whole piece, make no considerable ad-
dition to his stock who gathers them. So much only as we
ourselves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so
much only do we possess of real and true knowledge. The
floating of other men's opinions in our brains, makes us not
one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true.
Like fairy money, they turn to dust when they come to be
used." On the other hand, let no one too hastily reject.
Disbelieve after inquiry, if you see cause to ; but never begin
with disbelief Premature condemnation is the fool's func-
tion. It goes for nothing to say that the evidence of the
truth of a proposition does not aj)pear. Do you see the
evidence of its falsity^ Before you reject a proposition or
series of propositions, for what you suppose to be their error,
take care that you apprehend all their truth; or as Carlyle
shrewdly advises, "Be sure that you see, before you assume
to over&ee," Indeed, till the truth of a theme be appre-
ciated, its error, if any, cannot be detected. Such doctrines
as this of the spiritual body it is impossible to grasp on the
instant. They must be thought out, from the data which
Scripture supplies, and philosophy illustrates. Hypothetical
though they may be, in certain points, this again is no valid
objection, since without hypothesis it is impossible to advance
a single step. " Philosophy proceeds upon a system of credit;
and if she never advanced beyond her tangible capital, her
wealth would not be so enormous as it is."* Difficulty in
finding interpretation of anomalies and perplexities "is no
* Rev. W. Thomson, "Outlines of the Laws of Tlionajht "
OPINIONS OF THE FATHERS, &C. 245
argument," as Baden Powell truly observes, "against the
general truth of a proposition ; nor need it lead us into ex-
travagant and gratuitous speculations to bring about a pre-
cise explanation where the circumstances do not furnish
sufficient data. Having once grasped firmly a great princi-
ple, Ave should be satisfied to leave minor difficulties to wait
their solution, assured that time will clear them up, as it
has done before with others." The fact is, all great and
sacred truths, and there are none grander and more sacred
than this of the spiritual body, come to us at first, "like the
gods in Homer, enveloped in blinding mist." But to him
whom their descent to earth concerns, — to him who stands
most in need of their help, and who can most gratefully ap-
preciate, and best apply the privilege, "the cloud becomes
luminous and fragrant, and discloses the divinity within."
The eye that in the beginning was so dim, presently feels
itself sparkle and dilate, and what the intellect fails to read,
the quick heart interprets.
As when the moon hath comforted the night.
And set the world in silver of her light.
152. It may be interesting to conclude the argument that
the soul is a spiritual body with a few citations of authors
by whom the doctrine has been treated or approved. Among
the Fathers there does not appear to have been one who re-
garded the soul as most modern authors do. They seem
rather to have been unanimous as to its corporeity, though
on the nature of this corporeity they widely differed. Ter- ll^
tullian argues not only that the soul is a body, and that it
holds the human form, but that God himself is a body, for
that what is bodiless is nothing.* Augustin, though he finds
* De. Anima, near the beginning, Opera, p. 307; and Adve^sus
Praxeam, ib. p. 637. (Ed. Paris, 1641.)
21®
246 OPINIONS OP THE FATHERS, &C.
fault with Tei'tullian, from the mistaken notion that his
views involve materialism, by no means rejects them.*
Theodotus is very explicit; d?da xac 'rj <puy_-q acbixa ■/.. z. i.,
"the soul also is a body, for the apostle says, It is sown;"
&c.t Methodius, also, in his treatise on the resurrection;
" The souls," says he, " created by the Creator and Father of
all, are acoixaxa voepo., intellectual bodies, and adorned as
they are, wdth members which are perceived by reason,
. . . . are said to have a tongue, finger, and other
parts, as in the case of Lazarus and the rich man.| Maca-
rius, the celebrated homilist, observes — " Each one, according
to his nature, is a body, whether angel or soul. For al-
though these bodies are attenuate, nevertheless they are in
substance, character, and figure, according to the respective
subtleties of their nature, subtle bodies; in like manner as
the body we now possess in one that is Tiayoc,^ dense."§
Suicer, in his great theological cyclopaedia, the Thesaurus
Ecdesiasticus, article (l'oy_-/], may be consulted for more of
the same kind. Passing on to later times, we find the doc-
trine upheld by Lord Bacon: — "And this spirit whereof Ave
speak," says he, "is not from virtue, or energy, or act, or a
trifle, but plainly a body, rare and invisible, notwithstanding
circumscribed by place, quantitative, real."|| Andrew Bax-
* See the vindication of Tertnllian in Dr. Edward Burton's
"Bampton Lectures," Appendix, note 59, 1829.
t Clemens Alex. Opera, p. 791. (Ed. Paris, 1629.)
:j; The curious student will find this treatise well worth attention,,
or at least the excerpta given in that inestimable treasure-house of
Elegant Extracts, the Myriobihlion of Photious, pp. 907-932. (Ed.
Rouen, 1653.)
?i Homily iv. Works, p. 21. (Ed. Paris, 1722.)
II History of Life and Deatli. Works. Vol. xiv., p. 410,
MODERN AUTHORS AND THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 247
ter, in his Enquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul,
confesses that a difference between the soul after the death
of the material body, and a spiritual body, is a difference he
cannot comprehend. Sennertus adopts the doctrine in his
Epitomes Physicce."^ Cudworth, likewise, though with some
diffident reservations, in the True Intellectual System: —
"Even here, in this life, our body is, as it were, twofold, in-
terior and exterior; we having, besides the grossly tangible
bulk of our outward body, another interior, spiritual body,
. . . . which latter is not pvit into the grave with the
other," (Page 806.) The introductory chapter of one of
the first metaphysical works in the English language, But-
ler's Analogy of Religion, though it does not speak of the
doctrine by name, in argument fully acknowledges it.
From recent writers may be selected as follows: — Monck
Mason, in his Creation by the Immediate Agency of God,
written in reply to the Vestiges, after describing the inces-
sant atomic change of the material body, observes in
reference to the preservation of its identity. — " There inust
be a permanent representative within, which is not material,
— which is the Soul." Dr. Moore, in the Preface to his
work on the Power of the Soul over the Body, defines the
former as " a spiritual being, resident in the body." " The
being," he continues, "that now feels, thinks, acts, and agi-
tates the vital frame-work, will forever be subjected to affec-
tions and emotions, wherever it may dwell." Geoffroy de
St. Hilaire expresses similar opinions in a communication to
the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, published in their
Reports for 1837. Morell, in his Elements of Psychology,
is disposed to call the mind "a spiritual organism." "The
real man consists in the abiding power which the body con-
tains to assimilate everything to a given form and idea."
* Lib, viii,, cap, 1, Opera, vol. ii,, p. 81,
248 MODERN AUTHORS ON THE REAL MAN.
The doctrine is set forth in all its excellence and plenitude
in J. J. Garth Wilkinson's masterly work, " The Human
Body, and its connection with Man;" also in the "Anastasis"
of Professor Bush, and in the Rev. E. D. Rendell's truly
excellent " Treatise on the Peculiarities of the Bible."
CHAPTER XIV.
TJRVE IDEA OF TOUTS AND AGE.
153. The phenomena of the spiritual expression of life
are the operations of the Intellect and Affections, or what
phrenologists term the Intellectual and the Affective facul-
ties. Everything which belongs to man as a reasoning and
emotional being, is included in these two great divisions, and
the language of nature calls them, in its most ancient as
well as in its most modern tongues, the Head and the Heart.
The distinction is the Scriptural one, though philosophy is
only beginning to recognize it.* It is the Intellect and
Affections, accordingly, which essentially express human
life ; for the life of the body is but the life of an animal,
and little more than that of a tree. All things eat, and
drink, and sleep, and propagate, but only man can think
* " Metaphysicians," says Cory, " have at length approximated to
a truth which in the metaphysics of Christianity, is laid down with
as much perspicuity and decision as the immortality of the soul, or
any other of those points which have been so continually agitated
among philosophers, modern as well as ancient. The distinction
between the Intellect and the Emotions or Affections, to which,
simple as it may appear, such laborious approaches have been made,
through the thorny paths of metaphysics, is clearly drawn in the
Scriptures, and the respective seats of them assigned, figuratively,
but most naturally, to the Head and Heart, and to the heart the
Scriptures most constantly appeal." — Meta-physical Inquiries, p. 200.
L » 249
250 WORK A LIVING HYMN OF PRAISE.
and love. Everything which brings genuine delight and
dignity to human existence — -everything implied in hope and
faith, in wisdom and affection, comes of this heavenly boon.
Introducing man firstly to the loveliness of the material
creation, which to the brute is invisible ; afterwards it intro-
duces him to the immortal splendors of the spiritual crea-
tion, and to the company of the angels. The veritable
golden chain let down from heaven, which old Homer saw
dimly, the life of the Intellect and Affections is that by
which man is allowed to become sensible how near and
enduring is his relation to his Creator, for it is by these
alone he is approachable. Essentially expressing human
life, the acquirements of these two great spiritual faculties,
or Ideas and Emotions, are man's only genuine Property.
We have nothing else that we can either call or make abso-
lutely our own ; we need nothing besides, for these comprise
all things worth possession. They are the cup of ambrosia
presented to immortalized Psyche.
154. With such a destiny attached to it, how inestimable
a prerogative is human life ! And what ingratitude to mis-
use it. Life may be mtsused without being afeused. It is
misused if it be not so employed as to be enjoyed, i. e., by
making the most of its opportunities; in other words,
devoting it to honorable deeds, affectional as well as intel-
lectual. The more strenuously we enact such deeds, the
more genuine, because practical, is our acknowledgment of
the Divine goodness in bestowing life, and the keener be-
comes our aptitude for sucking the honey of existence.
Work or activity, of whatever kind it be, uprightly and
earnestly pursued, is a living hymn of praise. It is truest
obedience also, for it is God's great law that whatever
powers and aptitudes he has given us, shall be honorably
and zealously employed. The energy of life, when fairly
brought out, is immense; immense beyond what any one
LIFE INTENDED TO BE HAPPY. 251
who has not tried it can imagine. Too often neglected, and
allowed to lapse into weakness; trained and exercised, it
will quicken into grandeur. It is better to wear out than to
rust out, says a homely proverb, with more meaning than
people commonly suppose. Rust consumes faster than use.
To "wear out" implies life and its pleasures; to "rust," the
stagnation of death. Life, rightly realized, is embosomed
in light and beauty. The world is not necessarily a "vale
of tears." God never intended it to be so to any one. All
his arrangements are with an opposite design, and to be ful-
filled, only need man's response and cooperation. True, in
his all-Avise providence, he sends troubles upon men, and
grievous ones ; but they are never so great as those they
bring upon themselves, and willingly suffer. What shall be
our experience of life rests mainly with ourselves. The
world may render us unfortunate, but it cannot make us
miserable ; if we are so, the fault lies in our own bosoms.
It is not only the great who order their own circumstances.
On the wide, wild sea of human life, as on that where go
the ships, the winds and the waves are always on the side
of the clever sailor. Though one breast prove unfaithful,
there are plenty of others that do not. It is still our own
to rejoice in the belief of the good and beautiful, and to
weave out of this belief a perennial happiness. If we take
precautions to form and preserve a sound estimate of what
is past, the joyful experience and the sorrowful alike, we
rarely have cause for regret, and always abundance for hope
and thankfulness; for that which spoils life is seldom so
much the occurrence of certain events, as the perverted recol-
lection of them, and of this, happy events no less than un-
happy ones may be the subject. Even if a man make no
effort of himself — if he be so neglectful as not to realize the
brilliant opportunities permitted to him, so fully as he may,
still is life crowded with pleasures. When there is shadow,
252 TRUE IDEA OF LONGEVITY,
it is because there is sunshine not far off. Its weeds and
thorns are known by contrast with surrounding flowers, and
though upon many even of the latter there may be rain-
drops, those that are Avithout are yet more abounding.
There are more smiles in the world than there are tears ;
there is more love than hate, more constancy than forsaking :
those that murmur the contrary, choose not for thy com-
panions. When the mist rolls away from the mountains,
and the landscape stands suddenly revealed, we find that
Nature always has Beauty for her end. However long and
dreary may be the winter, we are always indemnified by the
spring — not merely by the enjoyment of it when it comes,
but by the anticipation. So with the mists and wintry days
of life ; while they last they are painful, but their clearing
away is glorious, and we find that they are only veils and
forerunners of something bright. Nature never forgets her
sestivalia, nor Divine love its compensations. The common
course of things, says Paley, is uniformly in favor of happi-
ness. Happiness is the rule, misery the exception. Else
would our attention be called to examples of wealth and
comfort, instead of disease and want.
155. Giving full, fair play to the intellect and afiections,
we not only discover what it is to live, and how easy to live
happily ; but the period of our existence upon earth ceases
to be short, and becomes immensely long. It is only the
life of the body which is short, or need be so. Real, human
life, is immeasurable, if we will have it so. Each day,
remarks Goethe in his autobiography, is a vessel into which
a great deal may be poured, if we will actually ^^/ it up;
that is, with thoughts and feelings, and their expression into
deeds, as elevated and amiable as we can reach to. It needs
little reflection to perceive that life truly consists only in
such exercises. "The mere lapse of years is not life. To
eat, and drink, and sleep, to be exposed to the darkness and
"WE LIVE IN DEEDS." 253
the light, to pace round the mill of habit, and turn the wheel
of wed,lth; to make reason our book-keeper, and convert
thought into an implement of trade; this is not life. In all
this but a poor fraction of the consciousness of humanity is
awakened, and the sanctities still slumber which make it
most worth while to be. Knowledge, truth, love, beauty,
goodness, faith, alone give vitality to the mechanism of ex-
istence."*
Grandly expressed in "Festus."
Life's more than breath, and the quick round of blood;
'Tis a great spirit and a busy heart.
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
To measure life by years is, to the true liver, to measure it
rather by ages. If we do not feel its immensity, it is to con-
fess to inactivity and slumber. When we would ask our-
selves how old we are, we should find that we must cast uj),
not anniversaries, but days and hours ; and to satisfy ourselves
how long our life has already been, should reflect, not on
the mere animal adjuncts of life, but on the books we have
read, the agreeable objects we have had before our eyes, the
pleasant places we have visited, the intercourses of friendship
by which our hearts have been made glad ; together with
the aspirations which have ennobled, and the hopes which
have cheered us. We should "taste in thought again" the
sweet hours spent by the sea, in the green fields, and in the
woods, and the shining, balmy, fragrant moments, each in
itself a little summer, brought by the tones, the smiles, the
ton eh, of our Beloved. These are the things that make Life.
* Martineau, "Endeavors after the Christian Life."
22
254 AGE NO MATTER OF BIRTH-DAYS.
The study even of a single science adds many years to one's
biography. For he who busies himself with chemistry, or
botany, or geology, enjoys a thousand pleasant thoughts in
the same space of clock-time wherein the indolent and incu-
rious know but one; and every onward step in discovery
becomes a new elixir vitce. The invention of logarithms,
says Laplace, has "lengthened the life of the astronomer."
As truly may it be said that the invention of the microscope
has lengthened the life of the physiologist. Age, accord-
ingly, or, as it would be better to call it, oldness, in its high-
est idea, is no mere matter of birth-days. The oldest man,
truly so called, is he who, giving a free and cheerful recog-
nition to life, in its depth, variety, and majesty, has enjoyed
the largest number of agreeable spiritual experiences, and
retains them vividly before his mind.
156. "Old," in the popular sense of aged and decrepid as
to body, denotes a state of things which pertains to man
only in his animal, temporal relations. This kind of oldness
goes along with eating, drinking, and so forth ; the idea of
it, therefore, should be wholly detached from the mind when
we would think of man in his highest or spiritual reality.
The soul that is in right order concerns itself little about
physical age, no more than about death ; for youth and life
preoccupy its interest. Neither does it feel old age to be an
evil. Physical old age, like mortality, is afflictive in pro-
portion to the want of inward strength to fall back upon.
" It is painful," says one who has j)roved the value of such
strength, " it is painful to grow old, to lose by degrees the
suppleness, strength, and activity of the body; to perceive
each day our organs becoming weaker; but when we feel
that the soul, constantly exercised, becomes daily more
reflective, more mistress of herself, more skilful to avoid,
more strong to sustain, without yielding to the shock of
accidents, gaining on the one hand Avhat we lose upon the
THE TIME FOR ENJOYMENT NEVER PASSED. 255
other, then we are no longer sensible of growing old." If
the soul be not young, youth as to birth-days has no advan-
tage over senility. To men who have no resource in them-
selves for being happy, every age is burdensome; and were
those who complain of the shortness of life as bringing them
so soon to the weakness and torpidity of old age, to live for
seven hundred years instead of seventy, they would be none
the better off. People past their bodily prime are often
heard com.plaining of the decline and degeneracy of things.
Since they were young, they say, the world has lost its old
simplicities, beauty is tarnished, and novelty at an end.
What does it amount to? Simply, that "they who utter
these dismal ditties have not cared to keep alive the sympa-
thies which carry a man along with his age; that they have
not cultivated a habit of genial observation, but have shut
themselves up in self and sophistication, under the delusion
that the pleasures of youth belong only to the young in
years. Foolish and lamentable error. If men have little
or no pleasure in their experience of the changes which are
brought by increase of years, it is because they are not good
and wise enough to find and contemplate the past in the
present, and thus induce a sweet and meditative continuity
of earliest life." Dullness is not in lapse of years, but in the
unskilful use of them; the tedium of a long journey is not
in the miles, but in the complainer; if time be tiresome, it
is because we do not spin amusement out of ourselves, as
silkworms spin their silk. With the man who has really
lived, the time is never past for sublime pleasures. Though
many he enjoyed in his youth may no longer be accessible,
by reason of his failing muscles, his capacity for the attain-
able is free and buoyant to the last.
My lieart leaps up when I beliold
Tlie rainbow in the skv !
256 THE INTELLECT IN ADVANCED LIFE.
So was it when I was a boy;
So is it now I am a man ;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die !
157. While true old age is that honorable and happy
state of soul which intellectual and emotional activities in-
duce, there is thus another oldness which comes of those
activities being checked in their very start, or turned astray
from the course wherein alone are youth and life. How
many are there who have scarcely run a score of birth-days,
yet are already sere in spirit! How many are there, again,
who, though the snow may have long Avhitened the moun-
tain tops, are green with all the spring freshness of thought
and feeling, and who dispel, by their manner, all idea of
their being "old." Time, necessarily, nowhere implies
youth : Time, necessarily, makes no one old. Those who are
old at sixty or seventy are not made old by lapse of years;
they have been old ever since they were twenty or thirty.
Doubtless, here and there, men are made old by the attrition
of care and distress on account of others, — and none are
more to be sympathized with than these; but in the majority
of cases, the oldness we are speaking of conies of sloth or
weakness, the result probably of crushing injuries in early
years — bad school discipline taking the first place, — or it
comes of indifference to religious principle, and thus of
giving Avay to "envy, hatred and malice;" since nothing
sooner cankers and shrivels the spirit than uncharitable, un-
generous, and selfish habits of will. That which makes old,
in the sense of loss of youth of spirit, is not Time, but the
consuming action of evil passions, or neglecting to nourish
the mind with wisdom. Youth, under right culture, may be
preserved to the very last. Is it not promised to the obe-
dient, that "the child shall die an hundred years old?''
"Age," well observes Mr. Dendy, in his nice little book. The
AGE A RELATIVE TERM. 257
Pilgrimage of Tliouglit, " is a mere relative term, and ought
not to be employed quoad time, but quoad condition. A
thousand disturbing causes may reduce to apathy or imbe-
cility the opening intellect of youth; and rej)ose, or manage-
ment, or habits of devotion, may render it perennial and
energetic to the very close of life." How many and splendid
are the examples of the latter! Mason, on his seventy-
second birth-day, wrote one of the most beautiful sonnets in
our language. Jussieu employed himself, between his
eighty-third and eighty-eighth year, in dictating a new edi-
tion of his Introduction to Botany; and this not in his
mother tongue, but in choice Latin. Goethe was four-score
when he completed the second part of Faust. The late
Marquis Wellesley Avas nearly or quite eighty-two when he
produced those extraordinary verses, —
Fons Salutis ! Vita ! Fides mea !
158. Youth, in fact, viewed as to its essential qualities, is
not a state into which we are born, and which we groAv out
of, and leave behind, but a state to which we gradually ad-
vance. We are born old, not young. We enter the world
blind, deaf, senseless, emotionless, passionless, ignorant; all
which conditions are characteristic of oldness, and are repre-
sentatively expressed in the bald head, the toothless gums,
the tottering gait, and the dozen other physical infirmities
and negations which belong alike to senility and infancy.
By degrees only do we become j'oung, learning in succession
to observe, to wish, to will, to think, to love, to hope. If
the expanding intellect and affections be affixed, under
kindly guidance, to what is truthful and good, youth spreads
its wings, and goes on growing in everlasting life ; if they be
affixed, under vicious or repressing influences, to what is
base or ignoble, the beautiful progression is arrested, and
the spirit relapses into its original, vacant old age. How it
22 »
258 CULTURE OF THE AFFECTIONS.
is that "the angels are for ever growing younger," we may
readily understand by noting the history of the soul which
earnestly and prayerfully seeks and strives to be angelic;
for this is a history of forsaking the evil and choosing the
good, bringing youth as its result, and foretelling on earth
the law of heaven.
159. Now to attain to this ha]Dpy state of youth, and thus
virtually to lengthen life, requires but that the spiritual
energies of our nature should be allowed fiill, fair play.
Giving them their due, old age itself, called dark and feeble,
may yet be rendered lovely. It is not only the "mind" or
understanding that must be cultivated; the heart must be
attended to no less carefully. Nothing is more importaat to
remember in reference to self-culture, than that intellectual
pursuits call forth only half our nature. True, they infuse
a wonderful duration into life as exercises of the attention,
the memory, and the agreeable power of investigating the
relations of things. But in order to the full realization of
life, there is needed also the play of the affections. We
must love, as well as think, in order truly to live. Bad as
is intellectual sloth, to neglect the cultivation of the feelings
is worse. There is no idleness so ruinous as that of the
heart. By the affections, as already said, is not meant love
towards certain of our fellow-creatures only, and preemi-
nently towards One ; though this, next to love of the Father
of all, is their most excellent activity. The affections are
the dispositions of the Will, love to one's wife, and child,
and neighbor, forming a part of them. The dispositions of
the Will give quality and intensity to a man's life in a much
higher degree than do the perceptions of the understanding.
"Show me what thou truly lovest," says Fichte, in that
beautiful book, The Way to the Blessed Life, "show me
what thou truly lovest, show me what thou seekest and
strivest for with thy whole heart, when thou hopest to attain
LIFE IS LOVE. 259
to true enjoyment, and thou hast hereby shown me thy life.
What thou lovest, is that thou livest. This very love is
thy life, the root, the seat, the central point of thy being."
Nothing is attainable unless we love it. "AVe can sometimes
love that which we do not understand, but it is impossible
clearly to understand what we do not love." Learn to love
loell is therefore the first and golden rule of wisdom. Our
true birth-day is when we begin consciously to love the good
and comely, and our true birth-place the scene of that love's
arising. Eve, rather than Adam, was called "Life,"
though our first father, considered physically, was equally
if not more deserving of the name, because in woman the
Affections predominate, as in man the intellectual powers.
Loss of the power of loving is loss of life. Directly we cease
to love a thing, it no longer has any of the beauty of life for
us, nor, though the hands may still possess it, can we any
longer call it our own. AflTection, therefore, alone makes
possession sacred. No man can avoid loving, nor can he
avoid loving that which God gave him for his affections'
chief delight. Hence it was that the monks, when they
made their vow of celibacy, and refused to love woman in
her proper person, still were unable to escape loving her in
the ideal, and took her image in the Virgin, able to dispense
so much the more easily with the genuine, the more ardently
they attached themselves to the imaginary. To love the
Virgin may be pious, abstractedly, and may bring many
pleasant thoughts; but real, practical piety, as well as wis-
dom, is to get a terrestrial wife, and love her. You have
the advantage, to say the least, of her society. As Adolphe
Karr says, in "A Tour round my Garden," talking of the
Hamadryads, " I love women under trees, not in them." True
reason and religion have an eye for the earth as well as for
heaven. Like the cedar of Lebanon, they have their
branches turned to the sky, and soaring beautifully, but
260 LIFE IS LOVE,
they have their roots in the soil beneath. Hence then the
great and impregnable axiom that Life is Love. Commonly
restricted to the play of the amative and philoprogenitive
feelings, Love properly denotes the energy, in a happy and
beautiful direction, of the entire spiritual nature. It is in
this high, impartial, unsensual sense of the word, of course,
that we are to be understood as using it. In a derivative
sense, it denotes also the ruling desire of a man ; that dispo-
sition of the will which is predominant with him, and which
may or may not be in concord with the intellect. Every
man has such a desire. It is ever secretly present to him,
and, though he may be immediately occupied with some-
thing else, unconsciously governs all his actions.
160. Every one proves that life is love:- — that we live
only when in union with what \sq love. Do we not feel it
daily? Absence from what we love is not life, but only
dull, uninteresting time. " It is but a little part of our life
that we live," says an ancient poet ; " the whole space of it
is not life, but time only."* Many are the sayings which
record how wide-spread has been this experience : — Vita in
exilio vitalis non est.'\ Nee voluptas sine vita, nee vita sine
voluptate. Life away from that which makes the enjoyment
of life, the Greeks called /3/oc dfdtoz, " lifeless life." When
others of the ancients shouted, " King, live forever !" it
was but a metaphorical way of saying, "O King! so long
as you live, may you be prosperous and happy !" Life and
* Menander, in a fragment preserved by Stobeeus, Sententice, Tom.
2, Tit. 108.
f Thus Eomeo, —
There is no world without Verona's walls,
But purgatory, torture, hell itself.
Hence banished is banish'd from the world.
And world's exile is death.
LIFE AND TIME. 261
well-being are in their briefest definition, union with the ob-
ject of our love ; death and ill-being are the reverse. The
poet addresses his beloved as — " My life ! my soul !" but
what does he in this beyond clothing in speech Avhat all
men utter silently ? Whatever be the object of our leading
affection, where the heart is, there too is our life ; and as we
are beings directly constituted for sympathy and intimate
communion with one of comj)lementary sex, life is real to
us in the degree that there is least absolute separation from
the chosen. They only can be truly said to live who have
a faithful heart to receive and recijDrocate the outpouring
of their own. It is because all life, whether physical, physi-
ological or spiritual, is a state of marriage, or the union of
two complementary forces, acting and reacting; and because
all marriage, rightfully so called, is life ; that the bitterest
of privations is prolonged severance from one's other self,
and the sweetest of delights, reunion and companionship
with her. The presence of those we love is a double life.
Hence also the enthusiasm of the lover, emphatically so
called, when in the society of his beloved ; and his pining
loneliness when away from her ; — her oivn enthusiasm, her
own solitude, no less. " Five days," says Clemanthe, —
" Five days.
Five melancholy clays I have not seen him."
To the genuinely fond and faithful, the world has in it two
places only — that where she is, and that where she is not.
Yet has the lover his gay as well as his lonely hours, since
the love which is his life beguiles the mind into one long
unbroken thought of the beloved, and since into every
thought and affection of human nature enter both summer
and winter. The summer of his absence is whenever he
sees what is beautiful, whether in nature or art, for the
Beautiful is ever the likeness of her he loves. He goes into
262 CONJUGAL LOVE.
the still country, and while other men see flowers, and clear
streams, and golden and purple sunsets, he only sees the fea-
tures of the wished-for. Who that has read Eloisa cannot
but remember St. Preux in the Valais ?
Te loquor absentum : te vox mea nominat unam !
Nulla venit sine te nox mihi, nulla dies !
(Ovid. Tristia, Lib. iii. EI. iii.)
" Thee, beloved consort, I talk to, far away ; thee alone does my
voice name ; no night, no day, comes to me uncheered by thy sweet
vision."
161. But the brilliant charms of sexal love, and the
richly glad life which it fashions, are not the lot of all.
That many of both sexes should remain celibate all their
lives is something more than an accident. It is an arrange-
ment of Providence for great and benevolent uses which it
is not difficult to estimate. Moreover, of no one of youthful
years can it be affirmed that they shall unquestionably en-
joy the life which comes of sexal love. Therefore is it wis-
dom to encourage those other loves which, though they may
not cast upon our pilgrimage an equal radiance, are solid,
substantial, enduring, independent of time and place.
These are, first, the love of the performance of good uses, in
the lecture-room, the Sunday-school, the domestic circle,
wherever, in a word, there may be opportunity of sharing
Avith others Avhat Providence has blessed us with, each one
according to his aptitude and ability ; secondly, the love of
nature. Cultivating these loves, the intellect itself expands
and grows wealthier. If the love of these things can be en-
joyed along with the love that has its root in sexal differ-
ence, it is a joy untold. " Life," says Schiller, writing to
his friend Korner, " life at the side of a beloved wife is a
different thing from what it is to one who is alone — even in
summer. Now, for the first time, I can thoroughly enjoy
CONJUGAL LOVE. 268
Nature, and in her, myself too." A wife should be chosen
for " her own sweet sake alone," hut if the choice be true, we
secure at the same moment, an enlarged aptitude for all mi-
nor loves. All minor loves indeed, after some mode or
other, enter into and become a part of true, fond conjugal
love, which thus procures to its possessors a summary or
compend of all the riches of the world. " With persons
whom we love," says one of the most charming of authors,
" sentiment fortifies the mind as well as the heart ; and they
who are thus attached, have little need to search for ideas
elsewhere."- — (J. J. Rousseau. Confessions, Part ii., Book 2.)
CHAPTER XV.
THE AFFMCTIONS IN JtEI^ATlOK TO JOIFE. EOVE OF NA-
TURE.
162. FiEST then, as to good uses. ISTo man is happier
than he who loves and fulfills that particular work for the
world which falls to his share. Even though the full under-
standing of his work, and of its ultimate value, may not be
present with him ; if he but love it, — always assuming that
his conscience approves, — it brings an abounding satisfac-
tion. Indeed, we none of us fully comprehend our office,
nor the issue we are working for. To man is entrusted the
nature of his actions, not the result of them. This, God
keeps out of our sight. The most trivial act doubtless goes
to the promotion of a multitude of ends, distant it may be
from us, but only as the leaves of a tree are distant from
their supplying rootlets. And therefore does it behoove us to
be diligent in our several spheres. We should work like the
bees, sedulous to collect all the honey within our reach, but
leaving to Providence to order what shall come of it. The
good which our exertions effect, may rarely or never become
visible. In teaching, which is the readiest of good uses,
how often does all exertion seem m vain. Our duty is never-
theless to go on, and strive to do all we can. " Every man,"
says Fichte, in the beautiful book already quoted, "every
man should go on working, never debating within himself,
nor wavering in doubt, whether it may succeed, but labor as
if of necessity it must succeed." Between the result of single
264
GOOD ENDEAVORS KEVER WASTED. 265
efforts and the end we have in view, and the magnitude of
the obstacles to be overcome, there may often appear a large
and painful disproportion ; but we must not allow ourselves
to be discouraged by seemings; warm, hearty, sunny endea-
vor will unfliilingly meet with its reward. Good uses are
never without result. Once enacted, they become a part of
the moral world; they give to it new enrichment and beauty,
and the whole universe partakes of their influence. They
may not return in the shape wherein played forth, but like-
lier after the manner of seeds, which never forget to turn to
flowers. "Philosophers tell us that since the creation of the
world, not one particle of matter has been lost. It may
have passed mto new shapes, it may have combined with
other elements, it may have floated away in vapor; but it
comes back some time, in the dew-drop or the rain, helping
the leaf to grow, and the fruit to swell ; through all its wan-
derings and transformations Providence watches over and
directs it. So is it with every generous and self-denying
effort. It may escape our observation, and be utterly for-
gotten ; it may seem to have been utterly in vain, but it has
painted itself on the eternal world, and is never effaced."
Nothing that has the ideas and principles of heaven in it
can die or be fruitless.
Talk not of wasted affection ; affection never was wasted ;
If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning
Back to their spring, like the rain, shall fill it full of refreshment;
That which the fountain sends forth, returns again to the fountain.*
Carlyle, in that extraordinary book. Sartor Resartus, shows
us that it is from our work we gain most of our self-knoiv-
ledge, — one of the most important desiderata of life. "Our
* See a beautiful theory of the Fine Arts, founded on these great
truths, in Mrs. Child's Letters from New York.
23 M
266 LOVE OF NATURE.
works," he says, " are tlie mirror within which the spirit first
sees its natural lineaments. 'Know thyself is an impossi-
ble precept till it be translated into this partially possible
one. Know what thou canst work at." Work is obedience,
and self-knoAvledge is invaluable, and thus is proved over
again that duty and interest are but two names for one fact.
163. Secondly, as to the "love of nature." This is not
to be understood technically. People who by its exercise
carry their youth along with them, may not prove to be
l)otanists or geologists. Quite as likely they Avill not. But
it will rarely prove that they have not accustomed them-
selves to an earnest and constant friendship with that of
which geology, and botany, and all sciences, barely as such,
are only the husks and coverings. They have lived in that
which is the spirit and life of all love and all knowledge —
the Poetic sentiment. They have lived in the poetry of
common things; not necessarily in written poetry, but in the
love of the omnipresent ingredients of poetry existing
throughout creation, and which are the ingredients likewise
of all science and philosophy, sacred and moral as well as
physical ; whereby, in fact, they are true poets, though they
may never have written a single verse. They have learned,
in a word, to feel and to see; — arts which, though they may
seem native and universal, and which, exercised after the
manner of quadrupeds, are common enough, in reality are
rarely practiced. Happy the man whose walk, in calm
April evenings, is arrested by the odor from the opening
buds of the balsam poplar. Happy again, who, when he
visits the sea-side, is quick to the
Crimson weeds ■which spreading flow,
Or lie like pictures on the sand below ;
With all those bright red pebbles that the sun
Through the small waves so softly shines upon.
POETRY OF COMMON THINGS. 267
There is no greater mistake than to suppose that a minute
knowledge of nature is requisite either to the love or to the
enjoyment of it. Every man who in his walks derives
pleasure from the common things of creation, who looks to
the fields, the woods, the mountains, and the things that are
therein, and reflects upon what he sees, has the true spirit
of the naturalist within him, and so far is a botanist and
geologist ; thereby is he proved also to be of poetic tempera-
ment, for in these objects is the soul of poetry contained ;
it is from.no other that the poet draws his inspiration, since
in nature is the only fund of great ideas. " Persons," says
the author of Kathemerina, "who in regard to science may
be a whole encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world — who
do not knoAV where to look for the Bear, or the place of a
single star, may yet have as much pleasure in the sight of
nature as those who know its secrets ; the poetry of common
life does not require men to be versed in philosoiDhy ; Nature
never intended that all her children should be engaged in
what are pompously called ' solid studies.' " In these com-
mon things of earth lies far more power to delight us than
people in general know of. All jDossess them in some sort,
as all possess the atmosphere ; but few appreciate them so
highly as they deserve, or extract the full value from them.
How beautifully is their Avorth acknowledged in the Song
of the Three Children — " all ye works of the Lord, bless
ye the Lord !" Strange to say, the educated classes seem
rather to dislike than to favor common things. They seem
to prefer the maxim quce rara, cava. Not so the man of
genius. Him we may almost recognize by his sympathy
with the familiar and unpretending. The finest understand-
mgs, and the noblest souls, says Charron, are the most uni-
versal and free. Accustomed to behold the grand whole of
things, to such minds all alike "discourse sweet music,"
Whether it be the objects of nature, or the hearts of man-
268 CHARM OF SIMPLE-MINDEDNESS,
kind, the simple and plain are as pleasing as the great and
lustrous. To him, in fact, who realizes the beauty and the
freshness of common things, who looks with love upon
nature in all its developments, not questioning within himself
whether any jiarticular part is more pleasing than another,
but attaching himself to the whole, as a great and beautiful
power capable of imparting purest joy, there is never any
need to search for pleasure ;
The meanest floweret of the vale.
The simplest note that swells the gale,
The common sun, the air, the skies,
To him are opening Paradise.
Hence too we find such mmds taking fullness of delight in
little children, their pretty faces, and innocent smiling ges-
tures ; glad also to hold intercourse with what are called
"common peojDle," who so far from being the "vulgar
people" of the world, include no small portion of " nature's
aristocracy." The vulgar are not necessarily the ignorant,
but the proud and the selfish, whatever their rank in society.
The pleasure such minds receive, they shed around. As
men of genius have faith and joy in simple minds, so these
latter, " timid before the crowd, mute before merely clever
people, feel quite at ease in the presence of a man of genius.
There is a sympathy of simplicity between them." Beau-
tifiil as are the letters of the highly-cultivated, none are so
sweet and touching as those that breathe the feelings and
sentiments of the simple-minded, especially of the kind-
hearted, amiable woman, whose insight and education
qualify her to appreciate her husband, without ever aspiring
to compete with him. "Heaven only knows how many
simple letters from simple-minded women, have been kissed,
cherished, wept over, by men of far loftier intellect. So
will it always be to the end of time. It is a lesson worth
THE ESSENCE OF POETRY. 269
learning by tliose young creatui-es who seek to allure by
their accomplishments, or dazzle with their wit, that though
he may admire, no man ever loves a woman for these things.
He loves her for what is essentially distinct from, though by
no means incompatible with them — her woman's nature and
her woman's heart, guileless, simple, and unaffected. This
is why we so often see a man of high intellectual power
passing by the De Stiiels and Corinnes to take into his
bosom some way-side flower, who has nothing on earth to
make her worthy of him, except that she is, Avhat so few of
your ' female celebrities' are — a true woman." In fine,
whoever teaches us how to enjoy common things, is our
greatest benefactor. So to represent familiar objects as to
awaken the minds of others to that freshness of feeling con-
cerning them whicli is the great j^rivilege of genius, is one
of the divinest uses human nature can fulfill.
164. It is the very same jDoetic sentiment which shows
itself in the love of good uses; also in genuine sexal love.
It is the same, indeed, which forms the mainspring of true
intellectual activity. Wherever any spiritual energy is so
exercised as to realize to a man the glory and blessedness of
Life, it is the Poetic sentiment seeking to express itself.
Therefore would it be no misuse of terms to say that, in its
genuine realization, life is Poetry; that divine habitude of
soul which "lifts the veil from before the hidden beauty of
the world, and makes familiar things be as though they
were not familiar;" which, discerning the holiness, the love-
liness, the bright side of all things, makes joy more joyful
and sorrow less sad, gives new comeliness to virtue and reli-
gion, and "makes the whole human race grow more noble
in our eyes." The very essence of poetry lies in its power
to beautify and exalt, and what is this but to lift into a
higher realization of life?
23 » -
270 THE IMAGINATION IX EEFERENCE TO LIFE.
We live by admiration, hope, and love ;
And even as these are well and wisely fixed.
In dignit}^ of being we ascend.
Therefore also is perennial youth identified with the encou-
ragement and culture, primarily, of the Imagination, one of
heaven's most gracious gifts to man, and therefore one of the
most practically useful. Concerned not only with science,
and the penetration of the secrets of nature. Imagination is
a first essential to human happiness. It is by the play of
the imagination, unconsciously it may be, that we are
strengthened for the common avocations of life, and that
they are rendered not only untiresome, but agreeable; it is
by the play of the imagination, no less unconsciously it may
be, that every emotion of pleasure is vitalized. Knowledge
in itself, feeling in itself, is inanimate. How lovely the
rose! Where is the man who is indifferent to it? Yet the
rose does not please simply because it is red, nor because so
fragrant, nor because of its configuration, nor even from the
combination of all these properties. It pleases because the
imagination connects it with something human and divine,
probably the cheek of woman. "Divine," we say, because
the imagination is the faculty which preeminently links us
to heaven, its proper home; and because whatever is vitally
and essentially human is an expression of something con-
tained in Him of whom man is the image and likeness.
More nearly than we suppose is imagination connected with
morality and religion. So with everything else that men
delight in. The senses view one thing, the imagination
views another — higher, lovelier, immortal. Whatever seems
to gratify, by pleasing the senses, owes its charms to the
pencil of the incomparable artist within. An "unimagina-
tive man," absolutely so styled, or self-styling, is a non-
existence. Some individuals may be more imaginative than
others, but absolute unimaginativeness is one of the nega-
EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 271
tions which degrade brutes. Imagination is the very essence
of Hope, without which there is no life. Holding fast when
all other parts are threatened with destruction, and bidding
defiance to the storms of devastation, Hope, the rebuilder
and regenerator, fresh, every morning, like the manna from
heaven, represents, in the little world of man, the sanatory
powers which maintain nature in its total. Spero, "I hope,"
is the same word as spiro, "I breathe;" spes is only another
name for the "breath of life."* He who has no future in
prospect, is already dead. Life is one incessant wish to live
" in the thick of all we desire, some day, and meanwhile we
do live there as well as hope and imagination can con-
trive it."
165. The love of nature, if we Avould prove how long and
beautiful it makes existence, must not be left as a mere
amusement that can be taken to at any time. Like the love
of virtue, it must be commenced in youth. A man may
learn a language or a science when he is grown up, but he
cannot then learn to love nature. This love he must bring
with him from his boyhood, Avhen it germinates in all,
though with most dried up in its earliest leaf How many
who have mildewed and rusted amid the mock pleasures of
towns, would fain return, when too late, to their first, young
love. Doubtless every man carries with him some remnant
of his early love for nature, but it is not that deep, animating
love which, by its freshness and fullness, keeps the heart
green. Vitally to affect us, it must grow with our growth,
and strengthen with our strength. Hence the paramount
■" Our English word "hope" conveys precisely the same idea,
being cognate with the word "gape," that is, to open the mouth wide
in order to breathe freely. The exchange of g and h is a very com-
mon occurrence; "give" and "have," for instance, are etymolo-
gically the same.
272 LEARN TO OBSERVE.
value, in the education of youth, of Natural History; or at
least of a fostering of the native taste in the human heart
for the poetical contemplation of natural objects and pheno-
mena. " Let everything be taught a girl," sajs one of the
most sagacious of educationists, "let everything be taught a
girl," and a boy as well, "which forms and exercises the
habit of attention, and the poAver of judging things by the
eye. Consequently, Botany, that inexhaustible, tranquil,
ever-interesting science, attaching the mind to nature with
bonds of flowers. Then Astronomy, not the properly ma-
thematical, but the Lichtenbergian and religious, which with
the expansion of the universe, expands the mind."* Espe-
cially should these things be taught to the children of the
poor, whose means of indulgence in costly pleasures are so
scanty. There is not a child who does not delight in wild
flowers, and whose intelligence cannot be led, if kindly dealt
with, to find in Botany a pleasure Avhich of all others re-
quires least outlay of time and money, and is most easily
and permanently within reach. To suppose that the poor
are less able to learn than the rich, that they have not
"minds" for such things, and that they are adapted only for
operatives and domestic servants, is most thoughtless. Many
a servant girl has as much taste and talent as her mistress
and the young ladies.
166. It is the forming and strengthening this habit of at-
tention which stamps so much efficiency on natural history,
even in its most prosaic pursuit. When Solomon tells us
with all our gettings to " get understanding," it is but an-
other way of saying, Learn to observe. One of the chief
functions, therefore, of the instructor of youth, if unable to
communicate positive knowledge of natural objects, should
be so to consolidate the interest of the youthful mind in
* J. P. Richter. Levana, or the Doctrine of Education, p. 255
HOW TO KEEP THE HEART YOUNG. 273
what of its own free will it is never slow to observe, that the
country shall continue, what it may be to all, a perennial
gladness and solace, not unintelligently, but because
thronged with old friends. A human heart can never grow
old if it bring with it from its childhood a lively interest in
the re-appearance of sjDring flowers, the habits of birds and
insects, the changing tints of the October leaves. The natu-
ralist's poem is the Pleasures of Memory and the Pleasures
of Hope both in one. He has always a to-morrow to his
pleasures, whereas with most there is only a yesterday and
to-day. Let the young not neglect or despise these sweet
pleasures, and they will find that when old they will not de-
part from them. Unhappily, children's love of nature is
for the most part not only not encouraged, but checked and
deadened. How else is it that the mass of mankind — say
only of the " educated " and well-to-do — how else is it that
they are so indiiferent to the works of creation, except in so
far as they can be made to subserve some selfish end? Who
is to blame ? Not He who gave them, for nothing is put in
the presence of mankind that the universal human intellect
may not appreciate. Neither is it from lack of opportunity
or invitation. It is the half-system of teaching which, born
of the ruling half-system of theology, loves to dwell with it
among the tombs, instead of coming out into the light and
pure air of genuine philosophy and genuine Christianity.
The poor lad of the streets, to whom the very daisy and
buttercup are strange exotics, whose holiday is with marbles
down in the dust, is in vital . education no worse ofif than
many a little gentleman who gets his prizes for Latin*
* No sort of disparagement of Latin is here intended. We know
its value too well. But liow inordinately and ridiculously the dead
languages have been honored, to tlie almost total exclusion of other
branches of knowledge, is sufficiently notorious. See the clever ar-
M »
274 CLASSICAL EDUCATION.
Drill a boy at mere book-lessons, and tlie chances are that
either he becomes a pedant, or disgusted with learning and
books for the whole of his life after ; Avhereas in using natu-
ral history as a lever of education, you secure numberless
and most happy opportunities for communicating both
knowledge and the taste for it, together with just and amia-
ble sentiments. It is one of the best of mental disciplines.
No mere pastime for the observation and the memory, na-
tural history, pursued seriously and connectedly, calls for
the activity of every faculty of the mind. To take a grass
or a fern, and determine in succession its family, genus, and
species, is an educational exercise little, if at all inferior
to the verification of a theorem of Euclid. Let there
be a deep, unsophisticated love of nature, and it will even
serve in the place of much that is commonly called educa-
tion. How much grace and dignity does the love of nature
give to minds in other respects simple and scantily furnished,
especially in females. There may be no learning, there may
be no " accomplishments," but if there be a deep, fond love
of nature, it compensates for the want of all, and we find a
more lively and engaging companionship than in the society
of the profoundest scholar who is void of it. People should
cultivate this love, and bring up their children in it, if they
Avould but realize the full beauty of the commonest objects
of household ornament. Nobody knows how to like shells
who has not collected them on the firm wet sand uncovered
by the retiring waves. Nobody knows how to like flowers
who has not gathered primroses beneath the tender foliage
of the spring. Where, moreover, we find this love present,
we may take it as a sign of still better things, seeing that its
tide in the Westminster Review for October, 1853, on Classical
Education, its use and abuse; or better still, Mr. Chapman's reprint
of it, with the appendix of extracts from cotemporary writers
N-ATUllAL HISTORY. ' 275
very province is to refine. When, on entering a house, you
see a few choice flowers tastefully arranged, you may expect
a shelf of wise and good books not far off. And so with the
manifestation of the soul.
167. The love of nature requires no peculiar circum-
stances. Its sphere is Avherever the sun is shining, because
it addresses itself to what the listless call weeds and stones,
finding poetry and delight where the dull cry all is barren.
It revels in a glorious landscape, but where the landscape is
not, it constructs one in miniature for itself Nothing in
the world is absolutely uninteresting to it, nor can be — what
is there indeed that, in any relation, has lost its primal qua-
lity of " very good ?" What is there that we should not es-
teem it a privilege to possess, although it be " common ?"
Is it nothing to have the frost-flowers on the window-panes ?
Is it nothing to have the blue sky? Is it nothing to have
the stars and the rainbow? Oh, what grand and awful
things surround us, if we will but look forth upon them !
But because they are " without money and without price,"
we make nought of them; refusing to enjoy, because accept-
ance and admiration alone are asked. That sublime sense
of the wonderful which they excite in us when children, is
one of the sentiments we should most anxiously keep alive.
When we cease to view with interest the familiar phenomena
of nature, its rarest and grandest lose in charm. Why do
not preachers speak more of these things ? If the office of
religious teaching be to amend man's heart, surely the study
of the works of God, as well as of his word, deserves some
little notice and recommendation. The religious contempla-
tion of nature has more efficacy in this Avay than mere scho-
lastic theologians suppose. " The moral constitution of
man," beautifully observes Dr. Moore, " is so intimately in
keeping with the outward cosmos, that it is vain to attempt
to regulate our faculties and feelings Avithout respect to the
276 NATURAL HISTORY AND THE PULPIT.
ordinances of God in tlie material creation."* The pulpit is
not the place for lectures on natural history, but neither is it
a place for discarding or forgetting it, at least after the man-
ner of the preachers that be. " In recommending the love
of God to us, how seldom do they refer to those things in
which it is most abundantly and immediately shown !
They insist much on his giving of bread, raiment, and
health (which he gives to all inferior creatures), but they
require us not to thank him for that glory of his works
which he has permitted us alone to perceive. They tell us
often to meditate in the closet ; but they send us not, like
Isaac, into the fields at even. They dwell on the duty of
self-denial, but they exhibit not the duty of delight." To
genuine theology nothing in the world is without signifi-
cance ; nor is it anything unfit for citation in its discourses,
when it would seek to interpret the word of God, and en-
force its teachings. The test of enlightened preaching is its
ability to " consider the lilies," and deduce from their his-
tory religious wisdom. The great defect of what is called
moral and religious teaching, as ordinarily carried on is,
that it continually tells us what we are not to do, whereas
genuine wisdom begins by giving something to be done, and
showing how to do it. In its very simplest form, if you would
keep a child out of mischief, set him to some interesting
employment. " Don't do that," goes for nothing unless fol-
lowed by " do this." That mankind may become more moral
and religious, let those who are anxious for it, administer
less reproof, and give in place of it, an interest in life ; show
how much there is to live for, and how easily procured.
168. The love of nature should be cherished for the sake
of the tranquility it induces. A man can be of importance
to others only when he is himself happy and peaceful, and
* Use of the Body in relation to the Mind. P. 16i:
MOEAL INFLUENCE OF NATUKE. 277
nothing so much tends to make him so as the contemplation
of nature. The serenity we find in the fields and the woods,
and by clear streams, we imbibe into our own hearts, and
thus derive from nature itself the very condition of spirit
which is needful to the enjoyment of it. In towns we may
find diversion, but Ave cannot find repose; calmness, in
which alone can the soul put forth its leaves and blossoms,
is for the solitudes of nature alone to give ; cheerfulness,
which arises only from the peaceful enlightenment of the
spirit, finds in the same its sincerest and warmest friend.
" I wondered," says Rousseau, describing his first experience
of this, " I wondered to find that inanimate beings should
over-rule our most violent passions, and despised the impo-
tence of philosophy for having less power over the soul than
a succession of lifeless objects." It is not the prerogative
of a few. Ask any man who has accustomed himself to
commune with nature, and he will testify that apart from
the intellectual culture attained by scientific acquaintance
with its objects — and apart from the admiration of creative
skill and goodness which they excite — there is in nature a
nameless and subtle influence, analogous to the influence of
human beings, and like that, acting upon us silently and
secretly, but most powerfully. If any would prove it in his
own person, let him go in the refulgent summer to where
the warmth and breeze will wraj) him round ; where he may
hear the singing of birds, and the sound of leaves and
boughs stirred by the wind, so like the grand, perpetual
song of the sea; where he can view without efibrt, the
smooth, green grass, stretching far away, interrupted only
by masses of the heavy, sumptuous foliage of the year's
glorious centre ; Avater in the distance, its ripples lighted by
the sun ; let him go alone amid these things, or even a small
part of them, and live with them for half an hour, then say
seriously, if he can, that he has not felt his spirit breathed
2i
2ry THE SPIRITUAL EVER NEAR US.
on by some unseen Power, and ascend under that breath
into a holier life. It is good to leave other people some-
times, even to leave our own thoughts, and to dwell amidst
this mysterious, powerful, moulding influence, submitting
our whole being to it, passively. If we take calmness with
us, that calmness transmutes into religion ; if we take
trouble and disquietude, they melt away. "When the vex-
ations of the world have broken in upon me," says Water-
ton, " I go away for an hour or two amid the birds of the
valley, and seldom fail to return with better feelings than
when I set out." Doubtless it is true that nature is
" colored by the spirit ;" that it dons a festive or a mourning-
garment according as its master does : that in nature of
itself, there is nothing either sad or joyful. But none of
this is incompatibly true. What soothes, ameliorates, and
ennobles us when in the presence of nature, consists not in
the objects we find there, but in the ministrations from the
spiritual world, which, by going into that sacred and peaceful
presence, we provide with congenial opportunity. For it is
one of the subljniest laAvs of Divine Providence that spiritual
gifts (which are influences on the heart), shall always be
best conferred in the presence of their material representa-
tives. Hence the institution of the representative bread
and wine, of sacrifices on altars, of baptism, and of every
other genuine religious rite and ceremonial. Hence likewise
the taking of the disciples to the sea-shore, the mountain,
and the corn-fields. The spiritual is ever near to us, but it
is in the solitudes of nature, when we are face to face with
the unmarred works of God, that our hearts are most acces-
sible to his inspirations. These it is which refresh us ; not
the sunshine and the landscape : as in reading the Bible, it
is not the reception of the words by the eye which invigor-
ates, but that Avhich during our reading is infused into the
soul. Let us not unduly exalt nature. People say God
TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY. 279
made the country, and man made the town, as if the latter
were altogether evil. Both have their sanctities, and both
their mighty influence for good. How many are the sweet,
endeared and endearing Homes, where the affections, taste,
elegance, and holy communings beautifully intermingle, and
sustain each other's life. The true place to live in is a great .^ , ,-^
city. If vice be there, and turbulence, still it is there only
that we get society, stimulus, libraries.
CHAPTER XVI.
TME INTJET^IjECTUAIj FACULTIES IJf MELATIOK TO LIFE.
169. More readily to apprehend the nature and use of
the spiritual faculties, esj)ecially those which belong to the
Intellectual province of the soul, we may here briefly con-
sider the fine correspondence which they hold with physical
Hunger and Thirst, and the means by which the latter are
satisfied and allayed. The hunger and thirst of the body
represent our spiritual desires and longings; the eating and
drinking which appease them are counterparts, respectively,
of the solacing of the affections with what they love, and of
the acquisition of knowledge by the understanding. Mutatis
mutandis, all the governing principles, requirements, and ac-
tivities of the soul and the body with regard to nourishment,
are the same. They similarly famish under privation of
food, and improve upon generous diet; hunger, which has
done so much for man as a physical affection, has scarcely
done less as a spiritual one. Figuratively, or in acknow-
ledgment of the correspondence, we speak of feeding our
hopes, thirsting for knowledge, listening with avidity, im-
bibing information. When we acquire that information, we
"digest it, — we "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest."
How beautiful are the allusions of the poets !
My lieart is thirsty for that noble pl.eclge ! — Julius Ccesar, iv. 3.
Urged by a restless longing, the hunger and thirst of the spirit.
Evangeline.-
280
SPIRITUAL HUNGER AND THIRST. 281
In Ion, the pestilence-stricken, dying mother (fearing to
communicate the infection,) forbears to give a last embrace
to her little child, —
Stifling the mighty hunger of the heart.
What pathos, again, in the unhappy Lady Constance, —
O Lord, my boy, my Arthur, my fair son !
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world;
My widow's comfort, and my sorrow's care !
The "hunger of the heart" is not merely the longing for
that which is beloved, but far away, or denied to it; it is
that beautiful fervency of the affections which makes them
yearn for something to call their own, something that shall
be the secret joy and solace of their life. Of its very nature,
the heart must and will have something to love and be kind
to ; it cannot live without ; it never was intended to ; whence
if precluded from that Avhich it knoAvs of and longs for, but
cannot secure, it will half-unconsciously pet even a dog or a
bird. In Scripture, the native land and home of all true
poetical expression, "eating" denotes the reception in our
souls of the love of God; "drinking" the reception of his
wisdom; these being the Divine elements by which our
spiritual nature is invigorated and sustained, and the gift of
which was rejDresentatively expressed in the miracles of feed-
ing the hungry. It is because all things come of the Divine
Love and Wisdom, and because physical things universally
are images of spiritual ones, that the bodies of all living
creatures require both food and drink, and are constructed
of solids and liquids, and that no vital function ever does
or can take place except through their combined instrument-
ality. Agreeably, thirst is used in the inspired volume to
express desire for truth ; hunger to express aspiration after
love. "Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,
24 »
282 CORRESPONDENCE OF BREAD AND WATER,
come and eat,* yea, come, buy wine and milk without
money and without price!" Of this present life it is said,
"Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteous-
ness;" and in the Apocalypse, of the multitudes of heaven,
that " they never more hunger nor thirst," which means that
in the Better Land is plenitude of wisdom and delight.
Bread, the staff of life, is so often spoken of in the Word
of God, because the representative of heavenly good, or
Divine love, and because there is not a single condition of
life in which we can dispense with that good, although we
may not receive it consciously. A man who will not eat
must needs die in a little time. Correspondingly, the
spiritual life soon becomes extinct, or reduced to its lowest
ebb, if the means which can alone support it be not used.
Hence we are instructed to pray without ceasing, " Give us
this day our daily bread." Ashur, says the promise, which
all may realize, "shall always have bread." Elsewhere Je-
hovah is described as pouring out his spirit on the earth,
and saying, — "I will give water to those which are athirst."
Water is the emblem of truth, as bread is of good. " Who-
soever drinketh of the water I shall give him, shall never
thirst." Perceiving the corresj^ondence, in the inmost of
our minds, we speak of truth, even colloquially, as flowing
from a fountain, also as a sea, and an ocean. "I seem to
myself," said Sir Isaac Newton, "to have been picking up a
few shells upon the beach, while the great ocean of truth lay
all undiscovered before me."
170. Religious or theological truths universally represent
themselves in secular things; as the religious life needs the
divine "flesh and blood," which "except ye eat, ye can have
no life in you," so does the life of temporal intelligence and
* " Eat," as applied to drinking, is similarly used by Homer,-
'eat the fat sheep and excellent sweet wine." — (II. xii. 339.) ■
FOOD FOR THE MIND. 283
emotion need its own appropriate aliments, "the food for the
mind" so often talked of, and which true Benevolence always
remembers to provide, by establishing the means of Educa-
tion. To urge this latter principle would be no more than
to dilate upon one of the oldest texts of common-sense; but
it is not superfluous to observe that were the simple rules of
common-sense which those who have it are so zealous in en-
forcing upon the body, as zealously enforced upon man's
moral and intellectual nature, they would prove the best
practical philosophy. That "food for the mind," moreover,
must be nutritive and Avholesome. "The stalwart and florid
components of a masculine life-hood demand the materials
of vitalization, not those which conserve squalor. The
intellect, as well as the body, demands strong, regular, solid,
aliment. If the human mind," continues one of the most
eloquent preachers of modern times, "grow dwarfish and
enfeebled, it is, ordinarily, because left to deal with common-
place facts, and never summoned to the effort of taking the
span and altitude of broad and lofty disclosures. The under-
standing will gradually bring itself down to the dimensions
of the matters with which alone it is familiarized, till, hav-
ing long been accustomed to contract its powers, it shall lose,
well-nigh, the ability to expand them." Mental culture is
thus, essentially, mental nourishment. We cannot expect to
enjoy "strength of mind," "vigor of mind," "intellectual
power," or by whatever other name the manly energy of the
soul may be designated, unless w^e furnish it with food such
as it can turn into swift, red blood. Neither can Ave expect
to see these things if by training Ave do not teach the soul
how to he hungry, Avhich is to be done by demanding of it
constant, tasking exercise. The laAvs of the body are those
of the mind. Exercise and excitement strengthen and ener-
gize, — though both may be carried to an extreme, and then
be hurtful by exhausting — indolence and habits of insensi-
J84 CURIOSITY THE APPETITE OF THE MIND.
tiveness contract, and debilitate, and at length kill. As a
man may always judge of his physical state of health by
the quality of appetite with which he sits down to his meals,
so may he of his spiritual health by the interest he feels in
J wisdom. Men who realize and thoroughly enjoy their
animal life, do so by virtue of their good Appetite, and by
the legitimate satisfaction of it ; they who live the higher
life of the intellect, do so by virtue of their Curiosity, which
is the appetite of the understanding. No man is truly
happy Avho has not a large curiosity as to the beauties and
riches of the Avorld in which we dwell ; tempered, neverthe-
less, with prudence as to the time, and method, and extent
of his gratifications. Of all the evils man is subject to,
assuredly not the least is wicuriousness ; perhaps it should
be classed among the greatest. Certainly there is no evil
more abounding. How many listen to philosophy, if they
can be said to listen at all, only with polite aversion, as
though the speaker were discoursing in an unknown tongue ;
how many are the minds whose appetite is altogether vitiated
and depraved, Avhich is tantamount to being lost, turning
away from all really substantial food as if it were so much
poison. It needs not that a man be uneducated to be in-
curious. It is not so much of Education commonly so
called, that curiosity comes ; but of quickening the mind
with life to educate itself. The customary endeavor to instil
' a large amount of mere dry, unvitalizing knoAvledge tends
to repress curiosity rather than to excite it. Grammars and
lexicons, whether of language or of' any other form of
knoAvledge, serve oftener to kill than to make aliA^e. Les-
sons, as such, or in the sense of parrot-knoAvledge, are only
" mind-slaughter." If it be desired to promote a good
appetite, whether of mind or body, it is not to be done by
confinement and gorging, which soon destroy it utterly; the
body must be taken into the play-grounds of nature, and
TRUE IDEA OF EDUCATION. 285
the mind be inspired through the imagination, upon which
curiosity itself depends. A child's imagination can hardly
be too much encouraged, provided always that it be guided
to some resting-place, where it can repose awhile, and in due
time, onwards again, but always with an interval. To ex-
cite a child's imagination, sets all its best feelings in motion ;
mere facts are as useless to it as they are dreary ; they die
upon a child's heart like rotten leaves.* Education, in the
popular acceptation of the word, might often be dispensed
with to advantage if Inspiration could be communicated in
place of it. To that genial stimulus of the best energies of
the soul into Avork on their own behalf, which it is the mark
and proud office of a great nature unconsciously to commu-
nicate — that stimulus of which all who have stood in the
presence of such natures, have been rapturously sensible ;
and which they look back upon as the Aurora of their
spiritual day — to that alone should the sacred name of
Education be applied. It was his power of inspiring that
gave such wonderful success to the late truly eminent Pro-
fessor Stuart, of Andover. Many a man of celebrity has
been heard to say — " I first learned to think under the in-
spiration of Mr. Stuart ; he first taught me how to use my
mind ; his first words were an epoch in my history." Stuart
proved more perhaps than any other man has ever done,
that the excellence of a teacher does not consist in lodging
his own ideas safely in the remembrance of his pupils, but
in arousing their individual powers to independent action,
in giving them vitality, hope, fervor, courage, in dispelling
their drowsiness, and spurring them onAvard to self-improve-
* See the excellent remarks on this subject in Hai'riet Martineau's
Home Education, chapter xxii. ; also the article " Civilization" in
Blackwood for January, 1855, p. 26 and onwards.
286 AIM OF THE TRUE TEACHER.
nieiit.* It is to such men and, their influence that Plato
alludes so eloquently; "Inspired by the Muses, they com-
municate the sacred fire to others, who again pass it on to
other minds, and so form whole circles of divine enthusiasts."
Longinus also, in that beautiful passage where he speaks of
those who, though of themselves they little feel the power
of Phoebus, " swell with the inspiring force of those great
and exalted spirits."t The notion that we must be taught
everything is false and destructive. It is better to be taught
very little, provided that a noble curiosity be excited, and
then the object of education is virtually accomplished. The
most extended course of teaching, conducted by the best-
informed masters, often fails to take the anticipated effect ;
it is by that which we acquire for ourselves that we are
really elevated, and it is that alone which lifts us above
other men. What the world calls " great men" owe their
nobility mainly to their self-culture. Great minds, more-
over, it will almost always be found, are such as have had
this invaluable sentiment of curiosity early awakened and
judiciously fostered. The avowed principle of education
with the mother and first intellectual guide of Sir William
Jones was to " excite his curiosity." With curiosity for its
dominant force, the mind becomes open and prepared for
everything ; and although on many points it may long
remain unmformed, it is capable, at a moment's notice, of
receiving information. It is the inquiring boy who usually
becomes the j)hilosophic man, and the philosopher thus en-
gendered who is most likely to " riiDen into the priest," the
highest (and seldomest) development of human nature.
* See the memoir of this eminent man in Kitto's Journal of
Sacred Literature for January, 1853, to which we are indebted for
the above.
f Corapai'e Coningsby, Book 3d, eliapter 2d.
KNOWLEDGE MUST BE ASSIMILATED. 287
What the Boy admires,
The Youth endeavors, and the Man acquires.
The incurious man, on the other hand, is not thus receptive,
and from his very incuriousness, never becomes great.
171. Appetite, after all, must not be mistaken for Acqui-
sition. It is not much reading that builds up wisdom and
life; a man may injure himself and cancel his true life by
careless or ill-timed reading, as readily as he may hurt his
body by unseasonable eating and unwholesome foods. It is
through not properly discriminating between these two
courses and their results, that with many persons there is a
kind of suspicion and distrust of the value of learning. But
that culture, whether of body or soul, is alone injurious,
which has no regard to time, and means, and measure.
"Desultory reading is indeed very mischievous, by fostering
habits of loose, discontinuous thought, and by relaxing the
power of attention, Avhich of all our faculties needs most
care, and is most improved by it. On the other hand, a
well-regulated course of study will no more weaken the mind
than hard exercise will weaken the body ; nor will a strong
understanding be weighed down by its knowledge, any more
than an oak is by its leaves, or than Samson was by his
locks. He whose sinews are drained by his hair, must
already be a weakling."* What we have to do, in order to
be healthy and strong, is not merely to eat, but to assimilate
what we eat. To read merely for reading's sake is almost
as unprofitable as not reading at all. Setting out, in the
first place, with a clear idea of what we wish to learn, which
is eminently important, we must afterAvards, if we would
realize what we have read, reperuse it in thought. This
only makes it truly our own. Better still is it to ^vrite dowji
* Guesses at Truth. 1, 212.
288 PHILOSOPHY OF READING.
the central ideas, or seek to communicate them in conversa-
tion. "All knowledge," says Whipple, "however imposing
in appearance, is but superficial knowledge, if it be merely
the mind's furniture, and not the mind's nutriment. It
must be transmuted into mind, as food into blood, in order
to become wisdom and power. Many of the generals op-
posed to Napoleon understood military science as well as he
did, but he beat them on every occasion where victory de-
pended on a wise movement made at a moment's thought,
because science had been transfused into his mind, while to
theirs it was only attached."'''' It does not follow, because
we seem to ourselves to possess things, that we veritably pos-
sess them. Though a man may have collected a thousand
facts in the ologies and the graphtjs, he may yet not possess
one of them in reality; though he cover himself with fea-
thers, it needs something else that he may fly ; it is of no use
merely to see what is true, unless by assimilating it, we prove
its efficacy, and feel it exerting upon us some salutary effect.
Accordingly, it is not so mi'ch the reading of books, and the
manual part of science, and the promenade part of visits to
the fields and the sea-side, from which we are to expect spi-
ritual aliment; we are nourished only as these things are
ijicorporated into our inmost thought. Many, especially
young persons, make it a matter of pride that they are
"great readers." They literally devour books, jet what
good does it do them? Life, real, enjoyable life, is im-
mensely dependent on intellectual and reading habits, but
it never comes of mere gormandizing. "We read to live,
not live to read." Mere consumers of books not only derive
no true nourishment from what they read, but are total
strangers to the higher pleasures of literary taste. Like the
* "On Intellectual Health and Disease," in a clever set of Essays
on Literature and Life. (American.)
HOW TO READ WITH MOST PROFIT. 289
lower animals, thej feed only, they do not eat To eat, in
the true idea of the act, requires a far more scientific use of
the mouth than is the case with mere feeding. Epicurism
is no mere invention of low sensuality; they who practice it
do but carry to an unworthy extreme one of the most excel-
lent and characteristic powers of human nature. No man
is wise who is not an epicure within the legitimate limits ;
none are more foolish and unkind to themselves than those
who regard only quantity and speed. So with the mental
palate. If we be not deliberate epicures in our reading,
half our advantages and privileges are thrown away, and
we are only like quadrupeds unintelligently munching grass.
Not that we ought to pick out Apician morsels. We are
not to read books merely with a view to passages which
have reference to ourselves, or for the sake of the more
splendid ones, or of such as may support favorite theories.
This is to refuse the greater part of their worth, often not to
discover it at all, and is the secret of many books being
thrown aside as flull and tiresome. Often when a man says
he "sees nothing" in a given book, the fact of the matter is
simply that he does not see himself in it, which, as a clever
writer remarks, "if it be not a comedy or a satire, is likely
enough." No book should ever be read except with two
distinct aims, first, our own impi'ovement; second, the just
apprehension of the author, whom we have never proj^erly
read, and therefore not benefited by, till we have seen his
subject as he saw it, whether right or wrong. To this end
we must possess ourselves of all the spirit that lies beneath
the words, mastering that internal character, sense and de-
sign of the work, to which our regard from the first moment
should be directed. Hence too the value as well as pleas-
antness of two persons reading together. Each perceives
different beauties, and in each is awakened a train of differ-
ently-associated ideas, throwing light from opposite sides
290 SELECTION OF BOOKS.
upon the arguments and illustrations, so that the author is
more thoroughly understood, and as a consequence, more
truly enjoyed. Especially should husband and wife asso-
ciate in their reading, he profiting by her feminine or affec-
„,j, tional insight, slie by his logical intelligence.
11 172. Many read less than they Avould perhaps, from the
seeming difficulty in the selection of books. How are we to
judge, they say, what books will, and what will not repay
perusal? To tell a good book is not really perplexing, any
more than to distinguish a wholesome food. A good book,
like a great nature, opens out a fine foreground, wherever
we may open it, and like the breath of a summer's morning,
invites us onward. It may be known by the number of
fragmentary, aphoristic sayings which may be gleaned from
it, full of grace and pleasing truth, as flowers on that summer
morning's walk. Bacon and Shakspere have multitudes of
such sajangs. The Bible has more than all other books to-
gether. Books that soon perish, die because void of them.
They make the difference between books of ideas, and books
of mere ivords. The value of a book consists not in what it
will do for our amusement, but in what it will communicate.
Whether dealing Avith fancy or with fact, all books in their
kind are dictionaries, and those are the best which yield
most material for reflection. It is not fine writing, as many
suppose, that makes fine books. Books are fine only in so
far as they flow from sound and abundant knowledge, a
picturesque and unobtrusive presentation of which is their
infallible characteristic. It is given, moreover, compactly.
When an author of any pretensions is found abridging
everything, the simple fact of the matter is that he perceives
everything. Diffusiveness is always a sign either of poverty
or pride; nothing of his, the vain man thinks, can ever be
too much. Good books, again, may be known by their
rarely containing anything unintelligible to earnest reading.
CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD BOOKS. 291
whatever liardness may appear upou tlie surface. "VVe should
always be glad to find a book invite us further and deeper
than we have previously gone; for if it do not, it will only
leave us where we ■svere. Those writers Avho never go further
into a subject than we can readily accompany them, or
than is compatible with making what they say indisputably
clear to man, woman, and child, may gratify us, indeed ; —
by awakening and enlivening our recollections, they may
even benefit us ; — but they do nothing whatever to increase
the vigor of our intellect, for how can we gather strength
except by exercise? They may, by virtue of popularity of
theme, be the lights of their own age; but they certainly
will not be the lights of succeeding ages; nor though they
may j)lease for the hour, can we permanently entertain a
high opinion of them, any more than we esteem a river deep
when we find that we can readily see the bottom. On the
other hand, we should never allow ourselves to be dismayed
by seeming hardness, remembering rather that the author
has only half the work to do, the reader a duty on his own
side; that to apply ourselves closely, in fact, is the way to
get the mental strength we find ourselves deficient in. The
best writer, it has been said, is he Avho merely states his pre-
mises, and leaves his readers to work out the concliisions for
themselves. Still may we be sure that men who are really
competent to teach, always so teach that attention may un-
derstand. The truly instructive mind, when it plays forth
the beautiful abundance of its wisdom, always condescends
to be intelligible. The lessons of true intelligence are like
the rays of the morning sun ; the light and magnitude are
revealed, but the splendor is reserved, pleasing the more, by
dazzling the less. No author can be expected to do all.
"Learn to observe" is as needful a maxim in reading as in
natural history. It was remarked by the celebrated Haller,
that while yawning we are deaj; the same act of drowsiness
292 BOOKS THAT SHOULD BE AVOIDED.
that stretches open our mouths, shuts iip our ears. It is
much the same in the exercises of the understanding; a lazy
half-attention is in effect a mental yawn. "Where a subject
that demands thought, has been thoughtfully treated, we
must be willing to make similar efforts on our own part, and
think with the author, or in vain will the author have
thought for us." Another excellent test of a good book is
that the opinions of its author do not range with those of
any recognized party. It will not readily fall in with any
particular creed in theology or school in philosophy; libra-
rians do not know what to do with it ; and sectarians become
angry and abusive. Freedom from sectarian bias by no
means implies freedom from religion. So far from this,
every great and good book, whatever may be its subject, dis-
closes from beginning to end, a devout and intelligent sub-
mission to revealed truth. Books that give no recognition
to religion ai'e stones rather than bread. Here we see our
way towards learning what to avoid, — a difficulty almost as
great as that of choice. One golden rule will almost include
the whole, namely. Avoid all that class of literature which
has a knowing tone. " Every truly good book, or piece of
book, is full of admiration and awe; it may contain firm
assertions or stern satire, but it never sneers coldly, nor as-
serts haughtily, and it always leads you to reverence and
love something with your whole heart." What constitutes
an "improper" book, depends chiefly on the intelligence and
purity of the reader. To charge unfitness upon a book,
unless it be in palpable antagonism with Scripture and good
manners, is often only to show that the plane of thought is
low and contracted. Detractors and small critics would do
well to remember that many kinds of errors are only possi-
ble to great souls, and that the very circumstances which in
their weak vision render a work " unfit," may certify a most
royal nature and descent. The assistance in choice of booJii>
LITERARY CRITICISM. 2d^
furnished by Critics and Reviewers, upon the whole is un-
trustworthy. They may have intellect enough to criticize,
but the preeminent quality needed to their vocation is
Christian love to the neighbor. The primary office of a
critic is not, as many seem to think, to detect imperfections.
That is a very shallow mind which seeks to distinguish itself
by facility in finding errors, trying to make superior ones
appear stupid. "The first duty of the critic is to create
happiness where it may be done faithfully, and to shrink
from giving pain where it can honestly be avoided," Stead-
fastly to adhere to this, the highest principle of criticism,
requires, however, too noble a nature to be met with fre-
quently. "A true critic," says Addison, "ought to dwell
upon excellences rather than defects; to discover the con-
cealed beauties of a writer; and communicate to the world
such things as are worth its observation." The rule applies
universally. Rightl}^ to comprehend and estimate things,
whether in Art, literature or nature, we must train ourselves
to admiration of Excellence. The contrary course serves
only to blind and darken. He who does not strive to rise
above nature, will sink below it. Finally, let our favorite
subject of study be what it may, we should above all things
take care not to restrict our reading too mvich to particular
themes or particular authors. "Preserve proportion in your
reading," says Dr. Arnold. "Keep your vieAV of men and
things extensive, and depend ujDon it, a mixed knowledge is
not a superficial one. As far as it goes, the views it supplies
are true; whereas he who reads in one class of writers only,
contracts views which are almost sure to be perverted, and
which are not only narrow, but false."
173. Solicitude for food, or hunger, and the appeasing it
legitimately and discreetly, are thus the inseparable signs
and attestations of health and vigor in the life of the spirit
as well as in that of the body. Where there is no desire for
25*
294 SIGNS OP A HEALTHY MENTAL APPETITE.
food there is no true enjoyment, and he is the happiest man
who feels how closely he relies both upon physical food and
spiritual food. A constant question in our self-examination
should be, what is the disposition of our minds, including
both the intellectual and the affectional faculties, toAvards
nature, and towards literature, and preeminently, towards
the word of God — in a word, what is our appetite for the
" feast of reason ?" No man can ever say to himself
" enough." As the meals we made in our youth avail no-
thing to the renewal of our bodies of to-day, so, if we would
live spiritually, we must perpetually feed the soul. Irre-
spectively of 7iew truths, how much of what we acquired in
years gone by, imperceptibly slides away, and needs to be
reclaimed ! " The ideas, like the children of our youth," as
Locke beautifully observes, " often die before us, and our
minds not seldom represent those tombs to which we are ap-
proaching, where, though the brass and marble remain, the
inscriptions are effaced, and the imagery is mouldered away.
The pictures in our minds are drawing in fading colors, and
if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear." Hence
the importance of surrounding ourselves with what is beau-
tiful, as far as lies in our power, so as to keep those ideas as
much as possible from decay. Hazlitt has said somewhere
of the portrait of a beautiful female, with a noble counte-
nance, that it seems as if an unhandsome action would be
impossible in its presence. Most men of any refinement
must have felt the truth and force of this sentiment; it
helps us to understand the importance of having beautiful
pictures, statues, models, and other works of art, round
about us in our daily sitting-rooms, so that correspondent
ideas may be continually excited, ideas of opposite nature
repulsed, and old thoughts kept alive. As famishing men
feed upon what is nearest, so does the hungry soul upon
what is close at hand, thus possibly upon evil things, if we
BOOKS AND EXTERNAL NATURE. 295
omit to encircle it Avith good. Hence, too, we may see the
importance of keeping our books within sight, instead of in
a book-case upstairs.
174. After the correspondence of physical feeding with
intellectual feeding, as regards the general principle, it is
interesting to note how close is that which subsists between
the two principal species of spiritual food, or books and ob-
jective nature. As there is a " book of nature," so in a
good library are there " wavuig woods and pastures ever
new." Books, regarded in their highest and truest light,
are as much a part of nature as gardens. Gardens indeed
they are. We do not quit nature when from walking in
the fields we step into our study; we only enter into another
presence of nature. We must not suppose that because in
dictionaries nature is the contrary to art, there is nature
only where art has not been superadded. As in winter,
though the forests be bare and the birds mute, the delights
of the true lover of the country are nevertheless not decidu-
ous till the spring ; so where there is solid affection for truth
and loveliness, no place is empty of nature, but simply filled
after another manner. The only difference a soul so ani-
mated is conscious of, is that while summer is more pecu-
liarly the time to feel, and winter to think, the fields and
the library are their happiest arenas respectively. Books
teach us to understand nature ; nature, in turn, teaches us
how to understand books. So animated, going into rural
paths is reading. When Goethe's exemplar, Kleist, was
asked why so fond of lonely country walks, " I go," said he,
" hunting for images." Similarly, when we tread our "duke-
dom large enough," we find in its immortal voices that be-
nign, medicinal tranquility, without which, Life is a thing
we hear of, but never truly feel. For, as said before, we be-
come conscious of Life in the degree that our minds, though
at work, are in repose — not unemployed, but at ease and
296 THE FRIE:'?D3niP OF BOOKS.
peacefvil. Work and rejjose are not antagonistic ; they are
each other's complement. The grandest workings of nature
are precisely those which present to us, along with move-
ment, the sublimest pictures of tranquility, as the roll of the
sea, the circling of the constellations round the pole. Great
workers, or those Avho most largely realize life, are always
at rest. They accomplish so much because they have
learned the secret of tranquility. Free from those conten-
tions of spirit which most men allow to distract them from
the true ends and prerogatives of life, the tranquil find the
time and the opportunity which the mass of mankind so
loudly complain that they have not. Like the calm-flowing
river, they reflect every tree and cloud, while the brawling
and troubled stream shows not a single picture. It is the
tranquil who truly " inherit the earth."
175. Good books, like nature, at once alleviate care, re-
press the insurgency of evil passions, and encourage and
animate the amiable. "When I come into my library,"
said Heinsius, " in the very lap of eternity, amidst so many
divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and such
sweet content, that I pity all those great and rich who know
not this happiness." " These friends of mine," writes Pe-
trarch, " regard the pleasures of the world as the supreme
good. They are ignorant of my resources. I have friends,
whose society is delightful to me ; persons of all countries
and all ages, distinguished in war, in council, and in letters.
Easy to live with, always at my command, they come at
my call, and return when I desire them ; they are never out
of humor, and they answer all my questions with readiness.
Some present before me, in review, the events of past ages ;
others reveal to me the secrets of nature ; these teach me
how to live, and those how to die ; these dispel my melan-
choly by their mirth, and amuse me by their sallies of wit,
and some there are who prepare my soul to suffer everything,
FINE OLD BOYS. 297
to desire nothing, and to become thoroughly acquainted with
itself. As a reward of such services, they require only a
corner of my little house, where they may be safely shel-
tered from the depredations of their enemies." But to enjoy
such friends, which is to enjoy literature, we must, as in
order to love nature permanently, begin early. He who
Avould long remain a man, must early begin to be one.
Whatever affluence of intellect we may enjoy in riper life,
we owe not so much to the acquisitions purely of manhood,
as to the successively renewed and re-invigorated impressions
of boyhood. GroAving u]d Avith such dispositions, old age
itself lives in serene enthusiasm, and like the old man in
Chaucer, who had nothing hoar about him but his locks, is
adolescent to the last.
Though I he hoar, I fare as doth a tree
That blosmeth ere the fruit y-woxen be ;
The blosmy tree is neither drie ne ded ;
T feel me nowhere hoar but on my hed ;
Mine harte and all my limmes ben as green
As laurel through the year is for to seen.
To carry, as somevi'here remarked by Coleridge, the feelings
of childhood into the poAvers of manhood, to combine the
child's sense of Avonder and novelty AA^th sights and experi-
ences which every day for perhaps half a century has ren-
dered familiar — and to Avhich achievement Avise mental
culture alone is needful — is assuredly, after virtue, the
greatest triumph of life. We often hear of fine hoys. The
finest of all boys is the fine old boy, he Avho has obeyed the
poet's great command. Keep true to the dream of your
youth.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE UETjIGIOUS HIjEMENT OF LIFE.
176. While tlie axiom that "Life is Love" verifies itself
in the manner set fortli, there is involved in it another and
yet higher truth. Love is a word of many different senses.
Lowest is the physical: the middle one is that wherein it
denotes the ruling desire of a man, the disjDosition of the will
which is predominant Avith him, and which may or may not
be in concord with the intellect : highest is the sense wherein
it denotes the energy, in a happy and beautiful direction, of
the entire spiritual nature, or the intellect and aflections com-
bined. (See page 259.) This last thus applies to and denotes
the religious state of the soul, Avhich is the blossoming of our
humanity, and of which Love is the essential characteristic.
The development and marriage of the intellect and affections
is at once the great duty and the blessedness of our being,
and thus our highest Life. The perfection of human nature
is when these two are conjoined, as man and wife, in even
and lovely flow. As a happy marriage is the most perfect
and beautiful state of existence that can be attained, as
regards the social relations of mankind; so the most perfect
and beautiful state of the soul is when the affections delight
in what the intellect says is right and true; and when the
intellect (ahvays referring itself to the Word of God as the
standard), commends what the heart inclines to. To be so
disposed towards each other, is to live in conjugal amity,
298
THE TRUE HUMAN LIFE. 299
which, is pure and unchangeable Love, and thus true and
perfect Life. Such a state of things is not only the perfection
of human nature ; it is the only one proper to be designated
human nature, and only Avhere it is present is man in his
natural state. All lower conditions are 'jmnatural. It is
important to observe this, because people are apt to call the
life of savages the natural state of man ; a mode of speaking,
unless merely intended to signify ignorance of the arts,
utterly inconsistent with all reason and analogy. No one
would say that a tree was in its natural state when, through
adverse circumstances, it was stunted and barren. Nature
is Excellence; anything that is not excellent is Avant of, or
departure from nature. The natural state of the tree is
when it is appareled in all the luxuriance of leaf and opu-
lence of fruit Avhich it is cajDable of; and the natural state
of man is Avhen the intellect and affections unite before the
altar of the law of God, which is to engage in pure and
faithful love. If either of these great spiritual powers un-
duly predominate, error, and therefore unha23piness, neces-
sarily ensues. Apart from the tendency there may arise
towards moral wrong, if the heart hold too great power, in-
stead of religion there is fanaticism ; if the head be too mas-
terful, there is rationalism. Regarded as a bemg adapted
for society, man, it may be added, is in a much more "natu-
ral" state when he is living civilized in a town than when
ignorantly vegetating in the wilderness. The nearest ap-
proach to genuine natural life is in reality that which we
mistakenly call "artificial" life.
177. Religion is the feeling and exercise of such love, and
the primary purpose of all true religious culture is to induce,
or rather to renew it; for the spiritual declension which was
the loss of Eden was no other than the estrangement of the
affections from their affianced partner, and until these be-
come reconciled, the heavenly garden cannot be re-entered.
300 FAITH AND WORKS.
The end of religious culture is threefold ; namely, to recon-
cile man to God, to reconcile him to nature, to reconcile him
to himself. The first is the final and crowning object, but
the last is its indispensable ground-work. The practical
beginning must always be made in man's own bosom, and
the sign and certificate of the truthfulness and efiicacy of a
given system of religious culture, is the degree in which this
lovely harmony is reestablished. There is no religion Avhich
can be referred exclusively to the heart, and none which
comes solely from the head. There is none which is only
Faith, and none which is only Works. However grand and
profound the perceptions of the understanding, if the heart
be indisposed to carry them out, still there is no religion.
Neither is there any if the intellect have nothing to proffer
to the affections, or only what is unworthy. For in the one
case, instead of love, there is variance; and in the other,
though there is a bride, there is no husband; or if the ideas
be selfish and sensual, a husband with whom true love can-
not grow up. Man cannot be virtuous in his heart, if he
do not know in his head what virtue is; we cannot love that
which we are ignorant of This takes us to another great
truth; namely, that as there is no virtue unconnected with
God, or uuderived from him, or intelligible except by refer-
ence to him, a right intellectual conception of God is the
very foundation of true religion, and thence of all genuine
life. How grateful should we be that no conception is more
readily accessible! We have but to think of the examples
set by Him "in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead,
bodily." Striving to imitate these examples, makes the
difference between religion rightly so called, and mere men-
tal acquiescence in a particular scheme of religious doctrine.
Eeligion is to live a doctrine, not simply to believe in one ;
and the best doctrine a man can live is the life of Christ,
He who most practises this, is the most truly religious. It
THEORY AND PRACTICE. 301
does not follow that defective knowledge of God, or a wrong
intellectual concejDtion of him, is a man's destruction. Men
are not saved or lost by what they think, but by what they
do. The essence of religion is a God-fearing and devotional
spirit, and no man is rejected who acts faithfully and sin-
cerely up to that which he has been taught to believe true.
He who can pray, honestly and silently, and feel his prayers
answered, is no stranger to the heavenly fold, however im-
perfect and erroneous may be his ideas. The peculiar cha-
racteristic of the intelligent religious man is, that he is
continually aspiring after a larger knowledge of his God. A
true Christian is never satisfied until he knows his Maker
and Saviour more accurately than any object of his senses.
Unpossessed of religious life, man only half lives. No mat-
ter what intelligence, and learning, and love of nature there
may be, no matter what health of body, what aptitude for
pleasures of sense, what money and ojoportunity wherewith
to procure them; wanting the true, high life of the soul,
existence is but sapless and inanimate, and all things no
more than what the poet calls the imaginary wife of the
bachelor, (poy^pbv Tvapo-j/A'Acaim, "a cold armful."* With
it, science, literature, love of nature, as we have seen, make
our experience long and beautiful, but there are hours when
all are vanity, and wretched is he who then has no higher
solace to take refuge in. Looking on how much some men
possess — some in the material world, some in the intellectual
— we are often inclined to envy them. Could we look into
their hearts, and see how little of their property they enjoy,
for want of this life, when the sorrows of our mortal pil-
grimage come thick and heavy, we should be more disjDosed
to pity them. All wisdom and philosophy resolve into this
one simple principle, that the happiness of intelligent crea-
Ljcophron. Cassandra, 113.
302 TRUE IDEA OF RELIGIOUS SECTS.
tures depends upon the development of their moral and
religious nature.
178. These two classes of the religious, namely, those Avith
whom Life or Love is uppermost, and those with whom
Belief, are the only real sects or parties of the religious
world. Other differences are but superficial and temporal.
Every church and denomination has its proportion of them;
every man is either an amo or a credo, and society suffers or
prospers according as the credos or the amos hold most
power. In the amos chiefly originate measures of social
reform and improvement. From the credos come most part
of the discouragements and obstructions which they meet
with ; for the credos think that their creed is the incarnation
and consolidation of all possible truth, and that " reforms"
are only disguised attacks upon it. Hence they are prone
also to condemn all rival corporations of credos, and to work
diligently at procuring proselytes to their own. The amos,
on the other hand, as they make religion to consist in good-
ness and love, care little to quarrel about dogmas ; they try
rather to promote peace and happiness. They believe,
nevertheless, and quite as reverently and firmly as the o'edos
do ; the difference is that the m?ios use their belief as a
means, while the credos stand still in it as a finality. The
credos, in like manner, also love, but for the most part their
affection is all " given to heaven," wherein they find excuse
for loving nobody on earth. Church and chapel they visit
punctually, but the fatherless and the widow they care little
to interfere with : these come to the province of the amos.
Hence, until we know pretty certainly whether a man is an
amo or a credo, in regard to the sect he is identified with,
the mere name of his sect sup]3lies not the least clue to his
religious quality. Unitarians are just as likely to be amos
as High Churchmen who fight duels, live luxuriously and
wantonly, and heap up treasures, not for heaven. Quite as
WORLDLY PLEASURES AND RELIGIOiSl'. 303
likely to be merely credos are those who rant and stamp, /
and have spmtual hysterics, proclaiming their conversion, \
and its day and hour, as if that could be effected in a mo- \
ment Avhich is coextensive and concurrent with one's whole '
life. From the mere holding of a doctrine, in short, little i
can be predicated, nor are the names of the doctrines them- /
selves truly descriptive. " Tell me a man's creed and I •
know Avhere to look for him, but I have still to inquire what
are his morals. Tell me, on the other hand, that he is a
man of justice, charity, and love, and I have no occasion to
ask whether he be religious." The ci^edo, as to his mental
character, is well described by Morris. " It is possible," he
says, " to be delighted with a doctrine, and yet have no just
conception of its practical bearings ; to revel in the thought
of a blessing, and yet not discern its force as a moral mo-
tive ; to have an intense admiration of the principles of
equity and love, and yet be a stranger to both the theory
and the practice of them in the varied relations of life and
the world." (Keligion and Business, p. 6.) The highest
idea of the religious man is plainly that which is sought
after by the amos. A true reverence of divine sanctities
proves itself by an equal reverence of human sanctities.
179. Men often suppose, that to rise into the religious
life, it is necessary that they shall withdraw from intercourse
with the world of secular things. N'ot so. It is realized
better in society than in the hermitage; and the world, in-
stead of being closed as a scene of pleasure, acquires new
interest and value; it manifests power even to amend us.
"Use the world," is the doctrine of purity. To forsake it,
is ungrateful to God and prejudicial to our best interests.
The truly religious man cannot see how it is a proof of
piety to emasculate his natural instincts. He knows how to
he both "merry and wise," and that it is religious to be so.
Those who make destruction of the common affections of our
304 WORLDLY PLEASURES AND RELIGION.
nature the condition of rising to God, confound use with
abuse, will with wilfulness. The value and importance of
the sensuous life are such as it is almost impossible to over-
rate. The evil consists in staying in it, or rather in neglect-
ing to engraft upon it a higher life. There is nothing in the
spii"it of religion hostile to cheerful enjoyment of the world.
Dissipation and unlawful pleasures unquestionably it pro-
hibits, and also that unlawful degree of attachment to plea-
sures in themselves pure and innocent which withdraws the
attention from the fulfillment of duty. But it never seeks to
forbid pleasure, or to demand the renunciation of anything
that it is of real advantage to us to possess, however intensely
secular. Pleasure in every form, is good in itself. It is the
sweet allurement with which God, the all-wise, and the all-
good, surrounds useful things and needful acts, in order that
we may seek and perform them. It is not pleasure which
corrupts men, but men who corrupt pleasure; rightly re-
garded, it leads men, not away from God and religion, but
toivards them ; resembling, in this respect, the sun and stars,
which never tempted and diverted men to that idolatry we
read of, but began to be w^orshijoed only when men were
idolaters already. In becoming religious, in fact, so far
from losing anything, we gain, and often where least ex-
pected. Nature, art, science, poetry, music, shape a very
diifereut experience to the religious and to the non-religious.
No man. can perceive their more excellent beauties unless
he give his heart to what is beautiful morally. As light and
heat come together in the sunbeam, so, as a law, do elevated
intellectual perceptions connect themselves with virtue of
desire and deed. Ubi charitas, ibi claritas. "Blessed are
the pure in heart, for they shall see God," is a promise ap-
plying to this world no less than to the next; for to "see"
God, is to be sensible of His immediate presence, and this
depends on no outward change, no shifting in time and
RELIGION THE GREAT ILLUMINATOR. 305
place, but on adaptation of one's heart. So with the glorious
promise of the new heaven and the new earth. Whatever
kind of cosmological fulfillment it may be intended to have,
and whatever deep spiritual meanings may be enclosed in
it, it is a promise realized by every man who looks forth
upon the universe with the eyes and heart of religion.
When in the 65th chapter of Isaiah, our Lord says in refer-
ence to his advent to those who seek him,—" I create new
heavens and a new earth," he means, as the event proves,
not that he literally reconstructs the world and sky, but
that by filling the soul with his divine love, it sees every-
thing after a more admirable manner. If, therefore, a man
would read creation in its fullness, — if he would thoroughly
appreciate what nature and art have to offer, his best prepa-
ration is observance of the precepts of faith to God and
charity to the neighbor. "To know nature, thou must be
true to nature. To be true to nature, thou must live look-
ing forever to the mighty Spirit who presides."* Nature
has been well said to have an exhaustless meaning ; but it is
a meaning to be rightly seen and heard only by him who
strives, ceaselessly and prayerfully, to become all that the
Divine image and likeness is capable of becoming, which is,
in fact, to become human and religious. Human nature is
like a microscope; every step in its regeneration is an addi-
tional lens, enabling us to see more beautifully and pro-
foundly. "As we become more truly human," says an ami-
able writer, "the world becomes to us more truly divine.
Light from heaven must beam upon the world within, be-
fore the outward works of God will appear in the perfection
of beauty. It is only when reason has acquired motive to
look beyond outward sight, and is enabled to dwell on a
brighter futurity, that the present world becomes fully sig-
* Panthea, or the Spirit of Nature, by Kobert Hunt, p. 24.
20 »
306 BEAUTY OF VIRTUE.
nificant."* Religion is the green mountain-slope which
commands the incomparable view. Blessed are they who
find it. As the light we admire on the discs of the moon
and planets is not their own, but the sun's, so the beauty of
outward nature is from heaven through humanity. Form
can only be duly estimated when we are capable of sympa-
thizing with the spirit: no man can go further than his own
measure; the small and weak therefore no further than the
small and weak: only from the height of our own nature
can we see the height of others^ nature, or of the world's;
some men see no beauty in the Venus. To be a physiogno-
mist therefore, in regard either to the face of nature or the
face of man, needs first that we be great-souled ; else we can-
not possibly compass the greatness of that we contemplate.
No bad, conceited, or affected man can ever be a physiogno-
mist; Nature and the soul are things altogether beyond his
grasp. The whole matter is contained in the ancient canon
that every scripture is to be interj^reted by the same spirit
which sent it forth ; — a canon so essentially fundamental in
I^hilosophy, that every fresh acknowledgment seems an un-
conscious echo of those before. "In order," says Plotinus,
"to direct the view aright, it behooves that the beholder shall
make himself congenerous and similar to the object beheld.
Never could the eye have beheld the sun, had not its own es-
sence been soliform {i. e. pre-configured to light by a similarity
of essence with that of light) ; neither can a soul not beauti-
ful attain to an understanding of beauty."t What but an
expansion of this, is that delicious little book. The Ministry
of the Beautiful ?.t "The thickest night cannot veil the
* The use of the Body in relation to the Mind, by Dr. Moore,
p. 162.
t Ennead 1, Book 6, "Of the Beautiful." (Page 57, F G. Ed.
Ficini.)
X By H. J. Slack. 1852.
A PURE HEART THE DISCERNER OF BEAUTY. 307
beauty and mystery of nature one-tenth part so effectually
as a low moral state. Divinest forms in vain present them-
selves to eyes whose mechanism communicates with no re-
cipient soul. Beauty without is the reflection of love and
obedience within. To the true worshiper nature exhibits
beauty and sublimity, where to the irreverent is barrenness
and vacuity. Two men may live on the same spot, one
dwelling in an Eden garden, sparkling with fountains,
odorous with the loveliest flowers, full of celestial sounds,
while the other is in a desert, the abode of uncleanness and
desolation. In proportion as a man developes beauty Avithin,
does he find it without." Emerson follows in words of
gold: — "The problem," says he, "of restoring to the world
original and eternal beauty, is solved by the redemption of
the soul. The ruin or the blank that we see in nature is in
our own eye. The axis of vision is not coincident with the
axis of things, and so they appear not transparent, but
opaque. The reason why the world lacks unity is, that man
is disunited from himself. A life in harmony with nature, the
love of truth and virtue, Avill purge the eyes to understand
her text, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and
every form significant of its hidden life and final cause."
Thus eloquently and variedly is it testified that in the degree
that we become sensible of the charms of virtue, our hearts
open to the true seeing of those that are physical; in other
words, that a man's opinion of the world is always in pro-
portion to his own comeliness. All who do see the world
from such a stand-point are Poets. To become virtuous
is to open the eyes to poetic sights; and conversely, before a
man can be a poet, or at all events, a true and great poet,
ne must have a loving and religious heart.* An immoral
* Almost a truism, from the variety of authors in •which this
idea may be found expressed ; its earliest occurrence appears to be in
308 RELIGIOUS LIFE AND SECTTLAR LIFE.
genius is no genius, simply a man of talent. Such an one
was Lord Byron. Shakspere, on the other hand, was of
the highest moral purity, therefore capable of all the func-
tions and rewards of poetry in the completest signification
of the word. "The profundity and simplicity of his poeti-
cal view of life," as Ulrici finely remarks, " was simply on
this account sublime and profound, because it was Christian,
and Christian also, even because it was sublime and pro-
found."* ISTot that Poetry and Religion are in any way
synonymous or convertible. Delighting "to sit under the
boughs of poetry, and to be washed by the surging waves
of music," religion still carefully distinguishes itself from
them. The one implies faith in a Saviour, the other simply
love for a Creator.
180. To realize these things, it is not necessary that a man
should be always thinking about what is spiritual and reli-
gious, any more than that he should quit the world of sen-
suous enjoyment. Doing so, he could not properly address
himself to the details of his secular duties ; but he should
always have his mind governed by what is religious. Reli-
gion does not consist in forever busying one's self with reli-
gious ideas, in season and out of season ; but in letting our
knowledge of what is right, color and ensoul whatever we
do. Unhappily, in many minds, it has been made to con-
sist too much in the performance of certain ceremonies,
acknowledging God at stated hours, speaking on given sub-
jects in a certain way; to be, in a Avord, not what in its
Strabo, about the middle of his first book. (P. 17, Ed. Cassaubon,
1620.)
* Shakspere's Dramatic Art, and his relation to Calderon and
Goethe, p. x. See also p. 118. Those foolish people Avho are better
able to see ignorance and impiety in Shakspere, than wisdom and
virtue, are provided in the pages which follow, with the completest
explanations to be desired.
LIFE IN ITS BEST SENSE. 309
purity it really is — a temper, but a pursuit. The consequence
is that to a great extent it is shut up in the church at the
close of service, and left there till Sunday comes round
again. The week-do^js are the true periods for religious
action, which, rightly understood, is doing as we would be
done by, and performing acts of Christian usefulness ; while
Sunday, in the proper idea of it, is a day for receiving and
communicating specific instruction in sacred things, and
joining with our brethren in the externals of ritual worship.
If it be possible to carry pride, selfishness, avarice, cheerful-
ness, diligence, into the execution of our daily work, it is
quite as competent to us to carry into it a religious spirit,
without which, in fact, religious action is merely show. Two
things are greatly to be distrusted in regard to religion — an
inactive profession, and rigor and multitude of ceremonials,
which latter, with the truly religious, are nevertheless ob-
served, and even more sedulously, only with this distmction,
that they are without advertisement to the woiid. " True
religion," as Charles Lamb tells us, " prescribes a kind of
grace, not only before meals, but before setting out for a
pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a pleasant meet-
ing ; a grace before reading any author that delights us."*
181. Being the highest kind of life, the Religious is that
to which Scripture chiefly alludes. Jesus, in particular,
rarely speaks of man's animal, organic life; he concerns
himself with what vitalizes the soul, and introduces it to
immortality in heaven. When life in the sense of the
future state is referred to in the Bible, it always implies
antecedent religious life on earth ; necessarily so, because no
man can live in heaven who has not first lived religiously
here. Religion is a marriage in the soul, and in heaven
there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. It must
Elia, " Grace before Meat."
310 SCRIPTURAL MEANINGS OF THE "WORD "LIFE."
be consummated in this life, if at all. ISTo one who is ac-
customed to peruse the Word of God attentively is a
stranger to these things. For completeness' sake some few
illustrations may nevertheless be adduced, i. e., of the word
*' life," as used in its sense of the religious. " He that hath the
Son, hath life ; and he that hath not the Son, hath not life."
" Keep my commandments and live" " He that followeth
after righteousness and mercy findeth life." " To be car-
nally-minded is death, but to be spiritually-minded is life."
" In the pathway of righteousnesss is life; m the pathway
thereof there is no death." The same is meant in all such
expressions as " enter into life," " light of life," " word of
life," " bread of life ;" where it is plain that something is
intended far higher, far more transcendental, than can be
identified or connected with mere animal, temporal vitality.
Every such passage must of course be interpreted on its own
basis and by its own context ; to read them aright, however,
we should act on the admirable maxim of Bishop Heber,
that the best means of understanding any single passage of
Scripture is to acquire an intimate and long acquaintance
with the whole of the sacred volume. It is instructive to
observe that the terms used to denote life in the original
languages of the Bible, announce on the very face of the
matter, that different ideas of it are intended. Thus, in the
New Testament, while the animal, temporal life is called
ipoyyi, the religious life, both as enjoyed here and as con-
tinued hereafter, is distinguished, almost uniformly as !^(07).
Those who are interested in the Scriptural usages of the
word life, will do well to consult a fine old volume, curiously
and immensely learned, by Richard Brocklesby — "An Ex-
plication of the Gospel Theism, and the Divinity of the
Christian Religion," Book iv. chap. 10, sect. 12, pp. 975 —
993. (1706.)
CHAPTER XVIII.
IjIFJE MEALIZED by activity— ACTIOW TSE IjAW OE
SAITINESS.
182. As the operations and phenomena of physical life
resolve universally into Motion, so do those of the spiritual
life into Activity. The reason is that the soul, like the
body, and nature universally, is a subject of continual
change, and depends upon its changes for all its energy and
pleasures. Like the body again, it acts both secretly within
itself, and externally, upon what environs it. The exter-
nalized activities are fulfillments of the inner, and are possi-
ble only as effects of them ; the secret or interior ones form
that sleepless life of desire, memory, and imagination, which
gives so beautiful an assurance that we are immortal.
Whatever we may seem to ourselves to be, we are never in
reality unoccupied ; the thinking poAvers and the affections
may appear to be at rest, we may be quite unconscious that
they are otherwise, but they never cease from action alto-
gether ; the spiritual heart, like the physical, is in ceaseless
throb. That which we commonly call activity is thus only
jDictorial, and but a part of what we effect; the essential
transpires beneath, in the silent chambers of the soul, and
so restlessly that no exertion of body can ever set forth the
half of it. To think is virtually to act ; so are to love, to
hope, to muse. Men are not to be considered idle because
we do not see them incessantly working with their hands.
That idleness exists there is no doubt, and that not a little
311
312 REVERIE.
of it is utterly shameful ; but we should be cautious how we
charge idleness upon any man too hastily, for it often hap-
pens that the idlest to appearraice are precisely those who
work the hardest. Before a man is set down as idle, it
should be asked what is his aptitude for seeing ; for never
since the world began, did an indolent heart and mind dwell
in the same body with open eyes. The truly idle man is
the selfish and unintellectual one, " spinning on his own
axis in the dark." Still, it is by the vigor and effectiveness
with which this essential activity of the soul is played forth
into the Avorld around that it is to be estimated ; and unless
we see signs and tokens of it in the shape of deeds, we are
justified in slowness of acknowledgment. In. fact, it be-
comes real only by impersonation into deed, for until
thought and afiection utter themselves on society, they are
only inutile visions. As a man's health and strength are
not determined by the bare circumstance of our knowledge
that his blood is circulating, but by the energy with which
we see him use his limbs and organs generally ; so the life
of the soul is to be judged of, not by its invisible dreamings,
but by its outward, sensible manifestations. Reverie,
though most wholesome services are sometimes wrought by
it, is but the phyllomania or running to leaf of the soul ; the
exclusively right purpose of spiritual life is the blossom and
fruit of external act. "By their fruits shall ye knoAvthem."
We tell what a man is, or as it is well-phrased, what he is
" made of," by what he does; not, however, by what he does
once, or occasionally, fine as the deed may be, but by what
he continues to do, and persists in doing, spite of all hin-
drances. Cleverness, parts, talent, so called, can be taken
no account of till they come out. A man of mere " capa-
city undeveloped," as Emerson says, "is only an "organized
day-dream with a skin on it." Genius itself is no genius if
it stay in-doors. " Genius unexerted is no more genius than
ACTION AND ENJOYMENT, 313
a bushel of acorus in a forest of oaks. There may be epics
in men's brains, just as there are oaks in acoi'ns, but the
tree and the book must come out before Ave can measure
them." A thing of names and definitions innumerable, Ge-
nius, whatever its particular attitude or features, is the high-
est development of the energy of the soul; its certificate and
ofiice, as with the great function of the body which corre-
sponds to it, or the procreation of offspring, which is the
highest development of physical energy, is that it again ion-
parts life; but until life has sprung up under its mighty
impulse, till we feel the world the richer for it, to call it ge-
nius is ridiculous and false. Genius is known by its acti-
vity; dumb and unjDrolific genius are but apj)ellations of the
Avant of it. Let none, then, stand still in the supposition
that because the soul works, and works diligently, of its OAvn
accord, a lofty spiritual life will necessarily be jDresent; no-
thing is vital and substantial till it be ultimated into body
or performance. So completely is action identified Avith life,
that it is the natural metaphor for its lapse and progress.
Agere, to act, is used by Tacitus for " to live ;" and to say
that a person has lived thirty years, is the same as saying
that he has acted thirty years.
183. That which is the truest sign of a thing is ahvays its
chief ornament and blessedness. Life, accordingly, is a
delight just in the degree that it is consecrated to Action,
or the conscious, volitional exercise of our noblest capabili-
ties. Action and enjoyment are contingent upon each other;
when we are unfit for w^ork AA'e are alAA^ays incapable of
pleasure ; work is the AA^ooing by AAdiich happiness is won.
The exercise even of our most ordinary bodily functions is
a source of pleasure — breathing, for example. If not
directly recognized as such, it is simply because of its unin-
terruptedness, beautifully illustrating that in order to the
r.omplete sense of happiness in the soul, there must be con-
27
314 ACTION AND ENJOYMENT.
scioiisness of being employed. All physical pleasures depend
for the maximum of their delightfuluess, on continual cessa-
tion and recurrence, often on slight movements and undu-
lations, just sufficient to give keener edge to their renewal in
the next instant ; similarly, but in a far higher degree, all
our spiritual, or mental and emotional pleasures, come of
constant action, unceasingly recapitulated. So inseparably
connected are the ideas of action and enjoyment, that when-
ever in nature we behold free movement, it awakens agree-
able emotions ; when, for example, in the calm air of a
summer's evening we watch the insects weaving their mazy
dances, we exclaim instinctively, how happy t,hey are ! In
man)^ languages, happiness and fruitfulness, both of them
results and indications of activity, are denoted by the same
word, as when the Latin poet calls the apple tree felix, the
unproductive wild olive infelix oleaster. The proximate
cause of this great interdependence is that man is a creature
of unbounded Wants. It is Want that spurs us on to
activity, in order that Ave may satisfy the want; were it
possible for us to appease all Avants as fast as they arise, Ave
should be the most miserable and forlorn of beings. This
is why we find such keener pleasure in the chase of an
object than in the capture of it; Avhy possession satisfies
only in the degree that it is a ucav beginning. It is not.,
says Helvetius, in the having acquired a fortune, but in the
acquiring it ; not in having no wants, but in satisfying them ;
not in haAdng been prosperous, but in prosperity, that hap-
piness essentially consists. The miser groAvs old enjoying
rather than Avearied of life ; the heir Avho comes into posses-
sion of his hoard dies of ennui ;~— unless he know beforehand,
it should be added, Avherein the advantage of wealth mainly
consists, namely, in the power Avhich it gives to an intelligent
possessor to diversify and dignify his pursuits, and thus to
multiply and ennoble his emotions, or practically, his Avants.
IDLENESS AND INFELICITY. 315
184. In order that good and honorable wants shall always
require a certain amount of exertion to appease them, and
thus that our zeal shall be kept burning, all those things
which humanity most needs are by a wdse and benevolent
Providence made the most difficult to procure. The silver
is hidden and the gold is buried ; every gift of the field
requires man's cooperation before he can enjoy it ; every
truth, even of the most universal interest and the most
practical tendency, has to be patiently and perseveringly
inquired for. Nothing in the world that is worth having is
gratis ; everything has to be met half-way between God and
ourselves ; and the more our experience of Divine Provi-
dence enlarges, the more deeply do we feel how beneficent is
the ordinance that it should be so ; how inglorious and nega-
tive would be our destiny Avere there nothing left for us to
effect as of ourselves. "Ask, and ye shall have," is equally
true in its reverse ; neglect to ask, and ye shall not have.
Whatever God's awaiting privileges, everywhere the law is
that they must be sought. Directly a tree neglects to assert
its arboreity, it ceases to be a tree, and lapses into mould.
Directly that a man falls into idleness and inactivity of soul,
ceasing thereby from the true exercise of his human nature,
he sinks into infelicity and animalism. A very simple
formula comprises the whole matter ; the re-action of man
in response to the primary action of God, constitutes the
vast blessedness it is to Live. " Did the Almighty," says
Lessing, " holding in his right hand Truth, and in his left
Search after Truth, deign to proffer me the one I should
prefer, in all humility, but without hesitation, I should
request Search after Truth." The most blessed of men is
he ■»vho, Avorking with his own hands for his daily bread,
reaps delight from the exercise of his intelligence upon his
toils, and feels a holy harmony between the munificence of
God and the duties which pertain to himself The dream
316 ACTION AND CHEERFULNESS.
of an existence perennially workful, and yet sweet, free and
poetic, such as has visited men- in every age, is not so vision-
ary as they have fancied, but it rests with the dreamer to
clothe it in reality.
185. Without action there can be no cheerfulness — the
prime need as well as token of a true and happy life.
Doubtless there is a native, spontaneous cheerfulness of
spirit, but that which keeps cheerfulness alive is nothing else
than activity, sedulously addressed to some worthy end.
This is a secret worth knowing, since without cheerfulness
neither the intellect nor the affections can expand to their
full growth, which is for life never to reach its proper alti-
tude ; while nothing is more surely fatal to it than gloom,
moroseness, and discontent, unless it be the petty envyings,
jealousies, and suspicions, the toadstools of the human heart,
which sprout from the same foul soil, or indolent inactivity.
Who are the people most generally given to talking scandal?
Those who for want of some enlivening occupation become
j)eevish and impatient, and know little or nothing about
cheerfulness. Having nothing to agreeably engage the
mind, the temptation to assume the office of censor over
their neighbors is too strong to resist, the whole heart be-
comes tainted and purulent, and the very occupations that
make others lively become an eye-sore. Every one has
noticed the cheerfulness which comes of a little bustle in
which all parties are concerned; how ill-tempers subside,
and Grossest faces become bland. A result as much more
solid and graceful as the instrumentality is nobler, infallibly
follows regular and solid devotion of the soul to aims that
demand its best imaginings. The beginning of idleness is an
ignoble rulmg love. The wants which come of such a love
are few and soon satisfied, since that which is lowest is
always easiest to reach, and hence it is incessantly left des-
titute. Nothing so effectually prevents idleness as a noble
ENNUI. Sir
sympathy. Tlie indolent rich, who fancy themselves weak
and invalided when they are simply stagnant for want of a
great purpose, would become sprightly and well directly,
did they but enter on some genial and generous love, which
would impel them into varied occupations. The very rest-
lessness which frets them shows that action is the soul of
life. Do something they must; this is a necessity they can-
not evade, for absolute inactivity is impossible: it is nature's
law. that employment shall go on with every one in some
sort; but in the degree that the inevitable something is mean
and indeterminate, the end of the pursuit is mortifying and
vain. God knows the means to make us work soberly and
usefully. Do you see any one at a loss how to spend his
time, undecided where to go, walking through dry places,
seeking rest, and finding none? Be assured that individual
finds existence a burden, and is a total stranger to its bloom
and true emoluments. Many sights are melancholy, but
none are worse than the listless, jaded countenances of those
who have nothing Avorthy to devote their energies to. Yet
these faces could beam with intelligence. Every man is
happ3^ by birth-right. It is his power to be happy that
makes him able to be miserable; the capacity for ennui
being, in fact, one of the signatures of his immortality. Why
brutes never suffer ennui is simply because they are inca-
pable of noble delights. How inexcusable it is, if not
shameful and disgraceful, to have nothing but what is low
and transitory to think about, and thus to ..fall into such a
state of dullness, scarcely needs an observation. Were the
world empty, were it a silent, barren waste, without a tree
or a blade of grass, there might possibly be an excuse; but
overflowing as it does with the most beautiful curiosities,
nothing is so utterly indefensible as to let a single waking
hour die blank. Thanks be to God, as soon as a man de-
sires to seek, he is always enabled to find; directly he feels
27 »
318 HOME AMUSEMENTS.
his heart and mind swell with a great desire, he finds the
world ready and waiting to supply him. Even though
busily engaged throughout the day in commercial or do-
mestic avocations, the dolcefar niente which our poor weari-
ness is so apt to plead in the evening, and which no wise
man ever refuses to listen to altogether, is a principle only
to be admitted under the protest that the projDer rest for
man is change of occupation. There are few kinds of busi-
ness which fatigue both body and mind at once; while one
toils, the other almost necessarily reposes; when the one
ceases work, nature rules that the other shall be fittest to
begin; and that is a rare case indeed where either body or
mind is debarred all opportunity of healthful and useful
occupation when its turn to work comes on. Man is not so
imperfectly constituted, nor is the world so defectively
framed, as for him to be constrained to look for pastime and
relaxation anywhere but in change from one improving em-
ployment to another; it may be questioned whether the
sweetness of Home can ever be truly enjoyed where the lead-
ing recreation does not take the shape of some intelligent
and pretty pursuit, such as the formation of an herbarium,
or the use of the microscope or pencil. Boys would not
incessantly be in mischief and trouble were they encouraged
to study natural history; girls would be far livelier and
companionable, and also enjoy better health, were they
trained to fixed habits of mental employment. The delight
of a single hour of recreation in art or science, outweighs a
whole life-time of mere frivolities ; before the picture of this
delight, could it be brought home to him, the mere trifler
w^ould sink in dismay. Finding our pastime in such pui*-
suits, we render ourselves independent of the casualties of
time and place, and secure an arbor of our own, where none
can molest. Accustoming ourselves to live in ideas, sorrow
and misfortune lose their sting. We discover that though
ART OF CONVERSATION. BIO
disappointed of our greatest and most cherished hopes, that
is no reason why Ave shoukl be impatient, or unhappy, or no
longer given to pleasant wishes and desires. We get to live
rather in that same kind of well-tempered hope and content-
edness both in one, which leads men to plant trees for the
future. "To have always," says D'Israeli, "some secret,
darling idea to which we can have recourse amid the noise
and nonsense of the world, and Avhich never fails to touch
us in the most exquisite manner, is an art of happiness that
fortune cannot deprive us of." Many things may furnish
such an idea; we have shown where they may be found.
Nepenthe still grows plentiful and green; the world is full
of sweet places where we may rest ourselves, and eat of the
lotus. We have no need to court gaiety in order to be
happy ; nor yet a large circle of acquaintance. Few would
longer trouble themselves about mere "diversions," were
they once to feel Avhat it is to possess the art of self-recrea-
tion among the untaxed gifts of nature.
186. While our leisure is honored and agreeably occupied
by such pursuits, materials are acquired also for that most
invaluable of the Fine Arts, the art of Conversation, desti-
tute of which, no family or social circle can be thoroughly
happy. Not that mere dry scientific facts of themselves can
serve its purposes, because the best, most living part of con-
versation is emotional, imaginative, bird-like. Moreover,
the richest conversation may be and often is Avholly inde-
pendent of such facts. But Avhere brothers and sisters have
each their tale to tell of something curious or interesting
seen in the day's progress, and have a common interest in
each other's discoveries and acquisitions, the imagination
soon finds Aving, and the heart soon Avarms. To learn hoAV
to talk, let people learn hoAv to do something, and get those
about them to do the same. Of all the unbecoming things
which true education Avould seek to anticipate and prevent,
320 HURTFULNESS OF GOSSIP.
that weak gossip about persons and clothes, eating and fcmw
jms, which generally passes current as conversation, is the
first that demands to be corrected. With the lover of noble
employment, leisure indeed, either for trifling talk, or for
trifles of any kind, exists no longer. No one ever wants to
"kill time" who has fixed, intelligent work in hand. He
very soon discovers that to kill time is to kill himself. The
time-killer, the mere trifler, condemns it in his own looks,
for he always seems ashamed. We never find him,
like Archimedes, shouting eop'/jxa! Such declarations
of honorable joy are the privilege of the Avisely active in li-
beral arts ; no man, says Plutarch, w^as ever heard to cry
out after a luxurious meal, j^i^pcoxa ! or after another
form of sensual pleasure, rcz(pi):rf/.(j. ! Briefly, to make it-
self happy is a duty which every created being, in propor-
tion to its capacity, owes to itself and to God ; one of the
chief characteristics of moral health. Lord Bacon tells us,
is a " constant quick sense of felicity, and a noble satisfac-
tion ;" felicity, in its highest signification, implies all that
can ennoble, while it excites our minds ; idleness and
trifling, though they may excite, can never by any possibi-
lity ennoble ; hence are the workers on intelligent pursuits,
at once the dutiful to God, the healthy in soul, the happy
ones of their race. Si non ingentem, as Virgil says, " if they
have not vestments curiously embroidered with gold, and if
for them the white wool is not stained wdth the Assyrian
dye—
At secura quies, et nescia fallere vita,
Dives opum variarum, —
" Yet tlieirs is peace secure, and a life of solid, iinfallacious hap-
piness, rich in various opulence."
187. Scientific and artististic recreations, pursued either,
purely on their oAvn account, or with a view to agreeable
PLEASURE AND BUSINESS. 321
intellectual intercourses, by no means demand tlie intense
application that many suppose. Neither is a little know-
ledge the dangerous thing which others often fear. The in-
firmity is not to have only a little, but to fancy that that
little is a great deal. Neither are brilliant talents wanted ;
a very moderate capacity -will soon carry us out to sea.
Nor, again, is there that incongruity between scientific re-
creations and the ordinary duties of life which is not infre-
quently alleged. " Business must be attended to," is one of
the best and safest maxims in the world ; a man, as Dr.
Johnson said, is never more usefully employed than when
earning money. There is another maxim, however, fully as
important, and founded upon as great a principle, and that
is, the intervals of business must be attended to,- implying
that there is none of the incongruity supposed. No one can
sharpen his intellectual faculties, or widen the range of his
knowledge, without becoming more skilful and successful in
the business or profession in which he is engaged. What-
ever tends to cheer the understanding in leisure moments, so
far from being in antagonism to business thoughts, is com-
plementary to them, and gives them zest. It is doubtful
whether any man can heartily enjoy the country who does
not spend a large part of every week in town-work ; and no
less c|uestionable whether any one so thoroughly enjoys
business as he Avho turns to it as a change. The same prin-
ciple applies to literary recreations. How long is the list
of men distinguished in commerce, who have also shone in
letters, even in literature sparkling with imagination ! The
late Mr. Roby, of Rochdale, author of the Traditions of
Lancashire, is a memorable example. Mr. Roby, says his
biographer, " was not inapt for the addition sum of the
banker because he delved into legendary lore, or rushed into
the realms of the imagination. He showed in his various
performances that the poetic temperament is not in antago-
0*
822 PLAY.
nism to the duties of life ; a truth the sooner recognized the
better. Many of our best writers are not professionally so ;
they sweeten a life of physical labor by intellectual activity,
and society reaps the double harvest. In his ordinary life
the author is but an ordinary man, and it is a monstrous ex-
aggeration to suppose as many do, that he is always walking
with his head among the stars and his feet among the flow-
ers. It would not be difficult to show that the man who is
engaged during the day in what are commonly called unin-
tellectual employments, or in semi-intellectual ones, such as
buying, selling, and casting accounts, has a decided advan-
tage in his leisure moments, cceteris paribus, over him who
has wholly to think.
188. Employment, therefore, does not mean no amuse-
ment; the workers, or those who use their time instead of
wasting it, have more holidays than any one else, for every
change is a going out to play. When rational and unso-
phisticated, play, commonly so called, is still work; at all
events, no man ever played genially and heartily without
gaining something by it, and thus gathering from it a fruition
of work. Play, moreover, is perfectly compatible with work ;
let no one suppose that art and science disallow it, or that they
render play uninteresting and distasteful. Pastime and fun
are as great a need as occupation, and as great a luxury.
He who refuses to play is but a stately fool; to sport and
• gambol with children is one of the sweetest lyric songs of
life; grown j)eople, however, should remember that as the
end of all exertion, even the slightest, should be profit, play
sliould always be based ujoon an intelligent idea. People
may be mirthful without being silly, just as they may be
grave without being gloomy; a mind in right order can
descend into frolics as readily as it can soar into magnificent
ideas; for it is the characteristic of well-disciplined intelli-
gence, and of purity and earnestness of the affections, that
USE OF AMUSEMENTS. 323
they are universal in their capacity. It is this which makes
the philosopher; the true idea of whom is that of an amia-
ble and pious man, who with the profound and scientific
combines the lively and the droll. " My idea of wise men,"
says some author, "needs that they shall be very lively: I
don't call dull men wise." Plato and Aristotle were not
always seen in their long robes, dignified and serious. No;
they were good-natured fellows, Avho enjoyed a laugh with
their friends like the rest of the world, and who loved, and
hoped, and listened to a good story with as much zest as the
least learned. " As much" did we say ? Culture of mind
enables us to enjoy far more intensely Avhen enjoyment is
afloat than when our heads are ill-provided. Love-poetry
owes to Plato a more exquisite stroke of nature than ever
was penned by a mere Avriter of songs and valentines: —
"While kissing Agathon, I had my soul upon my lips, for
it came, the hapless, as if about to depart." Many persons,
it is true, live ivithout amusement; grave, dull, would-be
moralists and sages; and certainly, pastime is not so indis-
pensably necessary after the mental and physical constitu-
tions have arrived at maturity, as before. It by no means
follows, however, that such persons Avould not live happier
and more useful lives if they resorted occasionally to the
ordinary sports of mankind. K^one ever decry play and fun
but those who are strangers to their value. The love of
them is one of the signs of a great nature. All true genius
is in its very essence, a joyous faculty; "wit" originally sig-
nifies the very highest efforts of mind. It is only by looking
around as well as upwards that a large and just conception of
life is attainable, and therefore that life is truly realized. "A
mind charged with vitality, and sustained by trust in God,
will not only look cheerfully to the goal of its pilgrimage,
but have ample stores of gladness to expend upon the
journey. The Muses have left no diaries, or doubtless we
324 ACTION THE SOURCE OF POWER.
should tind that they had their gipsy-parties and lively
games; that they danced and sang for pure enjoyment; and
visited mortal dreamers not only -in inspiring vision, but
sometimes to
'Tickle men's noses as they lay asleep.' "
In a word, though recreation with science and literature be the
most solid and unfailing kind of play, it is not the only kind
we need. With all his toil, and care, and penury of time, the
man who devotes himself to learning, or science, or business,
is no gainer in the end, if he do not take part sometimes in
lively entertainments. For a while he may seem to suffer
nothing; but the belief of his being able to dispense with
such playing is only a delusion ; there is a heavy reckoning
going on against him, which sooner or later will have to be
paid in suffering and premature exhaustion. Work and
play are reciprocally advantageous. While without due
play, there is no effective working, on the other hand, in
order to play heartily with the body, we must learn hoAV to
play heartily, in privacy, with the soul. No man thoroughly
enjoys play, or knows what play really is, who cannot spend
hours of solitude in comfort.
189. In the degree that we employ ourselves, we acquire
Power. As nature, ever shifting and transforming, is most
beautiful and delicious when it is not strictly either spring,
or summer, or autumn, — morning, noon, evening, or night;
so, all the potency we ever possess, is referable to our mo-
ments of action, or when we are experiencing or effecting
Changes ; the period of transition is that in which power is
developed; to acquire and to Avield it, we must be forever
seeking to quit the state we are in, and to rise into a higher
one. Power, accordingly, which is only life under another
name, is resolvable, essentially, into constant progression.
It never consists in the having been, but always in tho
AIDS TO MARRIED HAPPINESS. 325
becoming ; we flourish in proportion to our desire to emerge
out of To-day. It is often asked concerning a stranger,
"Where does he come from ? The better question would be,
Where is he going to f Never mind the antecedents, if he
be now in some shining pathway. Other people are con-
tinually heard wishing to be " settled." It may be useful to
be settled as to our physical resources ; but to be settled in
any other way is the heaviest misfortune that can befall a
man, for when settled, he ceases to improve, and is like a
ship stranded high and dry upon the sand. Who is the
man from whose society and convei'sation we derive soundest
pleasure and instruction ? Not he who, as it is facetiously
said, has " completed his education," but he who, like a bee,
is daily wandering over the fields of thought. The jjrivilege
of living and associating with a person who knows how to
think, and is not afraid to think, is inestimable ; and no-
where is it felt more profoundly than in the intimate com-
panionship of wedded life. Rousseau finds in this need a
beautiful argument for inspiring one's beloved, during the
sweet, plastic days of betrothal, with a taste for the ameni-
ties of nature, such as shall provide a source in after years,
of lasting and mutual delight. How pleasing, when many
summers of married love have thrown those hallowed days
far into the rear, to note again the uncurling ferns of spring,
wrapped so comfortably in their curious brown scales ; the
pretty scarlet hedge-strawberries gathered for her hand, the
delicate mosses, and the hundred other objects then first
noticed, objects Avhich set both mind and lips in action,
invoking currents of sweet converse, kindling looks from
which we turned to the sunshine for relief, and opening the
way to long trains of agreeable and profitable contempla-
tion, enlarged with every new impulse to mutual tenderness.
The being afraid to think is the chief reason perhaps why
the majority of people are so disinclined to think — to think,
326 TRUE PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION.
that is, beyond the little circle of their bodily wants. There
can be few who are positively unable to think ; otherwise
thought and happiness would not bear the close natural
relation which they do. Put a grand idea before the gene-
rality of people, and it seems to them like looking up a
ship's mast from the deck. Yet it is not that they cannot
ascend, using the proper means ; they let themselves be ter-
rified away, fancying they are unable, when they are merely
self-distrustful. Doubtless there is a difference in aptitude,
but every one may become stronger if he will ; the worst
unbelief is unbelief in one's self; it only needs confidence
and a start ; whatever Ave may get from others, or from the
world, has grown from germs such as we have also in our-
selves — Avhence it is that in our reading Ave are so continu-
ally coming uj) Avith ideas that Ave feel to be our oAvn ; nor
is there anything more beautiful in creation than each man's
OAvn private soul, Avhen fairly dealt Avith and elicited. Helen,
Avhen she explored nature for a model of a golden cup that
she should offer upon the altar of Diana as perfectly beau«
tiful, found nothing more exquisite than her OAvn bosom.
190. Practically then — for to bring us to some practical
conclusion is the sole use of such considerations — Ave learn
from the great laAV of Action the spring of Happiness, that
to encourage love of Avork is the first article of sensible
Education. In effect, this is the stimulating of the Intellect
and the Affections Avhich has already been adverted to under
other heads. All action, to be efficacious for good, must
rise into a certain intensity; it must also be regular and
determinate, and it is only training and culture that can
make it so. As in the structure of plants and animals,
Avhere any organ is deficient, or there is departure from
symmetry, it is uniformly referable to a Aveakening of the
vital energies, or to restraint or diversion of them away
from their proper office ; so Avhen our experience of life is
WORK. 327
infelicitous and unrewarding, it is because the natural
activity of the soul has either been repressed, or neglected,
or turned astray in early youth. The unhappy are those
"who from want of practice cannot manage their thoughts,
who have few to select from, and Avho, because of their
sloth or weakness, do not roll away the heaviest," and these
are precisely the individuals whom observation would per-
ceive to be laboring under imperfect discipline of the
spiritual activities, dating from the very commencement of
education. Ordinarily, to the young, work is rendered so
unattractive, and the idea of pleasure so entirely dissevered
from it, that the first wears the semblance of a penalty, and
the latter of the true object of existence. This is to com-
pletely neutralize the design of work, and to despoil life of
its highest luxuries. Pleasure is not bestowed on us to be
made a motive; still less is it to be deemed, as by many, a
right of human existence, and its non-arrival an exhibition
of Divine injustice. What we ought to let reign in our
minds, is primarily, work, which translates itself, in every
true soul, into the duty of development Let the prseludia
of stem and foliage be made the business, and the floAvers
will come of their own accord, and fill the air with fragrance.
" In teaching," says the good Jean Paul, " accustom the boy
to regard his future, not as a path from pleasures, though
innocent, to other pleasures ; nor even as a gleaning, from
spring-time to harvest, of flowers and fruits ; but as a time
in which he must execute some long plan ; let him aim at a
long course of activity — not of j)leasure." Then he shows
how privileged is such a course : " That man is happy, for
instance, who devotes his life to the cultivation of an island,
to the discovery of one that is lost, or to the extent of the
ocean. I would rather be the court-gardener who watches
and protects an aloe for fifteen years, until at last it opens
to him the heaven of its blossom, than the prince who is
328 WORK AND BODILY HEALTH.
hastily called to look at the opened heaven. The writer of
a dictionary rises every morning, like the sun, to move past
some little star in his zodiac ; a new letter is to him a new
year's festival, the conclusion of an old one a harvest-home."
Bodily health, as well as spiritual, depends on work. Very
many of the complaints so frequently heard from the deli-
cate young women of our day, as want of vigor, inability to
bear exposure, deficiency of strength to walk far, may be
traced to other and earlier causes than supposed, settling at
last into absence of well-trained mental power, such as
would seek an outlet in useful and agreeable occupation.
But mental power, let them understand, is not to be gained
from senseless fiction, which leading, as it is almost sure to
do in the end, to discontented dreams of what might have
been, or should be, keeps the heart away from thankful per-
ception and enjoyment of what is; it is to be got from no
such miserable waste of time as this ; but from steady and
well-directed reading of stories not fictitious, and from steady
and systematic contemplation of the works of natui-e.
Seeking to improve themselves as intelligent beings, our
young ladies would not half as often want the doctor.
Rational work they would find, moreover, less fatiguing
than the very pastimes which they fancy true enjoyment.
Under proper management, work never becomes irksome.
When prematurely fatigued, it is not the action that has
tired us, but want of ingenious and orderly methods. Work
never killed or hurt an)^ man who knew how to go about it.
See what order there is in nature ! Along with sublimest
activity, what smoothness and ease ! How still the growth
of the plant, yet how rapid ! How peacefully the stars of
midnight seem encamped ; yet before morning whole armies
have disappeared ! So much is achieved, because every-
thing is done in order, at the right time, intently, yet de-
liberately, and the minutes never wasted in indecision. In
WOKK IN THE FUTURE STATE, 329
work, then, consists the true i^ride of life. Grounded in
active employment, though early ardor may abate, it never
degenerates into indifference; and age, as we have said
before, lives in perennial youth. Life is a weariness only to
the idle, or where the soul is empty, and better than to exist
thus vacantly, is it for longevity as to birth-days to be
denied.
191. The consideration of this great principle, Action the
spring of Happiness, though it is in regard to the present
life that it practically concerns us, belongs as largely to
right estimates of the life to come. Doubtless, the means by
which we secure enjoyment upon earth, instruct us as to the
proximate source of the enjoyments that will be felt in
heaven, a subject that cannot be uninteresting to any man
who reflects for a moment how long he hopes to live there.
That the same re-action of man, in response to the primary
action of God, which here makes life and happiness, will
similarly engender it hereafter, we may gather, indeed, most
plainly, from the divine oracles themselves. When we are
told so consolingly, that to die is to go to rest, and that
"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they rest
from their labors," it is not meant that by entering the future
state we enter on a state of passiveness. There can be no
happiness or holiness, even in heaven, if the life be one of
mere quiescence. Do we not see, even in this world, that
those who would have us understand by Remember the
Sabbath-day to keep it Iwly, Remember to keejD it idle, i. e.,
idle as regards everything but religious discipline; do we
not see, even in this world, that they prescribe a course
against which all nature rebels, and which fails from its very
absurdity? How much more impossible will it be to keep
holy the everlasting sabbath, except by supplementing its
peculiar duties of praise and worship with useful and bene-
volent occupations. The labors which will be "rested from"
28 ■»
.3-^0 GOD THE GREAT WORKER.
are the resistance of temptations, the endurance of trials,
the struggles with evil, which incessantly harass our tem-
poral existence; all our chosen and happier activities will
continue, in a more glorious manner, and with the perfect
results which on earth are unattainable. The best and
wisest of mankind have always had a conviction that it
will be so. "He felt," says the memoir of Dr. Gordon,
"that there would be no interval of unconsciousness, no ces-
sation of activity, no intermission of enjoyment; that though
the mode of existence would be changed, the existence itself
would be neither destroyed nor suspended."* We may
learn much from the very term that Scripture employs. It
is never said that we shall rest from our worh, only from
"labor." Labor is that exertion which is irksome and
painful ; work that Avhich is congenial, welcome, a delightful
exercise. Labor is the toil of the soul and body upon things
in opposition to them; work is the bestowal of their best
energies on what pleases and recompenses. Work, rightly
understood, is divine, and nothing that is divine can ever
cease. It is divine because it comes out of the inmost spirit
of goodness and love, and thus, primarily, from God, whereas
indolence and laziness come of the very essence of evil.
Who is the greatest workman in the universe? He who
works, from out of His infinite Love, for the smallest insect
as well as the immortal angel. That the wicked are often
diligent, more diligent, possibly, than many of the good, is
no objection ; because the diligence of such does not come of
their evil, as to its own intrinsic nature, but of its necessities;
work must be done in order that the means may be procured
whereby the appetites of the evil shall be indulged. The
idea of an idle heaven is a very low and unintelligent one:
it could only have arisen with the indolent upon earth ; and
The Christian Philosopher triumphing over Death, p. 177.
MINISTRATION OF ANGELS. 331
wherever found, we may be sure tliei'e is an indolent spirit
underneath. Heaven, like the Lord himself, who to the
pure apjDears pure, who to the merciful appears merciful, is
measured by each man according to his own character and
inclinations, and if we would ask which view is nearer to the
truth, we may be sure it is that which most exalts us. If
true life consist in well-directed activity while we are here,
assuredly the continuation of our life in heaven will derive
its blessedness, in no slight degree, from the new and mag-
nificent opportunities it will there enjoy. There will be an
external world of nature to study, consisting of that inex-
haustible store of spiritual objects and phenomena which
forms the scenery of the spiritual world, and which is the
prototype of the material worlds and their contents, and
inviting us to endless research and contemplation; there
will also be good uses to fulfill, the prototypes of practical
charity and affection upon earth, and which will be largely
directed, there is every reason to believe, to the spiritual
needs of the successive and interminable generations of men.
Angel, literally "messenger," is not so much a designation
of nature, as commonly supposed, as a title or name of
office; and no office can be conceived more superb than that
of aiding and protecting souls still upon their pilgrimage.
That such fanctions are exercised, in other words, the doc-
trine of the "ministration of angels," has soothed and encou-
raged the virtuous of every age ; the Grecian belief in dacfi-ovtQ
or invisible attendant genii, was itself a recognition of the
guardianship of that celestial fraternity, the "bright band"
which gave cause to Archdeacon Hare to say so beautifully,
that while it is blessed to have friends on earth, it is yet
more blessed to have friends in heaven. Leigh Hunt,
speaking of Shelley (whose virtues we should do well to
reni.ember before his failings), acknowledges this fine senti-
ment in the most exquisite manner; "Alas! and he suffered
332 BENJAMIN WEST.
for years, as Ariel did in the cloven pine; but now he is out
of it, and serving the purposes of Beneficence Avith a calm-
ness befitting his knowledge and his love." Thus is our
destiny, even in this world, sublime, if we will but serve
God, and not Mammon. For the "spirits of just men made
perfect" then come into company with us; they "encamp"
around us, and "minister" to us, even as they themselves are
ministered to by the Lord. It is no mere fancy of a fond
mother that the smile of her sleeping infant comes of the
angels' whisper. So lovely an idea would not live among
the hallowed ones were it not the reflection of a heaven-sent
truth; when the heart in its thankful musings lifts itself
towards the skies, it is never sent away with a falsehood in
it. Wonderful has been the effect upon mankind even of
this little ministry. It was the smiling in her sleep of Ben-
jamin West's infant niece that led him, though quite a boy,
to use the pencil. He was placed to watch the cradle, and
struck by the innocent smiles of his little charge, drew her
as she lay.
CHAPTER XIX.
DEBITS IJV MELA.TION TO THE SPIBITUAL-LIFE.
192. If life be realized only in the degree that it is
happy, then is an infelicitous existence only a kind of
death ; and the man who experiences it, though he may
walk about, eat, drink, and sleep like other men — virtually,
and as regards all the true idea and design of life, is dead.
It sounds strangely, but if there be a state of spirit which it
is right, preeminently, to call Life, by reason of its excel-
lence and exaltation, the contrary condition can be no other
than what we have said. Life is where there are hope,
faith, reverence, sense of the beautiful, the sentiment of reli-
gion ; death is where these are absent or extinguished.
Death, in fact, like Life, is no unitary thing ; there are as
many ways of dying as of living, and as the highest kinds
of life are those which belong to and express themselves in
the Soul, in the Soul, too, are suffered the bitterest of deaths.
In childhood we do not know this. Death's heaviest shafts
seem to be those which fall on things external to us, as pa-
rents, friends, companions ; but as our experience enlarges,
we discover that no death is so sad, no death so momentous
in its consequences, as the death of the things which die
withm. So true is this, that often the greatest epoch in a
man's life is by no means the day of his physical death, but
the day in which he has died to something more important
to him than the whole world. " That which has died within
us," says Hare, " is often the saddest portion of what Death
333
334 DEATH OF FEELINGS AND IDEAS.
has taken away— sad to all, sad above measure to those in
whom no higher life has been awakened. The heavy
thought is the thought of what we were, of what we hoped
and purposed to have been, of what we ought to have been,
of what but for ourselves we might have been, set by the
side of what we are, as though we were haunted by the
ghost of our own youth. This is a thought the crushing
Aveight of which nothing but a strength above our own can
lighten." Death, accordingly, in its most sorrowful sense,
is not the death of the body, but the death of feelings and
ideas — the death of our love. For Avhen men say that they
have no "spirit" for a thing, or no " heart" for it, it is only
another way of saying that they have no " love," which is
practically to have no "life" for it. Spirit is breath, and
the heart is figuratively the blood, and by the breath and
the blood all life is circled in. So with the expressions
" dead to hope," " dead to enjoyment," " dead to enterprise."
Those who are thus lifeless are they Avho, having lost their
property, or their animal pleasures, or who, having had
their worldly schemes defeated, and have found no better
things to set their affections on, have lost their love, for life is
union with the object of our love. "Nabal's heart died
within him, and he became a stone." How sublime a
contrast where those better things have been acquired !
Soft was the voice of the priest, and he spoke with an accent of
kindness.
But on Evangeline's heart fell his words as in winter the snow-
flakes
Fall into some lone nest from which the birds have departed.
* * * ■;;- *
So was her love diflused, hut like to some odorous spices,
Suffered no waste nor loss, though filling the air with aroma.
Other hopes she had none, nor wish in life, but to follow
Meekly, with reverent steps, the sacred feet of her Saviour,
4«
DEATH OF SPIRIT. 335
Of all sad things in the world, the saddest yet is that which,
living to appearance, in soul is dead. Not only in human
beings is it witnessed : toAvns, countries, institutions, may lie
dead, though alive, as pictured in that wonderful passage in
the Giaour, so beautiful in the midst of its inexpressible
mournfulness, where the still and melancholy aspect of the
once busy and glorious shores of Greece is compared to the
features of the dead, —
Ere the first day of death hath fled.
* * * ■!<-
Such is the as^Dect of this shore,
'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more !
Every man experiences a measure of such death. Every
"mortification" we endure is literally "a death." Secu-
larly, at least, if not in the higher sense of the words, like
the flowers of the Cistus, we " die daily ;" and the more that
the temporal is loved, the more does the death afflict. For
it is of attempting to love the transitory and perishable — so
far as it is capable of being loved — and thus of loving what
is only a continual vicissitude, that death of sjDirit comes.
That which undergoes vicissitude has only a seeming life in
it, and therefore the love of it, so far as it is worthy the name
of love, can never uphold itself into a true and felicitative
life, for this comes only of loving the unchangeable. " Be-
fore the eye of Truth," says Fichte, " all life which finds its
love in the tem]3orary, and seeks its enjoyment in any other
object than the eternal and unchangeable, is vain and un-
blessed, because it loves only death."
193. What we have chiefly spoken of is the death of feel-
ings having relation to temporal and external things; far
more solemn and momentous is the death of those which
have relation to morals and religion. Both kinds might be
contemplated as to the place of their beginning, which is
336 REAL DEATH IS LOSS OF VIRTUE.
likewise twofold, i. e., in the intellect or in the affections.
The duality in the springs of life involves duality in the
place of death. As physical death is referable either to the
heart or to the lungs, so is spiritual death refei'able either to
the will or the understanding, and is marked by correspond-
ent phenomena. "The d.7zoXcdcl)G'.Q or petrifaction of the
soul," says Epictetus, "is double; in the one case it is stupi-
fied in its intellectuals; the other is when it is dead in its
morals. He who is thus dead, is not to be disputed with."
But there is no need to analyze so minutely. It is sufficient
to distinguish between death to what is good, and death to
what is bad, whether of an intellectual or an emotional
character. The Scriptural expressions of being "dead in
trespasses and sins," and of being "dead to sin," exactly
illustrate the difference. In every age there has been a
perception that real death consists in loss of wisdom and
virtue. "It is a doctrine of immemorial antiquity that the
real death pertains to those who on earth are immersed in
the Lethe of its passions and fascinations, and that the real
life commences only when the soul is emancipated from
them." Evil and falsity bring spiritual life to an end, just
as diseases do animal life. "What then are we to say?"
concludes Philo. "Surely that death is of two kinds — the
one being the death of the man; the other, the peculiar
death of the soul. The death of the man is the separation
of the soul from the body; the death of the soul is the de-
struction of virtue and the admission of vice."* Aristophanes,
in a well-known passage, calls the depraved citizens of
Athens "dead men," and founded, no doubt, on the corres-
pondence thus acknowledged, was the belief among his
countrymen and other ancient nations, that to see or touch
dead bodies was a great pollution. Jodrell gives numerous
* Allegories of the Sacred Laws, Book i., end.
SCRIPTURAL MEANINGS OF DEATH, 387
illustrations, both from historical aucl poetic sources, (iii. 15.)
la the ancient Jewish law, for the same original reason, it
was one of the things required to be followed up by "cleans-
ing." " This is the law, when a man dieth in a tent, all that
come into the tent, and all that is in the tent, shall be un-
clean seven days." * Vice as identified with death, is not
necessarily vice in its baser forms, or crime; it is wilful vio-
lation of the laws of God, whether externalized into criminal
act or not; and it is this which is chiefly intended by
" death" in Scripture. "Life" is attainment of union with
God, founded on reconciliation Avith one's self; "death" is
secession from truth and goodness. When, for instance,
Christ says that he shall come to judge "the quick and the
dead," the meaning is, all mankind, both good and evil. So
when David exclaims, "In death there is no remembrance
of thee," he intends, those who cease to obey God, cease also
to think of God. "Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep
of death," is a prayer to quicken the soul with new aptitude
for sacred things. It is the very same death which is
intended in the parable of the Prodigal Son — " For this my
son was dead, and is alive again ;" and w^hich the Apostle
alludes to when he says, "We know that we have passed
from death unto life." In its direst degree, this is the death
which on the other side of the grave becomes "hell," and
which begins it even in this world. It is by no metaphor
that men who have steeped themselves in iniquities, cry out
that they suflTer the tortures of the pit. As no man enters
heaven after the death of the material body, but he who has
received heaven into his soul in this life; so "hell" is an
intensifying and consolidating forever, of infernal states that
* Numbers xix. 14. See also chap, vi., and Leviticus, chaps, xv.,
xxi., &c.
29 P
338 DEATH VIEWED AS REJUVENESCENCE.
have already been sunk into. " Though this a heavenly
angel," exclaims lachimo, looking at Imogen asleep,
" Though this a heavenly angel, hell is here."
Death, in Scripture, when signifying death to virtue, poten-
tially means also the eternal perdition of the soul, as in
James v. 20, whence it is that we are so earnestly urged to
fly from it, seeing that after the dissolution of the material
body, ability to escape is at an end.
194. Death to what is evil is rejuvenescence. Though
consecrated by use in Scripture, it is a mode of expression,
therefore, which an exacter rhetoric would supersede with
"life to good." A man cannot properly be said to "die to
evil," because evil is in itself death. He can only die to
that which is essentially Life, or good. "Death to evil" is
like "Blessed Life," a phrase which, "according to the true
view of the matter," says Fichte, "has in it something super-
fluous, to wit, life is necessarily blessed ; the thought of an
ttnblessed life carries with it a contradiction. Death alone
is unblessed. What is unblessed, does not really and truly
live; but in most of its component parts is sunk in death
and nothingness." By whichever name we call it, — death
to evil, or return to youth and life, — nothing ever occurs in
the soul of man which more deeply and vitally affects him :
for it carries with it the change which it is the ofiice of re-
ligion to promote, or what Scripture terms regeneration.
Hence it is the true "resurrection." That which is com-
monly so called, is simply the exchange of one's sphere of
action, induced by the dissolution of the material body ;— an
exchange which in no way affects or alters the moral char-
acter, and is nothing more, essentially, than removal from
one country to another is in this present life. The place of
abode is new, but the man is the same. Resurrection is
rising, not remaining as ive loere. It is not barely to eaiter the
SPRING AN EMBLEM OF RESURRECTION. 66l)
spiritual world, which is the destiny of all, both good and
evil, but to rise into a loftier and diviner state of soul, such
as must be attained in this life, if at all. "He that is un-
just, let him be unjust still; and he that is filthy, let him be
filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous
still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still." The
avdaaraaiQ of the wicked, as Olshausen remarks, is only a
part of the Qdvaxoc, deurspo^. The resurrection, popularly
so called, like every other great fact in the economy of the
universe, is thus a representative occurrence. Attaching to
all mankind, both good and evil, it is not a doctrine pecu-
liarly of theology, but one of the simple laws of nature;
and therefore an intimation and exponent of a truth yet
grander than itself, and ready for all to realize who will.
When man disengages himself from his earthly vesture, and
passes from the temporal into eternity, he presents a picture
of the soul which detaches itself from evil, and ascends
into the high and lovely life of Christianity. That the true
resurrection is the regeneration of the soul, is shown by our
Lord's ow'n divine words — " I am the resurrection." Doubt-
less, in his ascent from the tomb, we have the type of man's
immortality ; but this is not so much the doctrine intended
in the w^ords in question, as that resurrection is to acknow-
ledge and follow him while we are yet on earth.
195. Such also is the resurrection which alone is repre-
sented and foreshadowed in the beautiful phenomena of the
Spring, so enthusiastically pointed to by preachers of every
creed and age. When the seeds vegetate, and cover the
earth with leaves and flowers ; when the trees bud, and
foliage takes the place of snow and icicles, the resurrection
that goes on is a rejuvenescence of life, beauty, vigor ; no
dead thing reappears ; nothing that is defaced comes up
again ; there is no portraiture of the re-animation of mere
dead material bodies, only of the deathlessness and energy
340 THE FIKST AND SECOND EESURRECTION.
of moral excellence. N'owhere in the whole scope of nature
is there ever seen resurrection of what is dead, or emble-
matic of death ; all its revivifying processes attach to things
which are alive and representative of life. It is only where
the principle and power of life have never been for one
instant interrupted, that resurrection takes place ; resurrec-
tion of that which has altogether perished and decomposed,
as the material body, which in itself is neither good nor
evil, is never in the least degree illustrated ; and from this
single circumstance, the current doctrine of the resurrection,
or that which regards it as a return of the soul into the
material body from which it had been separated — the latter
being transmogrified into a " spiritual body" — may be re-
garded as much in need of revision. The expectation of
such return is in reality no more than a varied shajDe of the
doctrine of the old Egyptians, which led them to embalm
the corpses of their dead, to be, they imagined, in course of
time re-animated by the relenting soul. Any theological
dogma which is not illustrated by the Divine economy as it
works visibly in the material creation, may legitimately be
demurred to. There is no truth vouchsafed to man but is
inscribed over again in the beautiful volume of the earth
and sky ; and conversely, the point Avhere nature no longer
speaks, is the point where truth also is at an end. The test
of truth is that nature mirrors it.
196. With this right understanding of the word before
our eyes, we see what is meant by " Blessed and holy is he
that hath part in the first resurrection." The second is
simply to enter the spiritual world, which all men do in due
course ; some to the " resurrection of life," some to the
" resurrection of condemnation ;" but that which is " blessed
and holy," is the resurrection which the soul has already
experienced in the body. It is this "first resurrection"
which is referred to in the encouraging and consolatory
NO KESUERECTION WITHOUT DEATH. 341
verse — " Precious unto the Lord is tlie death of his saints."
Some think that this means the death of the body. Nay ;
what God rejoices in, is the death of selfishness and bad
passions. There can be no resurrection, either real or repre-
sentative, except contingently on death ; hence it is said,
that a man must " hate his own life," and " except he lay
down his life." " Life" here denotes that particular, selfish,
temporal love by Avhich every man is animated while unre-
generate, impelling some in one way, some in another, and
which must be subordinated to a higher one if he would
rise. This death, therefore, does it behoove us strenuously
and unceasingly to contemplate ; and not only so, it needs
that, with the Apostle, Ave " die daily," that is, that we reju-
venize daily, exchanging what is unlovely in our affections
for some diviner attachment, and replacing our childish,
foolish, and unprofitable knowledges with wisdom at once
comely and substantial. Every day that something is not
efiected towards these two ends, is a day ill-spent. Few,
very few, are the truths and em&tions which, however rela-
tively excellent, do not require to be replaced by still supe-
rior ones, or at least to be rectified and expanded ; and no-
where is the necessity more urgent than in those which have
reference to religion and theology. If the first and greatest
of existing evils be indifierence to practical religion, want
of enlarged understanding of spiritual things is unquestion-
ably the second. People grow up, live and die, in the rudi-
mentary knoAvledge of religious truths communicated to
them in their childhood, and think their little leaf is all the
forest. Inquire if they have read the last new novel or
review, and it is considered a reproach to have to say " No."
Ask what new fact they have learned in geography, or other
physical science, and a reply is ready. But inquire, even
of " religious" people, what new idea they have of heaven,
or of God, or the human soul, or the prophecies, and they
29*
342 THEOLOGY A PROGEESSIVE SCIENCE.
wonder what you mean, or what there can be to learn.
Some abstain from search for fear of their " faith" becoming
weakened. Faith in Christ, says Vater, can be no hindrance
to critical and philosophical inquiries ; otherwise he would
himself impede the progress of truth. The best token that
genuine rejuvenescence of the soul is going on in us, is, that
the Word of God becomes daily a richer mine to our
intelligence.
197. Death imj)lies a place of burial, and as death in
Scrijoture denotes, on the one hand, declension from virtue;
on the other, escape from the power of evil, or regeneration ;
so do the words grave, tomb, and sepulchre. The unre-
generate man is not only dead, but as truly entombed as a
corpse beneath the sods. In the prophets there are many
examples, as when Isaiah, speaking of the " rebellious," says
that "they remain among the graves." Similarly, in the
New Testament, dwelling "among the tombs" denotes living
in the shades and negations of irreligiousness. The "lu-
natic" loved to dwell among the tombs. He impersonates
the man Avho is dead to spiritualities. If it be "madness"
to act recklessly in secular things, surely it must be "mad-
ness" to forget God. Properly regarded, insanity is of two
kinds; one comes of the brain being diseased, so that the
soul, healthy in itself, cannot use it; this is insanity com-
monly so called: the other is when it is the soul that is
diseased, albeit the brain be perfectly healthy; this is infi-
delity and irreligiousness. The Pharisees of the human race
our Lord calls whited sepulchres, because, making a fair
show on the outside, within they are full of dead men's
bones. In the sense of regeneration or newness of life, there
is no more beautiful instance than that in Ezekiel xxxvii.
12, "Behold, 0, my people, I will open your graves, and
cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into
the land of Israel, and ye shall know that I am the Lord,
CONSECRATION OP BURIAL-PLACES. 343
and I will put my spirit in you, and ye shall live." St.
John records how the promise was fulfilled: "I say unto
you, the hour is coming, and noiu is, when the dead shall
•hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall
live." (v. 25.) A moment's reflection will show that these
words can in neither case refer to the resurrection after the
death of the body. They can mean nothing else but the
"quickening to grace." The raising of Lazarus by the
Lord, and of the widow's son at the city of Nain, were in-
tended as signs that the same power should revive men who
had been long "dead in trespasses and sins." It was because
the Jewish religion was so essentially and minutely repre-
sentative, or prefigurative of the Christian religion which
was to "fulfill" it, that the Jews were so desirous of burial
in the land of Canaan, the Scriptural symbol of heaven.
Interment in that country was emblematical and prefigura-
tive of resurrection into Paradise. The inhumation of the
material body is the resurrection of the spiritual, and where
the former is symbolically deposited, the latter symbolically
becomes an inhabitant. It is for the same reason, though it
may be unsuspected, that Christians bury their dead either
in or closely adjacent to their churches, the representatives
of the temple not made with hands. Every observance and
ceremony of this nature is founded on the relation of things
physical to things spiritual. If, then, a man would vitally
experience what resurrection is, what it essentially is to rise
from the grave, let him, with God's help, "die unto sin."
That he will survive the death of his material body, he may
assure himself, for it is not given him to choose, but whether
he will rise or not, he himself must elect.
CHAPTER XX.
JtEJVVENESCENCE.*
198. More than once in previous chapters we have
spoken of Rejuvenescence ; it now becomes important to
treat the subject independently and connectedly. The most
glorious principle of nature, impressed upon its every object,
Life and Death themselves are only other names for Reju-
venescence ; the history of the world and of its contents, in
all their variety and phases, is no more than the history of
its operation ; the one great poetic idea of the universe, all
phenomena and splendors, spiritual as well as material, are
but parts and elements of it, illustrating and adorning its
different modes. Everywhere, since the first morning, has
youth been incessantly bursting forth, and creation begin-
ning afresh. " The universe, open to the eye to-day, looks
as it did a thousand years ago ; the morning hymn of Mil-
ton does but tell the beauty Avith which our own familiar
sun dressed the earliest fields and gardens of the world ;" all
things, says the apostle, " continue as they were from the
beginning of creation." True, there is continual dismem-
berment and disintegration ; the flower fades, the animal
falls to dust, but this is not death — it is merely the casting
away of worn-out vestures, in order that the new may be put
on. The form, the idea, the actuality, lives forever; the
* Literally " Return to a state of yontli."
344
DEATH NOT THE DESTROYER OF LIFE. 345
end always reverts to the beginning ; from the plant comes
the fruit, and from the fruit comes the seed, which again
contains the plant within itself Look at that sculptured
pine-apple ! ISTature in miniature ; upon its yellow ripeness
ensues a beautiful tufted crown of leaves, promising and be-
ginning the whole history over again, the true Phoenix of
creation.* The fabled Palm is only a metaphor of the
world. Turn which way we will, we find no " killing prin-
ciple" in nature, only a vitalizing and sustaining one.
Throughout its whole extent, Nature is Life ; in all its
forms and modifications, one vast and infinite Life — sub-
ject, no doubt, to the extinction of particular presentations,
but never to absolute and total death, even in its least ana
weakest things. Anything that looks like death is a token
and certificate of life being about to start anew and invigo-
rated. Every end is also a beginning. "All things in the
world," says Lynch, " are striving to begin as well as to
finish." Marriage once more is the type and exponent. So
far, therefore, from being the destroyer of life, death, rightly
viewed, is its nourisher and aliment. A thing does not pe-
rish in order that it may no longer exist, but that another
of the same or similar kind may enter fresh and beautiful
upon the scene, and thus virtually perpetuate the original.
"All death in nature," says Fichte, " is life, and in death
appears visibly the advancement of life. It is not death
which kills, but the higher life which, concealed behind the
other, begins to develop itself. Death and birth are but
the struggle of life with itself to attain a higher form.f
* The same beautiful onward growth appears conspicuously in
several of the New Holland genera of Myrtacete, as Melaleuca, Me-
trosideros, Beaufortia, &c. ; and a similar phenomenon in the cones of
the Larch, from the apex of which occasionally extends a leafy shoot.
t Destination of Man, p. 127.
P*
346 EVJJIRYTHING ALIVE TO THE LIVING MIND.
Granted, we do not perceive it to be so if we look at things
merely with the outward senses — we perceive it in the de-
gree that our own minds are alive, and apt, from culture
and sincere and fervent aspiration after truth, to rejuvenize
in themselves. Everything is alive to the living mind.
Death is abundant in proportion as the mind is dead. To
estimate our intellectual vitality, at any given time, we have
but to ask ourselves. How much life are we conscious of?
We speak, in ordinary converse, of youth and age as distinct
epochs, and as a matter of appearance, correctly so. It re-
sults, however, from this great law, that so far from being-
separate and successive, they are cotemporaneous and con-
current. Youth does not cease, and age begin. Through-
out life their phenomena run side by side, revolving each
upon the other, age succeeding youth, youth succeeding age,
in the most varied conditions of exchange, and often crowd-
ing into the same region. Everj^vhere in nature we see youth
and senility intermingled, presenting themselves alternately,
and altogether irresjDective and indejDendent of annual birth-
days. If decay attend upon age, so does it upon infancy ;
if youth is a beginning, so, too is maturity. Life rising out
of death was the great " mystery" which in old time, sym-
bolism delighted to represent under the thousand ingenious
forms preserved in mythology and ancient poetry, as in the
lovely fable of Cuj)id and Psyche. Nature was explored in
her every realm for attestations to it, the results giving to
religion new sanctity and illustration, to philosophy new
dignity and grace. Sleep was beautifully called " the minor
mystery of death ;" since the seeming susjDension of life
during the stillness of slumber, is the pathway to restoration
of its powers, and thus a prefigurement of what death is de-
signed for. " Death, like sleep," says the illustrious Herder,
" cools the fever of life ; gently interrupts its too uniform
and long-continiied movement ; heals many wounds incura-
DEATH AN OPERATION OP LIFE. 347
ble before, and prepares the soul for a pleasurable awaken-
ing, for the enjoyment of a new morning of youth. As in
my dreams, my thoughts fly back to youth — as in my
dreams, being only half fettered by the bodily organs, and
more concentred in myself, I feel more free and active — so
thou, revivifying dream of death, wilt smilingly bring back
the youth of my life, the most energetic and pleasing mo-
ments of my existence." *
199. When, then, it is said that death takes things away,
it is said wrongfully. It is done by Life, the constant aim
of which is to obtain a point of departure for renewed pro-
gress, pushing out of the way whatever may obstruct. See
what curious and striking illustrations are furnished in the
physiology of our own bodies ! The teeth of the child drop
from its little gums, that the teeth of manhood may take
their place ; the blood, by its particles, supersedes itself as
fast as it is formed; every molecule of muscle, and bone,
and brain, is an ephemeron ; our entire fabric is taken to
pieces and rebuilt some seven or eight times before we leave
it. The bodies of all other animals similarly rejuvenize
during the period between birth and dissolution, some, in
addition to the molecular renewal, having periodical and
most curious replacements of entire organs. Birds renew
their plumage; lizards and snakes their skins; the crab
even replaces its stomach, forming a new one every year,
and casting away the old. Plants also rejuvenize, exempli-
fied in the annual renewal of their leaves and flowers. In
the higher kinds of vegetation the phenomena are at once
so marked and intelligible, as to have called forth the first,
and as yet the only treatise, expressly devoted to this mag-
* Outlines of a History of the Philosophy of Man, book v.,
chap. 4.
348 PHYSIOLOGICAL REJUVENESCENCE.
nificent science.* Philo beautifully uses tliem to illustrate
the " unbounded wisdom of God :" " The wealth of that
wisdom is as a tree, which is continually putting forth new
shoots after the old ones, so that it never ceases growing
young again, and being in the flower of its strength."
200. As a phenomenon of physiological or organic life,
Rejuvenescence appears under two great general modes,
namely, first, Return by the individual, either as a whole,
or in its molecules, to an earlier condition of existence,
securing thereby a point of departure for renewed progress ;
secondly, Repetition in a new being, under the la,w of pro-
creation by male and female, of the entire course of organic
evolution. The first has for its object, the co7npletion of the
form ; the second has for its object, the repetition of the
form. Rejuvenescence in order to Completion is exempli-
fied in the growth of a child, leading it on to puberty, and
thence to manhood ; that which has Repetition for its end,
appears in the phenomena of generation and birth. It
follows that it is the power of Rejuvenescence which mainly
distinguishes organic bodies from inorganic, since in the
latter there is neither a graduated development of the indi-
vidual, nor renewal by procreation. Without rejuvenescence
there can be no organic development, nor where organs are
absent can rejuvenescence ever occur. The distinction be-
tween the two kingdoms of organized beings themselves as
regards rejuvenescence, is that while in animals there is a
perpetual dissolution and rebuilding of the entire substance,
the devitalized atoms being ejected, plants never rejuvenize
"" The Phenomenon of Eejuvenescence in Nature, especially in
the life and development of Plants. From the German of Dr. A.
Braun, by Arthur Henfrey. Eay Society's Volume, 1853. One of
the most important of modern contributions to the philosophy ol
Botany.
SLEEP. 349
a part once completed, but provide for the stability and
regularity of the vital processes, by developing new parts.
The stem once formed and consolidated, never alters in the
least ; the leaves and flowers when done with, are disen-
gaged, and absolutely new ones are unfolded in their place.
201. Rejuvenescence in order to the Completion of the
form, has, accordingly, for its chief process in Animals, the
decay and renewal of the tissues ; in Plants, the unfolding
of new organs. Both involve a variety of minor and con-
tributive activities, but most especially is this the case in
the rejuvenescence of the animal, where the full effectuation
of the molecular renewal requires and is secured by the
grand supplementary process of Sleep — in effect a periodical
return of the animal to its ante-natal state, beautifully cor-
responding with the resumption of that state in lactation,
which is a living over again of the life of the womb, on a
higher plane. During sleep, the inner formative processes
by which the body is preserved act undisturbedly and con-
centratedly. Every one knows how sweet is the restoration
derived from one's pillow when ui health ; more wonderful
even yet is that Avhich we derive when sleep occurs at the
crisis of severe diseases. The nocturnal refreshment of the
physical frame induces a similar restoration of the spiritual.
Relaxed from the tension in which it is held towards the
outer world while awake, during sleep the mind sinks into a
condition comparable to that in which it lay before con-
sciousness commenced ; all images and shapes it is cognizant
of by day, either vanish, or appear only as reflected pic-
tures ; unexcited from without, it " gathers itself up into
new force, new comprehension of its purpose, much that
crossed the waking thoughts, scattered and entangled, be-
coming thereby sifted and arranged." Hence is it that " our
waking thoughts are often our truest and finest ; and that
dreams are sometimes eminent and wise ; j)henomena incom-
so
•350 TRUE IDEA OF SPRING.
patible with the idea that we die down like grass into our
organic roots at night, and are merely resuscitated as from
a winter when we wake. Man is captured in sleep, not by
death, but by his better nature ; to-day runs in through a
deeper day to become the parent of to-morrow, and he issues
every morning, bright as the morning and of life size, from
the peaceful womb of the cerebellum." The most remark-
able illustration of the bearing of sleep upon rejuvenescence
is supplied perhaps in the chrysalis period of Insect-life.
Here takes place that grand retreat and gathering-in of
vital power which enables the unsightly grub to expand
into the lovely, completed and expressive form Ave call the
Butterfly, so exquisite a symbol of the Spring, when winter,
the grub and chrysalis era of the vegetable world, is emerged
from and superseded. The analogy is important to consider,
because of the common but mistaken impression that the
charming green exuberance of the vernal season is no more
than the work of the few days during which it appears.
That beautiful display is in preparation all the winter, just
as the butterfly is in preparation in the grub and chrysalis ;
Spring merely brings the concluding steps before our eyes,
as the rupture of the chrysalis the painted Avings of the
perfect insect. Not a little of the Spring begins in the pre-
vious autumn, and even in the previous summer. The
rudiments of the future leaves of the alder may be found
in August; the leaves and even the flower-buds also of the
lilac ; the catkins of the hazel make their appearance Avith
the asters and golden-rod; in the bulbs of the hyacinth, the
tulip, and the crocus, long before they manifest the least
sign of vegetation, the future blossom may readily be dis-
cerned. Insect-life, as a AAdiole, is the most perfect example
Ave possess of Rejuvenescence having for its aim the Com-
pletion of the Individual. The true idea of Avhat is so
improperly called the "metamorphosis" or "transformatioii"
V
METAMORPHOSIS OF INSECTS. 351
of insects, is development info a perfect state. It is no change
of one creature into another. The caterpillar contains
within itself the rudiments of the future butterfly in all its
parts ; it becomes the butterfly — not, as commonly supposed,
by a monstrous and- supernatural mutation — simply by cast-
ing its shin, and unfolding parts previously concealed and
immature, first the limbs, by and by the wings, oj^ening
more and more, till the idea of the perfect insect is attained.
No less striking and beautiful than the analogy of the But-
terfly with the opening leaves and flowers of spring, is the
rejuvenescence at that season of the Birds. They blossom
in the Spring, like the trees and plants, glossy and tinted in
their plumage, and like the plants again Avhen they shed
their jDctals, lose their peculiar spring and summer lustre
immediately the process of hatching is completed. To
return, however, to the Butterfly. We have a lesson in the
insect's history of another kind. From time immemorial
the butterfly has been the emblem of the resurrection.
Anciently, as with the Egyptians, we find it drawn either in
its pro]Der form, or as a lovely female child with butterfly's
wings. " Employed, subsequently, by the Fathers of the
Church, the beautiful symbol shone on their ponderous
pages like a beam of sunlight falling through a painted
window on the gloom of a cloister." The beauty and truth-
fulness of the emblem lie, however, in exactly the opposite
direction to that ordinarily supposed. Not only is the usual
idea of the resurrection, or that of a decayed body recom-
posed in its elements, and reunited after a certain interval
to the soul, not represented in the natural history of the
insect, but altogether contrary to it. What the history does
teach is that which is also the true idea of the resurrection.
As the caterpillar becomes the butterfly by no supernatural
transformation, but simply by the casting away of outward
coverings ; so does man become an angel, not by any imagi-
-352 THE FOUNTAIN OF REJUVENESCENCE.
iiaiy transmogrification of his " natural" body into a " spir-
itual" body, but by the latter, which he always has, laying
down and departing from the former, expanding its matured
organs, and ascending into that higher and lovelier mode of
life which is poetically represented under the name of wings.
Only with such an understanding, does the name ^uyri
projoerly apply to the beautiful creature it denotes. Reau-
mur, that great and good naturalist, when he discovered the
real structure of the caterpillar, and pointed out the dis-
crepancy between the truth of nature and the dogma of the
preachers, was denounced as an enemy to revelation.
202. Occasionally, but rarely, there is in man a resump-
tion, when old, of the external signs of youth. Cherished
from the remotest ages, the idea of a restoration of youthful
health, and strength, and bodily shape, by some beautiful
stroke of magic, is not altogether remote from fact, though
the magic is in nature rather than Art. The basis, proba-
bly, of the story of Medea and JEson ; it figures in the fables
and national poetry of every period of the world; its most
beautiful embodiment, the Fountain of Rejuvenescence, is
found in the tales of the far East, in the romances of Chi-
valry, and in the Mysteries: in the middle ages it was the
symbol of Christianity renewing the moral strength of the
world after the corruptions of pagan Rome; and now we
have it in a fine picture by one of the best of the French
pre-Raphaelite school.* The Alchemists thought to secure
such rejuvenescence by the aid of the Philosojjher's Stone,
which was not only to ward off sickness and infirmities, but
to replace men in the vigor of early youth. Vincent de
Beauvais attempted to show that Noah's having children
* M. Haussouiller, "La Fontaine de Jouvence." See the engrav-
ing in the "lUustrated London News," September 20th, 1850.
REPRODUCTION. 353
when five hundred years old was owing to liis j)ossession of
this precious secret, whereby he had had restored to him the
freshness of his ancient puberty. Vain expectation! though
man may certainly please himself with the reflection that
he alone ever steps in the grateful path. The lower animals
begin to decay almost immediately after the decline of their
propagative power; in man, life is prolonged more or less
after virility has ceased, and now and then operates over
again some of the most characteristic phenomena of his ear-
liest days. The cutting of new teeth in old age; return of
the power of suckling; growth of hair similar to that of the
young, and several other such phenomena are abundantly
on record, as may be seen at one view in Dr. IMehliss, whose
curious work, Ueher Viriliseenz unci Rejuvenescenz thierlscher
Korper (Leipsic, 1838), has raised the matter into a branch
of physiology. Of new dentition, for example, he cites not
less than thirty or forty authentic instances, many of them
octogenarian. For the appearance of these phenomena it is
necessary, he tells us, that there should exist complete
energy and integrity of vegetative life, and probably also
local excitement.
203. The second great form of physiological Rejuvenes-
cence, or that by which man, and all other living creatures,
together with plants, renew themselves as to race, is ex-
pressed in the phenomena of procreation.
Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youtli, now withering on the ground ;
So generations in their course decay,
So flourish tliese, when those are passed away.
Here it is that we most clearly understand that death, so
called, is the oj)eration of Life. The particular aggrega-
tions of material elements, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and so
forth, drawn together and consolidated by the immortal idea
30*
354 PROCREATION.
of each plant and animal, and by the spiritual body in man,
break up and disappear after awhile ; but the Form remains
with us still; its old apparel only parted with, in order that
new may be put on. Wonderful as are the processes of
sustentation and repair in the individual, those of procrea-
tion, or the sustentation of the species, incomparably trans-
cend them. No trifling work is the elaboration of a body
which shall feed and groAV, move and exchange offices of
friendship; but to construct one which, in addition to all
this, shall be able to engender new beings like itself, is the
very acme of skill and miracle. So excellently has the sub-
ject been dealt with by other hands, so extensive also is its
detail, that here we need only advert to it as one of the most
solemn considerations of life, a subject never to be approached
without reverence and awe. The unthinking part of man-
kind look upon procreation as no more than one of the com-
mon impulses of nature, and consider the slightest allusion
to it improper. Many even of those who ought to know
better, regard it as ignoble and degrading, and its alluring
incidents only as palliative and reconciliatory. There can-
not be a lower idea. In the whole range of delegated offices
there is none more honorable and noble than to act for the
Father of all, as ]3ei'petuator of the objects he has created
"for his pleasure;" wherefore also the dej)th and fearfulness
of its responsibility, since of all situations a man can place
himself in, that of Father is the most serious and manifold
in duties. Large indeed should be the faith in heavenly
succor of him who adventures upon progeny. The same is
the ground of the brilliant delights which enter into its his-
tory, since outward circumstance is always made commen-
surate with the dignity of that which it accompanies and
invests. The Beauty which attends on the period when
with the complete evolution of the system, the power is
attained of reproducing the species, is one of the most admi-
BEAUTY AND THE NUPTIAL SEASON. o55
rable phenomena of nature. The princijDle is universally
set forth. See how the plant, at its nuptial hour, adorns
itself with bright flowers ! See how the glow-worm trims its
lamp; how the butterfly spreads its gallant pinions! In
fishes, birds and mammals, puberty is again characterized
universally by the development of ornaments more or less
striking, such as brightly-colored scales and plumage, horns,
manes, and beards, the last-named enhancing the manly
beauty attained at this period in our own species, the female
of which is even more largely embellished by the growth of
the hair, and the development of the mammae, and of the
subcutaneous tissues of the body in general, giving to the
limbs their matchless "lily roundness." Not only are beauty
of form and color now most exquisite. Flowers smell the
sweetest during the union of the sperm-cell with the germ-
cell, especially in its central moments, losing their fragrance
rapidly when it is completed; in the animal kingdom, dur-
ing the same period, sounds are emitted, pleasing, undoubt-
edly, to the ears they are designed for, and taking in man,
the form of poetry and music. The ballad " to his mistress'
eyebrow" of the lover is the exact analogue of the song of
the bird, and the chirp of the grasshopper and cicada.*
That the song of birds has immediate reference to their loves,
is generally understood. Like the beauty of their plumage,
it rises to its highest degree during the pairing season, and
is lost at the time of moulting. All our resident birds that
renew their song in the autumn, probably have broods at
that time; the thrush, and the blackbird, which are heard
from the middle of January to October, generally have two
broods in the course of the season, and not infrequently
* Abridged, in part, from Dr. Laycock. British and Foreign
Medico-Chinirgical Review, July, 1855.
356 REPKODUCTION AN EMBLEM OF ETERNITY.
three. But it is not merely a pairing cry, being continued
till the young birds break the shell, and in many cases till
they are able to fly. Probably it produces general excite-
ment in the female bird, while sitting, so as to increase the
needful warmth, and a power of more energetic performance
by both parents of the various duties of the nest. We all
know that there are sounds, especially from those we love,
which make the heart beat, and the bosom thrill, and the
whole body gioAV, inspiring us magically and beautifully,
and doubtless it is the same with the feathered dwellers in
the trees.
204. Holding this sublime |)ower of self-renewal as a part
of its very nature, every animal, bird and insect, every tree
and herb, down to the humblest moss, is in its procreant ca-
pacity an emblem and prefigurement of Eternity. Forever
rolling onwards, the truest and grandest idea of the Divine
life is unfolded to us in the phenomena of reproduction.
Hence that beautiful custom of the ancients, of placing
seeds in the hands of the dead, and in their tombs and sar-
cophagi. They perceived that the renovation of a plant, by
its seeds, year by year, and from age to age, unchanged in
the least of its essential characters, is a picture in little of
immortality. The rites of religion always have reference to
the theory ; wherever religion has existed, the offices of the
living to the dead have invariably formed a part of them ;
and as all religious rites are of necessity syinbolical, their
beauty and intelligibleness show the quality of the faith
which employs them. The custom alluded to thus testifies
in itself to the antiquity of man's persuasion that he is to
live forever.* With mankind, elevation to capacity for the
* The early Christians also put seeds in the coflins of the dead,
bat in their case it was in acknowledgment of the imagery of St.
THE POEM or GEOLOGY. 357
privileges and rewards of procreation is the effulgent Aurora
of existence. Youth begins over again, on a higher and
more beautiful plane ; whatever talents there may be in the
soul, now they make their appearance. Early or late,
whenever it may be first felt, love, the high-priest of procre-
ation, always leads the way to rejuvenescence of our entire
nature; no j)leasures are so sincere and so enduring as those
which come late in life through renewal of one's youth un-
der the sweet agency of a happily-placed affection, nor are
any so thankfully enjoyed.
205. The rejuvenescence which the entire organic garment
of the earth has undergone, and will not improbably un-
dergo again, is the poem of Geology. This rejuvenescence
consists in the development of successive suites of animals
and plants ; enduring, as to their species, for incalculable
ages, and then disappearing, or nearly so, to make way for
newer and higher kinds, to endure for as long, and in turn
be themselves superseded. Four times, at least, says Lyell,
do these changes take place in the course of the tertiary era,
and to an extent which leaves hardly a species of the first
period extant among the species now living. This is not in-
consistent with the previously noticed kinds of rejuvene-
scence. It is rejuvenescence of organic nature in the mass,
the particular genera and species being but subordinate in-
cidents in the great onward and upward current of terrestrial
Life. " Newer and higher kinds" is not to be understood as
implying that the new appearances are all of higher grade.
" Geology affords no ground whatever for the hypothesis of a
regular succession of creatures, beginning with the simplest
forms in the older strata, and ascending to more com23licated
Paul. See an interesting article on the subject in Hooker's "Com-
panion to the Botanical Magazine," vol. 2, p. 298.
358 PROGRESS A FACT OF NATURAL HISTORY.
in the later formations. The earliest forms of life known to
geology are not of the lowest grade of organization ; neither
are the earliest forms of any of the classes which subsequently
appear, the simplest of their kind." It is in the aggregate
of forms, large and small, higher and lower, that the pro-
gressive improvement is shown, and this is one of the
proudest facts of natural history. It is proper to remark,
however, that there is a difference in this respect, as regards
plant and animal remains. While the vegetable kingdom
has always had representatives of highest as well as of low-
est forms ; in the animal fossils of the earlier ages, there are,
on the other hand, no vertebrates. But this difference, as
Alphonse De Candolle remarks, " need not excite much as-
tonishment, when we think of the vast distance which
separates the inferior and the superior animals, and the
comparatively homogeneous character of the great classes
of vegetables." Neither does geology give any countenance
to the idea of " jDrogressive development," in the sense of
transmutation of one species into another. We mention
this because of the importance of distinguishing the idea in
question from that of gradual improvement as a character-
istic of successive creations. It is a very different thing for
an organism to improve into one of higher nature, by eleva-
tion of its own qualities and powers, and for that organism
to cease altogether, and be replaced by a superior one. The
changes in the plants and animals of our earth, as regards
its successive periods, have uniformly been Avrought in the
latter way. The evidence of it is plain and abundant;
whereas there is none whatever to support the hypothesis of
the superiority having resulted from change for the better
of earlier individuals. That such improvement in the suc-
cessive sets of organized beings has been made, and is visible
to us, is a strong proof of the existence and the activity of
God; "improvement" of course being understood, when
FLOWERING PLANTS AND HUMANITY, 359
predicated of the Divine work, not as a coming forth of
results of experience in creating, but simply as a term de-
noting that Divine wisdom saw fit to disclose less elabo-
rate forms in the first place, and more elaborate ones
subsequently. The halting of nature at given periods in
the world's history, and in the intervals between one set of
species and another, producing (as at present) only the like,
is but the same phenomenon, on a grand scale, as that of
the repetition of its leaves by a plant, perhaps hundreds of
times, before the development advances to the stage of flow-
ers. Looking at the world as a grand scene of organic evo-
lution, every ncAV step in its rejuvenescence bringing it nearer
and nearer towards completion, we cannot but recognize how
beautiful an image of it, in little, is presented in a youthful
Teee, with its successive sets of leaves, more and more per-
fect and abundant in each new unfolding (so well shown,
for example, in young sycamores), the last and fairest era
being, in the one case, Man and the magnificent nature co-
temporary with him ; in the other. Blossoms and Fruit.
Blossoms and humanity are ideas which invariably go to-
gether; the pre-Adamite plants were almost Avithout excep-
tion flowerless ; fossil bees do not occur till the period of the
earth's preparation as a home for human beings. " The
first bee," says -the late talented and lamented author of The
Testimony of the Rocks, " makes its appearance in the am-
ber of the Eocene, locked u]d hermetically in its gem-like
tomb — an embalmed corpse in a crystal cofiin — along with
fragments of flower-bearing herbs and trees. The first of
the Bombycidas too — insects that may be seen suspended
over flowers by the scarcely visible vibrations of their wings,
and sucking the honied juices by means of their long slen-
der trunks— also appear in the amber, associated with
moths, butterflies, and a few caterpillars. Bees and butter-
flies are present in increased proportions in the latter terti-
3(30 THE ROSACE.53.
ary deposits; but not until that tenrinal creation to which
we ourselves belong Avas ushered on the scene, did they re-
ceive their fullest development." Examining the curious
and beautiful relics to which Miller alludes, how striking
appears the contrast between the tombs of these ancient and
inconsiderable insects and those which the dead receive at
our own hands ! Instead of the gloom which surrounds the
last habitations of mankind, here is brightness ; instead of
being loathsome and painful to look upon, here is something
to admire and covet. How insignificant and bungling seem
the best efforts of Art to embalm and preserve the corpse of
a departed friend, compared with this simple and elegant
method of Nature, so profound and perfect even in what
may aj)pear most fanciful and trifling in her works !
206. Not only were the species new, in the successive re-
juvenizings of the earth's surface, but in many instances,
the entire families. Rosaceous plants, for example, do not
belong to the earlier periods of the world's history. Hence
may Ave infer the higher nature of their correspondence in
regard to the sjpiritual principles of Avhich they are out-
births and representatives, a presumption already afforded
m the apple — a leading member of this tribe — being the
most perfect realization of a fruit, Avhether regarded as to
its botanical structure, or its uses. In the same generous
family are comprised the almond, the straAvberry, and the
medlar ; the plum, the peach, the nectarine, the apricot,
"shining in sAA^eet brightness of golden velvet," together
Avith innumerable charming floAvers, every one of them,
without doubt, of a fine spiritual origin and significance.
That these plants Avere not placed upon the earth until the
period of its occupancy by man, because he alone could es-
teem their produce, and that they were specially destined
for human nourishment and satisfaction, may certainly be
assumed as the reason of their late bestoAval. Doubtless,
THE FERNS. 36J.
there is au exact relation between the races of animals and
plants, and the epochs at Avhich they have been placed upon
the earth ; since the whole matter of the succession of organ-
ized beings is the realization of an infinitely wise plan —
whence, also, the impossibility of attaining grand and accu-
rate ideas of nature without the aid of geology ; — the pro-
founder reason lies, however, in the correspondence of nature
and the soul, the order in which, of growth and efilorescence,
is in every point the same. Quite unlike the Rosacese are
the Ferns. In these, so far from a comparatively recent
fiimily, we have the inheritors of one of the most ancient and
noble titles in vegetable peerage. Glorious in all periods of
the world's history, while the leaves and branches of its gene-
alogical tree are green and vigorous with rills of current life,
its roots strike deep into the remotest records of the past.
Honorable in the olden time, beautiful to-day, the Ferns are
the beau-ideal of a patrician family. Their value is com-
mensurate with their charms. Like the Rosetta stone, they
speak at once a familiar language and a primseval, helping
thereby to interpret the vast and sacred mysteries of extin-
guished ages. Less interesting, only because exotices of
small numbers and variety, are those other curious relics of
antiquity, the Cycadese. Memorials of a class of plants
whose day is past, they seem to linger with us not so much
for themselves as to " make former times shake hands with
latter."
207. Let us pass on to the renewals that pertain to the
Spiritual degree of life. In the changes of our feelings we
have rejuvenescences quite as beautiful as. those of nature.
The decay and retrogression which we see in autumn among
the plants, providing the means of a charming palingenesis
in the spring, is not more regular and universal than are the
declensions we are subject to in ourselves ; nor does nature
rebound more freely and improved. Whenever there is a
31 Q
362 PLEASURES OF LITERARY OLD AGE.
return of the heart from unsatisfying, selfish, or ignoble pur-
suits, to a taste for the jDure and uncloying charms of virtue
and nature, there we have the restoration of our youth;
wherever there is advance into new and delicious fields of
thought and feeling, under the influence of new scenes, or
the advent of new friends, or the passing aAvay of what is
painful, or distasteful, life starts anew in all its plenitude of
powers and sentiment. How charmingly does D'Israeli
describe the rejuvenescence in old age, of well-cultivated
literary taste! "The steps of time are retraced, and we
resume the possessions we seemed to have lost. We open
the poets who made us enthusiasts, and the philosophers
who taught us to think, with a new source of feeling acquired
by our own experience. Adam Smith confessed his satisfac-
tion at this pleasure to Dugald Stewart, while reperusing
Avith the enthusiasm of a student, the tragic poets of ancient
Greece. The calm, philoso|)hic Hume found death only
could interrupt the keen pleasure he was again receiving
from Lucian. 'Happily/ said this philosopher, 'on retir-
ing from the world, I found my taste for reading return
with even greater avidity.' Lord Woodhouselee found the
composing anew his Lectures on History so fascinating in
the last period of his life, that it rewarded him, Alison in-
forms us, with ' that peculiar delight which has been often
observed in the later years of literary men, the delight of
returning to the studies of their youth, and of feeling under
the snows of age the cheerful memories of their Spring.' In
the solitude and night of human life, is discovered that un-
regarded kindness of nature which has given flowers that
only open in the evening, and bloom through the night
season."* As morning and sunshine come back in the Hes-
* "The Literary Character," chap. xx. See also an original and
beautiful "Account of the state of tlie body and mind in old age," in
NEW DOCTRINES AND OLD. 363
peris, the evening primrose, and the night-flowering cereus,
so do fancy and imagination rejuvenize with the man of
taste.*
208. There is abundant illustration of this great law also
in civil, scientific, and literary history, especially the last;
and it is worthy of observation that the precursor of a nevf
era is always one who refuses to follow the slavishness, ex-
travagances, and caprices of exhausted invention, and
returns to the freedom, simplicity, and integrity of nature.
This is why men of true genius, who illumine the world with
something new and glorious, are always accused of "violat-
ing the rules," i. e., refusing to dwell among the tombs.
What shallow-minded bigots call "heresy" and "hetero-
doxy" is often nothing more than the rejuvenescence of a
devout and healthy soul, too far elevated above themselves
ever to care for their censure and wrath. The great Syden-
ham, with whom the science of medicine rejuvenized, as it
did with Harvey and Hunter, was conspired against Avith
intent to expel him from his College, as "guilty of medical
heresy." Death, in its blindness, ahvays thinks that its con-
trary, or Life, is the dead condition ; as evil always pities
the good, and would fain persuade us that itself is the sum-
the Medical Inquiries and Observations of that most interesting
Avriter, Dr. Rush. Vohime 2. (Philadelphia, 1793.)
* The number and variety of the flowers which expand, or only
become fragrant towards evening, show how deeply seated is this
beautiful correspondence. Besides the familiar species above men-
tioned, there are the Marvel of Peru, the tuberose, several species
of the Germanicese, as Pelargonium triste; several of the Caryo-
phyllese, as Silene noctiflora and vespertina, and Dianthus pomeri-
danus ; many tropical Convolvulacese, as Ipomsea bona-nox ; additional
Cruciferoe, as Cheiranthus sinuatus ; together with various Orchide.ia,
Malvacece, and Thymelese. Bartonia ornata, and Barringtonia spe-
ciusa are also beautiful congeners.
364 REVIVALS.
onmn honum. When another kind of rejuvenescence was
transpiring under the genius of Lord Bacon, Sir Thomas
Bodley wrote to him remonstrating on his "new mode of
philosophizing." New doctrines always displease the small
and stagnant-souled, who may be known by their having
nailed themselves to given opinions, and considering novel-
ties vicious and illegal. Given to fancying that the world
has been losing wisdom instead of gaining it, since the pe-
riod when they contracted their views, they must work by
precedent, or not at all, and hence are never anything but
mimics. Not so the men of life and power. "The great
men never know how or why they do things. They have
no rules, cannot comprehend the nature of rules. The mo-
ment any man begins to talk about rules, in Avhatsoever art,
you may know him for a second-rate man; and if he talk
much about them, he is a third-rate." As Goethe said, all
great men produce their works as women do i^etty children,
without either thinking about it, or knowing how it is done.
All great epochs are epochs of resurrection. Not one of our
modern institutions is purely an establishment of To-day.
That which is, has already been, only under another and
cruder form. The mode may be different, but the principle
is the same; the truths we delight in as our own, were plea-
sures to our forefathers ; if we do not recognize them in our
readings in history, it is because the ages in their spiral rise
have lifted them to a higher level, as a building becomes
different Avhen we are close beside it, from what it appears
while in the distance. Ideas never die. Out of fashion for
awhile; lost, perhaps, for generations, they bide their time,
then revive, as Ovid says, in nova corpora mutata, "changed
into new bodies." No fragment of truth has ever been
really lost. Immortal as its origin, every particle is sure to
rise again, its resurrection the result of its immortality. All
the great "Revivals" of the present age partake of this
THE GOLDEN AGE. 365
character, and result from this mighty law. Let us be
carefiil then how we ridicule even the least of them. Resus-
citations can only happen where there is life ; the absurdity
may prove to be in ourselves, rather than in the things.
What the many are, such is the individual. The parallel
between the soul of man and that of society is exact.
"Every man," says Sir Thomas Brov/ne, "is not only him-
self; there have been many Diogeneses, and many Timons,
though but few of the name; men are lived over again; the
world is now as it was in ages past; there was none then,
but there has been some one since that parallels him, and is,
as it were, his revived self" We often cast our eyes towards
the future. If we would speculate on it rightly, Ave must
first comprehend the jjresent, and that is best done by con-
templating the i^asf. True, in our retrospect we seem to see
little more than Destruction ; but in the eyes of the natu-
ralist this indicates Renewal, transition into a new, up-
growing Time. ISTot a few of our greatest riddles have their
solutions in ancient history; yea, even in the fables of my-
thology; for mythology is not, as foolish people fancy, pro-
fane romance, and nothing more, but sound and living
prophecy, a sort of secular inspiration suited to the times to
which it was given, and intended to receive fulfillment in
later days. We talk of the golden age as gone. Not so ;
the golden age is both with us, and to come.
209. The highest rejuvenescence of all is man's return to
youth in heaven. Some people think, weakly, that " death
is the only reality in life ; happier and rightlier-minded are
those who see and feel that Life is the true reality in death."
Why, then, call it death ? and why mourn and Aveep for
those who return to the spring-time of existence? Why
complain that Ave ourselves seem to be so soon taken from
^his land of tombs, and replaced in the golden country of
our pristine hopes and imaginings ?
CHAPTER XXI.
HEALTH AJSTD DISEASE— MATIOJVALJE OF MIItACLES.
210. Intimately allied with the idea of Kejuveneseence,
is that of Health, the synonyme of Life, the delicious
spring of all animal enjoyment, and the finest light whereby
both to think and to love. Without health, the larger part
of our time is at once wretched and unprofitable. Sickness,
which, in its intenser degree, is disease, turns existence from
a blessing into misery ; it makes us " go mourning all the
day long," and if not checked in its inroads, soon ends in
the death which it foretells. " The excellences of the body,"
says old Charron, " are health, beauty, sprightliness, agility,
vigor, dexterity, gracefulness in motion and behaviour.
But Health is infinitely before all. Health is the love-
liest, the most desirable, the richest present in the poAver of
nature to confer. One thing only is more valuable, and
that is Probity." Vigorous health is the chief secret of
Good Temper. Fretfulness, petulance, irritability, come
oftener of bodily ailments than of natural unloveliness of
disposition, as proved by the change Avhieh supervenes with
relief. No one of any considerateness will ever deal harshly
where such states of feeling are developed from such a
cause, though none are more likely to be betrayed into im-
patience with them than the hearty and robust, who having
no experience of the aggravations of physical pain, deem
that moral offences can have no other than a moral origin.
As with the individual, so with Communities. Study the
36G
MENTAL DISEASE. 367
tem})er of the people Avho live in marshy districts, of those
who encounter an annual tropical fever, or who are subject
to goitre, and contrast them with the dispositions of the
dwellers on mountains, and in dry prairies ; what selfishness,
apathy, and discontent we find in the former class ; what
kindliness, cheerfulness, and hospitality in the other! A
curious parallel might be instituted between Health and
Money. Health is the less envied, but the more largely
and thoroughly enjoyed ; money is exactly the reverse, or a
thousand times less enjoyed than it is envied. The superi-
ority of Health becomes evident, nevertheless, when we
reflect that the poorest man would not part Avith his health
for money, whereas the invalided rich would willingly buy
health.
211. True of the body, all this is even more true of tlie
soul, which has likewise its health and its ailments ; and in
no less intimate connection with its vitality, and happiness,
and death. Far more emphatically does the ancient pro-
verb apply to the soul than to the body —
Non est vivere, sed valere, vita.
" Let no man deceive himself," say the incomparable Pe-
trarch, " by thinking that the contagions of the soul are less
than those of the body. They are yet greater ; they sink
deeper, and creep on more unsuspectedly."* To talk either
of life or health, whether of soul or of body, is thus vir-
tually to talk of the other ; and the same of their negations,
or death and disease. Spiritual disease is not to be con-
founded, however, with " mental disease," or insanity, lunacy,
idiotcy, dementia, &c., in their various kinds. Not one of
* De Vita Solitaria, I. 3, iv., Opera, p. 233. One of the best
jiortions of what Coleridge so well calls "the inestimable Latin
writings of Petrarch."
368 SPIRITUAL DISEASE.
these conditions imjilies, necessarily, a diseased soul, seeing
that they may and do most frequently come of mere disease
of its material instrument, the brain. " Circumstances not
only environ essentials, but alter their seemings. Brains
may be born into inconvenient cases. Good human minds,
veritable immortal children, may be born into idiot brains,
which Avill represent them badly, as a poor gift of speech
may choke the utterance of a rich heart."* Spiritual dis-
ease is where the brain itself is healthy, but its owner and
master distempered. Spiritually, we are well when we feel
ourselves diligent in the pursuit of intelligence, and have
" a conscience void of offence toward God and man," when
we are earnest to keep God's law, and thence trancpiil, and
sensitive to whatever is beautiful ; we are sick when these
conditions are absent or reversed. The correspondence of
physical disease with spiritual is most exact. By reason of
it we speak of a healthy tone of feeling, a miorbid imagina-
tion, sickly sentimentality, ill-nature, ill-temper; also of
being sick at heart, ill at ease, cured of bad habits. Pru-
dent, well-timed words. Homer calls bjtrjC, healthy. (II.
viii. 524.) From the Latin sanus and sanitas, we have the
equivalent expressions, sanitary, sanatory, sanative, sane,
insane, sanity, insanity; the three first applied to bodily, the
* In ascribing lunacy, insanity, &c. to diseased bixuin, we must take
care not to do so unreservedly. Cases are not infrequently met "with
of patients who have been mad for years, and yet whose brains, on
dissection after death, present no appearances different from those
of persons who have died in all the vigor of sound intellect. On
the other hand, all morbid appearances of the brain (except those
which supervene upon general paralysis) are found as frequently in
persons who have died sane as in those who have died mad. The
sudden cures of the mad, their temporary restorations, and many
other facts lead to the belief that insanit}^ may probably be a disease
of the blood.
ORIGIN OP DISEASE. 369
others to intellectual health. Sovncl, which is the same word
as sanus, is applied to a "sound judgment," as well as to a
" sound constitution."
212. It is because of the spiritual diseases that the physi-
cal ones exist ; or rather, they are both of them outbirths
of the same infernal cause, namely, the circumstances and
principles of hell. Whatever is good, beautiful, and enjoy-
able upon earth, is by derivation from heaven, or the bright
and angelic portion of the spiritual world; whatever is evil,
offensive, and ugly, comes, similarly, from the regions of
darkness. Disease belongs to the dark catalogue. In its
moral forms, it is directly inseminated and sustained by evil
spirits — the door to their agency being the "fallen nature"
inherited from our parents and ancestors ; for, that man is
exposed to the incessant, though secret and silent seductions
of evil spirits, is no less certain than that he is blessed by
the ministration of angels; — its physical forms appear
among us, because of the universal and immutable ordi-
nance that all things and conditions spiritual, shall issue
into material representatives. Proximately, these latter are
induced by infraction of the laws of the physical world.
Though all such afflictions are referable, ultimately, to the
providence of God, it is no direct supernatural influence
that casts a man into rheumatism or fever, but carelessness
of something purely natural. This is the immediate cause
of physical suffering ; else man would not be the free agent
that he is, in matters of health and self-protection. Disease,
accordingly, is no part of the proper nature of things, as
death is, but a declension from it. Disease destroys, but
death is sanative. Disease is to the material body what sin
is to the soul ; a condition it is liable to, but so far as it is
given to man to judge, apparently by no means inevitable.
A distinction is clearly drawn in Scripture between those
who " kept not their first estate," and those whom the sense
Q *
370 CORRUPTION OF NATURE BY THE FALL
of the passage implies to have retained it. Decay is natural,
because nature is finite, such decay always having reference
to Rejuvenescence, or the renewal of life ; but disease — un-
derstanding by this name, painful and virulent affections —
is not natural. At least it is impossible to conceive of it as
in any way compatible with a state of moral and physical
purity, such as that which the Bible teaches regarding our
first parents, and which alone is a true state of Nature.
The hundred wretched maladies which now infest the world,
entered it, there is every reason to believe, with man's gra-
dual, and deeper and deeper lapse into sin, or the im-natural
state. While the " corruption of nature by the Fall" is un-
questionably much exaggerated by theologians, in whose
commentaries it is far more largely dwelt upon than in the
Scriptures — neither our Saviour nor any of the New Testa-
ment writers who profited by his oral instruction ever
making mention of it — it cannot for a moment be doubted
that there is an awful and unrecalled literal truth in what
it is customary to call the " curse." Thorns and thistles
shall the earth produce unto thee, in sorrow shalt thou
bring forth ; and the other similar intimations of evil to
come, carry with them the intimation, though this is not
siDecifically stated, that disease also would now begin to af-
flict. It would enter the world, like the thorns and thistles
themselves, and like the creatures which are noxious to
man — expressly taught by Luther, Kirby, and many others
to have been unknown to this earth till after the Fall ; — it
would now enter the world because the latter had become
an arena, through the sin of its inhabitants, into w^hich in-
fernal principles and circumstances could project them-
selves ; each thorn and thistle, and noxious animal and
disease, being the physical embodiment or playing forth of
some element of hell ; the virus of a long anterior sin, in-
fusing itself into a fresh country of the universe. The .com-
PHYSICAL AND MORAL DISEASE. 37^
mon origin of the two forms of disease of course does not
imply that they shall exist in the smne j^erson, or that moral
disease necessarily engenders physical, or physical disease,
moral, in a man who suffers from the other. It is in the
total of the world and its inhabitants — some experiencing
the spiritual, others the physical, that the representative
fulfillment is effected. Physical disease visits the most vir-
tuous, if they neglect to take sanitary precautions ; and the
man who attends to them, though he be a thief and a liar,
probably has not a day's sickness in his life-time. Permitted
thus to enter the world we dwell in, like all other evils, it still
comes under the supervision of divine love. To exhibit this
great princij^le as regards sickness, has been the happy office
of Dr. Duncan, in his commendable little work, " God in
Disease, or the manifestations of design in morbid pheno-
mena." " Throughout every department of the various
forms of physical suffering," says he, " are scattered in pro-
fusion, proofs of care, of tenderness, and of design." By
well-chosen illustrations, embracing many different kinds of
disease, the Doctor shows most conclusively, that though in-
fernal in its origin, all the subsequent history of disease is a
history of infinite benevolence, and this whether it afflict
the wicked or the good. This book is of peculiar value as
being the first step in a very useful direction, namely, the
collection of the evidence of a personal and merciful God in
the disorders and irregularities of the universe.
213. Connected thus intimately, it follows that the best
and shortest way to diminish physical disease, is to strive to
diminish that which is spiritual ; seeing that Avherever there
is most scope afforded for underlying spiritual forces to ex-
press themselves, the physical outbirths of those forces will
most abound. So long as mankind surrender themselves
willingly to the malignant seductions of infernal spirits,
thereby opening the Avay for aggravation and extension of
372 THE MIRACLES OF HEALING.
spiritual disease, so long will physical disease continue in
full force. The principle is daily becoming verified. Though
the names, and thence the apparent diversities of disease,
are multiplying, disease itself, with the advance of civiliza-
tion, is steadily decreasing.* While knowledge is power, it
is also bodily health. As arts and sciences, social economy
and refinement, move onwards, all these things being essen-
tially connected with moral or Christian advance, the means
are increased by which life is defended, and pain alleviated.
How much more, then, may be anticipated from the direct
warfare with the very fundamental causes of disease carried
on by the extension of religious principle and motive, in
other words, from the gradual evangelization of the world.
Intelligence assails disease proximately, because it teaches
what are the physical laws of health, and the implicit obe-
dience they require ; improvement in morals helps to subvert
its very basis. To get a vicious man to amend his morals,
is similar to burying a corpse. For as the latter difiuses
malaria of physical death, so do the wicked among mankind
diiFuse those of spiritual death. Innocence and purity are
corrupted by them; health is lost, and disease takes its
place.
214. The miracles performed by our Lord consisted chiefly
in healing, for the very reason that bodily diseases represent
the more awful ones of the soul, which it was the object of
his life and death in the flesh to remove. " Jesus went about
all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the
gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness,
and all manner of disease among the people." Every cure
which he wrought represented the liberation of the soul from
some particular kind of moral evil, or some specific intellec-
* See Marx and Willis, On the Decrease of Disease effected by the
Progress of Civilization. 1844.
THE TRUE INTENT OF MIRACLES. 373
tual error. "Bless the Lord, my soul," says the psalmist,
"who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy dis-
eases." Thus were the miracles in question performed not
merely as indications of a Divine power to command, but
as media of spiritual instruction. To the more intelligent
Jews who witnessed them, they must have been peculiarly
attractive, seeing that an especial function of their Scrip-
tures — the Old Testament of our Bible — and of the entire
ritual of their religion, had been to train them to look for
lessons of spiritual wisdom in things physical and objective.
Under this discipline, the love of signs and wonders became
eminently characteristic of the Jewish mind, as a taste for
philosophic speculation and discussion was peculiarly dis-
tinctive of the Greek;* so that, from disposition as well as
habit, they must have been prepared— or at least the pious
and better part, who had eyes to see — to perceive in those
acts of divine cure the benignest and most godlike of pro-
mises. No man rightly appreciates the miracles Avho does
not interpret them after the same manner. That such is the
true and the prescribed intent of the miracles, is shown by
the very word used to denote them, which is almost uniformly
arjiJ-Ecov, "sign," implying that they are to be regarded as
significant, i. e., significant of something interior to and
higher than the bare physical performance. The value of a
thing is always in proportion to its significance, to the truth
which it representatively teaches ; the spectacle of the world
is the grand, permanent source of sound and sublime in-
struction which we find it, entirely by virtue of this great
quality; as the chief efiect of female beauty depends on ex-
pression, so the value to our minds of the material universe
comes of our being able to perceive in it the expressive cha-
* "The Jews," says St. Paul, "require a sign, and the Greeks seek
after wisdom." 1 Cor, i. 22.
32
376 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHYSICAL SCIENCE.
are. The flower is from the first, in preparation,^ — an
integral part of the idea of the plant ; though to the unob-
servant it comes suddenly, the practiced eye can discern its
embryo even when the leaf-buds have scarcely begun to open ;
beautifully representing in finites what miracles and their
laws are to the Infinite. For could we see the entire scheme
of the universe as He alone can see it, we should perceive
them, unquestionably, bearing a relation to its symmetry and
inviolable Order, similar to that which, in miniature, the
flower bears to the plant. So with the phenomena of astro-
nomical science. Tlie " natural law" of the visible heavens
is for the planets to move in certain, well-known orbits ; for
the constellations to change their apparent positions with the
circling of the hours and seasons, and for various other
phenomena to transjDire, familiar and intelligible enough to
their student. Yet how many others take place in the depths
of space which seemingly are altogether anomalous, such as
most of those connected with comets. Compared with the
ordinary occurrences, they are miracles. But no ; whatever
the ignorant may suppose, the astronomer is satisfied that
they are merely phenomena waiting explanation ; — phe-
nomena referable to some wider law, Avhich controls our solar
system, and the constellations, and the comets alike, and
which science may some day put in the same rank as to in-
telligibleness, with eclipses and the morphology of j)lants.
Again ; " the anomaly that water is at its greatest density at
about 40° Fahr., and below that, expands with decrease of
temperature, is held by some to be a marvelous and outstand-
ing fact, setting all theory at defiance. Yet no truly induc-
tive philosopher for a moment doubts that it is really a part
and consequence of some higher law, of which the ordinary
law of expansion is a part."* Much of what it is customary
* Baden Powell, Unity of Worlds, &c., p. 96.
EVERY NATURAL EFFECT THE RESULT OF LAW. 377
to call, in reference to miracles, the " suspension" or " viola-
tion" of natural laws, is disproved by the phenomena attend-
ing the operation of counteracting laAvs ; also by such as come
of the simultaneous operation of two different laws. For
instance, it is " a natural law" that fire shall burn ; but at the
1861 meeting of the British Association, M. Boutigny passed
his bare hand harmlessly through a mass of molten metal,
showing that fire may be prevented from burning, although
to the spectator who is unacquainted with the scientific reason
of the prevention, there is no apparent reason why it should
not burn. The freezing of water in a red-hot platinum
crucible, which every dextrous chemical teacher now shows
to his pupils, curiously exemplifies the miracles which come
of two or more laws acting at the same moment. The very
notion of an " interference" with natural law is foolish, since
every efiect in nature must necessarily be the result of a law
instituted to ensure it. In whatever department of nature
they may occur, all such anomalies will unquestionably be
found some day, to be included under grand and harmonious
laws. " Nature," in the words of the great master, " pur-
sues its course, and what we take for an exception, is but in
accordance with law." As to anomalies, says the acute
writer just quoted, " the philosopher will always fall back
upon the primary maxim that it is in every case more pro-
bable that events of an unaccountable and marvelous char-
acter are parts of some great fixed order of causes unknown
to us, than that any real interruption occurs."* When we
speak, accordingly, of the " laws of nature," and define
miracles, as we suppose, by means of the contrast, we do no
more than speak of some few laws that lie on the surface.
Familiar with a certain number of them, we ai-e prone to
look upon ourselves as admitted into the sanctuary of the
^ Baden Powell, Unity of Worlds, &c.. p. 108.
32*
376 ILLUSTKATIONS FROM PHYSICAL SCIENCE.
are. The floAver is from the first, in preparation,- — an
integral part of the idea of the plant ; though to the unob-
servant it comes suddenly, the practiced eye can discern its
embryo even when the leaf-buds have scarcely begun to oj)en ;
beautifully representing in finites what miracles and their
laws are to the Infinite. For could we see the entire scheme
of the universe as He alone can see it, we should perceive
them, unquestionably, bearing a relation to its symmetry and
inviolable Order, similar to that wliich, in miniature, the
flower bears to the plant. So with the phenomena of astro-
nomical science. Tiie " natural law" of the visible heavens
is for the planets to move in certain, well-known orbits ; for
the constellations to change their apparent positions with the
circling of the hours and seasons, and for various other
phenomena to transpire, familiar and intelligible enough to
their student. Yet how many others take place in the depths
of space which seemingly are altogether anomalous, such as
most of those connected with comets. Compared with the
ordinary occurrences, they are miracles. But no ; whatever
the ignorant may suppose, the astronomer is satisfied that
they are merely phenomena waiting explanation ; — phe-
nomena referable to some wider law, which controls our solar
system, and the constellations, and the comets alike, and
which science may some day put in the same rank as to in-
telligibleness, with eclipses and the morphology of plants.
Again ; " the anomaly that water is at its greatest density at
about 40° Fahr., and below that, expands with decrease of
temperature, is held by some to be a marvelous and outstand-
ing fact, setting all theory at defiance. Yet no truly induc-
tive philosopher for a moment doubts that it is really a part
and consequence of some higher law, of which the ordinary
law of expansion is a part."* Much of what it is customary
* Baden Powell, Unity of Worlds, &c., p. 96.
EVERY NATURAL EFFECT THE RESULT OF LAW. 377
to call, in reference to miracles, the " suspension" or " viola-
tion" of natural laAvs, is disproved by the phenomena attend-
ing the operation of counteracting laws ; also by such as come
of the simultaneous operation of two different law^s. For
instance, it is " a natural law" that fire shall burn ; but at the
1861 meeting of the British Association, M. Boutiguy passed
his bare hand harmlessly through a mass of molten metal,
showing that fire may be prevented from burning, although
to the spectator who is unacquainted with the scientific reason
of the prevention, there is no apparent reason why it should
not burn. The freezing of water in a red-hot platinum
crucible, which every dextrous chemical teacher now shows
to his pupils, curiously exemplifies the miracles which come
of two or more laws acting at the same moment. The very
notion of an " interference" with natural law is foolish, since
every effect in nature must necessarily be the result of a law
instituted to ensure it. In whatever department of nature
they may occur, all such anomalies will unquestionably be
found some day, to be included under grand and harmonious
laws. " Nature," in the w'ords of the~ great master, " pur-
sues its course, and what we take for an exception, is but in
accordance with law." As to anomalies, says the acute
writer just quoted, "the philosopher will always fall back
upon the primary maxim that it is in every case more pro-
bable that events of an unaccountable and marvelous char-
acter are parts of some great fixed order of causes unknown
to us, than that any real interruption occurs."* When we
speak, accordingly, of the " laws of nature," and define
miracles, as we suppose, by means of the contrast, we do no
more than speak of some few laws that lie on the surface.
Familiar with a certain number of them, we are prone to
look upon ourselves as admitted into the sanctuary of the
^ Baden Powell, Unity of Worlds, Ac. p. 108.
32 *
•378 INTERRUPTIONS OP NATURE,
temple, when in reality we are only in the porch. When
science shall be able to explain the miracles, it will be time,
and not before, for men to catalogue the " laws of nature."
That smaller things and principles, perfect in themselves,
are yet contained within larger ones, is shown as well in the
forons as in the laws of nature ; of which latter, indeed, ob-
jective forms are only so many exhibitions. However
widely objects may vary in configuration and structure
among themselves, a common idea is found to pervade them
all. Eveiything is but a part of a wider complex. In all
their insatiable variety there is yet contained a permanent
and unmistakeable unity. The idea of any given " species
of animal is only part of the idea of the whole animal king-
dom ; and this again is only part of a still more enlarged
idea, which comprises both the animal and the vegetable
kingdoms. This again is a part of the whole idea of the earth,
which aj)pears at first sight an exclusive little world of
itself, but is, notwithstanding, only a part of a vast system
of worlds."
217. It does but require then that we should carry this
great general principle to the consideration of the miracles,
to find them, as afiirmed in the outset, at once a portion of
nature, and one of its most valuable and instructive por-
tions ; differing from the familiar portion only in the cir-
cumstance of their having been so timed in the general plan
of creation, as to subserve specific religious purposes. The
diflference does not consist, as commonly supposed, in the
putting forth of a greater amount of divine power ; it is a
diflference only in the mode of the manifestation of that
power ; or consisting in the unaccustomed shape or formula
in which, at particular eras, it has been exhibited to men.
To say that an event such as that of the sudden healing of
the sick was a " miracle," is strictly nothing more than to
speak of it as an anomaly in our experience. Whatever
THE USUAL AND THE UNUSUAL. 379
else the miracles may prove, the first thing they make us
sensible of is our ignorance ; the first benefit we derive from
them is impulse therefore to new intellectual effort. There
is nothing about the miracles to put them absolutely out of
the pale of our understanding. True, nature has an acces-
sible and an inaccessible, and it is our wisdom to find out
where the division lies. But it is also true that nature is a
vast promise. Though there arc thousands of things not yet
understood, he would be a bold man who would enumerate
what things are absolutely incomprehensible. Darkness,
for the most part, is not so much the darkness of night to
an eye that is open, as of day to an eye that is closed in
indifference. The contentment of the world in general with
the light they possess, is no reason with the Fountain of
Wisdom for withholding enlarged supplies from those who
ask for more. It comes therefore to a mere question of in-
telligence and desire to know. There is every encourage-
ment to hope and strive. How small a part even of the
ordinary laws of nature is yet open to the profoundest phil-
osopher ; yet how clear are the ideas already attained from
the index which that small part furnishes ! How many
wonderful processes are going on in secret which we know
nothing of! How many are there which this age was first
acquainted -with ; how many that we are ignorant of will be
discovered when our memory shall be no more ! We have
but to abide by the principles which guide us in scientific
research. With every step upwards, we learn to think more
of the " common" arrangements of the Avorld, and to lay
less proportionate stress upon occurrences which are rai-e,
because all are found referable to a central sj)ring, rendering
none more peculiarly strange than another, and taking even
from the strangest that seeming of an " interference" with
law, or of " suspension" of law, which at first is all our
thought. The brute is scared by the lightning, and the un-
380 MIRACLES AND REJUVENESCENCE.
tutoi'ed mind is aghast at the storm ; both are unobservant
of the stars and their movements, while all these things are
to the intelligent as much a |)art of nature as daylight.
" The difference betAveen the wise and the unwise is, that the
latter wonder more at what is imusual, the former more at
what is usual." In reality, what we pass by so indifferently
as " common," is for the most part, in the highest degree
estraordinaxy, habit alone dulling the sight to what we
should otherwise wonder at as " miraculous," just as we are
apt to overlook many of the greatest of God's mercies,
because with us always.
218. The function or instructive purpose of a miracle is
Rejuvenescence. Wrought in all cases, either directly or
indirectly, by Him Avho " upholdeth all things by the word
of his power," the miracles, whether judicial, creative, or
restorative, were acts uniformly bearing a definite and posi-
tive relation to the highest and heavenliest condition of
things, the everlasting Eden of Life. How beautifully is it
told of Naaman, that when miraculously cured of his lep-
rosy by washing seven times in Jordan, "his flesh came
again, like unto the flesh of a little child." What could
show more strikingly that miracles, rightly understood, so
far from being arbitrary deeds in contravention of nature,
consist in the removal of hindrances to its proper, harmo-
nious activity? All, without doubt, were indications to man,
that by his moral degeneracy he is in an abnormal state ;
that sickness, want, evil, are the twnatural condition ; that
the state of Nature is Excellence, Youth, Life ; that these,
as we have said before, are the one grand, comprehensive
idea of the universe, and other things mere accidents and
phenomena of their history and promotion. "A miracle,"
says Dr. Gumming, " is not, as some have tried to show,
contrary to nature, but is above and beyond what we call
nature. For instance, when we read of our Lord's healing
CORRESPONDENCES OF DISEASES. 381
the sick, and raising the dead, we hear it said that it is con-
trary to nature. It is no such thing. We call it contrary
to nature, because we say that sickness is natural. Sickness
is not natural ; it is an imnatural thing — a discord in the
glorious harmony. So with death. Death is the unnatural
thing, and the natural thing is putting an end to death, and
bringing back glorious and everlasting life. Healing the
sick, and raising the dead, are the perfection of nature ;
they are the bringing back of nature to its pristine state ;
the restoration of the primseval harmony, the augury of
future happiness ; they are demonstrations to us that all the
prophecies which describe paradise are possibilities. Every
miracle of our Lord is a specimen of that new genesis under
which there shall be no more sickness, but wherein former
things shall have passed away, and all things shall be made
new."*
219. What maladies of the soul are specifically repre-
sented by given diseases, it is easy to perceive. Those which
are mentioned in the Bible furnish a clue to all. Leprosy,
for example, corresponds to profanation ; or the knowledge
of what is right, but contempt and neglect of the practice
of it. Reverence for divine truth, and obedience to it, is
the very first step in regeneration ; hence, the first person
cured after the sermon on the mount was one afflicted with
the disease in question. The next was one "sick of the
palsy;" the condition of the paralytic exactly represents the
infirmity of the human will. Fever represents anger, rage,
and fury in their various degrees, whence its frequent meta-
* Foreshadows, vol. i. Lectures on the Miracles of our Lord, as
earnests of the Age to come, p. 9. Li saying that death is unnatural,
Dr. Gumming of course is influenced by the low and popular notion
respecting death which we have had occasion to correct above.
382 SALVATION IS HEALTH OF SOUL.
phorical use alike in poetry and colloquial converse. Fur-
ther illustrations may be seen in the Rev. Isaac Williams'
" Thoughts on the Study of the Holy Gospels," and in Dr.
Duncan's little work just now spoken of.
220. Because of the correspondence we are considering,
our Lord is called the great Physician and the Saviour.
The former name signifies one who restores to a state of
nature ; the latter, the healer or health-giver. " Salvation"
is derived from the Latin salus health, salvus healthy, which
in French reappears as sauf, the proximate root of save.
Salvation, accordingly, is that Avhich, as the Avork of God
saves or heals our souls. Hence the cry of David — Lord,
heal my soul ! and the prayer of the prophet — Heal me, O
Lord, and I shall be healed ; save me, and I shall be saved.
Jesus Christ, as the Sun of Righteousness, is said to bring
healing on his wings. Etymologically, " heal" and " save"
are the same word, as readily seen by grouping together the
several collateral forms, as "whole,'.' and the Greek o/.o;;.
The hale man is he who is Avhole; health is literally a state
of wholeness. Primarily, the Avords heal and save thus
mean to make sound or entire, as when a Avouud is healed,
and the new skin grown over. The numerous sad pictures
in Scripture of the depraved moral state as one of wounds,
laceration, and bleeding, give to these AVords, as there used,
an unspeakable beauty and appropriateness. Hoav sub-
limely it is ascribed to the Lord, that "He healeth the
stroke of their wound !" Derived from the same primitive
root, through another channel, and denoting the same idea,
are the AVords solace, console, consolation. An incurable
grief, the wound of heart that remains open till death, Ovid
beautifully calls vulnus inGonsolabilis. Life and health, or
Avholeness, imply unity, integrity, perfection ; hence Ave find
the earth, " the firm, round earth," called solum, and Avhat'
eA''er is like it in its integrity, solid, Avhether material oj
MUSIC AND MEDICINE. 383
spiritual. We speak of a solid understanding, as Horace
of mens solida, a fixed resolution. To consolidate is to
make perfect or entire. The idea of such entirety is the
ground of the adjective solus, alone ; and reappears also in
'fjXcoz, or Sol, the sun. Helios was the same as Phoebus
Apollo, the god of day and of light, and the father of ^scli-
lapius, the god of medicine, if not the god of medicine or
healing in his own person ; for though in later times there
were as many as four Apollos distinguished, this was proba-
bly but in keeping Avith the tendency of the Grecian mind
to change the several attributes of a deity into as many dis-
tinct gods. The primitive idea was the sun, the fountain of
light; to this, as a matter of course, followed life and
health ; and by another beautiful perception, the same deity
presided over music, one of the soul's chief comforters and
healers, whence its medicinal fame from time immemorial.
" The poets," says Lord Bacon, " did well to conjoin music
and medicine in Apollo, since the office of medicine is but
to tune this curious harp of man's body, and to reduce it to
harmony." Apollo Avas the pagan aspiration after Christ ;
one of his surnames was acozr^p, Saviour. His Avorship, his
festivals, his oracles, all had more Aveight and influence Avith
the Greeks than those of any other deity they Avorshiped.
They would never have become what they were without the
AA^orship of Apollo ; in him was the brightest side of the
Grecian mind reflected. He who is the True Light, the
Light which is the life of men, reveals himself also as
Healer of the nations, in his " lovely song of one that
playeth aa'cII upon an instrument."
221. The profound and beautiful relations indicated in
the above ideas are acknowledged alike by theology and
philosophy, by science, poetry, and language; all of Avhich
testify that like the Bible in its multiplicity of translations,
the great, primal truths of creation are yet but varied pre-
384 UNITY OF TRUTH.
sentations of One truth. Every cluster of human know-
ledge is consanguineous with every other cluster, like the
bunches of grajaes upon a vine, and our highest and most
delightful intellectual exercise is to realize their unity, and
their common origin. How beautifully, for instance, does
science illustrate the correspondence of Light and Music, as
regards the fundamental tones of the musical scale and the
prismatic colors ! The colors thrown by the prism upon the
wall are the sounds of music, in a different sphere, so that
whatever is representatively expressed in Light, is repre-
sentatively expressed also in the harmonies wJiich please the
ear, the difference being only in the method. The corres-
pondence is not a discovery of science; strictly speaking,
science discovers very little ; its function is rather to confirm.
We speak intuitively of the "harmony of colors;" the poet
in every age finds music in the lovely variegations of natural
scenery, and equally detects in music that exquisite inter-
weaving and melody of tints, which contributes so largely to
the objective picturesque. The harp of Memnon is not a
fable; the glow of the rising sun is a song wherever it may
shine; "every lover of nature who, seated on a mountain or
by the ocean, has witnessed the sun casting his first golden
beams across the earth, has had his soul stirred by its hea-
venly music;" heard faintly and from afar, as it is in towns,
still how divinely glad and animating are its strains ! Sun-
rise may well have been deemed the return of a god : it is
not merely the awakener of the world to life; the whole
idea of life is representatively summed up in it, as in a happy
and beautiful child descending upon the household as its
morning-beam. Thus is it with all knowledge; the wider
and higher the laws of nature we can discover, the more
admirable and extended is our insight into nature, and the
more of it do we enjoy at any given moment, as by grasping
the stem on which they grow, we secure a whole posy of
THE VEILED ISIS. 385
flowers at ouce. Far, we can never penetrate, yet may
every man more deeply than he does. Isis still presents her
countenance veiled as of old; but while she with disdain
rejects the mere dissector and nomenclator, who cares only
to inspect her as an anatomist; to him who would look upon
her with the eyes of a lover, she will grant divinest glimpses.
That heavenly face is hidden from the world only that rude
profanity shall not stare at it; it is in wise encouragement
that it should be so ; for if, according to the inscription, no
mortal may uncover it, we must seek then to be mmortal.
He whose heart faints because discomfited while on earth, is
no ti'ue disciple at Sais.
33 R
CHAPTER XXII.
MOHT^LITY AND IMMORTAIjITY.
222. With so solemn and inevitable a destiny as Death
forever looming in the future, it is not surprising that the
leading text of the moralist and preacher in every age
should be preparation for it ; or that, viewing the changes
which it works, and contemplating them only in their
mournful aspect, the verses of the poet should be strown so
profusely Avith elegiacs. Laments over the evanescence of
the beautiful constitute some of the richest poetry the world
possesses ; and were even prose literature to be sifted for its
gems, they would probably be found in connection with the
same grateful but melancholy theme, as the loveliest hours
of the summer are those which are wet with the tears of
Eos. There are no monopolies in the kingdom of thought
and feeling ; the spirit by which modern or Christian medi-
tations on life and death are often thought to be distin-
guished from those of the ancients, is itself cosmopolite, as
well as cotemporaneous with all eras ; for although the par-
ticular phraseology which the New Testament has supplied,
is in the writings of pagan moralists necessarily absent,
those writings breathe nevertheless, along with their sad-
ness, a serene and earnest piety, which may be found if
there be disposition to acknowledge it when met with.
That the ancients' moralizings on life and death are com-
parable with those of Christian writers, it is by no means
meant to assert. Unhappily, there is but too much room
386
THE TRUE FUNCTION OP THE POET. 38T
for censure, especially as regards that ample portion where
the scantiness and transiency of our temporal opportunities
are made an argument for sensual indulgence — when they
cry — " Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we
die." The verses ascribed to Anacreon and other Greek
poets, those likewise of Horace, Propertius, and Catullus, in-
citing to such indulgence, are Avell known to every lover of
classical literature. Yet even these have their better, per-
haps their redeeming asj)ect, and this, in merest prudence,
should be considered first. Nothing is ever lost, while much
is always gained, by attending to the good of a thing before
its evil. Catullus' address to Lesbia, for instance, beginning
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemns,
which beautiful little poem may be taken as a type of all
its class, has in it something so exquisitely tender and afiect-
ing that we can readily suppose the poet to have laid so
much stress upon the certainty of never returning into the
sunshine of terrestrial life, in order to encourage mankind to
value that life as it deserves, and to enjoy it as intensely as
the Creator desires we should. As the perishableness of the
rose quickens our sense of its beauty and fragrance, so the
picture of Joy, with Death in the distance, inspires us with
new interest in our innumerable temporal delights, given us,
as they are, " richly to enjoy." We need such reminders ;
men weaken in soul as well as body; the glow and ardor of
love for the beautiful and true die from out of them, like
strength from the limbs, if not watched and fed; the high and
glorious function of the poet is, that he comes to us with his
stronger soul, and sets us growing and living afresh. Such
restorative, invigorative influence it is the nature and utility
of all true poetry to exert upon us, and the degree in which
it vitalizes is the token of the poet's genius. And though
his particular theme, as in the song referred to, Avhich dwells
388 LIFE TO BE MADE THE MOST OF.
wholly upon kisses, may seem trite and poor, still he is none
the less faithful to his mission if he awaken lofty and amia-
ble sentiments. The physical images with which he deals,
are so many figures and representatives, Avhich it is for our-
selves to translate into their significance, making out a new
poem in our own minds. The opposition of ideas, so re-
markable in the opening lines of the song spoken of, has a
beautiful reflex in the Arcadian landscape of Poussin, re-
presenting rural festivity, the charm of which would be
sensibly diminished, were it destitute of the monument and
inscription.*
223. Be it Catullian or not, the sentiment that we should
make the most of life ; that as we go along we should enjoy
every gift of God as ardently and as copiously as we can,
consistently with sobriety and order, is a perfectly right and
proper one — it is more, it is one of our first and highest
duties. To sell one's self to sensuality is one thing ; thank-
fully to accept, and temperately to enjoy the honest plea-
sures of the senses, is quite a different matter. Sight and
hearing, taste and touch, were bestowed for no other end
than to be exercised on things congenial to them. The true
way to enjoy most of heaven is previously to strive how
much we can enjoy of earth ; not, however, by striving to
enjoy it exclusively as an earthly thing, still less as a sensu-
ous one, to the neglect of the moral and intellectual ; neither
again by laying ourselves out for pleasure, j)urely as such,
but by taking as our ruling motive, in our search for enjoy-
ment, the higher development of our humanity. The golden
rule of all is to connect, as often and as closely as we can,
the terrestrial with the heavenly. The highest delight of
* For a variety of beantiful commentary and quotation upon this
subject, see Dunlop's History of Eoman Literature, vol. 1, p. 470.
VALUE OF OPPORTUNITIES. 389
■ivhich human intelligence is susceptible is that which comes
of the habit of translating the ordinary circumstances of
daily life into ideas that lead ultimately to God ; there are
no truly beautiful and nourishing ideas but such as are
felt to gravitate imjDerceptibly toAvards Him, while none are
so practical and efficacious, as ingredients of happiness, as
those that are sucked, honey-like, from the merest trifles of
existence. So in regard to the tirne for enjoyment. Though
we may rely upon the recurrence of some few sources of
pleasure, the greater part are so fitful, the total of the cir-
cumstances is so unlikely ever to be the same again, and
our own changes of emotional state are so frequent and ex-
treme — what enraptures to-day often becoming distasteful
and even bitter on the morrow — that if we Avould realize
life in its fullness, we must let no chance, not the slightest,
escape, though at the moment it may seem utterly insignifi-
cant. Life is made up of minutes, and its happiness of car-
responding little pleasures ; the wise man secures the atoms
as they flit past him, and thus become owner of the aggre-
gate. Making every circumstance of life, sensuous, moral,
and intellectual, and every day and hour, contribute a little
something, he finds that though a brilliant and memorable
pleasure may come but twice or thrice, the secret of a happy
life is nevertheless his own. That fine secret is not so much
to lay jDlans for acquiring happy days, as to pluck our en-
joyment on the spot ; in other words, to spend that time in
beiiig happy which so many lose in deliberating and scheming
how to become so.
Non est, crede mihi, sapiente dicere Vivain;
Sera nimis vita est crastina, vive hodie.
I'll live to-morrow, 'tis not wise to say ;
'Twill be too late to-morrow, — live to-day.
To accomplish this, we have only, as said before, to make the
33 «
390 LIFE HAS A PRIZE FOR EVERY ONE.
most of each little incident and opportunity, contemning
and repudiating nothing ; always remembering, however,
that the way to make such incidents and opportunities most
prolific of enjoyment is so to humanize them that they shall
flower into thoughts of heaven. Wilfully to let opportuni-
ties go hy, is a wickedness and an inexcusable folly ; whence
the still more foolish regrets which tear the heart that has
been so unjust to itself — for folly is only another name for
th orn and prickle seed ; — but a greater folly yet, is to stand
waiting and wishing for opportunities, when in fact they cir-
cle us, if we will but keep on the qui vive. As the best
school in respect of high duties is the practice of the little
ones of common life, so the best and shortest road to happi-
ness and true philosojjhy is to make the most of what lies
beside us, and enjoy all we can of the life we have, leaving
it to God to determine what fortune shall attend our steps.
Dominus providebit If we trusted more in his sponta-
neous generosity, we should seldomer be disconcerted by the
failure of our own j^i'eparations, and should find that the
Divine intent is that life shall be felicitous. The same, did
we ask ourselves more frequently what we have, rather than
brood so ungratefully upon what we have not. Though
we may be poor and afflicted in comparison with some, in
contrast with others we are opulent and blest. Life has a
prize for every one who will open his heart to receive it,
though it may be a very different one from the spirit of his
early dreams. " There is no greater mistake," says a thought-
ful writer, " in contemplating the issues of life, than to sup-
pose that baffled endeavors and disappointed hopes bear no
fruits, because they do not bear those particular fruits which
were sought and sighed for.
"The tree
Sucks kindlier nurture from a soil enrich'd
By its own fallen leaves, and man is made
SORROW FOR THE DEAD, -391
In heart and spirit, from deciduous hopes,
And things that seem to perish."*
The disproportion in men's inheritances is far less than we
are prone to think. If one hand of the universal Giver be
closed, the other is expanded ; no one is left without his
meed of compensation, only in our weakness and unthank-
fulness we look more at the darker side of our own lot, and
at what appears to us the brighter side of our neighbor's.-
Epictetus explains the mystery in part ; "it is not Fortune
that is blind, but ourselves." Whatever be our lot, if man
Avill but just concede that that must be best for him which
the Best of Beings has ordained, life thenceforward has a
solace which no fortune can wrest away.
224. Thankful, hopeful, happy as we may be. Death
comes at last, and familiar as we may have made it in
thought as a general proposition, always so strangely and
solemnly as to be incredible and unexpected ; in the case of
those we love, as an impossibility suddenly converted into
a reality. Immortal until taken away from us, now for the
first time we become aware that they were only lent, and
mourning and grieving seem to be the only real and perma-
nent things of earth. There is no wrong done in giving way
to such emotions. To be troubled at the death of those we
love, and to shrink from death on our own part, are equally
in obedience to heaven-implanted instincts, and the former
is always the sign of an amiable and tender disposition,
Luther thought that the punishment of Adam partly con-
sisted in his long life of nine hundred years, seeing that in
the space of it he Avould lose so many friends. They are
emotions, nevertheless, which require to be controlled, and
which demand, no less, that they shall not be perverted.
" Henry Taylor, " Notes from Life."
392 TRUE WAT TO HONOR THE DEAD.
Our moral and intellectual knowledge we should ever allow
to remind us of the high purposes they are intended to serve,
and to lift us out of useless and ungrateful regrets. The
Creator disposes us to be grieved at the decease of our
friends, in order that all humane and kindly feelings may
be awakened and deepened. It is for the sake of the sur-
vivors that he leads us to sorrow for those Avho die; that the
wretchedness it is to be bereaved of those we love, with the
inevitable reflection that enters into it of how much we have
left undone that would have contributed to their happiness,
may incite us to be more generous to those who are with us
still. True mourning for the dead is to live as they desire
we should do, and as Ave feel most pleasure in having others
live towards ourselves. Any other is little different from
selfishness. "We do not honor the dead by withdrawing
our sympathy from the living, or neglecting occasions of
being as useful to them as we were to the individual we
mourn. No man loses by death the whole of his friends and
acquaintance, and can say that his generation has left him
alone. The place of those who are gone will be supplied by
others; the circle perpetually renews itself; to determine
that none can or shall be so good in our eyes as the departed,
is at once to behave uncharitably to mankind, and to refuse
the compensations which God provides." Thus does the
death, so called, of those of our friends and companions who
precede us in the return to youth, provide us with the most
favorable opportunity of testing how much life there is in
ourselves. For the value and reality of a friend consist,
essentially, in his influence on the development of our affec-
tions, charming them, as with a song, into love of the Good
and Beautiful, and this, to the soul that is in right order,
the mere dissolution of the body but little hinders. All that
is dearest and loveliest in those who go first, all that makes
it go-Dd for our souls to possess such treasures, remains with
DEATH NOT A MISFORTUNE. 393
US, if wc love truly, after they are gone. Friends, parents,
children, brothers, sisters, though they may quit their accus-
tomed places, and be no more seen, die to us only when in
our inconstancy we forget them. Life is love. So long as
we love a thing we retain it. It is only when we cease to
love it that it dies. "To me, indeed," says Cicero, speaking
of his lost friend Scipio, "though he was suddenly snatched
away, Scipio still lives, and will always live, for I love the
virtue of that man, and that worth is not extinguished. If
the recollection of these things had died along with him, I
could in nowise have borne the loss of that most intimate
and affectionate friend. But these things have not perished ;
nay, they are cherished rather and improved by reflection
and memory."* Rightly regarded, the death of a friend is
one of the greatest mercies God bestows upon us. Not only
does it operate upon the development of the affections; but
"through the gap which it makes in the visible, we gain a
vision into the awful, invisible life of which it was for a mo-
ment the semblance. We see what Ave had forgotten, or
never properly known, that the life we lead in the flesh is
only the appearance, and that the hidden life of the spirit is
the reality, and thence are we warned fi'om walking "in
vain show ;" for it is no other than walking in ^--ain show, to
surrender ourselves, as we are so prone, to matter and mate-
rial things, and turn deafly from the message of the spirit-
ual." In its purity, sorrow for the dead is a part of that
elegant sentiment of our nature which leads us to sigh at the
ruin of the beautiful, wherever it may pertain, or however
it may appeal. The heart of that man is not to be envied,
who can see the leaves wither and the flowers fall, without
some sentiment of regret, or who can pass unnoticed the
* De Amicitia, at tlie end.
394 DEATH AN OPERATION OF PROVIDENCE.
dried-up fountain, or the time-worn, roofless, silent abbey.
The tender interest which every rightly-ordered mind feels
in the frailty of the beautiful, alike of nature and of art, is
only a slight tribute of becoming grief and affection, seeing
that it is under its benign and humanizing influence that we
grow in wisdom, and become conscious of delight; our sor-
row for the dead, so lovely as they were to our hearts, is this
self-same tribute, only deserved infinitely better. Far,
accordingly, from our thoughts should be the idea of misfoi'-
tune in connection with death. "To have laid a strong
affection down among the dead, may be a great sorrow, but
is not a real misfortune. Whatever one's after-goings may
be, there is a deposit for the future life, a stake in the better
country, a part for the heart which the grave keeps holy, in
spite of the evil that is in the world. The living may change
to us, or we to them ; sin may divide, strife may come be-
tween, but through all times and fortunes, the dead remain
the same to our memories and loves. The child taken from
us long ago is still the innocent lamb that was not for our
folding; the early lost friend is still the blessed of our youth,
a hope not to be withered, a promise not to be broken, a
possession wherein there is no disappointment."
225. If it be inconsiderate, or unkind, or unwise, to mourn
for the dead merely in the shape of regret for their depar-
ture, it cannot be wisdom to complain if part of our own
time seem withheld. That a man should lament at having
to die, be it soon or late, indicates neither philosophy nor
religion. No one who is in a right state of mind ever even
thinks about death. He thinks only of his life, knowing
that if this be properly regulated and developed, death,
come when it may, will but invigorate and renew him. It
would be difficult to find a greater or more pernicious error
than that so often propounded as " religion," that men
should be always looking forward to their "end." They
DEATH OCCURS AT THE BIGHT MOMENT. 395
should never be looking forward to their end ; they should
be too intent upon their present. True religion does not
concern itself as to how and when men die, but as to the
quality of their current life. Men are not saved according
to how they die, but according to how they live. Death
takes no man unprepared, whenever it may come, wherever
he may be, or however employed. Neither could he die at
a better time, were he allowed even to choose and arrange
for himself; because God, who fixes it, is the only compe-
tent judge of our spiritual condition, and causes us to die at
the precise moment when it will be best for our eternal wel-
fare, whether we be tending upwards or doAvnwards. Even
to the most wicked, death is an operation of mercy, seeing
that it is of Him who maketh the sun of his love, no less
than that of nature, " to rise both on the evil and on the
good, and sendeth rain both on the just and on the unjust."
If to one man life be " providentially spared," the life of
another is providentially taken. The only ground on which
we can properly lament the ending of our sojourn on earth,
is that it prevents our being any longer corporeally useful
to others. But in thinking only of life, and never of death,
we are not to think only of our h'me-life. We should think
of our life as a stream, which commencing in a wilderness,
presently leaps from it in a waterfall, and thereafter pursues
its endless course through a country infinitely rich and
beautiful with nature, art, civilization, and religion, reflect-
ing in its serene and softly gliding depths, each heavenly
scene it visits. Darwin remarks that we are less dazzled by
the light on waking, if w^e have been dreaming of visible
objects. Happy are they who in this life dream of higher
things than those of earth ! They will the sooner be able
to see the glories of the world to come. Living here the
true life of the soul, we shall start at once from the slumber
of temporal existence into shining and intelligible morning.
396 FEAE OF DEATH.
To me the thought of death is terrible,
Having such hold on life. To thee it is not
So much even as the lifting of a latch ;
Only a step into the open air
Out of a tent already luminous
With light that shines through its transparent walls.
Wisdom, then, dictates that life should be our great and
only regard. For the first ofiice of wisdom is to give things
their due valuation, to estimate aright how much they are
worth ; and the second is to treat them according to their
worthiness.
226. The /ear of death is quite another matter. As said
above, it is the simple emotion of nature, the play of a
divinely-implanted instinct, and thus conformable to the
just order of things. Virtually, it is the impulse to self-
preservation, the profoundest instinct of the whole animal
creation, seeing that without it, every species, man included,
would soon become extinct. The innumerable physical
perils which endanger life ; and in man, the mental suffer-
ings superadded to them, would lead, in different instances,
either to its accidental loss, or its willing surrender, almost
as soon as possessed, and thus to the depopulating of the
world. How rapidly does life even now become lost, despite
the desire to preserve it ! Save for the great impulse within,
to Live, whatever it may cost, the world would cease to be
replenished, and " Be fruitful and multiply" have been an
impractical command. Men difiTer about arts and sciences,
about their pleasures, fashions, ornaments, and avocations,
but all are agreed m the love of life, and hate, and fear,
and flee from death. "We do not all philosophize," says
Clemens, " but do we not all follow after life ?" " This tem-
poral life," says another venerable writer, "though full of
labor and trouble, yet is desired by all, both old and young,
DEATH MAY BE MET CHEERFULLY. 397
princes and peasants, wise men and fools."* Virtue, wis-
dom, poetry, the Bible, are matters which from intellectual
slow-pacedness, or moral disrelish, excite only moieties of
interest, but life is the central, universal, indomitable
solicitude.
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury or imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
Man needs, in truth, to love life, if only from the immensity
of function Avhich he is qualified to perform ; and doubtless
it is in order that he may avail himself of his opportunities,
if he will, and build up his futurity, that the love of the
merely animal life is made so strong in him ; for this is the
first essential to the incomparable privileges of existence.
It is by reason of the great excellence of life, as a spiritual
necessity, that the deepest injury that can be inflicted is to
kill, and that the highest philanthropy and goodness is to
preserve alive. To lay down one's life for another implies
the most ardent of all possible love, because it is the relin-
quishment of our richest treasure.
227. The man, accordingly, who afiects to regard death
xvithoiitfear, must not expect to be believed. He may not
anticipate it with horror ; he may have learned, by secret
and silent preparation of the heart, and by accustoming
himself to see God as infinitely just and merciful, how to
meet it cheerfully ; he may be perfectly resigned to it when
he sees its approaching shadow ; but still he dreads, and
were the spirit not withdrawn by him who gave it, would
never part with it of himself When death is actually about
to happen, the fear of it is in great measure lost. At all
* Lactantius, Book iii., chap, 1^
34
398 SENSATIONS OF THE DYING.
events it is not common, as well known to those Avhose pro-
fessions lead them to the pillows of the dying. This, again,
is a vast mercy and providence of God, both to the individ-
ual and to the bystanders. Given to us when it is proper
we should live, it is mercifully taken away when we are
going to depart. When we fear death most, supposing that
is, that there is no sufficient physical reason for the fear, we
are j)robably entering on our highest usefulness to the world.
When fear does manifest itself at the period of approaching
death, it is rather as the result of some diseased or enfeebled
state of mind, usually induced by spurious religious teach-
ing ; or of vivid presentiments of what a wicked life is about
to lead to ; than as a part of the animal instinct which pre-
viously had. ruled. As a rule, death, at the last hour, like
Satan, appears only to those who have reason to be afraid
of him, and rarely even to these. ISTothing is more decep-
tive than the manner in which a person dies, though often
made so much of The wickedest die " in peace" no sel-
domer than the righteous, though it is the peace of torpor in
one case, of piety in the other. The inmost ground of men's
fear of death is consciousness of severance from God, through
disobedience to his law. Brutes fear to die simply because
of their instinct to preserve life, or from the purely animal
feeling. Men fear to die from a twofold ground; super-
ficially, from the same instinct as that of the brutes ; in-
teriorly, from consciousness of this severance from their
Maker. God desires that all men should be united to him,
and to this end has given them adequate spiritual faculties,
wherein they shall exercise the life which conducts to heaven.
In proportion as they do this, and thereby attain to con-
sciousness of union with Him, the idea of death departs
from them, because they are living with the Fountain of
Life ; the less that they feel united, the more do they think
of death, and fear to die. While, accordingly, the righteous
WHY IS MAN IMMORTAL? 399
man views his physical death with no alarm, the unrighteous
carries his fear with him even into the future state. Fear
of death is not so much according to the place a person is in,
as according to the condition of his heart. It is its own dis-
solution of which the soul, in its secret chambers, is afraid ;
and the sense of dislocation from God which gives the real
agony to the expectation of death here, will constitute a simi-
lar but infinitely severer torment hereafter ; as in heaven the
greatest blessing will be the sensation of coherence with God,
or Life. To fancy, as many do, that death is not only terri-
ble and affrighting, but physically painful, is quite a mistake,
being to look for sensibility in the loss of sensibility. Death
is a sleep rather than a sensation, a suspension of our faculties
rather than a conflict with them ; instead of a time of suffer-
ing, a time of deepening unconsciousness. Dr. Baillie tells
us that his observation of death-beds inclines him to the firm
belief that nature intended we should go out of the world
as unconsciously as we come into it. The moment, says
Mrs. Jameson, " in which the spirit meets death is probably
like that in which it is embraced by sleep. To be conscious
of the immediate transition from the waking to the sleeping
state never, I suppose, happened to any one."
228. Why is man immortal ? Not simply because the soul is
non-material. We must not suppose, remarks Warburton,
that because the soul is immaterial, it is necessarily imper-
ishable. Though it does not dissolve after the manner of
matter, that is no reason why it should not be susceptible of
extinction in some other way.* To suppose otherwise would
be to esteem it of the same substance as the Creator, instead
of one of his creatures, as it is. Of all the arguments for
the immortality of the soul, that of its being " immaterial "
Divine Legation of Moses, Book ix., cliap. 1.
400 IMMATERIALITY OF THE SOUL NO ARGUMENT.
is unquestionably the weakest. " The immortality of
the soul," says Dr. Knapp, in the Christian Theology,
" neither depends for proof upon its immateriality, nor from
the latter can it be certainly deduced." To the same effect
is the remark of Mr. Isaac Taylor : — " As to the pretended
demonstrations of immortality drawn from the assumed
simplicity and indestructibility of the soul as an immaterial
substance, they appear altogether inconclusive."* It would
l)e easy to show indeed, that he who affirms man to be im-
mortal simply because of the immateriality of the soul, is
bound to affirm likewise the immortality not only of the
nobler animals, but even of the microscopic animalculse,
which would be contrary alike to reason and revelation.
Bishop Butler's argument for the immortality of the soul,
namely, that in fetal diseases the mind often remains vigor-
ous to the last, though commonly esteemed one of the
strongest, is actually of no more worth than the argument
of immateriality. Any function will remain vigorous to the
last if the organ of its exercise be not the seat of the disease.
Immortality inheres in the soul of man not because it is
immaterial or spiritual as to substance, but by virtue of the
"breath of lives" which God breathed into man in the
beginning; the life of intelligence to hno\v him, and the life
of power and adaptedness to love him. It is through the
possession of these two faculties that man lives forever, in
happiness or in misery, according as they are honored or
abused, and not merely because he possesses a soul or spi-
ritual body. They remain with him, and thus keep him
alive forever, because given by infinite, divine, uncliangeahle
Love, Avhich, whatever it gives once, it gives everlastingly,
^Vere God to withdraw life from man, even for aii instant,
* Physical Theory of another Life, page 254,
SUPPOSED IMMORTALITY OF BRUTES. 401
he would not be the Faithful and the True. The very
object of the creation of man was, that a being should exist
competent to receive and reciprocate this love. Love lives
by reciprocity. Its most exquisite satisfaction and delight
is at once to love and be loved back again by the chosen
one of the bosom and the offspring of the body. Not simply
to exhibit his power or his skill, did God create the uni-
verse, but that his love might have an arena, and that hap-
piness inexpressible should animate innumerable hearts. To
think of God aright, we must think at the same moment of
a universe of intelligent and feeling creatures, for each idea
is needful to the true reading of the other. Any idea of
God which does not include man, is low and imperfect.
Banish then the fancy that man is immortal because he has
an "immaterial" soul. It needs to be something more than
"immaterial;" it must be adapted to religious exercises; just
as it avails nothing to the Ourang Outang to be organized,
he must be adapted to talk and to manipulate, if he is to
enter the ranks of humanity.
229. It is because these two faculties — intelligence to
know and adaptedness to love — are not possessed, that
brutes are only temporal. They cannot entertain heavenly
ideas — they cannot feel religious emotions ; — as Wesley beau-
tifully exjDresses it, they are not " creatures capable of God."
Uuprofitably indeed has the time been spent by those who
have sought to show that brutes are immortal, or even have
any claim to be. The chief argument with those Avho have
espoused the notion, has been the "justice of God," which
requires, they contend, that brutes should live over again,
in order to be recompensed for the evils they suffer here.
This, indeed, is the only argument, as there is nothing in
brutes which shows them to be placed here for probationary
and preparative discipline, as man is ; such discipline being
not only needful to heaven, and the reason of man's being
ai « R a
402 BRUTES HAVE NO FEAR OF DEATH.
made a free moral agent, but one of the best natural proofs
of the destiny of him who is subjected to it. Brutes have
none of the pains, anxieties, and disquietudes arising from
moral causes, to which man is subject. They have none of
his love of virtue, thirst of knowledge, or intense and con-
stant longing after such a degree of happiness as this life
not only never gives, but is absolutely incapable of afford-
ing. The plea above-mentioned is therefore the only one.
But is it a reasonable plea ? That the infliction of cruelties
on brutes by man must one day be accounted for by him is
certain, because of the great and shameful wickedness of ill-
treating and giving pain to the defenseless. Probably,
however, all these cruelties and pains appear to brutes as so
many accidents, devoid of meaning or intentional harm, and
no more than the fall upon them of a tree or a house. That
they suffer with the intensity commonly supposed, may also
be seriously doubted. In reasoning concerning the feelings
of the lower animals, we are too apt to reason from our
oivn — a course which cannot but lead to error. That which
so enormously aggravates physical suffering in man, is the
operation of his imagination. Brutes, being destitute of this
faculty, perceive only by moments, without reflecting upon
past and future, and time and life without reflection are, as
we all know, next neighbors to no-imie and wo-life. Suffer-
ing, alone and definite, is incomparably less afflictive than
when combined Avith various and indefinite trouble of mind.
Let none suppose that divulging this to mankind at large
would be to the prejudice of the brute creation. The gentle
and kind will always treat brutes gently and kindly, what-
ever their feeling or want of feeling ; while the cruel will
always treat them cruelly, as they do their own species.
230. Whether or no, that pain, hunger, thirst, and other
such "evils," (which are all that brutes can be seen to en-
dure,) require compensation in another life, is after all, no
SUFFERINGS AND ENJOYMENTS OF BRUTES. 4U£)
argument, because it lias yet to be proved that these are
evils ; and query, is not the physical enjoyment of all ci-ea-
tures quite a balance against their physical sufferings? The
enjoyment of the brute creation is immense. We cannot
turn our eyes in any direction, but we Avitness an exubei-ance
of it. Earth, air, and water alike swarm with beings full
of the delight of living, and collectively, perhaps experienc-
ing as large an amount of agreeable physical sensation as
does the total of the human race. No small part of this
haj)piness is of man's own bounty to them, though certainly
for his own interest in the end. " He spreads the verdant
mead, and lays out pleasure-grounds for the horse, the ox,
the sheep, and the deer; and the pang that deprives them
of existence is as nothing compared to their antecedent life
of luxury. Were there no men to till the ground, the earth
would not maintain a thousandth part of the animals it does
at present, and the want of cultivation would also unfit it
for the mass of living insect enjoyment with which it now
swarms." Besides, in the lower grades of animals, whose
numbers compared with those of the higher kinds, or quad-
rupeds and birds, are as the sands of the sea, physical sufier-
ing is little, if at all experienced. As regards these, accord-
ingly, the plea of recompense cannot stand, and this is
enough to condemn the Avhole hypothesis. When Ave see
fishes and insects apparently writhing in pain, it is not that
they are in a state of agonizing torture, but that they are
struggling to he free. Those vehement eflTorts come simply
of impatience of control, a desire common to every living
creature. Nothing that has life but rebels against captivity.
Imprison even a plant, and it becomes as restless, in its
sphere of being, as a chained animal. Pain, in fact, is so
slight in the humbler classes of animals as in no way to
admit of comparison with what it is in man and the crea-
tures he has domesticated. Every entomologist knoAvs hoAV
404 OPINIONS OF SOUTHEY, &C.
indifferent are insects to mutilations that would be instant
death to a quadruped; Mr. Stoddart, in his entertaining
little volume, "Angling Reminiscences," has put it beyond
all possibility of doubt that fishes feel no hurt from the
hook.
231. The doctrine of the immortality of brutes is an ex-
ceedingly ancient one. The Indian, whose blissful heaven
consists of exhaustless hunting-grounds, does but reflect from
the forests of the West, what is thousands of years old in
the Odyssey: "After him I beheld vast Orion, hunting in
the meadows of asphodel, beasts which he had killed in the
desert mountains, having a brazen club in his hands, for-
ever unbroken." Virgil, in his sixth book, enumerates ani-
mals seen by JEneas in the kingdom of Pluto ; Hercules,
in Theocritus, finishes the narration, of his great exploit of
slaying the ISTemean lion by saying that " Hades received a
monster soul." The same belief existed among the Druids,
though doubtless a transplantation from the East; the war-
rior shades, celebrated in song by the son of Fingal, love all
the amusements of their youth; they bend the bow, and
pursue the resuscitated stag. Authors who have left treat-
ises on the sul)ject are Crocius, Ribovius, Aubry, Gimma,
&c., and in our OAvn country, Richard Dean, Curate of
Middleton in 1768. "As brutes," says the latter, "have
accompanied man in all his capital calamities, (as deluges,
famines, and pestilences,) so will they attend him in his final
deliverance." Southey, Lamartine, and Miss Seward have
written beautiful verses expressing their belief in the immor-
tality of brutes. The "Penscellwood Papers" (Bentley,
1846) may be consulted for an essay to the same purpose;
Mrs. Jameson's Common-place Book (pp. 207-212) for
selected opinions ; and Bonnet's Palingmesie Philosophique;
Idees SU7- I'etat .j'utur cles Animaux, (QEuvres, Tom. vii.) for a
long and minute argument. Dr. Barclay (Inquiry, &c., p.
BRUTES NOT IMMORTAL. 406
399,) pleads that for aught we know, brutes may be immor-
tal," "reserved as forming many of the accustomed links in
the chain of being, and by preserving the chain entire, con-
tribute, in the future state, as they do here, to the general
beauty and variety of the universe, a source, not only of
sublime, but of perpetual, delight." It is true that the
forms of animals will be thus needed ; it is true also that they
will appear in the scenery of the future world, but it is not
true that those forms will be there by resurrection from
earth.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE ItJESVRRJECTION AND THE FUTURE LIFE.
232. Concerning no subject of vital interest to the
human mind are theoretical doctrine, and familiar, practical
belief, so widely discrepant, as in regard to that most solemn
and awful event of human life, the Resurrection after death.
We say " of life" because life and immortality, rightly
viewed, are not two distinct things, any more than time and
eternity are. Life runs on into immortality, partitioned
from it only by a thin, dissolving veil of flesh and blood ;
Time is simply that part of Eternity in which we exist now.
Man is, not to he immortal. Although the true idea of the
Resurrection has been incidentally stated in other places, a
distinct chapter upon its philosojohy and phenomena becomes
of the highest importance to our present inquiry. As with
many other topics, it has been impossible wholly to postpone
it ; some of what we have now to present in a connected
form may in consequence want the air of absolute novelty;
but by concentrating the whole, perhaps even the points
already touched upon will become more intelligible, and
thus Tender the new allusion to them not unwelcome.
233. Doctrine says the Resurrection is to happen in the
remote future ; Belief says it occurs simultaneously with
dissolution. Who ever speaks of a dejjarted friend except
as having " gone to heaven," that is, of living there as a
glorified human being, in the enjoyment of Gverj bodily
member, and every mental faculty and emotioii, needful to
406
RESURRECTION IMMEDIATE. 407
the realization of celestial happiness? Who ever speaks,
we say, except of their having gone — mark, not as to go, at
some indefinitely distant period, but as having already and
absolutely gone? Unwilling as men may be to allow in
words that the soul is a spiritual body, independent of the
material body, and capable of complete existence after part-
ing with the latter; to believe that the departed is "in
heaven" is necessarily to believe it ; also to believe in imme-
diate resurrection, and what is of no less importance, in
immediate "judgment." In every age has that great unim-
peachable intuition of the spiritual body, and of its imme-
diate resurrection, been the faith of sorrowing men. What-
ever light Scripture may have thrown upon death, to this
the human heart cleaves with firm, undeviating affection.
However opposed in other things, in this, Pagan and Chris-
tian are agreed — death is immediate entrance into the Better
Land. How beautiful is the monody of the old Greek
poet —
" Prote, thou art not dead, but hast removed to a better place, and
dwellest in the Islands of the Blest, among abundant banquets,
where thou art delighted, while tripping along the Elysian plains
amongst soft flowers, far from all ills. The winter pains thee not,
neither does heat nor disease trouble thee, nor hunger nor thirst ;
nor is the life of man any longer desired by thee, for thou livest in
the pure splendor of Olympus."
Cyrus, on his death-bed, desired the Persians to rejoice at
his funeral, and not to lament as if he were really dead. (^
The Arabs regard it impious to mourn for the deceased,
" that is," say they, " for those who are with Mahomet in
Paradise." " Dear Sir," writes Jeremy Taylor to Evelyn,
in 1656, "I am in some little disorder by reason of the
death of a little child of mine, a boy that lately made me
very glaci ; but now he rejoices in his little orb, while Ave
think and sigh, and long to be as safe as he is." Her-s,
408 A MAN DOES NOT REALLY DIE.
indeed, is the mourner's consolation. When the loved and
lost are thought of by the calm light of the great and
sacred truth that " there is a spiritual body," they cease to
be dead ; their resurrection has already taken place. The
mind that is in a right state recoils from the chill ideas of
the coffin, and putrefaction, and inanimateness, and fastens
on the sweet conviction that the vanished one is alive, and
in the enjoyment of serenest happiness and rest. It thinks
of the corpse in the grave merely as an old garment, conse-
crated indeed by the loved being who had used it, but of no
value in itself, and soon to be the dust from which it was
moulded. Never was there a more lovely illustration of
this faith than the epitaph on the mother and her infant in
the Greenwood Cemetery at New York : " Is it well with
thee ? Is it well with the child ? And she answered, It is
well." (2 Kings iv. 26.) That part of the great mystery
which concerns the souls of little children who die, and their
development in the future life, is the most pleasing perhaps
of all for our contemplation. Whether do they remain
little children, or expand to the full, beautiful, noble human
stature ? Either Avay, those who have lost such a one, are
never without a little child to love and nestle in their
hearts. The others grow up and become men and women,
but this one stays with them forever.
234. In order to a true idea of the Resurrection, it re-
quires accordingly, first that we should have a true idea of
what the soul is ; second, a true idea of what constitutes
Death. The soul, as we have seen above, is no mere ap-
pendage to man, formless and insubstantial, but man him-
self Death, as we have also seen, is simply the departure
of man from his temporal, material body, and his conscious-
ness of the material world ; and entrance upon full con-
sciousness of the spiritual world. The fundamental truth
of the whole matter simplifies therefore into this — the dL^-
POPULAR FICTIONS OP BURIAL, 409
tinctiveness of ourselves from our material bodies. " It is the
soul," says Hierocles, " that is you, the body that is yours."*
What we are is one thing, what we have, or some time have
had, round about us, is another. We must not confound
them. It is because they are confounded, that people cannot
see how the soul can be independent, and live and act sepa-
rately and apart. As we cast off our clothes at night, and
wake to the world of visions, so is it at death — we cast ofi'
our temporary material bodies, which are only so much
api^arel, and become conscious of the world of spirits. A
man never really dies. A change comes over us, but life is
never really extinguished, nor for one instant suspended.
The dead, as we call them, are no more dead than we our-
selves. Solemn is the thought, but someivhere our departed
friends are every one of them alive, consciously, vigorously,
actively alive.
235. Further, as the soul is the man, and the material
body only his house while upon earth, a man is never really
buried. No human being, since the beginning of the world,
has ever yet been buried, no, not even for a few minutes.
Buried ! Hoav can a living soul be buried ? Man is where
his conscious being is, his memory, his love, his imagination ;
and since these cannot be j^ut into the grave, the man is
never put there. So far from being our " last home," the
grave is not a home at all, for we never are laid in it or go
near it. " How shall we bury you ?" said Crito to Socrates,
before he drank the poison. " Just as you please," replied
Socrates, " if only you can catch me !" Socrates knew bet-
ter than that he should die. He saw through death as a
* l,v yap £t ii ipvxfi' rd ii crSijxa, aov. Commentaries on the Golden
Verses of Pythagoras, (Ed. Needham, 1709, p. 114). Many otlier
ohservations of the same tenor occur in this truly philosophical
writer.
35 S
410 TOMBSTONE INSCRIPTIONS.
vapor curtain, through which he would burst into another
life. "I shall not die; I shall never die," is what every man
ought to say, and energetically to think. " I shall never
die; I shall never be buried; bury me if you can catch me!"
Burying, as commonly spoken of, is a gross, material idea,
thoroughly vulgar, unpoetical, and unscriptural, the result
of materialism in theology, and a striking proof of the
small amount of spirituality current in the popular reli-
gious creed. To talk of a man being " buried," put into
the earth, and lying there, Avhile his soul is somewhere else,
is no less false and illogical to the understanding than it is
offensive to the feelings. "We ought to rise above the use of
such base phraseology. We ought even to teach our children,
from the earliest, that there are no men and women really
in the grave ; and truly they better understand and receive
this great truth than many of their elders. How difficult
to make a child believe that its mother, or father, or bro-
ther, is below the sods ! And how foolish the efforts some-
times made to force it to believe the degrading falsehood !
Leave it alone to its heaven-born thoughts. Why attempt
to destroy the being of one Avho is merely absent to us,
as we shall all be, ere long, to others ?" The very tomb-
stone is inscribed falsely. It says " Here lies the body of
," Rather should it be, " Here lies the last of the
bodies of ," since the body we depart out of at death
is only the concluding one of a long series, every one of
them quite as worthy of commemoration. The earth, let us
remember, too, does not itself open the grave we deem so
frightful. It is man who digs it, and who peoples it with
the horror which he charges on it. People talk again of
the " worms " which devour the dead. Here is another fal-
sity. Our bodies moulder and decay, but they are not
eaten. Worms are engendered, not by corruption, but by
flies, who must lay the eggs from which they issue, and no
DEAD BODIES ARE CAST OFF GARMENTS. 411
flies have power to penetrate so far into the earth as the
depth at which the dead are usually laid. Wrong feeling
about dead bodies and the grave does more than anything
else to vitiate religious teaching, to hinder consolation for
the loss of friends, and in general, to mar faith in immortal-
it}^ Happy the day when all shall learn that the corpses
of the departed are no more than relinquished garments of
living men and women — temples of God in which divine
service is over and finished, the chanting hushed, the aisles
deserted, and to be contemplated with as little terror and
revolting as we gaze at the silent ruins of Rivaulx or Tin-
tern before altogether " wede away" by Time.
236. The conviction of our departed friends being alive
in heaven, fashions our own secret expectations. No one
ever imagines from his heart, that he is to lie indefinitely in
the earth, but rather that death will be to greet and be
greeted by old, well-known faces, sliming in the sweetest
lineaments of love — that as we were received when as little
infants we entered this world, with tenderness and affection,
so shall we be when as men and women we enter the next ;
that, in short, all pleasant things and states will immediately
supervene, the same, yet inexpressibly more bright, all the
dreams found, and only the sleep lost. It is enough that
we have a sjpontaneous hope of it, for the hopes of the heart
are rarely deceptions.
My sprightly neighbor, gone before,
To that unknown and silent shore,
Shall we not meet as heretofore,
Some summer morning ?
When from thy cheerful face, a ray
Of bliss hath struck across the day,
A bliss that would not go away,
A sweet forewarning?
412 TRUE AND FALSE EMBLEMS OF DEATH.
Intuition is worth volumes of logic. "Where, in the plan
of nature," says the German writer Reimar, " do we find
instincts falsified ? Where do we see an instance of a crea-
ture instinctively craving a certain kind of food, in a place
where no such food can be found ? Are the swallows de-
ceived by their instinct when they fly away from clouds and
storms to seek a warmer country? Do they not find a
milder climate beyond the water ? When the May-flies and
other aquatic insects leave their shells, expand their wings,
and soar from the water into the air, do they not find an
atmosphere fitted to sustain them in a new stage of life ?
Yes. The voice of nature does not utter false prophecies.
It is the call;, the invitation of the Creator addressed to his
creatures. And if this be true Avith regard to the impulses
of physical life, A¥hy should it not be true with regard to
the superior instincts of tlie soul ?"*
237. Holding such views in their hearts, and daily read-
ing the book wherein they are confirmed, is it not strange
that Christians should use for the symbol of death, the
unconsoling, not to say disgusting and disheartening, skull
and cross-bones ? What a Sadducean usage compared with
the beautiful custom of the ancient Greeks, who, though
" pagans," saw death imaged rather in the living, glossy,
Evergreen tree, and planted accordingly, beside their tombs,
the cypress and the yew. In ancient funeral ceremonies
were used, for the same reason, branches of myrtle and
arbutus, as shown by the beautiful allusions in the Electra
of Euripides, and the 11th book of the ^neid. Certainly
the former custom is still extant, but not so its intrinsic
significance, or Avhence the dull surmises that have been set
forth to explain its retention ? That which is perennially
* The Principal Truths of Natural Eeligion Defended and Illus"
trated, in Nine Dissertations. — Enc/lish Trans., 1766,
CHEERFULNESS OF DEATH. 413
fair and cheerful is the true emblem of death; not that
which is dolorous ; the tree green throughout the winter, and
the Amaranth, rather than the decaying old bone. How
elegantly and appropriately the Amaranth is associated with
immortality by the poets ; and practically, under the name
of Immortelle, in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise, is familiar
to accomplished minds.* No less so the fine similitude of
life and its interlude of death, presented in those mysterious
rivers which, like the Guadalquiver, after flowing for some
distance, lucid and majestic, suddenly hide themselves in
the ground, but a little further on burst out again, as pure,
and bright, and grand as ever. It is not a little curious
that the only personification of death which has come down
to us from antiquity, represents it as a skeleton dancing to
the music of the double flute ;f the charming old fable af
the singing of the swan before its death, is but a poetic ren-
dering of the same idea. Jerome Cardan, the famous phy-
sician of Milan, in the sixteenth century, concludes his
* The Amaranth or " Everlasting" is not, as commonly supposed,
a flower sui generis. There are many species, and even genera of
flowers which by reason of their juiceless and scariose texture,
retain their color and form indefinitely. Such are diflTerent species
of Eliehrysum, Ghiaphaliuni, &c. among the compositse, in which
family the Amaranths chiefly occur. Oddly enough, the genus
botanically called Amaranthus, least merits the name. Those who
would cultivate these beautiful flowers should on no account omit
GnapJmlium fulgidum, golden ; Aphelezis humilis, crimson ; Hhodanthe
Manglesii, rose-color and silver ; Ammobium alatum, white ; and
above all, the incomparable Astelma eximia, resembling clusters of
ripe raspberries. The chaplets, &c. used at Pere la Chaise are made
of the Gnaphaliuni Orientale. No garden need be destitute of the
Eliehrysum bracteaium.
f On a gem preserved in the Medicean Gallery at Florence, and
figured in the Musceum Florentinum. Gemmse Antiquae ex Thesauro
Mediceo, &c. Plate 94, fig. 3.
35 «
414 DREAMS.
beautiful book on Consolation, with a comparison of death
to marital love. " Cum itaque stremem agonem anima
superaverit, tarn quam amans amanti copulata, ea dulcedine
• ac securitate fruitur, quam nee scribere, nee cogitare possu-
mus, &c." "When, therefore, thou hast taken thy last
leave of life, thy soul, like unto a lover embracing his love,
shall enjoy that sweetness and security which we can neither
Avrite of nor conceive." — Opera, torn, i., p. G36. This beau-
tiful composition, the choicest work of its extraordinary
author, i-anks second only to that of Boethius on the same
subject.
A^ ^ 238. The transplantation of our consciousness, at the
period of death, from the material to the spiritual world,
has its image in the suspension of our external senses during
Sleep, and the wakening of that mysterious sensibility of
which we become conscious in certain modes of dreaming.
"We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleep," says
Sir Thomas Browne. " The slumber of the body seems to
be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation of sense,
but the liberty of reason."
Strange state of being ! For 'tis still to be;
Senseless to feel, and with seal'd eyes to see.
Doubtless the majority of dreams are what Macnish asserts
all to be, namely, "the resuscitation of thoughts which in
some shape or other have previously occupied the mind."
Experience and revelation attest, however, that at times,
the struggles of the chained spirit to employ, and thus to
enjoy itself amid the glories of its proper clime, are not in
vain. Such are the occasions Avhen strange, beautiful pic-
tures open out before our sleeping sight, rich in all the
colors and reality of life. It will be said that these are
creations of the imagination. Probably so. But then what
is this imagination?" Barely to assign a phenomenon to the
DREAMS. 415
" imagination" is to get no nearer to its cause. It is to evade
the question, rather than to resolve it. The "imagination,"
as usually referred to in such matters, is just one of those
useful entrenchments behind which perplexity is apt to
shelter itself, and nothing more. The imagination belongs
less to the material than to the spiritual world; or at least,
it is like the Janus bifrons of the Roman mythology, — pro-
vided with a twofold face and senses. What the populace
say about imagination presenting images that we mistake
for realities, is like popular philosophy in general, pure
nonsense. No man ever imagined or can imagine anything
that has not reality somewhere, and this whether waking or
sleeping. That which we call imagination in reference to
dreams is what in the day-time we call our poetic faculty, —
and probably the play of each is in definite ratio to the
other — the prime characteristic of the faculty being unswerv-
ing allegiance to Truth and fact, and one of its chief privi-
leges, insight into the spiritual world. In sleep we are con-
scious of beholding objects as distinctly, and hearing sounds
as plainly, as in our waking state, yet with an eye and ear
wholly different from the outward organs; and which can
have reference therefore only to a sphere of nature and
mode of being likewise entirely different, a sphere which can
be no other than the Spiritual world. Dreams, in a word,
rank with the highest phenomena of the spiritual life.
"Dreams," says Addison, "give us some idea of the great
excellence of a human soul, and its independency of matter,
They are an instance of that agility and perfection which is
natural to the soul when disengaged from the body. When
the organs of sense want their due repose and necessary
reparation, and the body is no longer able to keep pace with
that spiritual substance to which it is united, the soul exalts
hei'self in her several faculties, and continues in action until
416 PERMANENCE OF THE MEMORY.
her partner is again qualified to bear her company. Dreams
look like the amusements and relaxations of the soul when
she is disencumbered of her machine; her sports and
pastimes when she has laid her charge asleep." Bishop
Newton's remarks on dreams are little less than argumenta-
tive for the spiritual body. " It is very evident," he writes,
" that the soul is in great measure independent of the body,
even while she is within the body; since the deepest sleep
that possesseth the one cannot affect the other. While the
avenues of the body are closed, the soul is still endued with
sense and perception, and the impressions are often stronger,
and the images more lively, when we are asleep than when
awake. They must necessarily be two distinct and different
substances, whose nature and properties are so very different
that while the one shall sink under the burden and fatigue
of the day, the other shall still be fresh and active as the
flame; while the one shall be dead to the world, the other
shall be ranging the universe." Lord Brougham's Dis-
course of Natural Theology contains reasoning to the same
effect, and almost in the same words. A most clever and
interesting little book on this subject, and one which nobody
curious in the phenomena of man's inner life should fail to
peruse, is Sheppard's "On Dreams, in their Mental and
Moral Aspects, 1847."
239. But leaving aside such dreams as those alluded to,
even the ordinary kind claim to originate in a spiritual
activity, similarly concurrent with the ligation of external
sense. For "the resuscitation of thoughts which in some
shape or other have previously occupied the mind," is
nothing more or less than a prelude to what will unques-
tionably form a chief part of our intellectual experience of
futurity; namely, the inalienable and irrepressible recollec-
tion of the deeds and feelings played forth while in the
PERMANENCE OF THE MEMORY. 41T
flesli, providing a beatitude or a misery forever.* Ordi-
narily, this resuscitation is of such a medley and jumbled
character, that not only is the general product unintelli-
gible, but the particular incidents are themselves too frag-
mentary and dislocated to be recognized. But it is not
always so. There must be few who have not experienced in
their sleep, with what peculiar vividness, unknown to their
waking hours, and with what minute exactitude of portrai-
ture, events long past and long lost sight of, will not infre-
quently come back, showing that there is a something within
which never forgets, and Avhich only waits the negation of
the external world, to leap up and certify its powers.
O, wondrous Dreamland! who hath not
Threaded some mystic maze
In its dim retreats, and lived again
In the light of other days?
-X- * * -:■:-
There the child is on its mother's breast
That long in the grave hath lain,
For in Dreamland all the loved and lost
Are given us again.
In the whole compass of poetry, perhaps there is nothing
more touching than the allusion in the Exile of Erin : —
* Martineau carries out this view, in a piece of great power, in
the "Endeavors after the Christian Life." Vol. 1. Coleridge, in
Biographia Literaria, (vol. 1, p. 115. Ed. 1817,) suggests that the
"books" which are to be opened at the last day, are men's own per-
fect memories of what they have thought and done during life. In
relation to the quickening of the memory at death, it is full of
solemn interest that persons so nearly drowned as to lose all con-
sciousness, and all sense of physical pain, see, during the moments
preceding their restoration, the whole of their past life in mental
panorama. Of this there are many well known instances on record.
Forgetting, absolute forgetting, asserts De Quincey, is a thing not
possible to the human mind.
S *
418 DEEAMS AND PHYSICAL HEALTH.
Erin ! my country, though sad and forsaken^
In dreams I revisit thy sea-beaten shore ;
But alas ! in a far foreign land I awaken,
And sigh for the friends I shall never see more !
That which so vividly remembers is the Soul ; and if in the
sleep which refreshes our organic nature, it utters its recol-
lections but brokenly and indistinctly, it will abundantly
compensate itself when the material vesture which clogs it
shall be cast away. Much of the indistinctness of dreams
probably arises from physical unhealthiness. If a sound
body be one of the first requirements to a sound mind, in
relation to its waking employments, no less must it be need-
ful to the sanity and precision of its sleeping ones. Brilliant
as are the powers and functions of the spiritual body, the
performance of them, whether sleeping or waking, so long
as it is investured wdth flesh and blood, is immensely, per-
haps wholly, contingent on the health of the material body.
If the material body be improperly fed, or the blood be in-
suflSciently oxygenated, the brain and nerves are imperfectly
nourished, and the spiritual body can but imperfectly enact
its wills. However little it may be suspected, the great
practical question of our day, the health of towns, thus in-
volves, to a less or greater extent, the moral and intellectual
interests of the community. For a soul that is debarred
from acting freely and vigorously, through a defective or
vitiated condition of its instrument, cannot be expected to
act nobly and religiously.
240. To enter the spiritual world, or rather, to become
conscious of it, requires no long journey. Man, as already
observed, is from his birth an inhabitant of it. Wherever
there are material substances and material worlds, there
likewise is the spiritual universe. Could we be transported
to the most distant star that the telescope can descry, wc
should not be a hair's breadth nearer to it than we are at
NEARNESS OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. 4l9
this moment, nor should we be a hair's breadth more distant
from it. So far from being infinitely remote and uncon-
nected, as vulgarly supposed, the invisible or spiritual world
is immediately contiguous. It circumferences us like the
air we breathe. It is only to unintelligence that it is dis-
tant, and thus, like the Beautiful, at once quite close, and
far away. It is near to our souls, which alone have concern
with it, as the sweet kiss of true love; far from our bodies
as such love is from the vicious. The notion that heaven
is somewhere beyond the stars, a country on the convex
side of the firmament, merely an elevated part of space, has
long since been neutralized by the discoveries of Astronomy
alone. "Above" the physical earth, and "below" it, are
conditions which are changing every moment. If heaven
be above our heads at noon, it is beneath our feet at mid-
night. The blue, radiant, infinite sky is the material emblem
of heaven, but heaven itself lies nowhere in material space,
because it does not belong to such space. This is the very
letter of Scripture. When the shepherds were watching
their flocks on the eve of the nativity, the angels had no
long distance to traverse in order to come into view. They
were not seen first as a bright speck in the sky, gradually
taking shape as they drew nearer. They were beheld "sud-
denly," indicating that they were close by all the while, and
that for them to be seen it was merely needful that the
spiritual eyes of the shepherds should be opened. It was
"suddenly" also that Moses and Elias disappeared after
they had been seen on the mount of the Transfiguration;
implying a similar closing of the spiritual eyes of the three
disciples. So when "the angel of God called to Hagar out
of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar?"
the words could have been uttered in no distant realm, or
they would have been inaudible. At death, accordingly,
there is no migration to some distant region of space; the
420 DISCLOSURES OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD,
avenue to our eternal abode is simply the casting off the
"fiesh and blood" which "cannot inherit" it, and heaven
and hell are near and distant according to each man's moral
state.
Death is another life. We bow our heads
At going out, we think, and enter straight
Another golden chamber of the King's,
Larger than this, and loyelier.—Festus.
241. What are the landscape features of that "golden
chamber," of course we cannot knoAv till we enter it, "neither
hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive." But
the inspiration which promises it says also that "the invisible
things of God are clearly seen by the things which are made,"
signifying that the splendors of futurity, though in their
fullness unimaginable, are nevertheless pictured in those of
earth. Heaven is the permanent sl'do^ of creation; earth is
its dim £cdwXov. The spiritual world is the universe of the
essences of things ; the material one is the theatre of their
finited presentation; to such extent, and in such variety,
that is, as it is necessary or desirable that man should know
them during his time-life. Doubtless there are millions of
spiritual things which are never ultimated into material
effigies, but reserved as the privilege of the angels. Yet
whatever we do see that is excellent and lovely, we may be
sure is a counterpart of something in every sense celestial.
The flowers of the spring yearly delight us by their return,
because of prototypes in the spiritual world which are im-
mortal, though their material emblems, like the beautiful
Dissolving Views, come but to flee away; and tried by the
Sensational standard of the real, seem to be gone and lost
forever. The rose seems to wither, its j)etals scatter, and its
loveliness is only a recollection; but the real rose can never
perish. The real rose abides where it always was, in th^
VISIONS OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 421
spiritual world ; and there it will subsist for ever ; and when
we cast off our own leaves, we shall find it there in all its
deathless beauty, along with all the other loved and vanished.
God takes care of all that is truly beautiful and precious,
and reserves it for us, provided we will go and take posses-
sion. We have but to cross the dark river confident in his
trustworthiness, and we shall not be disappointed. God
loves to be trusted. Then, too, we shall behold the spiritual
sea, and islands, and rivers, and sun, and stars, and trees,
just as St. John beheld them when God opened his eyes so
that he might tell us of them in the Apocalypse, and as we
continually express our own personal hope in respect of, in
that beautiful anticipative hymn beginning
There is a land of pure delight,
and proceeding —
There everlasting spring abides,
And never-withering flowers ;
•k -It * -x-
Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green.*
We all came into the world for something ; we shall all go
* Other scenes in nature may be grander, but lovelier there are
none than the view, on a fair summer morning, from the eastern
shores of the upper part of the Bristol Channel. Seated on the
thymy hills of happy Clevedon, sloping so delicately to the edge of
the wild, seaweed-mantled crags, upon whose feet the impetuous
waves, dashing and tossing, seem never weary of flinging their
white beauty — as we gaze upon the opposite coast, the picture in
these verses is completely and most exquisitely realized. There
rolls the "swelling flood;" there lie the "sweet fields beyond,"
dressed in their " living green," and dotted with hamlets and white
cottages which show conspicuous in the bright revealing sun. Borne
to this beautiful presence, the heart learns how to understand the
heavenly Jordan, and swells with new delight of pious hope.
35
422 THE PRESENT LIFE NOT TO BE SLIGHTED.
out of it for more ; just as Avhen daylight is exchanged for
starlisfht, we lose our consciousness of the terrestrial in the
4^ superber consciousness of the universal.
Mysterious Night ! when our first parent knew
Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue ?
Yet, 'neath a curtain of translucent dew.
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus, with the host of heaven came.
And lo ! creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun ? or who could find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed.
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind ?
Why do we, then, shun death with anxious strife ?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life ?
242. But, because of these prospects, we are not to think
slightingly of the present life and its arena. Each sphere
of being is divine, for each is the work of God, and if not
felt sacred, it is the observer that is in fault. Many think
that because heaven, which is the sunny part of the spiritual
world, is above all places holy, therefore the material Avorld,
this earth, is vile — the devil's kingdom. Not so. The
world, properly regarded, is God's kingdom, not the devil's.
Hell only is the devil's kingdom. True, Jesus said, " My
kingdom is not of this Avorld." But it is quite wrong to in-
fer from this, as many do, that he neither felt any interest
in it himself, nor desired that man should feel any. To
fancy our Lord to have promulgated Christianity upon
earth solely with a view to man's future happiness in hea-
ven, is one of the fatalest errors we can fall into. The true
office of religion is to teach us so to live in this world, and
so to enjoy it, that we must needs live in and enjoy the
"my KIl^GDOM IS NOT OF THIS WOELD." 423
other. " If thou wilt rightly understand and love eternity,
learn properly to understand and love terrestrial life. The
true preparation for heaven is to learn what we have on
earth, and to be glad in it." To say that there is " nothing-
true but heaven," that all below is unworthy a wish or
thought, is the very opposite to what Christ really taught.
Certainly, the world we live in is full of trials and deceitful-
ness, and blessed is the promise of solace and compensation
in a brighter sphere ; but it is God's world still, therefore
abounding in good and beauty, and impossible to be all
worthlessness and illusion. The tendency to neglect and
too little appreciate the advantages of the present life, en-
couraged by the incessant dwelling by many of our spiritual
teachers on the prospects of the life to come, is a result
which every thinking Christian man cannot but deplore ;
for that cannot be a true spirit of Christianity which deems
our beautiful world a mere "vale of tears," the mere pas-
sage to a better, or which thanks God not so much for what
he has already given, as for what we consider Ave are and
ought, to receive. What our Lord really meant in those
memorable words, " My kingdom,"&c., was, that he came to
introduce an order of things based on other princijoles en-
tirely than those of the humanly constituted kingdoms then
existing — principles of love, charity and mercy, instead of
selfishness, cruelty and aggression. Hence the angels sang
not only Glory to God in the highest, but on earth, peace
and good-wdll. There is something truly grand in the spec-
tacle of a man in the enjoyment of health, prosperity, and
reputation, looking forward nevertheless to a future life,
with hope and thankfulness. Far more admirable, how-
ever, is the spectacle of him who feels this hope and thank-
fulness, not by reason of dissatisfaction with the world, but
by reason of its ministry to him of wisdom and delight.
" The fact," says a great and original writer, " that the sky
424 FANATICISM AND TERRESTRIALISM.
is brighter than the earth is not a precious truth unless the
earth itself be first understood. Desj)ise the earth, or slan-
der it, fix your eyes on its gloom, and forget its loveliness,
and we do not thank you for your languid or despairing
perception of brightness in heaven. But rise up actively on
ihe earth, learn what there is in it, know its color and form,
and the full measure and make of it, and when after that,
you say ' heaven is bright,' it will be a precious truth, but
not till then." (Ruskin, Modern Painters, iv. 39.) Con-
stant dAvelling upon death and what will follow it, too often
confounded with religion, and even mistaken for it, is not
only not healthful to the soul, but injurious. True, the way
to live pleasantly is to learn to die hopefully ; " fine ideas,"
says Goethe, " must needs fill the soul that in any way out-
steps the boundaries of terrestrial life;" but we must not
think only of dying ; it is more religious to seek to preserve
our life as long as we possibly can, and to exert ourselves
as far as strength and opportunity will permit, than to
estrange ourselves from God's gifts. Anything which too
powerfully attracts us away from the duties of the present
life, cannot be regarded as beneficial. While here, the
living should belong to life, and adapt themselves to it.
God has shown us that it is his will that we should do so,
by withholding from us every clue as to the time of our de-
parture. A truly noble soul loves both heaven and earth,
falling neither into fanaticism nor terrestrialism. The func-
tions of our temporal life are as noble in their degree as
those of eternity can be. Our relations to God can never
be more intimate or grand. " It is a poor mistake to think
that we compliment God's heaven by despising his earth,
and that we best show our sense of the great things the fu-
ture man will do yonder, by counting as utterly worthless
all that the present man can do here."
CHAPTER XXIV.
TB:E AN'AIjOGIES of KATURE—LAW of FREFlGVRATIOy.
243. A TEUE philosophy of Life includes the great phe-
nomena of Analogy. In order, therefore, to the comple-
tion of our subject, it is proper that they should receive an
independent and methodical consideration, over and above
the passing allusions that have from time to time been made.
Analogy as it exists among natural objects and appearances,
is not, as often supposed, mere casual and superficial resem-
blance, though it is jDcrfectly true that such resemblance
exists. It is a part of the very raethod, order, and consti-
tution of things. The evidence of the Unity of creation
resides in its analogies ; in these also Ave realize the noblest
and most ennobling knowledge that is open to us after Scrip-
tural truth, namely, the dual glory and blessedness of our
position in the universe, or as regards Nature on the one
hand, below, and God upon the other hand, above. Lord
Bacon, who calls them the " respondences" of Nature, fully
alive to their value, thus urgently enforces it in the Ad-
vancement of Learning. "Neither," says he, "are those of
which we have spoken, and others of like nature, mere
resemblances (as men of narrow observation may possibly
imagine), but one and the very same seals and footsteps of
Nature, impressed upon various subjects and objects.
Hitherto this branch of science hath not been cultivated as
it ought. In the writings emanating from the profounder
class of wits you may find examples thinly and sparsely in-
36 « 425
426 ANALOGY AND CORRESPONDENCE.
serted, for the use and illustration of the argument, but a
complete body of these axioms no one hath yet prepared ;
though they have a primitive force and efficacy in all science,
and are of such consequence as materially to conduce to the
understanding of the Unity of Nature; which latter we con-
ceive to be the office and use of Philosophia Prima." All
philosophy goes to establish this high claim. No portion of
Nature is truly intelligible till its analogies with the other
portions are investigated and ajoplied ; the man who disre-
gards them can never be more than a sectarian, while he
who uses them — not in the way of a trifler, as the end of
his inquiries, but as a philosopher, for their efficacy as a
means — proves that it is they alone which can render the
mind cosmoiDolitan, and truly instruct us in the arcana of
creation. A man may be a very good chemist, as 1.0 ac-
quaintance Avith salts and acids ; he may be a very good
botanist, as concerns the names and uses of plants ; but this
is only to be a savant ; he is no philosopher till he can gather
new insight into his chemistry or his botany by virtue of its
analogies with other shajjes of truth, and feel the centrality,
as to essentials, of every science. For the true analogist,
wherever he may be, however he may shift his standing
ground, always finds himself in the middle of nature, his
particular object for the time being, the clue and text-book
to the whole. The characteristic of the true philosopher is
his large consciousness of what is proper to the race in
general, and of the varied circumstances which pertain to
its expression in the individual. Analogy as it exists in the
world of material nature, or as we are now treating of it,
must not be confounded with Correspondence. " Corre-
spondence," in the strict and proper sense of the word, and
as ordinarily used in this volume, denotes the relation of
the material and objective, to the spiritual and invisible,
that is to say, the relation of inmost Cause to outermost
ANALOGY AND CORRESPONDENCE. 427
Effect, all causes belonging primarily to the spiritual world,
and the phenomena of material nature being so many final
effects of them, as shown in our chapter upon this subject.
Correspondence, accordingly, can properly be spoken only
of that first, governing analogy of the universe which in-
volves the relation of a prior principle to a posterior, of a
noumenon to a phenomenon, or vice versa. The analogies
of the material world are secondary, and are not correspond-
ences. They are analogies of one natural effect with another
natural effect ; of one natural cause with another natural
cause, and so forth ; Avhile Correspondences rest on the rela-
tions, not of two natural things to one another, but of
natural things to spiritual things.
244. The value of the study of analogy, even in its sim-
plest applications, is impossible to be over-rated. Thei-e is
not a single science from which difficulties have not been
removed by the certainties of a kindred science, when ana-
logically compared with it, or which, on similar comparison,
does not furnish new hints and illustrations. " It is curious,"
remarks Sir David Brewster, tacitly vouching for this prin-
ciple, "how the conjectures in one science are sometimes
converted into truths by the discoveries in another." Struc-
tures, forms, and phenomena, moreover, Avhich are incom-
prehensible, considered locally and specifically, and which
often seem positively useless and incongruous, become, by
reference to a higher synthesis, based on an extended and
philosophic consideration of analogies, not only comprehen-
sible, but fraught with meaning of the finest order. Such,
for example, are the organs which in man seem meaningless
mimicry of the female bosom. Viewed by the light of
analogy, there is nothing in the world either capricious or
inconsistent. The mistake which too often prevents the full
realization of the use of analogy, and tends even to en-
gender distrust and prejudice, is the waywardness which so
428 GENERALIZATION THE BASIS OF PHILOSOPHY.
commonly persists in, contrasting that which is highest with
that which is lowest — the extremes^ in a Avord — and rejecting
all that lies between as anomalous. Relations, like causes,
that are not immediate, are discovered by such as are inter-
mediate. When divested of the arbitrary disguises with
which fancy may choose to clothe them, the highest and the
lowest reflect each other's looks, and a common brotherhood
becomes everywhere apparent. Because of this grand con-
sanguinity of all knowledge, arising from the unity of
nature, comes also the lofty opinion which the votaries of
any particular department entertain of it. To the geologist
there is nothing nobler than geology; to the chemist than
chemistry; to the florist than floriculture. Each man feels
the throbbing of the mighty heart, and, like the true analo-
gist, seems to himself to stand in the middle.
245. Analogy accordingly, true, inductive, poetic analogy,
constitutes the highest exercise of philosojohy, "the science,"
as Adam Smith Avell defines it, "of the connecting principles
of nature." Not that perception of analogies is itself philo-
sophy, but that all true philosophy rests on large and bril-
liant generalization, the means to this latter being fine and
lively aptitude for the former. "The excellence of a philo-
sophy," says Ruskin, " consists in the breadth of its harmony,
or the number of truths it has been able to reconcile."
That powerful capacity of abstraction which seizing the
points of agreement in a number of otherwise dissimilar in-
dividuals, marshals the related, and separates the alien, is in
fact, the highest prerogative of the human mind. "To
generalize," says Mackay, " to discover unity in multif)lieity,
order in apparent confusion ; to sejoarate from the accidental
and the transitory, the stable and universal ; this is the great
aim of human Reason." Not only is it the strongest evi-
dence of Intellectual greatness. "The tendency to connect
and harmonize evervthine; is one of the eminent conditions
TRUE IDEA OF GENIUS. 429
of a mind leaning to virtue and beauty, just as the tendency
to dismember and separate everything is that of a mind
leaning to vice and ugliness." The finest part of Originality
is combination, or the power of generalizing and uniting,
discovering new harmonies among familiar elements, and
showing us gracefully and eloquently how to see them for
ourselves. Originality therefore, instead of being, as many
suppose, nearly exhausted, instead of becoming rarer, will
become grander every day, and go on delighting us forever,
seeing that with increase of facts and principles to generalize
and comhine, jxiri passu will there be scope for the power of
generalizing. Essentially, this great jDower is innate and
intuitional; hence it is classed by Plato with the divine or
Promethean gifts. Forming, as it does, an integral and vital
part of "Genius," or that which we are born with, if geniu,*
be acknowledged a boon from heaven, the part must of ne-
cessity be of the same origin as the whole, and the sage of
the Academian garden be in the right. All men are com-
petent to it, for all men's intuitions are alike, however dif-
ferent may be their development into living force under the
influence of education and self-culture. Genius is not so
rare as many suppose. Let a man assiduously apply him-
self to Nature and Analogies, and he will find in his own
heart, however unexpectedly, hidden stores of the envied
power, ready to burst into lifelike seeds. The achievements
of genius, even the very highest of them, come not of
something peculiar to the man, but of something common to
all men. The man of genius, restrictively so called, does but
set forth, clearly and beautifully, what all the world knows
already, and what every true reader of him feels to be
equally his own. Other people differ from him not as being
ignorant, but as having their knowledge confused, vague,
and inarticulate. This is the reason why in the land where
a great genius lived and wrote, we always feel at home.
430 PRINCIPLE or PREFiaURATION.
Though we may never have quitted our own shores, reading
Virgil we feel that our native soil is beyond the Apennines.
To the Englishman who loves him, Goethe makes Germany
England ; to the German who has a heart, Shakspere makes
England Germany. Generalization, accordingly, is not to
be deemed purely a gift, a power vain to aspire to; what is
intuitive, even in the greatest, is simply the capacity to gene-
ralize. Whatever its particular bent, genius cannot do
without study and culture, and these will often lift a man to
the level of the reputed "Genius." In no department of
life do men rise to eminence who have not undergone a long
and diligent preparation; for whatever be the difference in
the mental powers of individuals, it is the cultivation of them
that alone leads to distinction. Though few may even by
culture be able to express, all can in some measure learn to
feel and understand. This, if nothing further, is in the
power and Avill of every man, and peculiarly of the analogist.
He may begin Avhere he pleases; Nature has everywhere a
portico; Truth, like the world, is a sphere; dig Avherever we
may, we shall surely come to the centre if Ave dig deep
enough.
246. That Nature is a magnificent Unity has long been
perceived; also that its parts form a vast Chain or series,
beginning with the atom of dust, and extending through
minerals, plants, and animals up to man. Associated with
these great principles, and springing out of them, is a third,
the beautiful principle of Peefiguration. Everything in
nature is a sign of something higher and more living than
itself, to follow in due course, and in turn announce a yet
higher one; the mineral foretells the plant, the plant fore-
tells the animal, all things in their degree foretell mankind,
"Nature," says Henry Sutton, "before she developes the
human being, prophesies of that her grand and ultimate
performance, and gives pictures and shows of her unborn
NO MIMICRY IN NATURE. 431
man-child, hinting at him, and longing and trying to realize
him, before the time has come for his actual appearance."
As the Poet is not of one nature, but of Two, one concerned
with the present, the other reaching forwards into the future,
so is it with the phenomena and forms of Life. Over and
above their ordinary present use and meaning, they tell of
other and greater things to come, anticipating them, and
pointing to them. Ordinarily, the resemblances subsisting
between the three kingdoms of nature are deemed mimicries;
the higher manifestation is said to be " imitated" by the
lower, the phenomena of the vegetable being considered a
degradation or humble copy of those of the animal, and those
of the mineral world a degradation of those of the plant. This
is wrong altogether ; it is viewing the column as commencing
with the capital, and ending with the pedestal. Properly
understood, there is no such thing as mmicr?/ in nature ; it
is an inverted mode of observation that makes it seem as if
there were; the motto is everywhere Excelsior: the like-
nesses are not those of the living, smiling child and the
wooden doll, but of the artist's pencilled outline and finished
picture in colored oils. " In the inferior orders of creation
it is not that the lamp of vitality is going out, but that we
catch the first kindlings of that spark which gioAVS with so
noble a flame in the Aristotles, the ISTewtons, the Miltons,
of our heaven-gazing race." So full of interest are these
prefigurations, so serviceable to a right concej)tion both of
the unity and of the chain of nature, that it will be best for
them to receive our first consideration, letting the former
and greater truths come after. None of these matters, it
may be hinted, are for closet study; they concern nature as
it flows fresh and immaculate from God, and only by con-
versance with nature can they be justly apprehended. The
man wdio would be truly instructed in her ways must seek
482 PREFIGURATIONS OF THE MINERAL KINGDOM.
them, not by pursuit of his fancy in a chair, but with his
eyes abroad.
247. The Mineral kingdom, iis the common basis of ma-
terial nature, is also the first seat of prefiguration, which
begins in the beautiful objects known as Crystals, including
both the minerals proper, as the amethyst, lapis-lazuli, and
emerald, and the infinite variety of chemical salts, as sul-
phate of copper, prussiate and bichromate of potash. These,
in the symmetry of their forms, the purity and often trans-
lucent brightness of their colors, and their clustered mode
of growth, give promise of the flowers of the plant, and are
the blossoms of inorganic nature. Many substances in crys-
talizing, so dispose themselves as to predict the branching
and general arrangement of the stems and foliage of plants.
This we may see in native silver and native copper, which
frequently assume most beautiful arborescent and frondose
figures. In the freezing of w\ater it is shown so strikingly,
that while it transports the true lover of nature with de-
light, even the dullest are attracted and pleased by it. The
delicate silvery lace-work on the window-panes on frosty
mornings is something more than a pretty accident. By no
means a mere lusus naturos, (a very unmeaning expression,)
not without a cause do we find it anticipating the forms of
certain mosses, as those of the genus Sy2onum, and in par-
ticular the soft, feathery Hypnmn proliferum of sylvan path-
ways, giving not only the contour, but the very size. Nature
places it there because in her least as well as greatest works
there is nothing so incongenial as an abrupt beginning, and
nothing so grateful as to sound a "herald voice" of coming
glory. Certain sea-weeds are prefigured by the frost-work
no less strikingly than the mosses ; in the Ptilota plumosa we
have a remarkably beautiful instance, every pinnule of this
charming plant ramifying at a given angle, and originating
smaller ones of the same character. Sometimes the tracery
PREFIGUREMENTS OF VEGETABLE FORMS. 433
is curvilinear instead of angular, when it points to the
luxuriant wavy leaves of the Acanthus, as chiselled for the
crown of the Corinthian pillar. No branches of trees, or
foliage, however graceful, can exceed the freedom and
variety with which these lines are drawn. In other cases,
when curved and frondose, they foreshadow the rounded
masses that give such richness to the umbrageous elm
and courtly chestnut. Jones of Nayland gives plates of
some of the latter varieties in his Philosophical Disquisi-
tions (p. 244). Scheuchzer, in that curious old book, the
Herbarium Diluvianum (tab. 8, p. 40,) figures a specimen
of another variety, singularly presignificant of the club-
moss, or Lycopodium clavatum, formed, he tells us, on the
inner surface of a glass globe in his museum, during the
severe winter of 1709. Prefigurements of vegetable forms
occur likewise on the pavement in winter mornings, deco-
rating it even in the heart of foggy towns, with graceful
arching sprays in basso relievo of brown ice. In their earlier
stages these rei:;ind us of the foot-prints of the sea-gulls
upon the sand. On the surface of very shallow water, as at
the bottom of tubs, congelation not seldom repeats, on a
grand scale, small portions of the flowerage of the window-
panes. The prefiguration is then of the larger pinnate-
leaved ferns, as the Polypodium aureum, especially as they
appear when pressed and dried for the Hortus Siccus. In
fossil ferns, from these latter having more the appearance of
drawings, we may observe it more plainly still.* In the
animal kingdom these forms are recapitulated in the ilat,
white, pectinated skeletons of such fishes as the sole; just as
* An extraordinary example, singularly like the Pecopteris gigan-
tea, occurred on the premises of the author, during the intense frost
of February, 1855. The pinnae were fourteen inches long, and the
entire ice-leaf five feet in circumference.
.37 T
434 SNOW CRYSTALS.
the angles and geometrical nicety of the proportions of
single crystals, reappear in the honeycomb of the bee, and
the hexagonal facets of insects' eyes. The stenis of plants,
or at least those of exogenous structure, are prefigured in
that curious stalactitic variety of sulphate of baryta, called
in Derbyshire "petrified oak." The horizontal section of
this mineral, when polished, presents a rich brown, circular
disk, and gives an exact picture of the concentric rings and
medullary rays. Flowers are foretold again in Snow.
Walking over the white mantle of mid-winter, we little
think that at every step we annihilate a tiny garden. But
so it is. Scattered over the surface of snow are innumerable
glittering spangles, composed of six minute icicles, spreading
starlike from a centre, the rays themselves often provided
with smaller, secondary filaments, so as to resemble micro-
scopic feathers. In the less developed stage we see Nature
planning in them such of the lilies and other flowers of
Endogens as when expanded are flat and radiate, the Or7ii-
thogalum unbellatum, or Star of Bethlehem, for instance: in
the latter or more developed stage they are harbingers of
that dainty little blossom of the Canadian woods, the
Mitella nuda, the petals of which are fimbriated and of the
purest white. In the animal kingdom, the idea culminates
in the star-fishes. The beauty of these unregarded little
diamonds of the snow, though lost upon most men, has long
been a delight to quick observers. Descartes gives rude
drawings of them in the Meteor a, and the ingeuious but un-
fortunate microscopist, Robert Hooke, in his Micrographia.
(Plate viii., 1675.) Dr. Grew, author of that immortal
work, the Anatomy of Plants, contributed a paper upon
them to the Philosophical Transactions for 1673, and there
is a notice of them somewhere by Linnseus. It remained
however for Scoresby, the arctic voyager, to point out their
astonishing variety. His figures amount to nearly a hundred,
IMPORTANCE OF LITTLE THINGS. 435
and look as if designed from a kaleidoscope, all referable,
nevertheless, to the common six-rayed star as their funda-
mental form. It is from these figures that the Cyclopsedias
and Galleries of Nature have all copied. The impression
commonly entertained that the large diversity found by
Scoresby in the Polar regions belongs only to such latitudes,
is not correct. In the "Illustrated London News" for
February, 1855, and again in the "Art Journal" for March,
1857, there are drawings by Mr. Glaisher, of the Greenwich
Observatory, of no less than thirty-two varieties discovered
in his own neighborhood, and doubtless many more may be
found, and in any part of the country, if diligently sought,
providing a Christmas and New-year's pleasure for the in-
telligent such as will outweigh whole nights of the mere
temporicide popularly esteemed the heau-icUal of winter
pastime. They were no common eyes that first espied the
snow-flowers. Most men can see large things, but it takes
clever ones to see the little. Nor were they common minds.
To take the simple, the homely, the unheeded, and show
mankind how to find in it a source of new, rational, and un-
sophisticated enjoyment, is not the least of the benign func-
tions that belong to Genius. To learn how to see and de-
light in little things as well as large, is in fact, to make no
slight progress both in true intelligence and in aptitude for
genuine pleasure. Many laugh at the idea of being pleased
with little things. "Little things," they say, "please little
minds." They should remember that the great mass of the
population of our planet consists of the merest pigmies,
diminutive birds and fishes, tiny insects, animalcules only
visible with a microscope, so tliat to turn away from little
things is to be indifferent to almost everything the world
contains. Besides, with Uranus eighty times greater than
the Avhole earth, Neptune a hundred and fifty times greater,
Saturn more than seven hundred times, and Jupiter more
436 PREFIGURATION IN PLANTS.
than fourteen hundred, it is rather inconsistent to talk about
littleness in the objects of a world itself so puny.
248. The enterprise of plants is one of the most wonder-
ful things in nature. Irrespectively of their immense pre-
significance of Animal life, which infinitely exceeds that of
the mineral world with regard to the vegetable, there is a
continual and ardent emulation of all higher j)arts and
forms by those which in function or development are lower.
Leaves, for example, which, as we all know, are ordinarily
of some shade of green, in many species paint themselves
with the most vivid and beautiful colors. The leaves of
several kinds of Amaranthus, as the Prince's-feather and
Love-lies-bleeding, even when they first creep out of the
ground, are brilliant red, announcing the blossom from afar;
those of the C'aladium bicolor, Cissus discolor, Physurus
pictus, Ancedochilus argenteus and setaceus, Plectranthus con-
color, and many others, are variegated with all the hues of
summer gardens, and outshine tens of thousands of actual
flowers. In the genus Tillandsia they are often striped as
if with rainbows. It is not implied, or at least it is not a
rule, that richly-tinted leaves predict richly-tinted flowers as
coming by and by upon the same stem. Prefigurement
may or may not refer thus particularly; its tidings are for
the most part of a future glory in nature as a whole. The
flowers of plants are foretold also by the bracteas and even
by the calyces of certain kinds. Such is the case with the
Euphorbia splendens, several species of Salvia, the Hydran-
gea, and the white-winged Musscenda frondosa. By means
of their veins and other peculiarities, leaves in other cases
apprize us of the very configuration of the tree they are
building up. The angle at which the veins diverge is often
the same as that which the branches make with regard to the
trunk; where the leaves are sessile, the stem is usually set
with branches down to the very ground; where they are
PREFIGIIRATION IN PLANTS. 437
petiolate, the stem is also naked to a considerable height.
" So far," say Dickie and McCosh, " as we have been able to
generalize a very extensive series of facts before us, we are
inclined to lay down the provisional law that the whole
leafage coming out at one place on the stem corresponds to
the whole plant, and that the venation of each single leaf
corresponds to the ramification of a branch."* In certain
mosses, as the Hypnum dendroides and Hypnum alopecurum,
may be found miniatures of every tree in an arboretum.
249. The presignificance of Animal forms and economy
by plants extend to the whole of their organic functions,
many of their very organs, even to their spontaneous move-
ments, their habits and qualities. As regards structure, the
soft parts of the animal body are foretold by the succulent
portion of the plant ; the veins and blood by the ducts and
vessels, with their rills of sap; the bones by its strong skele-
ton of woody fibre.f What is the nature of vegetable
Feeding has been shown in a former chapter. - It may be
added that the eating of organized food, esteemed so pecu-
liarly distinctive of animals, has its prefigurement in the
Drosera and Dioncea; those curious little plants already
mentioned on p. 63, which by means of appendages to their
* Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation, Book 2, chap. 2,
(1856.) See which excellent work for abundant illustration of the
facts adverted to.
f Nowhere in nature are there more finished examples of skele-
tons than occur in plants. Those furnished by the capsules of the
Stramonium, the Henbane, and the Campanula, and by the leaves
of the holly, poplar, and Indian fig, when grouped and glass-shaded
like wax-flowers, are fit ornaments for the most recherche drawing-
room. The best are obtained by artificial maceration, but singularly
beautiful specimens often occur among the natural relics of the au-
tumn. The Indian fig-leaves are those imported from China.
37*
4y8 SLEEP OF PLANTS.
leaves, entrap the smaller kinds of insects, as flies are en-
snared in spiders' webs, and then, apj^ear to suck and ab-
sorb their juices. From June to August, when the English
species of these vegetable carnivora are most active, there is
scarcely a leaf in which we may not see either a recently-
caught victim, or the desiccated relics of a former one.
Vegetable Sleep is that relaxation of the vital processes
which is indicated by the folding together and drooping of
the leaves as night approaches, prefiguring the listlessness
and supine attitude of the dormant animal, and further, in
the beautiful phenomenon of the closing, eyelid-like, of the
petals of the flowers, so charming to watch in the stillness
of summer twilight. All plants do not exhibit these pheno-
mena, but there are probably none which do not experience
a periodical repose (at least when they are in a state of
growth and inflorescence), eminently beneficial to their
health, whether marked by external change or not. It is
not to be understood that there is actual sleep in plants.
Real sleep occurs only where animal functions are super-
added to simply vegetative ones. The classes of plants
Avhereiii the prefiguration of sleep is chiefly conspicuous are
the Leguminosse and the Compositse, the former closing
their leaves, and the latter their flowers. Strikingly beau-
tiful examples occur also in the water-lilies, the crocus, and
the poppy, lulled as it were by its own Lethean balm.
Those plants which do not open their flowers till sunset, as
the Evening-primrose, or until night is far advanced, as the
Cereus grandiflorus, seem to be the harbingers in the vege-
table Avorld, of those nocturnal birds, animals, and insects
which are active only after dark, when all others are asleep.
The Night-scented stock, and other flowers which are fra-
grant only or chiefly in the evening, are the heralds of the
nightingale. Certain other plants agree with certain other
kinds of birds in being peculiarlj' matutinal. Go out as
REPKODUCTION OF PLANTS. 439
early as we will, we find the delicate white bells of the wild
convolvulus in the dewy hedge, and the rich imperial purple
and crimson ones in the garden, just as we are never too
soon for the chaffinch, the blackbird, and the lark. More
wonderfully yet is Procreation foretold by plants. The ap-
paratus, the mode, the circumstances, the results, all are de-
licately, but explicitly and fully announced. The louver
kinds of plants, as fungi and lichens, wherein distinctness of
sexual organization is imperfect, point to sponges and their
congeners; the higher kinds, as roses and apple-trees, which
have male and female as plainly marked as in mankind,
prefigure in this respect, mammals, birds, insects, and all
the nobler animate beings. Every individual flower on a
given plant is a fore-shining of the nest of the bird, and the
lair of the quadruped, and consummately, in its beautiful,
silken, shielding petals, of the inmost curtained sanctuary
of married love. The very colors and the fragrance per-
form a part in the exquisite proem, being to the flower what
sensation is to the creature, and emotion and sentiment to
man. It is by reason of what it foretells, that the flower is
so lovely. So near is the plant lifted towards the animal
world, during the period of its sexual activity, that it be-
comes illuminated by the light of human love, reflecting the
loveliness of the higher nature, like woods made musical by
the descent into them of the singing birds. As with Sleep,
there is no genuine sex in plants ; this belongs purely to the
animal world. The hymeneal hour gone by, and fertiliza-
tion accomplished, the rudimentary seed begins to form,
giving a presage of antenatal existence, followed in turn by
a prefigurement of parturition in the bursting of the pod,
and the escape of the ripened seeds. Finally, the seed itself,
Avhile in course of formation, is connected with the ovarium
by a funis ; when detached, it is marked with an umbilical
scar Even lactation is prefigured in plants;. The gerrai-
440 ANIMAL FORMS FORETOLD BY PLANTS.
jiating embryo of the seed, too small and tender to live by
itself^ has vegetable mammae provided for it in the cotyle-
dons, which, white and rounded, nourish it with their sweet,
milk-like contents. In the two large white symmetrical
halves of the almond, the filbert, the acorn, the bean, we see
this exemplified in perfection. They are no part of the fu-
ture plant, which grows entirely out of the little hinge-like
body lying at the point where they unite. Everywhere in
nature the mother's bosom is foretold. The streams which
" give drink to every beast of the field, where the wild asses
quench their thirst," are its adumbrations in the great world
of inorganic nature ; to " flow with milk and honey" is the
poetical or natural metaphor for the irrigation of a thirsty
land with nutrient rivers. Rocks and towering mountains
have a terrible and romantic grandeur, but the beauty of
earth lies in those round, gently-swelling hills and eminences
which the French so apj^ropriately call mamelons. Not that
the figure is a modern one. The Greeks termed such hills
zczdot and fiaozoc. A mound of this form at Samos, Calli-
machus calls " the breast of Parthenia."
250. The special prefigurations of animal ideas by plants
are no less striking than the general. Thus, in the large,
white, ovoid berry of the Solanum Melongena or " Egg-
plant," Ave have the egg of the domestic fowl ; in the pods
of certain leguminous plants, bivalve shells, with their occu-
pants; in the stem of the Testudinaria, a tortoise; in the
seed of the Ophiocaryon, a coiled-up serpent, with glaring
eyes, ready to dart upon its prey. The caterpillar is seen in
the pod of the Scorpiurus; the antlers of the stag in the
leaves of the Aerostichum alcicorne; the cocoa-nut gives tid-
ings of the round brown head and comical visage of the
monkey. Fishes are not the first beings to be clothed with
scales; they are anticipated on the leaves of the Hippophae
and Elceagnus; the hair, wool, and fur of terrestrial crea-
ANIMAL FORMS FORETOLD BY PLANTS. 441
tures are similarly announced by the vestures of the Ghia-
phalium and Verbascum, while many ferns have their stems
covered with ^uasi-plumage. The unexpanded buds of the
great Shield-fern, Mr. Gosse compares to the shell of the
Ti'ochus magus. (Aquarium, p. 70.) The names Lagurus,
Bird's-foot, Cock's-comb, Echinocactus, Phytelephas,* and a
hundred others, refer to foreshadowings of the same cha-
racter. So Avith the title of the large and beautiful family
called Papilionacece, literally, "the Butterflies," typically
represented in the Sweet-pea. In these we see Nature's
first step towards the Insect-Avorld, or at least towards the
lepidopterous class. "The insect-Avorld," says Coleridge,
"taken at large, appears an intenser life, that has struggled
itself loose, and become emancipated from vegetation. Florae
liberti et lihertini! If, for the sake of a moment's relaxa-
tion, we might indulge a Darwinian flight, we might ima-
gine the life of insects an apotheosis of the petals, stamens,
and nectaries round which they flutter." There is no need
for this; there is ample delight in the simple truth of the
prefiguration, which ranks Avith the loveliest in nature. In
that charming book, "Episodes of Insect Life," there is a
long discourse upon the subject, to which the interested in it
should not fail to refer.f It is not a little curious that the
moths called from the time of their appearance "night-flyers,"
are generally of a subdued tone of color, corresponding with
that prevalent in the nocturnal flowers. More prefigurative
even than the Papilionacese are the Orchids, which present
* "Phytelephas" is the axapropriate name of the palm, the seeds
of which, commonly known as Vegetable ivory, have now so exten-
sively superseded the tusk of the elephant, as regards parasol and
umbrella handles, and the numberless little articles of the toy-shop
and ladies' work-boxes.
t Vol. 1, p. 306. See also Vol. 2, pp. 294, 295.
T «
442 ORCHIDEOUS PLANTS.
the forms not only of insects, but of birds, and even reptiles.
Even our indigenous species, next to tlie ferns the most
attractive of British plants, mount so high towards aniraality,
that we discern in different kinds the bee, the wasp, the
butterfly, and the spider. The European Orchids are ter-
restrial plants, but the tropical and principal part of the
family are epifpJiytes, that is, instead of anchoring in the
earth, like the mass of vegetation, they perch upon other
plants, and usually upon trees, in the clefts of which they
lodge. Thus lifting themselves away from the earth, they
beautifully presignify the aerial life, as well as the forms of
bird and insect; and in the tenuity of their flower-stems,
whereby the blossoms seem to flutter in the air, predict even
the animal freedom from all bonds, and preeminently the
living liberty given by wings. The inclinations which
prompt both the Orchids and all other epiphytes to forsake
the earth, and seek the friendly support of stronger plants,
are the first prophecies and signs of volition and social sen-
timent. Actual motion is prefigured in the Sensitive-plants,
described on page 18. As regards the natures, habits, and
peculiar phenomena of animals, vicious and poisonous ones
are foreshadowed in the nettle;* the sharp and rending teeth
of wild beasts in thorns and thistles. There are grasses
which anticipate the camel in providing against drought;
the phosphorescence of the glow-worm and the fire-fly is a
brightening of the light which first shines in the Rhizo-
morpha and the luminous Agarics; the juice of the Sangui-
naria is like blood; that of the Pcdo de Vaca, or Cow-tree,
* The Nettle-plants, says Schleiden, are "the serpents of the vege-
table kingdom. The similarity between the instruments with which
both produce and poison their wounds is very remarkable." See
his minute account of the apparatus, and a drawing of the nettle-
sting, in "The Plant, a Biography," Lecture VIII., pp. 199, 200.
THE WALNUT, POMEGRANATE, &G 448
is like milk, not only in color, but in fitness for human food.
In a few cases the prefigurations point directly towards
mankind. Such are those Avhich occur in the Orchis mas-
cula, the Uvularia, the Phallus, and the Clitoria, names
sufficiently descriptive of their extraordinary nature. In
the walnut is a hint of the human head. The shell is the
skull ; the kernel, white, oval, convex, curiously convoluted,
and enclosed in two delicate membranes, is the brain.
Because of this resemblance, this fruit is in its native Eastern
countries, called the "brain-nut." The stems of the Balsam,
the Stellaria, the CarnatioD, and their allies, jDrefigure, in
their long slender shafts and peculiar joints, the bones of the
leg and arm. " The stalk which sujoports the leaflets of a s^oe-
cies of ^sculus (the Horse-chesnut) exactly resembles a
bone of the hand or foot ; while in the Manna ash we have
four or more pieces of like shape, forming the main stalk of
the compound leaf, separating at the joints, and resembling
a series of phalanges, as in a finger or toe."* Far above
all, is the exquisite presignificance conveyed in the pome-
granate, which, newly ripe, and before the crown has
expanded, is a perfect representation of the full-grown virgin
breast. Some varieties of apples bear a similar resemblance,
furnishing one of the most beautiful metaphors of Greek
poetry : in Theocritus, for instance, fj.J2a red yyodovxa,
"thy downy apples." (xxvii. 48.) In that truly elegant
descriptive pastoral, hardly inferior to any in Theocritus,
"The Garden of Phyllion" of Aristsenetus, apples floating
down the stream in which she is bathing, are mistaken for
Limona's breasts by her companion : —
But my love's bosom oft deceived my eye,
Resembling those fair fruits that glided by ;
Dickie and McCosh, p. 185,
444 LANllUAGE OF FLOWERS.
For when I thought her swelling breast to clasp,
An apple met my disappointed grasp.*
Ill the poetry of the Orientals, we find the pomegranate fur-
nishing similar allusions. The temple of Solomon, which
in its every circumstance and particular, was representative
and antetypical of the Christian church, was, on account of
the correspondence of the female bosom, largely adorned
with pomegranates of gold.
251. The presignificance of mental and moral qualities
by plants is fully as extensive as that of organic structure
and configuration. This arises, of course, from the corre-
spondence Avhich subsists between the material and the spi-
ritual worlds. The former, as the representative of the
latter, must needs prefigure it. Thus the box-tree foretells
stoicism ; the chamomile-plant energy and patience in ad-
versity ; the ash and mulberry prefigure prudence ; the net-
tle is a presage of spitefulness ; trees like the Hernandia, that
make a great display of foliage, but produce no fruit of any
value, apprize us of pretentious but empty boasters. It was
not from their mere commercial value that the dowry of a
Greek bride was paid in olive plants, any more than it is from
mere fancy that the English one wears a wreath of orange-
blossom. It prefigures the virtues and the aptitudes which
adorn and should appear in the Avife. The leaves are green
* Compare Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 155 ; and Acharnenses, 1198 ;
also the allusion in that charming little poem in the fourth hook of
the Anthologia (De Bosch, vol. 2, p. 420), beginning rav lK<j>vyovcrav
fiarpo;, and descriptive of Venus rising from the sea. See likewise,
Wharton's Theocritus, vol. 2, pp. 296-299 ; 4to., 1770. Why, in an-
cient times, the apple was sacred to Venus, is easy to understand.
The curious may read concerning its symbolic use, the Hierogly-
phica of Pierius, Lib. LIV., cap. 1-14, de malo (pp. 573-577), and
Alciati, Emhleviata, p. 814.
PREFIGURATIONS IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 445
all the year round ; flowers white and fragrant, fruits fiill
grown, and others in youngest infancy, are always to be
seen on this beautiful tree. We may gather from Scripture
why the ancients placed palm-branches in the hands of their
statues of Temperance and Cheerfulness, and why in Egypt
a vine Avas the hieroglyph of intelligence. Many plants are
social, or often found in each other's company. Between
others Inere exists a kind of discord or enmity ; that is, they
do not flourish when in proximity, and seem even to render
the soil unfit for each other's support. Others again inflict
injury by their peculiar twining and constricting mode of
growth; others by the deep shade they cast. "Orobanche,"
the name of a well known genus of parasitic plants, means
literally the "vetch-strangier." In the tribe of grasses,
which invariably grow in company, we see the gregarious
instinct foreshadowed. In other cases, there is love of
solitude and seclusion.
252. Chiefly of this latter nature are the prefigurations
which occur in the last or Animal kingdom. The mineral
having foretold the plant, and the plant the animal, this last
can do no more than point to Intellect and Affections. All
that is presignified by plants with regard to human charac-
ter, is reiterated, and with new emphasis, by animals, in their
various habits, economies, and instincts. Language is fore-
told in their various cries ; singing in the warbling of the
birds — next to the voice of woman, the sweetest melody in
nature. To this no doubt is owing that peculiar and
striking adaptation to the human ear of the music of birds
which makes it the most tender and beautiful relation by
which man is connected with the external world. Human
Art is preceded in the fabricative instincts, as of the bee,
the wasp, and the beaver. Democritus contended that men
learnt weaving from spiders, and architecture from the nest-
builders. Citizenship and social compact are prefigured in
38
446 PREFIGURATIOXS IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.
the gregarious animals, as the antelopes and the deer. Pa-
rental affection, anger, vanity, courage, cowardice, mildness,
fidelity, grief, artifice, rapacity, all have their first shows in
different creatures, and after the same manner ; i. e., only as
shows, inasmuch as they remain, like the architecture and the
Avarbling, the same from age to age and everywhere, whereas
in mankind they are local and elastic. In the canine race
is prefigured even the sentiment of veneration. To a noble-
spirited dog, a kind and generous master is a god.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE CHAIN OF NATURE.
253. The Chain of Nature, one of the most beautiful of
philosophic truths, is at the same time one of the most de-
fectively understood. It would seem to be the fate of all
great truths to be most familiar to the world under the
guise of some mistaken apprehension. As popularly re-
garded, it has its likeness in Bishop Berkeley's celebrated
book called Siris, which begins with the medicinal virtues
of tar-water, and insensibly mounting upwards, through
every variety of learning, ends in a discourse upon the Tri-
nity. The genuine Chain of nature is another thing alto-
gether. Plants are higher in the scale of being than mine-
rals, and animals than plants, and in each kingdom there are
series of forms, successively more and more complex ; but
there is none of that complete and absolute progression from
the lowest mineral to the highest animal, which is ordinarily
supf)osed. Such a sequence is not only not consonant with
the true principles of harmony and symmetrical disposition,
but at variance witli them ; certainly it is not borne out
either by analogy or facts. The appearances, as we shall
see presently, in which the popular belief originated, and
which are esteemed its evidence and verification, prove, not
as most frequently happens in matters of testimony, too Ut-
ile, but too much. They prove, not that there is a chain,
but that there are thousands, nay, millions of chains. The
idea is an exceedingly ancient one. Macrobius thinks it in-
447
448 homer's golden chain.
tended in the famous "golden chain" of Homer. "Since
all things," says he, " folloAV in continuous succession, de-
generating in order, to the very bottom of the series, the
more attentive observer will discover a connection of parts,
down from the SujDreme God to the last offHBCouring of na-
ture, mutually linked together, and without any interrup-
tion. And this is Homer's golden chain, which he tells us
Jupiter ordained to be let down from heaven to earth."*
In the 27th Dissertation of the accomplished and delightful
Maximus Tyrius, it is adduced with a view to illustrating
the nature of Socrates' daliMov or guardian angel, the sub-
ject of this and the preceding discourse. In nature, he
tells us, there is a regular gradation of being, commencing
with God, and terminating with plants, each rank of exist-
ence being connected with one above, and one below, by the
union of different qualities in the same body. The do.t[ioveQ
partake of the divine nature on the one hand, and of the
human on the other. In modern times the idea has had
the support of Addison, Locke, and Dugald Stewart. " Na-
ture," says Addison, " is filled up with divers kinds of crea-
tures, rising one above another by such a gentle and easy
ascent, that the little transitions and deviations from one
species to another are almost insensible." (Spectator 579.)
Locke's account occurs in the Essay on the Human Under-
standing, (Book iii. chap. 6,) finishing with a rather amusing
allusion to " what is confidently repoi^ted of mermaids." Du-
gald Stewart's may be found in the Outlines of Moral Phi-
losophy, section 109. To no one, however, does the hypoth-
esis owe so much as to the enthusiastic Genevese naturalist,
Charles Bonnet. In his work entitled " Contemplation de
* Cumque omnia continuis, &c. In Somnium Scipioni-s Com-
ment., Lib. I. cap. xiv.
bonnet's hypothesis. 449
la Nature," he takes up the proposition of Leibnitz, that
everything in the universe is connected, and that nature
makes no leaps. This — unlike the German philosopher,
who confines its application to successive events, having the
relation of causes and effects, or at most to the reciprocal
action and reaction of cotemporary beings — Bonnet extends,
with astonishing ingenuity, to the forms of those beings.
Commencing with the consideration of the ruder and more
simple substances of our planet, he successively introduces
us to minerals, plants, and animals, mounting through the
various species of the latter up to man, and exhibiting his
conclusions, at the last, in a kind of thermometrical table.
At the bottom we have matieres plus subtiles, then feu, then
air, then eau, and at the top VHomme."^ Unfolded with the
sprightliest eloquence, the enchanting picture could not fail
to gain many admirers, and for a long j^eriod naturalists
busied themselves in filling up the vacancies which the want
of observation, in their view, still left in Bonnet's scale, the
discovery of an additional link being an object of their
greatest interest and delight. In Applegarth's Theological
Survey (p. 270) we are treated to a panorama still more
extensive, namely, a scale of being of which the foot is the
magnet, and the apex the cherubim. This last carries out
the idea entertained by many, both before and after, that
man himself is only an intermediate ; in other words, that
there are as manj^ varieties of animated existence above him
as there are below, successively nearer and nearer to the
Almighty. There is no more substantial ground for such a
* The table in question forms the frontispiece to Vol. I. of the
collected works (Neuchatel, 1781), the "Contemplation" being in
Vol. IV. The original publication, in 2 vols. 8vo, was seventeen
years earlier.
38*
450 MAN THE HIGHEST OF CREATED FORMS.
belief than for the hypothesis of an exact sequence of ter-
restrial things. There are only three orders of being in the
universe, the Absolute, the rational finite, and the irrational
finite, or God, man, and what is inferior to man. Degrees
of celestial intelligence and authority we may readily sup-
pose, as " one star differeth from another in glory ;" there
are men who are greater than man as he is here, but there
is no form superior to the human. If the human form be
as Revelation intimates, " the image of God," there can be
no room for intermediate forms. The name of "angel" as
said before, is a designation, not of difference of nature, but
of office. The angels themselves are both in the Old Testa-
ment and the New, called indifferently " angels and men."
Compare verses 1 to 16 of Genesis xis., and verses 4 and
23 of Luke xxix. The correct rendering of the only text
in Scripture which seems to countenance the opinion that
angels are nobler inthescale of being than mankind, teaches,
not as the common version has it, that man is " a little
lower than the angels,^' but " a little lower than Elohim."
The Psalm in which the words occur is a kind of resume of
the Mosaic history of the creation, and simply repeats in
other terms, that " God created man in his own image."
254. It is 2:>ossible, unquestionably, and easy, to pick out
a series of forms which can be placed, as by Bonnet, so as
to stand in a seeming natural sequence. But to effect this
as many more must be left aside, which cannot be incorpo-
rated either into the same, or into any linear scale. A true
"chain of being" would not only provide places for all
things without exception, but demand them as indispensable
to its construction. Things are related by so curious and
vast a variety of particulars, that if we attempt to arrange
them in an exact series and gradation, violence is done at
every step to some close affinity, one point of resemblance
being necessarily neglected for the sake of another, and the
TRUE IDEA OF NATURAL AFFINITIES. 451
determination where each species shall be located becomes
almost entirely a matter of fancy. Which are the plants,
for example, best deserving to be placed next to animals?
Nothing is more like an animal than the Sensitive-plant, as
regards its power of movement, yet the Sensitive-plant is tiie
very furthest removed from what naturalists universally
call the "zoophytes." Even a chain-like classification of
the forms belonging to the separate departments of nature
becomes practicable, if attempted on a scale of any extent,
only by such artificial and conventional methodizing as the
thirteen andrian classes of the botanical system of Linnaeus.
Natural orders, classes, &c. do certainly follow one another
seriatim in books, as if it were so in nature, but this is purely
an exigency of the pen. In writing, we must needs begm
with something, and go on, and finish with something, just
as in order to survey the world, we must start from a specific
point. The real relation of natural orders and classes, and
no less so of species, is that of the provinces of a great em-
pire, every one of which is in marginal contact with many
others. It is under the influence of this insight that those
grand theories of classification have been conceived which
arrange the objects of nature after the manner of solar sys-
tems, the highest forms being placed as centres, and the
lower ones round about them; these latter gradually ap-
proximating towards other centres. "This radiation, as it
were," says Kirby, "from a typical form as a centre, by
various roads towards different tribes, seems to prove that
the world of animals, as well as that of heavenly bodies,
consists of numerous systems, each with its central orb. . .
Fl'om the genus Patella, among the mollus-
cous animals, by different and diverging routes, we may
arrive at almost any molluscan group or tribe." (Bridge-
water Treatise, p. 275.) In the vegetable kingdom it is the
same. Families most vmlike in the total of their characters.
452 THEORY OF EEGULAR GRADATION.
consociate by means of planets which, though remote from
their respective suns, are in close proximity with one an-
other. On the other hand, while immense number of spe-
cies, both of animals and of plants, are so closely allied as
to furnish naturalists with "genera," not a few species stand
completely isolated: on account of their very distinct and
peculiar forms, they cannot be associated with any others.
To place the whole in one grand continuous line would
obviously require that sometimes a solitary species should
be taken, at other times vast suites of species. The genus
Erica, for example, the four or five hundred species of which
are all upon a level in point of excellence, would have to
be esteemed as a single species. Legitimately, there is no
place in the hypothetical chain of nature for many even of
the families of living things — Birds for instance, which by
reason of their two wings, two feet, a bill either partly or
entirely horny, and a body covered with feathers, are dis-
tinguished so entirely from all other animals as to constitute
an absolutely independent class of beings, merging into no
other class, either above them or below. Blumenbach, who
is as fond of citing objections to the hypothesis of the single
chain as Bonnet is devoted to the assertion of it, remarks to
the same purpose concerning the Tortoises : " The very pecu-
liar and distinct form of this isolated group," says he, "con-
stitutes a strong proof of the non-existence of the supposed
gradation of objects in nature."
255. That there are mixed or transitional beings in na-
ture, is as much an hypothesis as the Chain, being, in fact,
a part of it. Doubtless there are many curious organisms
which from some peculiarity of structure, appear to be com-
binations of t-^vo other kinds ; the whale, for example, which
in an arbitrary and popular sense, conjoins fishes to mam-
mals. But it is no mixture in the strict sense of the word,
any more than such aquatic plants as the Ramineidua aqua-
NO MIXED BEINGS IN NATURE. 453
tilis and the Siuvi inundatuvi, with their seaweed-like foliage,
conjoin terrestrial exogens and algse. Connection, to a cer-
tain extent, there is also, both in plants and animals. No
two species are so closely allied, but that there is room
between them for a third, as proved by the frequent disco-
very of such intermediates in countries newly explored.
But this is a very different thing from mixture or insensible
transition. Lithophytes, zoophytes, phytozoa,* are mere
names. ISTone of the beings so designated are really two-
fold. Nowhere in the world is there an object Avhich may
be referred with equal or even plausible propriety, to the
mineral kingdom or to the vegetable, to the vegetable or to
the animal; or which, as used to be said of the fresh-water
polypus, is at once "the last of animals, and the first of
plants."
256. In thus criticizing the doctrine of the Chain of Being,
it is not intended to imply that it is current in modern
science. No one Avho is conversant with the Avritings of
Cuvier, Swainson, or Lindley, believes in that universal
auvkyzia Avhich the authority of Aristotle was for centuries
sufficient to certify. "May we expect," says Eymer Jones,
" as we advance from the lower types of organization to such
as are more perfect, to be led on through an unbroken and
continuous series of creatures, gradually rising in importance
* The vermiform filaments contained in the antheridia of Charas,
Mosses, and other cryptogamous plants, are by some authors called
"phytozoa." It is scarcely necessary to say that the term is used
above as by Ehrenberg, or in its proper, etymological sense of
"plant-animals," which should never have been departed from.
The German naturalist Horaninow, who divides the organic world
into vegetables, "phytozoa," animals and Man, gives to the word a
still greater ambiguity, by including under it the fungi and tlie
algse.
454 DISCRETE DEGREES.
and complexity of structure, each succeeding tribe of beings
presenting an advance upon the preceding, and merging
insensibly into that which follows it? A very slight exami-
nation will convince us to the contrary." All, however, are
not scientific botanists and zoologists, and so long as popular
authors continue blindly to re-assert it, Bucke, for example,
in the "Beauties, Harmonies, and Sublimities of Nature,"
so long must the error be met with new exposure. Besides,
it is by acquainting ourselves with the defects and inconsist-
encies of the popular idea, that we become best able to
appreciate the genuine. Those who, with Bonnet, sought so
ardently to establish it Avould have escaped their pleasing
illusion had they aj)plied themselves to the diligent exami-
nation of Species, in Natural History the very basis of
accurate knowledge. Bonnet himself appears to have par-
ticipated in that unwise contempt for the minute discrimi-
nation of individual forms which at the time he lived was
proscribed under the name of "nomenclature," and like
other men of merit never to have imagined its immense
value.
257. The true idea of the Chain of Nature has for its
centre the law of Discrete Degrees,* — a law which has
been several times alluded to, and which the time is now
come to illustrate specially. "To-day," says M. Victor
Cousin, "two great wants are felt by man. The first, the
most imperious, is that of fixed, immutable principles, Avhich
depend upon neither place, nor time, nor circumstance, and
* The reader to whom " discrete" may be a new word, must re-
ceive it as signifying "parted" or "severed." Tlie term belongs
originally and properly to the philosophy of the illustrious Sweden-
borg, the first to discriminate the two-fold nature of Degrees. See,
for his exjDosition of the subject, the volume on the "Divine Love
and Wisdom."
LAAV OF DISCRETE DEaREES. 455
on which the mind reposes with unbounded confidence. In
all investigations, as long as we have seized only isolated,
disconnected facts, as long as we have not referred them to
a general law, we possess the material of science, but as yet
there is no science. Even physics commence only when
universal truths appear, to which all the facts of the same
order that observation discovers to us in nature may be re-
ferred."* In the law of Discrete degrees we realize one of
these sterling principles. Intelligently applied, it clears
away difficulties that are insuperable before; it puts us on
our guard against merely apparent truths, and ratifies and
shows the rationale of the genuine; and while it exposes
what is false in our preconceived ideas, becomes a means and
highway tanew and accurate ones. It is not too much to
say that it has been the want of an enlarged and philoso-
phical recognition of the law of Discrete degrees which has
mainly led to many of the grossest errors of materialism, —
that spirit, for example, is only matter attenuated and etheri-
alized ; — to the weary, iterated and reiterated, but still fruitless
controversies concerning instinct and reason, with the varied
evils that have followed in their wake ; to the popular mis-
conception of the Chain of Being; and though last, not
least, to the mischievous hypotheses of "progressive develop-
ment." The laAv of Correspondence, which is another of
the sterling principles desiderated by Victor Cousin, and the
law of Discrete degrees, taken together, and properly de-
veloped and applied, would form the most efficient of all
possible aids to the discovery of that grand philosophic
ultimatum, the System of Nature. Thence they would tend,
more than anything else, to draw the conflicts of the various
schools of human thought and speculation to a close, and to
Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, p. 33.
456 CONTINUOUS DEGREES.
supersede them ■with, a noble unanimity; and bearing as they
do, on the spiritual no less than on the material, would be-
come preachers of holiness and religion. The long-looked-
for, long-pray ed-for reign of God upon earth, cannot begin
till the reign of the true science of creation, which will be
at once its harbinger and the plane for its establishment.
258. Looking abroad upon the external world, we find
everywhere two great modes of special arrangement, Lati-
tude or extension, and Altitude or elevation. Exactly
accordant with this duality are the relations and the proper-
ties of all the organisms and forms of nature, and of all the
powers and principles of life. Those which are represented
in latitude or extension are relations of Continuity; those
represented in altitude comprise the relations we term Dis-
crete. The difference may be illustrated under the image
of a s^Dlendid mansion. Discrete degrees are represented in
its successive floors; Continuous degrees in the suites of
apartments which they severally comprise. Let us move
about as much as we will on a given floor, we are still on
the same level ; it is only when we ascend to a higher or
descend to a lower, that we essentially change our position ;
the change is then, however, absolute and complete. So is
it in nature. First, we have vast platforms, one above
another ; secondly, on every platform innumerable chambers
and noble galleries, respectively adapted and appropriated to
some special use, possessing their own peculiar interest and
attractions; also their lowest, superior, and most honorable
places ; pointing, moreover, to the platform next above, and
prefiguring and presignifying its contents, but never actually
merging into or coalescing with it. To define these two kinds
of relation more particularly, let us take examples from
familiar nature, and first, as being the simplest, the relations
of Continuity.
259. Continuous degrees are those which intervene be-
ILLUSTRATIONS OF CONTINUITY. 457
tween the extreme phases or conditions of which any given
subject or object is naturally susceptible, and which mark
its development and historic progress up to the period of its
consummation. Thus, the progress of the day is by continu-
ous degrees; the night melts into the dawn, the dawn into
the morning, the morning into noon. The influx of the tide
upon the shore is by continuous degrees ; from low water to
high, is one long, unintermittent flow, and the same when
the waves retire. The march of the Seasons is by continuous
degrees ; Spring glides imperceptibly into Summer ; summer
as softly wanes into the year's beautiful old age, like human
life, every day a little, and without halting for a moment.
The tinting of the leaves in autumn, commonly called the
Jading of the leaves, is again by continuity. From the
full, bright, living green of June, to the not-always "sere
and yellow," but oftentimes rich crimson of October, — as
when a monarch gathers his robes about him that he may
die royally, — it is like the painting of the sky at the close of
a summer's day, when the molten gold boils up behind the
purple cloud-mountains of the west, and the very zenith and
farthest east are tinted with virgin rose, — one long, soft,
lovely transfiguration, such as the eye in vain essays to
follow. Nowhere in nature is there a more beautiful analogy
than this of sunset with the " many-colored woods" of the
year's eventide. Everything in plants is more or less illus-
trative of continuity. We see it most remarkably in what
botanists call Varieties, all of which are sports within a
given circle. The Broccoli and the Cauliflower are but
modifications of the coarse marine cabbage. From wild
sour crabs, scarcely lai'ger than boys' marbles, have arisen
all varieties of apples, not excluding the pippin and nonpa-
reil; the austere and uneatable sloe is the source of the
luscious plum; even wheat appears to be the culmination of
an obscure grass, the JEgilops ovaia. So with many of our
39 U
! OF^AT
458 THE THREE KINGDOMS DENATURE.
choicest flowers. The innumerable varieties of carnations,
fuchsias, pelargoniums, &c., are all resolvable into some
simple and original form, from which they have arisen under
the stimulus of culture, and to which, in the course of a
generation or two, they relapse if left to themselves. The
choicest pansies in a flower-garden, if neglected, return in a
veiy few years, in their descendants, to the inconspicuous
Viola tricolor of the fields. Were another example needed,
we might point to the various conditions of which water is
susceptible. According to the amount of caloric present in
it, we have ice, water properly so called, or steam. Between
the solid glacier and the white clouds from the locomotive,
there is an exact continuity and gradation, and either ex-
treme is convertible into the other. In degrees of Contin-
uity, it will be observed, then, Ave have relations merely of
state, not of kind, every new appearance and condition being
developed out of its immediate predecessor, and limited to
externals. Whatever the amount of sport, whether in color
or configuration, in density or in texture, the absolute internal
nature remains the same, just as in regard to the human
race: whether we take Caucasians or Ethiops, Bosjemans or
Feejee islanders, all are resolvable into the zoological species
Man.
260. Where things are differentiated by a discrete degree,
the commencement of the new one is not, as with continuity,
where the inferior or prior one left off, but on a distinct and
higher level, and under the influence of new principles.
Every ending is absolute, and every beginning de novo,
initiating an altogether nobler mode of existence, which
culminates after its own manner, and is then succeeded by
another. This is most strikingly displayed in the relations
of the three great kingdoms of nature. Minerals, Plants,
and Animals. So far from being true, as supposed by Con-
tinuity and the "Vestiges," that the ending of one joins the
EACH KINGDOM ON ITS OWN PLATFORM. 459
foundation of the succeeding, it is here that the affinity and
resemblance are the very slightest. The humblest forms of
plants are those which are least like arborescent crystalliza-
tions; and the humblest forms of animals those which have
least in common with the Mimosa. Each kingdom of nature,
as it ascends towards its maximum, instead of approximating
closer and closer to the next above, and eventually passing
into it, in reality becomes more and more remote from it.
They may be compared to three beautiful temples; the first
of Doric architecture, the second of Ionic, the third of Ro-
man. Each temple is built on a plan of its own; the
foundations have a measure of uniformity; but while the
Doric pillars are simple shafts, the loftier and fluted Ionic
are crowned with graceful, curling volutes, and the Compo-
site, loftier still, with all the ornament that tasteful luxury
can engraft. Each kingdom starts on a platform of its own,
as physiology will some day demonstrate beyond dispute;
growing more distinct with every step, at last it enjoys a per
fection no less peculiarly its own. That perfection does not
reside in the forms Avhich seem to be connecting links with
the kingdoms next above; the perfection and termination of
each realm, as of each tribe and class, is in the maximum
realization of its archetype. Quadrupeds, for example, do not
termim ate with the monkeys; their maximum is the lion, the
acknowledged king of beasts from time immemorial. So in
the vegetable world. Endogens do not terminate with the
Smilax, though it anticipates the netted leaves of the
Exogens overhead ; but with the princes of their archetype,
the stately Palms. Though the several perfections are so
unlike, there is still a fine harmony between them. The
perfection of the mineral kingdom in the lucid and brilliant
Crystal, harmonizes with the perfection of the plant in the
odorous and glowing Blossom, and both harmonize with the
perfection of the animal, which resides in its vast powers of
460 RULE IN THE ESTIMATE OF SPECIES.
body and external sense. Brutes are possessed of these vast
powers, because the ascent of the brute creation towards its
maximum is away from man rather than in the direction of
him, just as the mineral series divaricates from the plant,
and the plant series from the animal. For man, though the
head and archetype of all things, is no part of a specific
chain, but a series in himself, at once a beginning and an
end. Everywhere the maximum of the lower realm is more
glorious than the minimum of the next above; man is ex-
celled by the brutes he rules over, in swiftness, in eyesight,
in delicacy of touch and smell,* because these things, though
the perfection of the brutes, belong to the mere basis of
humanity; — all creatures, however, in his own maximum,
he transcendently excels, vindicating the supreme majesty
of Intellect. In every maximum, it is further to be ob-
served, all the forces of nature that have reference to it, are
concentrated. ChemLstry is at its acme in the moulding of
the crystal; vitality in the fashioning of the flower.
261. When, therefore, we would rightly contemplate the
great kingdoms of nature, or any of their subdivisions, we
should begin by comparing summit with summit. The keys
of knowledge are the perfections of nature. Descending from
the capitals to the pedestals, we learn that the animal differs
as widely fi'om the vegetable, as both differ from the mine-
ral. This should be our rule even in the comparison and
estimate of species. "Every species is higher in some re-
spects, and lower in others; there are many scales of per-
fection in different respects, running, as it were, parallel with
one another; so that in defining the degree of elevation of
any particular species, we must take into account the posi-
* Smell seems to be most acute in the predaceoue mammalia;
bight in the predaceous birds; touch in the antennae of insects.
EXCELLENCE CONSISTS IN COMBINATION. 461
tion it occupies in the several scales jointly." The criterion
of excellence is combination of properties. Man, for exam-
ple, as just observed, is inferior to the dog, as regards smell,
and to the elephant, as regards bulk, but in neither of these
creatures, nor in any other, are so many properties combined
as in himself; this at once places him immeasurably above
them all. In regard to "lower" or "inferior" forms, and in
general to maximum and minimum, as spoken of the sepa-
rate departments of nature, it is essential to remember care-
fully that there is no such thing as defect in the works of
God. "Higher forms" are simply such as are more com-
plex in their organization than certain other forms. To the
simple organization of the plant, for instance, in the Animal
are added nerves, endowing it Avith the sensation which the
plant has not. Instead of "lower" and "superior," it would
be better therefore to say "simple" and "complex," only
that usage has established the former terms. So with the
epithet "perfect" as aj)plied to natural structures. Nothing
is positively or absolutely -imperfect. The tender moss is as
perfect in its little sphere as the lordly forest-tree. "Per-
fect" is used by the naturalist simply in a technical sense, to
express "the degree in which those peculiarities are deve-
loped Avhich characterize a particular group. Those peculi-
arities of structure, for example, Avhich make an insect Avhat
it is, and not a worm or a crustacean, are found to be j)re-
sent in their greatest intensity, and in the fullest combina-
tion, in the beetles; hence we say the beetles are the most
perfect of their class. A beetle is not more perfect as an
animal than any other, but it is more perfect as an insect"
It is at once the most permanent and the most elaborate of
insect forms.
262. Not only is there no succession of one kingdom of
nature above another by the maximum of the lower gradu-
ally sliding into the minimum of the superior; the law of
39 «
462 DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN PLANTS AND ANIMALS.
discrete degrees precludes intermixture at any other point,
even at the foundations. The common opinion regarding
the animal and vegetable worlds is, that at their commence-
ment they are united. It is true that between the first ani-
malcules and the first vegetalcules there is a seeming iden-
tity, and that the embryo human organism itself does not
perceptibly differ from the earliest forms of plants; true,
moreover, that the two classes of beings retain a kind of
parallelism for a considerable distance. Both begin with
the simple vesicle, the globe in miniature, the cylinder, and
the disc, seeming to measure with their fine geometry the
space which they are by and bye to fill so admirably; expe-
rimenting more boldly as they proceed, the bells and vases
of the polyps and the coral-creatures pair with the cups of
the lichen and the thecse of the mosses, even to their peris-
tomes; the divergence, however, rapidly becomes so wide,
and the culminating extremes are so far asunder, as to prove
them wholly distinct ideas of Almighty Avisdom. "To sup-
pose," well observes Dr. Harris, "that because it is difficult
to assign the boundaries of the two kingdoms, therefore
there are no boundaries, would be as irrational as to con-
clude that, because material atoms disappear, first from our
unaided sight, and then even beyond the reach of microscopic
power, there is a point at which they graduate into nothing-
ness. A moment's reflection will show us that between that
supposed point and the point beyond, there is all the differ-
ence between body and space, something and nothing, an
infinite difference. In the same manner, however slight the
break, where the vegetable appears to graduate into the
animal, such an interruption there is; and it is nothing less
than an interruption in kind, a transition from identity to
essential difference."* The dispute, not yet settled, as to
Pre- Adamite Earth, pp. 245, 246.
CONSTANCY OF SPECIES. 463
whether those beautiful little specks of life, the Desmidiese,
are animals or vegetables, merely shows that we are still in
ignorance of their essential nature. It is but a little while
since opinions were similarly divided as to the sponges,
Corallines, Sertularias, and even the fungi. Natural his-
tory, like theology and every other great system of truth,
always has its mystei'ies, though they are not always the
same mysteries, either absolutely or relatively.
263. The three great primary platforms of nature,
minerals, plants, and animals, though they are the chief
seat and illustration of discrete distinctiveness, by no means
exhaust it. Each of these three principal platforms com-
prises many minor ones, and each of these latter a multi-
tude of still finer. The first are occupied by the various
tribes, classes, and families of beings, the last by genera and
species, organs and organic tissues. Doubtless, the more
minute our analysis, the more difficult becomes the deter-
mination of the relative rank of the objects compared ; as
when we com.pare, for example, the various genera of a
" natural order," or the various species of a genus. Ordi-
narily they are so alike in apparent excellence, that, as said
above of the species of Erica, fancy and taste alone can
graduate their merits ; that there is a discrete difference, Ave
may nevertheless be assured, since Nature in the principles
of its least things, is invariably the same as in those of its
greatest. The difficulty in nature is to see the law where it
hides itself from us, and not to be led astray by appear-
ances. Many things in nature which are contradicted by
our senses, are nevertheless, true, and chief among them are
these seeming equalities of things. To their discrete sepa-
rateness is referable the constancy of species. Primarily
dependent, as well said by Agassiz and Gould, '' upon ira-
464 DIFFERENCES COMMENCE IN THE BLOOD.
material nature/'* that is to say, upon pre-existent forms in
the Spiritual world, the fixedness of species rests proximately
in the distinctiveness of their platforms, from which they
are incapable of moving, either upwards or downwards;
and which prevents them, at the same moment, from inter-
marrying, and thus defacing and disordering the world with
hybrids. The great mass of the organic forms commonly
deemed hybrids are in reality mere varieties ; i. e., sports of
a given single siDecies, rather than intermixtures of two
different ones. Purely and entirely by reason of this abso-
lute separateness, does it become possible to classify material
objects into scientific systems, and to impersonate them with
names. The boundaries being unalterably fixed, we are
enabled, first to discriminate, and subsequently to recognize
them. Were there no discrete degrees, the world instead of
Koa/jioi;, would be jaoc- St. Paul tells us of the discrete
degrees of the animal world, Avhen he says: "All flesh is
not the same flesh ; there is one flesh of men, another flesh
of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds." Flesh
is only consolidated blood. Not only hath God " made of
one blood all nations of men ;" all things discretely sepa-
rated, are of their ov/n peculiar blood ; the diflerences in
the vital fluid, (which, homogeneous and uniform as it is to
the eye, is one of the most varied substances in nature,) are
the inmost seats of all distinctions. Here, in the blood,
begins the difference of creatures one from another ; the
Teeth, which are the last and completing effort of the vital
energy, as the blood is the first, completing also the distinc-
tions, and standing as the Omega to the Alpha of the
crimson stream which originated their own material. The
structure and form of the teeth constitute so imj)ortant a
Outlines of Comparative Physiology, p. 86.
FUNCTIONS AND TISSUES. 465
particular iii the discrimination of species, that if any tribe
of human beings were found to differ materially in their
dentition from the rest of mankind, it would justify a strong
suspicion of a real specific difference — as strong a one as
would arise from a difference in the form of the blood-discs.
Discrete difference prevails as profoundly in the saps of
plants ; and closely as they resemble in some points, between
the vegetable and the animal tissues. Vegetable cells are
discretely below animal cells ; no vegetable tissue could
associate with animal tissue ; " it would be the sport of ac-
tivities which it could neither share nor reciprocate." So
with the vital functions. What are called the "vegetative
functions" of animals are not Yegetable. An animal is not,
as to its physiology, plant 2}lus animal, but wholly and
absolutely sui generis. There are feeding, respiration, re-
production, &c., in both, but they are never the same feed-
ing, nor the same respiration. Every function, on the
higher platform, is as totally diffei-ent from those of the
lower ones, as are the forms and organizations. Plants, for
example, take carbon from the atmosphere, while animals
take oxygen. Were the various properties which are dis-
tributed among the members of the vegetable kingdom to
be concentrated in a single individual, that individual would
still be inferior to the ignoblest brute. The discrete degree
pronounces once for all. Thus far and no farther. A long
procession of discrete degrees, it may be added, often has
the look of continuity, as in the case of the successive steps
between the hoof of the quadruped and the human hand.
They are shown to be discrete degrees which intervene, by
not a single hoof having ever become anything more than
a hoof, during the twenty centuries that naturalists have
studied animal history; the hand of man similarly remain-
ing the same from age to age.
264. Along with discrete degrees it is important to con-
466 LAW OF PROMOTION.
sider the great companion law of promotion. Nature, in her
ascent, leaves nothing behind; she subordinates, but never
disuses ; the past is always brought forward into the pre-
sent; every degree of ascent is marked by new powers and
new forms of apparatus, but with these are always essen-
tially recapitulated all things that have previously been
employed. The properties, moreover, which exist in the
lower or anterior stages, are not only carried on to the
superior, but are there applied to new and higher purposes.
The physical laws which in the mineral world induce cohe-
sion and affinity, and achieve their highest in the production
of crystal flowers, these do not cease with the crystal;
brought forward into the vegetable, they are as active as
they were in the mineral, only that now they are no longer
the rulers, but subordinated to the higher authority of the
vital forces. These in turn move forward into the animal,
where to chemistry and vitality are superadded senses and
locomotion; all finally move forwards into man, where they
lie under the new and crowning magistracy of reason. Man,
as said above, is not like lower natures, contained on a given
platform, bat a platform in himself, discretely separated
from all below by his vertical attitude and consummate
nervous system,* as a material organism; by his intellect
and afifections as a vessel of life. He is all that has gone
before, and Man besides. He feeds and sleeps with the
vegetable; builds and procreates with the animal; talks,
dresses, worships, hopes, laughs, and imagines, in virtue of
* The most striking illustration of this occurs perhaps in relation
to the human voice. It is not so much in the mere organs of the
voice, as they are commonly called, the larynx, &c., that man differs
from the inferior animals, and by which he is enabled to speak ; it
is in the nerves rather, by which all tiie parts are combined into onp
simultaneous act. This is peculiar to him.
VEGETABLE-CRYSTALS. 467
his own original and unique humanity. In man all the
operations of nature are concentrated and perfected. He is
the continent of the world rather than contained in it; the
aggregate of all properties, phenomena, and uses; thus the
summary and mirror of the whole of God's creation. He
never ceases to be the lower natures, and cannot, for they
are the basis and factors of his perfection. There are times
when he is, practically, nothing else, and it is good that it
should be so. "The master-piece of creation," says Lichten-
berg, "must for a while, on his pillow, become a plant, in
order that he may he this same master-piece."
265. The promotion of physiognomies is one of the most
curious things in nature. As the crystal is a mineral flower,
so is the flower a vegetable crystal. The geometry of the
former reappears in flowers as their numerical proportion ;
the angles and faces of the one, become the outlines and
symmetry of the other. Flowers, however, have a greater
variety of forms than crystals, and some of them are un-
known to the mineral world, as the pentagonal. The tri-
gonal and tetragonal are plentiful in both. The cube is
recapitulated in that pretty little blossom of early Spring,
the Adoxa moschatellina; on the cone of the fir before it
opens we have the most beautiful rhomboidal figures ; and
in the delicate little organisms called Desmidiese, triangles,
cylinders, and ellipses.
266. The renewal, in the animal kingdom, of the features
of plants and flowers, is divided between the arborescent
polypifera, and those lovely marine productions, the Actinise,
popularly known as the sea-anemone, the sea-daisy, &c.
The resemblance of these curious organisms to the rich,
double, and many-colored varieties of the Anemone hor-
tensis, and the Chrysanthemum, is most extraordinary. The
Actinia equina, says Lamouroux, may be seen, when the
tide retires, "ornamenting f,he sea-rocks with its beautiful
468 ANIMAL-FLOV/ERS.
colors, purple, violet, blue,* pink, yellow, and green, like so
many flowers in a meadow." The Actinia Dianthus, or
sea-carnation^ the Actinia Calendula, or sea-marigold, and
the Actinia crassicornis, perhaps the finest example of the
whole tribe, are miracles of beauty. Besides these, there is
the exquisite genus Lucernaria, one species of Avhich, the
Lucernaria Auricula, transcends even the Actinias in its
lovely renewal of the flower. No one who has collected
Sertularias can have failed to observe their beautiful resem-
blance to slenderly-branching trees of the cypress kind.
" The polypidom," remarks Mr. Gosse, " of that very elegant
species, the Sertularia cupressina, fine specimens of which
are eight to twelve inches high, forms a taper-pointed spire,
the numerous component branches of which are fan-shaped,
and arch gracefully downwards, so that the resemblance to
a tree of the pine tribe is neither fanciful nor remote." In
no department of nature do we see more strikingly illus-
trated the indifference to large and little in the workmanship
of the Almighty ; in a cluster of these delicate little polyp-
trees, with their inhabitants, without the slightest voluntary
effort of the imagination, we live over again among the
noblest elements of the forest. But the great zoophytes of
the tropical seas eclipse all. Ehrenberg was so struck Avith
the magnificent spectacle of the florifbrm polyparia of the
Eed Sea, that he exclaimed, "Where is the paradise of
flowers that can rival in variety and beauty these living
wonders of the ocean!" Many species, Mr. Dana tells us,
"spread out in broad leaves, and resemble some large plant
just unfolding; others are gracefully branched, and the
* Wlien Lamouroux speaks of blue sea-anemones, he refers merely
to the variegation of certain species. An Actinia wholly blue seema
as unlikely a wonder as a blue dahlia or blue rose.
SCIENCE OF NATURE AND OF MAN. 469
whole surface blooms with stars of crimson, purple, and
emerald green." At Macao, says another, "dendritic zoo-
phytes, having their branches loaded with colored polyps,
like trees covered with delicate blossoms, richly uprose from
the clear bottom of the bay." (Adams, "Voyage of the
Samarang.") The star-fishes recapitulate the various kinds
of radiate- flowers, and other stelliform products of plants ;
the bilateral animals, or those in which the external mem-
bers are in pairs, remind us of the configuration of the
Labiatse. How beautifully even the simplest forms and
phenomena of lower platforms are brought forward to the
higher, is shown in the ice-plant, which recapitulates the
hoar frost, and in the Drosera, gemmed with uuforgotten
dew.
267. Understanding the law of promotion, we first begin
to read truly, the great lessons inscribed on lower natures.
Were there no animals man would be a thousand times
more incomprehensible than he is ; animals, in turn, are si-
milarly illustrated in the plant-Avorld ; in either case because
the lower nature shows in detail and prominently, what in
the higher nature is obscured by subordination. Seeing that
all things are mute predictions and prefigurements of Man,
it follows again, conversely, that in the laws and phenomena
of our o^vn being, we have the keys to all phenomena beneath.
All lower things derive their intelligibleness from higher
ones ; we learn the nature of the world only by viewing it in
the sunshine. The true science of nature we shall never be-
come possessed of till it is studied, in every part, by the
light of humanity ; — till the naturalist looks more narrowly
to the congruity which subsists between the world and him-
self — " the world of which he is lord, not because he is the
most sulDtle inhabitant, but because he is its head and
heart."
40
CHAPTER XXVI,
THE UNITY OF NATTTItE.
268. Now that we have seen how the various parts of
nature stand related, viz., according to Discrete degrees and
Continuous degrees ; also Avhat is the meaning and the
teaching of Prefiguration ; the way is opened to a clearer
and more comprehensive survey of the Analogies of nature,
the phenomena which in their total, declare its Unity.
As to the broad, general fact of this unity, there is nothing
new to be said. Since the world is the work of God, and
He is One, its constituent parts must needs correspond, not
only with Him as their Designer and Creator, but likewise,
in some way, with one another. In other words, the world
as a Avhole cannot display its Maker without its several
parts doing the same, and to this end they must necessarily
be alike. Such, accordingly, is the fact. " Everything in
nature contains all the powers of nature. Each new form
repeats not only the main character of the type, but part
for part, all the details, aims, furtherances, hindrances, en-
ergies, and whole system of every other. There is some-
thing that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, day and
night, man and woman, in a single needle of the pine, in a
kernel of corn. Every occujDation, trade, art, transaction, is
a compend of the woi'ld, and a correlative of every other.
Each one is an entire emblem of human life, of its good
and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course, and its end." We
speak of the " physical geography" of the world. That
470
ONLY ONE PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 471
which we find in the whole, we find over again in every
scene and portion. The sea, for example, has its mountains
and valleys, in the waves ; its rivers, in the currents ; its fo-
rests and " ocean-gardens," in the densely-planted and luxu-
riant algse which adorn it as with trees and flowers. De-
scending to the special provinces of nature, we find animals
intimately analogous Avith plants, plants possessing analogies
with minerals — each particular form, Avh ether organic or in-
organtic, being a miniature representative of the class to
which it belongs, and all its factors representatives again of
itself; the members show more or less, the essential proper-
ties of the total, the total is a vast expansion of the atom.
Because of this unity, it follows that, absolutely, there is
only one Science, at least only one physical science, just as
in the doctrine of a celebrated school of ancient philosophy,
there was only one Virtue. That one science has various
departments, whereby the ineommensurableness of nature is
brought down to our capacity; still it is only one science es-
sentially, as we prove every day. Occupy ourselves with
whatever province of it Ave may, we soon become sensible of
its interconnection with others, and are frequently at a loss
to determine the actual area that it covers. " The unity of
science," says one of the profoundest thinkers of our day,
" is the reflection of the unity of nature, and of the unity of
the Supreme Reason and Intelligence which jDervades and
rules over nature, and from which all reason and all science
are derived." It follows again that in all our investigations
of natural phenomena, if we would justly comprehend them,
we should more and more vigilantly look for likenesses.
The beginnmg of philosophy is the study of differences, but
we climb to that beautiful Olympus where simple and es-
sential Truths reside, the heaven of all the other spheres of
knowledge, by comparing, and deducing resemblances ; just
472 COMPARATIVE ANATOMY.
as we rise in moral and religious life by seeking and valuing
Christianity above sectarianism.
269. In organic nature, to which alone is it expedient to
give attention at present, Three kinds of analogy are ob-
servable. First, analogies of organization, which are the
profoundest; second, analogies of external configuration,
with or without similarity of internal structure; third,
analogies of qualities, habits, instincts, &c. Frequently one
kind of analogy presupposes and brings another, but it is by
no means necessary to the existence of analogy that all three
kinds, or even two of them, should be associated. The
analogy between the different species and tribes of organized
beings as to their internal structure, is the subject-matter of
one of the grandest of natural sciences. If one thing more
than another attests the unity of creation, it is Comparative
Anatomy. Different as are the outward seemings of bird
and quadruped, fish and reptile, and more different even yet
those of the boneless creatures, leaving plants, for the time,
altogether out of the question, nothing is plainer to the
tutored eye than that all these varied beings are utterances
of a single Divine idea. The likeness in the higher classes,
the Vertebrata, is unanimously acknowledged in their name.
The lower classes, negatively distinguished as the wiverte-
brata, differ unquestionably, in respect of that hard frame-
work we call the skeleton, which in these no longer appears
as a set of internal bones, but is replaced by a solid outer
covering, well shown in the lobster and the crab. In regard
to the viscera and the organs of sense, the analogy, how-
ever, is obvious enough; and since so many affinities have
been already demonstrated between these invertebrata and
the higher classes, all pointing moreover to a common
archetype; the circumstance of their unlikeness in the matter
of skeleton, and thence of configuration (as in the case of
the star-fishes compared with birds,) stands only as a mys-
HOMOLOGY. 4(3
tery to be cleared up.* • The advances which science haa
already made towards the solution, are sure in their promise;
as the stars and the compass tell the mariner his prow is
homeward, though the land be yet invisible.
270. Homology is the name of the science which seeks to
determine these deep affinities. The more usual application
of the word is to the science of skeletons and their parts;
but properly, it applies to all parts w^hatever of the animal
structure, whether hard or soft. The idea intended to be
conveyed by it is, that specific organs of animals, to appear-
ance quite distinct, do nevertheless directly answer to one
another, and are derivations from a common archetype or
model. The arm of the human body is "homologous" with
the fore-leg of the brute, with the wing of the bird, and with
the pectoral fin of the fish. Essentially it is the same part
which we see in each, but being intended to serve a different
purpose in each difiTerent animal, is modified accordingly.
The homologies just alluded to are called by Owen "special."
He gives this name to all such affinities of different parts or
organs, in different da\\m.?Lh, as demonstrably answer one to
another. The least acquainted with animal structure may
.understand them, by comparing the hoof, the paw, the talon,
and the human foot. " General homologies" form another
and yet profounder class. These are the relations which the
total of the structures of animals, in all their variety, bear
to that grand, universal type of which Man is the proudest
fulfillment, — the type termed the Vertebral, but though in
the vertebrated animals most consummately set forth, cer-
* The bilateral symmetry of those curious shells cast upon our
sandy shores, commonly known as "mermaids' heads," (zoologically
Spatangus,) beautifully points from afar to the vertebral idea. See
for an account of it, "Annals of Natural History," vol. 1, p. 30.
40 «=
474 Owen's "serial homologies,"
taiiily not confined to them. Every one may see the general
quality of this type, by comparing the skeletons of quad-
rupeds, the bird, and the fish. No animal has all the parts
of the common archetype expressed in their maximujn/
Some have one part more highly developed, some have
another; always, however, in a fixed degree, neither more
nor less, whereby the specific identity of each is preserved
pure. The wing, though an organ of the same archetype as
the arm, never changes to an arm ; nor does the fin of the
fish ever assume the character of a Aving. Thirdly, Owen
discriminates "serial homologies." These are the relations
which the several parts of an animal bear among themselves.
Comparing, for example, the bones of the leg with those of
the arm, we pursue "serial" homologies; and again, when
we compare the bones of the spinal column Avith those of the
skull, which latter the acute Oken has demonstrated beyond
dispute, to be itself a chain of vertebrae, the various ele-
ments of the several bones being so modified, expanded, or
contracted, as to convert them into a fitting cavity for the
brain. Homology is thus to analogy in general, what gram-
mar and etymology are to the science of language, — a finer,
more recondite, and more exact determination of its funda-
mental truths. Obviously, without a careful and extended
study of all three of its departments, our apprehension of
the Unity of Nature can be no more than superficial and
vague. Happily, this grand science is now kindling a lite-
rature of its own, the light of which points and illuminates
our way.*
* See, for instance, Owen's Works "On the Homologies of the
Vertebrate Skeleton," and on the "Nature of Limbs;" and the
masterly article on the Skeleton in Todd's Cyclopaedia of Anatomy
and Physiology, by Maclise. For a talented resume of the subject,
see the London Quarterly Review, No. viii., July, 1855.
COMPARATIVE ANATOMY OF PLANTS. 475
271. Botany has its CumiDarative Anatomy as well as
Zoology, all sound and scientific classification resting upon
the resemblances of the different organs as to their essential
nature, however widely diversified in seeming. Viewed
homologically, the parts of which plants are composed are,
like those of animals, exceedmgly few. The flower, with its
various members, is only a fasciculus of leaves, similar to
those of the stem, only more delicately fashioned, and beau-
tifully colored; the fruit is no more than another such fas-
ciculus, curiously folded together, and distended or covered
in with juice or pulp. The proofs of this are furnished,
partly by the phenomena of double flowers, partly by the
comparison of a large number of different species. In the
double white water-lily, the double tulip, and often in the
double camellia, every shade of transition may be traced
between petal and stamen; in the double cherry-blossom,
instead of a pistil, there grow two little leaves, exact minia-
tures of the ordinary foliage; sometimes, even in single
blossoms of the Anemone nemorosa, leaves similarly stand
in place of ovaries. The identity of the petals and the
calyx, and of the calyx and the stem-leaves, is shown by the
polyanthus, in its difl^erent varieties ; the latter also by the
gentianella, and a variety not infrequently met with, of the
common white clover. It is not that any given flower or
fruit ever actually consisted of green leaves, and was formed
from them by direct transmutation, but that the essential
elements both of flower and fruit are varied and elaborate
developments of a single organic form, which in a lower
state of development would have been a simple twig of
leaves. Every leaf in its embryo state is potentially a petal,
potentially a stamen, potentially the carpel of a fruit, and
il expands into one part or another according to the impress
given it at birth, by the directive vital power. The term
'•metamorphosis," as applied to floral development, becomes,
476 OxENERAL MODEL OF PLANTS,
therefore, incorrect. An organ once frauied and determined
is never converted into a different organ: there is simply a
capacity on the part of the original germ to develope into
one or another of many different shapes. The homologies
disclosed by the different species of plants are most strikingly
illustrated in the origin and structure of Fruits. In the
apple, for example, we have five carpellary leaves, united
and enclosed in pulp; in the fraxinella and the star-anise a
similar combination, but without the surrounding pulp; in
the pseon}^, three or four such leaves, at once destitute of
pulp, and instead of being united, perfectly independent and
distinct, and apt, when withered and dried, and the seeds
have fallen out, to expand into a close likeness of the green
leaf. The flowers of the different genera of Ranunculacese
are scarcely less instructive. Only by the laws of homology
do we rightly understand Anemone, Clematis, Caltha, Trol-
lius, Helleborus, &c., and learn that Avhat seem to be petals,
are in reality exalted calyx-leaves. Botany and Zoology
will some day be found of singular mutual service in regard
to their comparative anatomy. The homologies of the Ver-
tebrata will be illustrated by those of the higher orders of
plants, those of the invertebrata by the less perfect kinds.
Nothing is plainer even now than that the general model of
plants is upon the vertebral archetype. We find it in what
is essentially the Plant, namely, the Leaf. It is in the leaf
that the vegetable energies are chiefly exercised; it is from
the leaf that all the floral organs are develoiDed, and to the
leaf that all parts are reducible by homology; the Leaf
therefore may be regarded, as above said, the essential and
prototypical Plant.* Taking, then, the essential plant, the
* That a leaf is a 'perfect plant we by no means intend to say. A
perfect plant is a highly complex organism, a structure built up of
PLANTS FORMED ON THE VERTEBRAL ARCHETYPE. 477
simple green leaf, its normal and highest form is found to
consist in a strong, central axis or midrib, giving rise to
numerous lateral ribs, which diverge from it at certain
angles, and establish the general figure. The interstices are
filled Avith pulj), and the whole organism is enclosed in a
skin. The essential parts of the flower, and of the fruit, the
maximum stages of vegetable development, consist of this
identical green leaf, folded vertically upon its axis, as on a
hinge, so that the edges come in contact, each being a minia-
ture of the cavity formed by the spine, the ribs, and the
breast-bone. In the cavities thus formed, the highest ener-
gies of vegetable life are concentrated, and the ends of that
life accomplished. The stamens supply pollen ; the pistils,
or organs of female function, contain seeds. Looked at,
accordingly, from the plant, the body of a vertebrated crea-
ture, or at least of any of the mammalian tribes, is seen to
be an infinitely perfected Leaf; looked at from Man, the
carpel of the fruit (the pod of the pea, for instance), folded
with such fine symmetry on its little spine, is the miniature
idea of the human frame, which is also folded, as it Avere, on
the spinal column. Everything in nature shows more or
less of the spinal column, a right and a left, standing side
by side, and vertically united, since everything flows from
the Good and the True, as conjoined in the Divine, and
receives their dual and undivided impress.
272. Guided by the light of these great principles, we see,
then, that the kingdoms of organized nature are but mani-
fold repetitions and modifications of one grand ruling arche-
inany distinct pieces, each with an allotted office of its own. It is in
no case merely a leaf, nor even a twig, per se, because to the full and
complete idea of a plant is needed not only distinct nuti-itive and
sexual apparatus, but a descending axis or root, as well aB an ascend-
ing axis or stem.
478 UNITY OP THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM.
type of structure, divaricating on the one hand, into the
idea realized in the perfect Animal, on the other, into that
of the perfect Plant, the several members of each kingdom
being allied, remotely to those of the sister kingdom, inti-
mately and definitely to one another. Begin, as in former
surveys, with the Vegetable Kingdom. In its aggregate,
this is in reality the distributed exhilntion of a single plant—
a plant existing nowhere as a fixed, tangible individual, but
everywhere as a theoretical or ideal one, having its parts or
factors diffused over the whole surface of the earth, in the
infinitely-varied figures we call " species." Some species
show one part in perfection, some show another, the ideal
total being best represented Avhere the largest number of
parts occur in most symmetrical combination. It is not
the more thorough completeness or excellence of any one
organ in particular that gives superiority to a vegetable
form, but the collocation of the largest number of distinct
parts, well balanced and proportionate, and in noAvise defec-
tive or confused. That such an archetyj)e governs the
forms of the vegetable world, ajDpears not only in completed
parts, but conspicuously also in the gtiasi-abortive or rudi-
mentary development of certain organs in given species,
wdiich in other species expand to high perfection, and serve
highly important purposes. It appears again in what are
so viciously miscalled " monstrosities," as when the Linaria
vulgaris, the pretty yellow toad-flax of our autumnal hedge-
banks, makes those curious efforts to rise from the usual
unsymmetrical corolla into the regular five-leaved form.
Rightly regarded, the vegetable kingdom is thus — not what
it appears at first sight, an assortment of discrepancies — but
a grand whole, formed of an innumerable quantity of
smaller parts, the mass presenting nothing different from
what may be discovered in the individual, and the indivi-
dual reflecting all the qualities of the mass. Every leaf on
CELLULAR PLANTS. 479
a tree is a tree in little ; the tree, in its turn, is a leaf, as it
were, enlarged; every variety in outline and structure, wlie-
ttier of bud, or leaf, or flower, or fruit, is only another ut-
terance of one primitive and ubiquitous idea. The very
cells of Avhich a plant is built are so many plants in minia-
ture, haying their own seasons, life, death, and renewal, and
performing within themselves the whole series of vital func-
tions. Thousands of plants consist of nothing more than a
few such cells as in septillions make up an oak tree, mere
microscopic threads, yet in all the characteristic phenomena
of vegetable life they are on a j)ar. Such are the red-snow
plant and its congeners, the various species of Palmella and
Protococcus. "Whether," says Mohl, "they consist of a
single cell, or as in the Confervas, of rows of cells united
into a thread, each cell is capable of an independent exist-
ence. It absorbs fluids from the surrounding medium, re-
spires, and assimilates the absorbed substances; in short, the
simple vesicle sufiices for the accomplishment of all the va-
rious functions which must cooperate in the nutritive pro-
cesses of the plant." According to the closeness or other-
wise of the analogy between particular forms, we have
species, genera, tribes, classes, and so forth ; the skill of the
botanist largely consisting in his ability to collocate such as
to the less observant and sagacious appear alien. Where
there is the greatest amount of real afiinity, there is often
the least apparent afiinity, and vice versa; the progress of
genuinely scientific Botany, as of every other department
of natural history, consists in seizing the deep and perma-
nent resemblances, and passing by the superficial and occa-
sional. Narrowly looked at, the smallest mosses are found
analogous with the tallest tree ; the most insignificant of
weeds with the choicest floAvers ; Lycopodiums disclose ana-
logies Avith firs and pines ; the gourd and cucumber plants
with the passion-flowers ; Avater-lilies Avith poppies and Mag-
480 UNITY OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.
iiolias. Ever}'- great platform of plants is found in close
analogy Avith every other platform. Looking from the out-
side, the throne of difference, to the inside, the throne of
likeness, the same old, old fashion is ever present. There is
nothing in Exogens which we do not find, prefiguratively,
in Endogens, as when we compare the pine-apple with the
cones of the fir tree; nothing in flowering-plants which we do
not find among the flowerless. In the curious Brazilian fa-
mily Podostemacese, especially in the genera Lacis and Mni-
opsis, we see liver-worts and sea- weeds as it were in bloom.
Twining plants have their forerunner in the fern called Ly-
godium ; the Casuarinas of New Holland their precursors in
the Equisetums. Nothing is more interesting than the simple
resemblance of large and little. The Mucedines or mildew-
plants, comprising the genera Penicillium, Botrytis, Asper-
gillus, &c., form sometimes in the space of a square inch an
immense forest of little trees from one to ten lines high, va-
ried, but always elegant in their ramification, and bearing
at the extremities of their whorled, umbellate, or panicled
branches, bunches or heads of seed, producing the most ex-
quisite effect. Growing on all sorts of substances, and in
all latitudes, if they do not attract the eye, it is because
without the microscope they are scarcely visible. What a
new Avorld do we owe to this wonderful instrument !
273. The Animal Kingdom, like the vegetable, is a grand
whole, of which the smallest polyjD is a perfect representa-
tive. None are ignorant that every living creature eats,
drinks, and propagates; that it is born, grows, lives, and
dies, and has more or less means of intercourse with the
external world. A moment's reflection makes it self-evident
that such conformity of history implies a generally concur-
rent likeness as to organization. Animalcules, a thousand
of which do not exceed the bulk of a grain of sand, are
essentially not different from the largest quadruped. They
UNITY OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 481
are composed of members equally well suited to their mode
of life. Their actions display all the phenomena of instinct;
they move with surprising speed and agility, directed evi-
dently by choice, and with a specific end in view. They eat
and drink, and must therefore be supplied with a digestive
apparatus; they exhibit muscular power of the most extra-
ordinary amount; they are susceptible of the same passions
as the superior animals, though differing in degree; and the
satisfaction of those passions is attended by the same results
as in our own species. These and many other phenomena
of the same nature indicate, beyond question, that they must
be as highly organized, in their degree, as the Mammalia
themselves. So full and exact are the analogies which unite
the various provinces of the realm of animals, that while
every inhabitant of a given platform is in general affinity
with the whole, it is in immediate agreement with particular
forms occupying the platforms above and below. Every
quadruped, that is to say, is in direct analogy with some
bird, fish, reptile, and insect; partaking, it may be, more of
the structure of one, more of the habits of another, more of
the qualities of a third, but in every case definitely. For,
as said above, we .must never think of analogy as a matter
purely of organic structure. Nature does not confine herself
to a single mode of alliance; structure is one method, others
consist in economy, to which, however, structure is always
co-ordinated and predetermined. To the lowest members of
the animal kingdom, as the sponges, Sertularias, and other
"zoophytes," one great attribute of animals seems, however,
to be denied, viz., the power of locomotion. But the unity
of plan is only curiously varied. All the fixed animals are
aquatic, so that the constantly changing element in which
they live, incessantly brings new objects into contact with
them. Unable to move personally, their world, which is the
water, moves for them, as the atmosphere does for the trees.
4i V
482 ANALOGIES OF MAMMALS AND BIRDS.
The sea-anemone, glued to a rock upon the shore, bathed by
a thousand waves that come but once, is far more of a tra-
veler than the worm craAvling in the soil.*
274. To illustrate the particular analogies of animals, we
may adduce first, those existing between Mammals and Birds.
The analogies in question have been noted from very early
times. Naturalists were not long in finding out that the
Quadrumana or monkey-family have their parallel in the
Scansores or climbing birds ; the Carnivora in the Raptores
or birds of prey ; the Cetacea, or Avhales, in the ISTatatores or
swimming birds. Mr. Newman, in his treatise on the "System
of Nature," sums them up most felicitously. Thus : — " The
parrots among birds emulate the monkeys among placentals ;
they eat all kinds of food that they can procure ; they obtain
it in the same situations; they seek it in the same way —
by climbing — for a parrot does not run or leap like other
birds, but like a monkey, climbs slowly and solemnly from
bough to bough. Its foot is constantly used as a hand for
conveying food to the mouth ; its chattering voice is also
similar; its large brain and peculiar tact in imitation are
still additional similarities." No less striking is the agree-
ment between the carnivora and the birds of prey. What
the lion and the tiger are among the former, the same — and
in many more points than the thirst for blood, and the pur-
suit of living quarry, — are the eagle and the vulture among
the tenants of the air. So witJi the birds denominated the
Insessores or Perchers, such as the sparrow, the raven, and
the thrush. These are the feathered analogues of that class
* The Actinias are not absolutely fixed. Ordmarily so found, they
have the power, nevertheless, of detacliing themselves, and moving
away. They do this either by slowly gliding along ; or by revers-
ing the body, and nsing the tentacula as feet; or by inflating the
body with water, and committing themselves to the waves.
ANALOGIES OF REPTILES AND MOLLUSCA. 483
of quadrupeds to which the mouse and the squirrel belong.
" Many of them are remarkable for their attachment to the
residences of man; they perforate our walls, make then-
nests and bring forth their young in holes and crevices of
our roofs; they are remarkable for boldness yet wariness;
they are forever intruding, yet constantly on the watch;
they are of small size, and infinite in number; they are
merry, active, and playful. Who is there that has not com-
pared the sparrow to the mouse?" Passing to other families,
we see in the wryneck a feathered ant-eater ; the camel and
the girafie remind us of the stork and the ostrich; the pen-
guins and the sea-gulls of the seals. Birds in general are to
the rest of the vertebrata what Insects are to the inverte-
brata. Both tribes of beings are remarkable for the lustre
and variety of their colors : for their power of rapidly sail-
ing through the air; for their high degree of respiration;
and their extraordinary amount of instinct. In beautiful
and ingenious architecture, the birds, the bees, and the
wasps, have been competitors since the world began.
275. In the inferior tribes of animals we have analogies
precisely similar, as in the likeness of the shell-bearing
mollusca, such as the snail, to certain members of the tribe
of reptiles. As it slowly crawls along, with head and tail
alone protruding, w^e see over again the general figure and
proverbial slowness of the tortoise. The fish called the
Tansy, or Blennius pJiolis, is remarkable for its skill in
building nests like those of birds. "What makes this fish,"
says Mr. Gosse, "more than usually interesting is, that it is
one of those species which construct an elaborate nest for
the deposition of their eggs and the hatching of their
young—
Atque avium dulces nidos imitata sub undis !
In Mr. Couch's "Illustrations of Instinct" (p. 252 et seq.)
4S4 THE STRAWBERRY-CRAB AND OTJRANG-OUTANG.
tlie construction of the little dwelling, of fi'agments of coral-
line and other sea-weeds, interwoven by silken threads, its
suspension from an overhanging rock, the deposition of the
amber-colored eggs, the habits of the new-born young, the
danger they incur from predatory enemies, and the vigilant
care of the affectionate parent, are well described." From
the same author may be cited another curious history.
"The Strawberry-crab (Eurynome aspera), so called from
its being studded all over with pink tubercles on a white
ground," he tells us, "is a climber. If it were a terrestrial
animal, I should say its habits were arboreal. True, it now
and then wanders over the bottom of its abode, with sIoav
and painful march, but generally it seeks an elevated posi-
tion, AVe usually see it in the morning perched on the
summit of some one of the more bushy weeds of the Aqua-
rium, as the Chondrus or Phyllophora rubens, where it has
taken its station during the night, the season of its chief
activity, as of most other Crustacea. While watching it
climb," he continues, "I was strongly reminded of the
Oiirang-Outang at the Zoological Gardens ; the manner in
which each of these very dissimilar animals performed the
same feat was so closely alike as to create an agreeable feeling
of surprise."* This crab resembles the monkeys also in its
great length of arm, obviously an adaptation for climbing;
seen also in the Sloths of South America, which are almost
exclusively arboreal; in the Longicorns among beetles,
which are essentially tree-insects; and in the perpendicular
web-makers among the Spiders. The Cephalopoda or
Cuttle-fishes are preeminently the Felidse of the ocean.
Lying in wait for living prey ; lurking in secrecy to spring
upon it; feeding chiefly in the twilight or at night; their
The Aquarium, pp. 127-131.
FOSSIL PLANTS AND ANIMALS. 4b5
strength and rapidity of movement render them formidable
enemies to many of their felloAV-inhabitants of the waters.
They are, moreover, the chamseleons of the deep, having the
power of rapidly changing the color of the skin as emergen-
cies require. The Pteropoda (wing-footed), so called from
the peculiar lateral appendages which constitute their prin-
cipal means of progression, are the moths and butterflies of
the sea. Insects in general, are represented there by the
Crustacea, a tribe nearly allied to them. No true insect
ever occurs in salt water.
276. Fossil species no less than living ones attest the unity
of organic life. Whether antediluvian or recent, there is
only one system of structure, either for aninials or for plants.
"Throughout all formations, the grand truth to which every
accession of geological discovery bears witness, is the prin-
ciple of unity of plan. Even the most seemingly monstrous
and incongruous forms of animated existence in past times,
are all, without exception, constituted according to regular
modifications of a common type, and with parts, organs, and
functions, related by the closest analogies to one another;
so that no sooner is a new si^ecimen detected than it imme-
diately finds its proper position in the scheme of nature.
Whether an absolutely new form, or offering appearances
intermediate, a place can be assigned to it, and this invari-
ably too in such a manner that it either tends "to supply a
link of affinity between orders of beings already related, or
indicates some new and unexpected point of analogy."*
Take a few examples. No living species of animals have
wider intervals between them than those belonging to the
Pachydermata, or family of the rhinoceros and elephant.
But in the ages when the tertiary strata were deposited, this
^ Baden Powell, " Philosophy of Creation," p. 337,
41 «
486 UNITY OF ANIMALS WITH PLANTS.
tribe of quadrupeds was far more abundant than now; the
fossil species sujDply the links which are needed to unite the
existing kinds, and complete the series. Of the reptilian
creatures we now similarly possess only a remnant. This
earth was for thousands of years the abode of numerous spe-
cies no longer to be found alive, the Ichthyosaurus, the Ple-
siosaurus, and the Iguanodon; the fossil and the living
taken together, make up the series to which they are mu-
tually indispensable. The same with fossil plants. The
Calamites of the coal-formation take their place in the exist-
ing family of Equisetacese; the Lepidodendra are interme-
diate between living Lycopodiacese and Coniferse, approach-
ing, however, more nearly to the former; and even the
Sigillarias find, as far as the particulars of their organiza-
tion are known, a definite place in the living flora that
surrounds us. Nature, we thus learn, knows nothing of
past and present. The relics of bygone ages are not relics
of extinct systems, simply of extinct species. The trilobites
and pterodactyles, the Sigillarias and the Lepidodendra, are
as much a part of the chain of being as the zebra and the
camel, the oak and the myrtle-tree, and are fully as essential
to its completeness.
277. That Animals and Plants taken together, form a
whole, is a fact no less obvious than the unity of either king-
dom considered se^^arately. As organized beings, formed of
solids and fluids, maintaining, and maintained by, an inces-
sant cyclical action, born of a parent, or rather of parents,
growing to a given bulk, feeding, sleeping, reproducing their
kind, and on the expiration of their lease of life, dying, and
giving place to their descendants; the members of these two
great realms are perfectly and in every point analogous.
Every function in the one is so closely imaged in the other,
that although in no case identically the same, it is impos
sible not to re<?ognize them as determined by a common law.
UNITY OF ANIMALS WITH PLANTS. 487
Physiologically, they are one. The wide difference in the
general configuration of the two classes of beings takes no-
thing from the integrity of the principle. The unlikeness
in general form which on a superficial contrast, Avould keep
asunder the quadruped and the tree, would on the same
reasoning keep even further apart the mammal and the
polyp. The unlikeness, after all, is not so great as we are
apt to suppose. There is little resemblance, it is true, be-
tween the totality of plants compared with animals; we
must not expect that, because analogous, a menagerie and a
flow^er-garden will be like seal and impression; taking, how-
ever, one object at a time, and though no analogue be
straightway found, instead of throwing it on one side, pa-
tiently and sanguinely persisting in the search, knowing
what we look for, there is nothing in the world of animals
for which a parallel may not be found in the world of plants.
Examples of these parallels were cited in the chapter on
Prefiguration, leading, as Ave there saw, to the transfer of
animals' names to plants, and of plants' names to animals.
It will suffice to add, that while plants, as a whole, occupy
a platform beneath animals, so do their particular races, and
even species, occupy specific places, each higher kind of
organism standing, as it were, virtually above the next
inferior, the mammal at the summit, the plant underneath,
and probably a mineral below the plant. As the parrots,
for instance, answer to the monkeys, so do the epiphytic
Orchids to the parrots. They reside, like both classes of
creatures, not upon the ground, as other plants do, but upon
the boughs and branches of trees; the gaudy plumage of
the parrots they almost surpass in the brilliant coloring of
their petals; the aptitude for mimicry in the monkeys they
parallel in their extraordinary counterfeits of the shapes of
insects, birds, and reptiles. It may be remarked here that
Nature has her mountain-families, her sea-families, her river-
4S8 GEOGRAPHICAL ASSOCIATIONS.
families, and so forth, in every department. The monkeys,
the parrots, and the epiphytic Orchids are peculiarly her
threefold forest family, at least as regards the tropics. In
the torrid zone the parrots are the principal of the birds
which make their dwelling in the woods; they rarely de-
scend to the ground, and numerous in individuals, fill the
forest Avith their disagreeable cries. Similarly, the monkeys,
so well adapted for a life in the woods, by the structure of
their bodies, and the nature of their food, numerous also
both in species and individuals, live almost entirely in the
trees. In the forests of tropical South America, the Orchids
are described as growing in myriads, adorning the living
trunks as it were with jewels, and rendering the prostrate
beautiful even in death.
278. In no light does the analogy of plants and animals
ai^pear more striking, than when we compare the great
natural groups into which they are scientifically divided.
In both there is a common archetype, but in both there are
many sub-types, the latter being the ground of the distinc-
tions of tribes, orders, classes, genera, and so forth. Ordi-
narily, the animal Avorld is divided firs't into Vertebrata and
Invertebrata ; or animals with a spine, and internal skeleton,
such as man ; and animals destitute of a spinal column, and
with their bony part on the outside, as in the case of the
crab. Plants, after the same manner, are primarily distin-
guished by almost all, into the two great classes of Phseno-
gamia and Cryptogamia, or flowering and flowerless, the
former distinguished by their conspicuous stamens and
pistils, or reproductive apparatus; the latter by the appa-
rent absence of these parts. The CryjDtogamia comprise the
ferns, sea-weeds, lichens, and similar plants; the Phseno-
gamia include all kinds of trees, shrubs, and the remainder
of the herbaceous vegetation of our planet. In both cases
the negative is intensely deceptive. We might as reasonably
QUATERNARY SYSTEM OF ORGANIZED BEINGS. 489
divide animals into radiate and non-radiate, or plants into
fungoid and non-fungoid, as say "vertebrate" and "mverte-
brate," "flowering" and "flowerless." The invertebrate
tribes of animals, and tlie flowerless tribes of plants, are in
no sense natural, coherent, and symmetrical groups. So far
from it, they differ among themselves quite as widely as in
the collective from the vertebrated and the phsenogamous.
The true distinction to begin with is the quadruple, namely,
of Animals into Vertebrata, Articulata, Mollusca, and E,a-
diata; and of Plants into Exogens, Endogens, Cormogens,
and Thallogens.* The Vertebrata comprise man, quad-
rupeds, birds, fishes, and reptiles : the Articulata, insects in
all their variety, together Avith the crustacean animals, such
as the crab and lobster ; also the centipede, the earth-worm,
and similar creatures: the Mollusca comprise the slug, the
snail, and the inhabitants generally of shells, whether fresh-
water or marine, univalve or bivalve : to the Radiata belong
the star and jelly-fishes, the sea-anemones, the coral-creatures,
and most kinds of animalcules. These last are all of them
aquatic. The four great provinces of the Vegetable King-
dom are equally intelligible, even to the least practiced.
"Exogens" comprehend all those trees and plants which
have the wood forming their stems deposited in concentric
layers, so that the section shows beautiful rings ; the veins
of their leaves a)'e netted ; their flowers and fruit are con-
structed on a quinary type; and the embryo of the seed is
provided with two seed-leaves. vSuch, for example, is the
structure in the oak, the apple, the olive, and the rose; the
first, the most perfect realization of a forest-tree; the second
of a fruit-tree ; the last of a lovely floAver. "Endogens" are
^ The two latter groups together form what some authors call the
Acrogens, but to view them as one is certainly incorrect.
V «
490 EXOGENS AND VERTEBEATA
of lower develoj)ment. The section of the stem presents dots
instead of rings ; the stems are rarely provided with branches,
and instead of bark have only a hardened surface; the veins
of the leaves are straight and parallel instead of netted^
perhaps the leaves themselves are in general only the parts
which in Exogens are simply the petioles, the lamina being
here undeveloped; the plan of the flowers and fruit instead
of quinary, is ternary; and the embryo has a solitary seed-
leaf. Lilies and grasses of all kinds are endogenous, and in
the tropics, the number is swelled by the stately Palm-trees.
" Cormogens " have their noblest representatives in the Ferns ;
plants destitute for the most part of aerial stems ; destitute
also of true flowers, but provided with elegant green
"fronds," which serve at once for leaves, and to bear the
fructification, the curious and characteristic brown bars or
spangles developed on their under surface. To the same
province belong the Lycopodiums, the Equisetums, and the
Mosses. Fourth and last, the "Thallogens" comprise the
singular, universally diffused and familiar plants called
Lichens, Fungi, and Sea-weeds. None of these plants have
proper stems, leaves, or blossoms. They are simple masses
of cellular tissue, and are scarcely ever of a green color;
gray, yellow, red, purple, or white, replace the verdure we
find in every other race.
279. Now these four great classes of Animals, and four
great classes of Plants, — acknoAvledged by all the best sys-
tematists to be strictly "natural," — answer to one another ex-
actly. The Exogenous plants are the vegetable analogues
of the Vertebrata ; the Endogens of the Articulata ; the
Cormogens ansAver to the Molluscous creatures : and the
Thallogens to the Radiate. The details of the several ana-
logies would require a volume ; a word upon each is all that
can here be given. The agreement of the Exogens with the
Vertebrata is known to most ; it is one of the first facts
FERNS AND MOLLUSCA. 491
which the philosophic naturalist finds appealing to him.
To illustrate that of the Enclogens with the Articuiata,
which is little less conspicuous, it will suffice to point once
again to the insectiform flowers and the aerial habitats of
the Orchidese. The analogy of the Mollusca with the Cor-
mogens is not so palpable till scrutinized ; — -it is hard to
think that the shells upon our mantel-pieces can have any-
thing in common with ferns and mosses. When, however,
we compare the naked molluscs, such as the slug, with the
essential part of the fern, — which is not so much the frond,
as the rhizome or root-stock from which the frond arises, —
the mystery begins to clear. Take, for instance, the rhi-
zomes of the different species of Davallia, and of many of
the genus Polypodium, as they lie, slug-like, upon the sur-
face of the earth. In the ramosum they are streaked ;
those of the vesperUlionis crawl over the edges of the flower-
pot. The analogy becomes further evident when we com-
pare the fronds themselves with the peculiar respiratory ap-
paratus found in the Mollusca, and called their "branchiae."
The fronds of the fern, it will be remembered, are the respi-
ratory apparatus of the plant, and therefore analogous to
the branchiae. These latter, like the ferns, are often deli-
cately branched, and stand to the body of the creature just
as the fronds do to the rhizome. Such is the case in the
Nudibranchiate molluscs, delicate and fragile little creatures
found crawling on corallines, sponges, and sea-Aveeds, and
usually of the most charming and diversified colors. Their
branchiae are beautifully arborescent, in many species doubly
and triply pinnate, resembling the fronds of the Davallia or
of the Polyjjodium Dryopteris, and disjDosed either in a star-
like circle, as in the genera Doris, Polycera, and Miranda,
or in a double row down the back, as in the Tritonia (or
Dendronohis) arborescens. This most elegant little creature
has a body of about two inches in length, supporting seven
492 MUSHROOMS AND JELLY-FISHES.
or eight pairs of its fern-like plumes, those towards the head
being the largest, and those nearest the tail the smallest.
It is met with on the shore, in crevices of rocks, and upon
sea-weeds, &c., almost throughout the north, or from Green-
land to the English Channel, and again on the north-east
coast of America. The reader interested in knowing more
of these curious and unregarded, but exquisite little beings,
theoretically, may consult the admirable monograph of
Messrs. Alder and Hancock, published by the Ray Society.
How the analogy between the Radiata and the Thallogens
is determined, may readily be understood on a comparison
of the higher fungi, such as the mushroom, with the jelly-fishes.
Every one who has seen these latter lying stranded on the
shore, will remember their circular configuration. We have
it markedly also in the opened Geastrum and the star-fishes.
Most of the crustaceous lichens, and the fructification uni-
versally, show circles and radiations ; and how common this
is with the polyj)s is unnecessary to say. In the beautiful
white laminated coral, the Fungia agariciformis, we can
hardly persuade ourselves that we do not see a petrified
mushroom ; as for the analogy of the Algse with the Ra-
diata, every one at first sight takes the Sertularias for Sea-
weeds.
280. While the innumerable facts which disclose these
grand analogies, testify, in so doing, to the Unity of Nature,
they are unanswerable evidence against the hypothesis of
the Continuous Chain. Vertebrates unquestionably stand
at the head of the animal kingdom, man, considered zoolo-
gically, being their maximum; and Exogens as plainly stand
first among plants ; the descent, however, from these doAvn
to the lowest, is not by a single line, but by many lines di-
verging in widely separated directions. No tribe, either of
plants or of animals, can be said to be absolutely at the bot-
tom. Though the Radiata and the Thallogens are placed
TROPICAL SEA-WEEDS. 493
there in schemes of classification, a considerable portion of
them are far superior in their development to species be-
longing to the higher tribes. Every tribe, in fact, both of
animals and plants, possesses, as said before, an extremely
wide range of form, higher kinds and lower kinds, the for-
mer always superior to the lower ones of the adjacent tribes.
Like the columns of the orders of architecture, they begin
in simplicity, but are crowned with sculptured capitals.
We may construct a continuous chain by taking the vari-
ous tribes of beings in their aggregates, and placing them
according to the dignity of their maximum developments ;
but such a course is impossible with subtribes, genera, and
species. In short, if we seek to arrange things in a strictly
arithmetical succession, we not only depart from the true
order of nature, but outrage it. The Radiata have as
good a claim to be put second as the Articulata, and the
Mollusca as good a claim as the Radiata; similarly in
plants, the highest of the Cormogens, or the Tree-ferns, are
incomparably better entitled to be placed next the Exogens
than many Endogenous genera, the duck -weed for example,
which hides the water of stagnant ponds ; and the same is
the right of the magnificent sea-weeds of the Indian and
Antarctic oceans. The U Urvillea, when cut transversely,
presents zones, with divisions resembling medullary rays,
and a sort of pith ; a similar appearance is observable in-
deed in the well known olive-brown alga of our own shores,
the laminaria digitata, or Sea-tangle, one of the giants of
the marine forests, as regards Europe. Lamouroux claims
four distinct parts for its stem, analogous in situation, or-
ganization, and relative size, to the epidermis, bark, wood,
and pith of Exogens.
281. The true position of the subordinate provinces of
the two great realms of organic nature, with regard to the
^hief or typical province; also the relation which the subor-
42
i94 EACH ARCHETYPE A KIND OE SUN.
dinate provinces bear towards one another ; and the relation
again of the whole of either series to its correlative, plants
to animals, and animals to j)lants — the following diagrams
will serve perhaps to make plain : —
Articulata. Endogens.
VEETEBEATA. EXOGENS.
Eadiata. Cormogens. Tliallogens
Here we have the Vertebrata and the Exogens the centrb
of their respective systems, the subordinate tribes equidis-
tant from them, each with its lowest forms on the remote
confines, and its highest next the archetype. Each arche-
type is, as it were, a Sun, transmitting its rays in three di-
rections, and with equal force and effulgence in every one of
them. The nearer we stand to the luciferous orb, the more
sensible we are of its qualities; the further we travel away
from it, the fainter becomes the light. Leaving the apple
and the rose, for instance, among Exogens, we come, accord-
ing to the point of departure, to the palms among Endo-
gens, to the tree-ferns among Cormogens, or to the great
tree-like algse of the southern seas, among the Thallogens.
These form, as it were, the inner circle. Next we come to forms
of each tribe less elaborately developed, and thence gradually
jDass outwards to the simplest of each kind, the humble
dwellers at the "ends of the earth." The Articulata and
the Endogens, the Mollusca and the Cormogens, the Radiata
and the Thallogens, may be placed in any one of the three
stations ; it matters not which lie upon the right, or ' which
upon the left; the essential point is their equidistance from
the centre.
282. The distribution into fours is not confined to the first
TRUE IDEA OF FORM. 495
great provinces ; every one of these latter is again divisible
into a principal and three subordinate, and there is ample
reason to believe that it is the same again with every one of
these. Doubless, the further we push in our inquiries,
the greater becomes the difficulty of determining these
normal centres, and what characters shall be deemed indica-
tive of superior rank; but it is certain that every principle
of nature runs through the whole of nature, — that every type
and institution is repeated on every platform, though we
may be unable to make it out upon the instant. Nature
does not disclose all her secrets at once; every generation is
allowed its share of insight; an infinite amount is reserved
for those unborn. Take, for instance, the Vertebrata. The
highest of these are the Mammalia, or animals that suckle
their young; the remainder are the three obvious and well-
known groups. Birds, Fishes, and Reptiles, all of which
stand equally near to the Mammalia in their higher forms,
while no one of them is absolutely the lowest. We may
repeat here that in the true idea of the Form of an object
is involved not merely its structure, or that part of its na-
ture which the anatomist is concerned with ; it includes also
the whole of the qualities and dispositions which j)ertain to
it, and which distinguish it socially from other things. And
this, in fact, is its essential nature, being that which gives it
a place and function in the general economy of creation;
thus the object and end for which it was created. The End
is always nobler than the Means, for the means are only
processes whereby the end shall be attained. In all our
groupings and classifications, therefore, we should view the
organic structure as intermediate between the Artist and
the End he has in view. Put in a diagram, the four classes
stand thus: —
496 THE MEANS AND THE END.
Birds.
MAMMALIA.
Fishes. Reptiles.
Among plants, after the same manner, the great, primary
province of Exogens resolves into
Calycifiorse.
THALAMIFLOE^.
Corolliflorse. Monochlamydese.
The reciprocal relations are in these minor classes precisely
analogous to those of the larger divisions. As Exogens
answer to Vertebrata in the first analysis, so, in the second,
the Thalamiflorse answer to mammals.
CHAPTER XXVII.
MAH' THE EPITOME OF NATUME.
283. In the forms, properties, analogies, and discrete dis-
tinctiveness of tlie three great kingdoms of objective nature
is set fortli the Avhole philosophy of Life and Mind. Here
are represented and expounded the threefold expression of
the Divine life, the threefold composition of the human
soul, and all those other sublime trilogies of the universe
which declare Him who by Avisdom framed the Avorlds.
When, therefore, Ave Avould study life, Avhen Ave AA^ould study
metaphysics, psychology, or any of the profound and spa-
cious themes Avhich deal AA'ith facts not obvious to the senses,
our best and shortest Avay is to begin AAdth studying Natural
History, or the science of minerals, vegetables, and animals,
their forms, relations, uses, and correspondences. The study
of the three kingdoms of nature is in effect the study of
Man, Avho, being the image of God, is the finite archetype
and summary of all things, the Avorld over again, at once its
lord and its epitome. The Avorld is threefold because man
is threefold. In the constitution of human nature is Avritten
the rationale of its entire scheme and order — yea, of every-
thing it contains. If man were not Avhat he is, and if he
Avere not the immediate and personal Avork of God, though
there might be a world, it Avould be as different from the
Avorld Avhich noAV exists, as man himself Avould be different
from Avhat Almighty Wisdom and Goodness have created
42 » 497
498 INTELLECT CONTINGENT UPON THE WORLD.
him. The primary, essential reason of the world's being
what we find it is, of course, the Nature and the Will of
God. Every divinely originated object is a result of which
the Supreme reason lies far back of man, far back even of his
intelligence and imagination. Still, it is man that we must
look to as the explcmation of the Avorld's existence — he is the
proximate reason, the point at which our inquiries are at
once stayed and rewarded. TFhy man is the summary
and proximate reason of the world, is that he shall be a
happy dweller, in the end, in the mansions of the heavenly
presence. He cannot become this unless he have an intelli-
gence commensurate with his glorious destiny, and such in-
telligence he can only possess by learning the nature and
will of God as expressed in material, objective forms. In
other words, to realize our sublime destiny we must first
learn to know and love Him who has provided it ; but this
we can only do through the medium of the finite and mate-
rial. Only through this medium is God knowable at all.
Without an objective world, rich and gorgeous as our own,
the idea of God could not be conceived. "As there are no
infinite media, no signs that express the infinite, no minds,
in fact, that can apprehend the infinite by direct inspection,
the One must appear in the manifold ; the Absolute in the
conditional ; Spirit in form ; the Motionless in motion ; the
Infinite in the finite. He must let forth his nature in
sounds, colors, forms, works, definite objects and signs."*
Not that because of this distribution of the Divine nature,
we are to think of it as a congeries of separate and sepa-
rable elements. No. It is perfect and indivisible Unity,
variously exhibiting itself, or in diverse aspects and mani-
festations, according to the design to be accomplished. We
" God in Christ," by the Eev. Horace Biishneil, p. 139.
INTELLECT CONTINGENT UPON THE WORLD, 499
never see only a part of God's natui'e. He is present in his
full totality, in every leaf upon the tree ; in every little but-
terfly and shell. Not personally, but by the communication
of his Life. Nature is not God, neither is God nature.
Nature is the Divine Art, expressed in material configura-
tions and phenomena ; God reigns apart from it, in the hea-
vens. While true, then, that but for the Intellect of God
there could not have been a woild, it is no less true that the
intellect of man is contingent iipon the world. In order
that as intelligent beings we may appreciate and enjoy our
eternity-life, we must abide for a given period in the school
of the time-life, or the material world, using it, and fulfill-
ing its duties. This we can only do by being in imiiy with
it. Things can only use what surrounds them by virtue of
such a relation. Plants can only assimilate mineral matter
by virtue of their having a mineral side ; animals can only
assimilate vegetable matter by virtue of consanguinity with
the vegetable; man, were he not both animal and plant, and
man besides, could make no use of either. He is competent
both to apply the world to his physical use, and to love it,
and profit by it, sjoiritually, because he is its entire nature
epitomized and concentrated. It is because they are want-
ing in this plenitude of relation that brutes are incapable of
heaven, and make no use of the Avorld except as a place for
eating and drinking. Man would be as short-lived as they
are, did not the laws of the world pre-exist in his own nature,
and but for this also he would be as blind and speechless.
Language, narrowly looked at, is in its e'^ry word a spirit-
ual echo and reflection of the world outside; its every atom
primarily denotes something objective, or at least physical.
" It is only as there is a Xoyoc: in the outward world, an-
swering to the Xoyoc; or internal reason of the parties, that
men can come into a mutual understanding in regard to
any thought or spiritual state whatever." For the same
500 MAN THE MICROCOSM.
reason, every great poem that deals freely and profoundly
with external nature, is a " Kosmos " of the spiritual nature
of man. None have so largely helped forward the true sci-
ence of metaphysics as the poets, Avho have stood face to
face with nature, and sung about her splendors.
284. Such is the idea of man intended in his ancient name
of microcosm, or " little world," — a name approved by greatest
thinkers. " Fantastically strained," as Lord Bacon observes,
"by Paracelsus and the alchemists," Avho made it the ground
of their astrological sjoeculations, the idea has to a certain
extent lost favor in modern times. There are not wanting
even despisers of it. "Paracelsus," says the author of the
History of the Literature of Europe, "seized hold of a notion
which easily seduces the imagination of those who do not
ask for rational proof, that there is a constant analogy be-
tween the macrocosm of external nature, and the microcosm
of man." Misconceived and misapplied as it was by the
arch-mystic, the doctrine has at no time been in the least
degree falsified. Rather does it acquire new strength with
the growth of science, aided often by those who are least
conscious of their services. Dating from the oldest j^hiloso-
phers, it receives its best illustrations from the newest.
Every man who seeks to obey the golden aphorism, " Know
Thyself," finds in his own nature reiteration of the world at
large; he finds it, both physiologically, in his body, and
spiritually, in his soul. " Man's body," in the words of a
popular writer, " contains the elements of all knowledge."
Its chemistry is AA^nderful, and embraces all chemistry ; its
geography is equally so ; its seas and its rivers are even more
wonderful than those of the earth ; its temperature contains
the whole theory of combustion. All knowledge, all taste, all
sense of right and wrong, is comprehended within the sphere of
the microcosm, man. He who knows man thoroughly, is both
learned and scientific, and what is better than either, he is tho
ANALOGY OF MAN WITH TREES. 501
truly wise man." " In man," we are told by another, " all the
powers and realities of the universe are concentrated, all de-
velopments united, all forms associated. Man is the bearer
of all the dignities of nature. There is in nature no tone to
which his being is not the response, no form of which he is
not the type. The human organism is the whole xoapto';^
with its life infused into the individual. Man's organization
embraces all ; he is the world's self-surveying eye, the world's
self-hearing ear, the Avorld's self-enouncing voice. Hence
he is termed by Goethe the plan of creation ; by Novalis,
the systematic index to nature ; by Oken, the complex of all
organizations."*
285. Of all subjects open to the human mind, it follows
that the Unity of man with nature is the most lofty and in-
structive. If true that he is one with it, then the study of
man must needs be the study of all nature, and conversely,
as said at the outset, that of nature must be a microscopic
view of man, free access to every side and aspect of him.
No subject defines so vast a circle. It embraces the whole
of metaphysics, and the whole of the philosophy of Lan-
guage, which is equivalent to saymg the entire range of the
correspondence of things spiritual with things material. It
embraccB the whole of zoology, of botany, and the sciences
of nature in general, making all things fill with life, and
bringing all into an unexpected fellowship. In every sense
of the word, it is se(/-knowledge. " The man who does not
find in animals younger brothers, and in plants cousins more
or less removed, is unacquainted with his own nature."
How beautiful the analogy of man with Trees ! His physi-
ology is pictured in them ; they have members, organs, and
tissues ; the pendent, flexile branches of many kinds are
* Stallo, Philosophy of Nature, p. 107.
502 ANALOGY OF MAN WITH TREES.
trauscripts of the locks and ringlets of the head, as those of
the silver-birch, called by Coleridge "the lady of the woods;"
the gnarled and knotted oak reminds us of masculine stur-
diness and muscles. The old botanist, Curtius, has a chap-
ter De arhorum membris, et illorum cum hominis membris
conformitatej'^ imitated by Laurenberg in one De Analogia
plantas et hominem.'f Poetical minds dwell on it enthusias-
tically, as Sir Uvedale Price, in his book on the Picturesque ;
" The luxuriance of foliage answers to that of hair ; the
delicate smoothness of bark to that of skin, and the clear,
even, and tender color of it to that of the complexion."
Then he shows us how the youth of a tree corresponds with
the youth of our own species, each being made beautiful by
its freshness, which gives way, however, with lapse of years,
to dryness and wrinkles. " By such changes, that nice
symmetry and correspondence of parts, so essential to beauty,
is in both destroyed ; in both, the hand of time roughens the
surface, and traces still deeper furrows ; a few leaves, a few
hairs, are thinly scattered on their summits ; the light, airy,
aspiring look of youth is gone, and both seem shrunk and
tottering, and ready to fall with the next blast."| A pas-
sage in the elegant " Poetics" of Mr. Dallas, well deserves
appending. "Almost every page," he observes, "that
Wordsworth has written, bears token of his belief that be-
tween man and the flowers of the field there is a close alli-
ance, — that man is indeed a Tree, endowed with powers of
self-knowledge and self-movement ; — a faith shared by many
besides, but entered into by none more entirely, unless by
George Plerbert ; a faith which is nowhere more strongly or
* Hortormn, Lib. vii., cap. 1 — 15. 1560.
f Apparatus Plmitarwn, cap. 7 — 12. 1632.
t Pp. 94, 95, Lauder's Edit. 1842.
THREE KINGDOMS OF THE HUMAN BODY. 503
more frequently affirmed than in the assurances of Holy
Writ, and which the legendary lore of Daphnes and Ariels,
together with our love for trees, and the way in which we
lament their downfall more than that of anything else not
human, proves to be deeply seated in every bosom."
286. The unity of man with nature in respect of its
three kingdoms is marked, first, in the structure of his cor-
poreal frame; secondly, in the triple action of his life.
Begin with the body. Here we have one of the most won-
derful analogies in creation. The abdominal region, the
lowest part of the body proj)er, is our mineral kingdom : the
chest, with its leafy lungs, and life-giving heart, the source
of aliment to every member, is our vegetable kingdom; the
head, with its beautifully-moving face, and restless brain,
supported by the chest, as the chest by the inferior part, is
to the remainder of our fabric Avhat animals are to vegeta-
tion and the soil. Every part is needful to the well-being
of every other part. As vegetation effects important and
salutary changes in the earth and atmosphere; and as ani-
mals are at once givers and recipients, in regard both to the
plant-world and to the mineral; so is it with the three king-
doms of the human body. The need of plants to the earth
in regard to the promotion of rain, and of the earth to plants
as an anchorage and source of food, is but a varied utterance
of the sympathies of our own organization. Man himself
is as necessary to the earth as the earth is necessary to him;
the same is true of the corporeal members that represent
them.
287. As in external nature, by the law of promotion,
every superior platform carries with it the essential qualities
and powers of all that have gone before, so is it in nature's
Epitome. As the plant has the mineral idea in it, the
peculiar glory of the vegetable being superadded; and as
the animal hag the vegetable idea in it, with again a brighter
504 THE HUMAN HEAD.
dignity superinduced, whereby it feels, and moves, and be-
comes capable of social intercourse; so into the chest, or
vegetable region of the human body, are continued the
attributes of the earthly or abdominal region; and into the
head or animal region, the attributes of both the others.
There is nothing either in the structure or the functions of
any portion of his body, but is in the Head of man recapitu-
lated and reiterated, and in every case under a nobler and
purer guise. The limbs and their activities reappear in the
muscles of the face, and that lively play of the features
which gives it variety and expression. The digestive system
reappears in the mouth, wherein the whole process of feeding
is at once begun and representatively completed, the jaws
and teeth taking their place as representatives of the hands,
— the prehensile organs by which the food has in the first
instance been procured. The nose re-enacts in little the
duty of the lungs, and the function of the respiratory appa-
ratus in general. On the lips are beautifully spiritualized
the idea and circumstances of sexual love.* The eyes in
their mighty grasp of total nature, a microscope one mo-
ment, a telescope the next, renew and concentrate the
powers given by the sense of touch, and the aptitude for
locomotion, bringing as it were, the Avhole surface and whole
mechanism of the body to a single point. Hence their
beautiful roundness, since whatever in the universe exhibits
a totality, is invariably a Sphere. In that wonderful frame-
work, the human Head, are collected accordingly, symbols,
representatives, and metaphors of every organ and sign of
Life. The body is the first and ruder synthesis, the head
the last and finest. Here all the powers and elements of
nature converge, as all the light and colors of creation
Rai >! ju^ii avrn yXvKcia yivcrai tuv ipvxaiv. Aristcenetus, Epistles, 2, 7.
THREE DEGREES OF HUMAN LIFE. 505
meet in the grand focus of the Sun. Most naturally is it,
then, that in the face are afforded those entertaining disclo-
sures which indicate man's hold within himself of the
organization and inmost nature of every creature of zoology.
When the features of the monkey, the sheep, the bull, sup-
plant, as we often see them, those of the proper human
countenance; when the mildness of the dove, the cunning
of the snake, the stupidity of the ass, paint themselves on
the physiognomy of our fellows, it is because in man they
are all essentially contained; and though their normal and
complete realization is outside of him, are yet competent to
look forth from the windows.
288. With the three great kingdoms of the bodily fabric
correspond, in turn, the three great factors of our humanity,
the Sensuous life, the Rational, and the Religious, — forms
of activity which have each of them their distinct place and
special office in the soul's economy, as minerals, plants, and
animals have theirs in the economy of the world. The sen-
suous life is the mineral degree of human nature ; the rational
life is the vegetable degree; the religious life is the animal.
The first, like the solid earth on which we stand, sup-
plies the other with a footing; the rational life is that
pleasant green sward of our existence to AA'hich belong the
innumerable little thoughts and emotions of daily life,
amiable and intelligent, worthy and beautiful, but still only
secular and temporal; the life of religion is that which,
lifting us into the sphere of the heavenly and immortal,
crowns and consummates the others, as animals complete the
glory of God's creation. Wanting either of these three
lives, human nature would be imperfect, nor could we exist
without any one of them for a single instant; for though
man may refuse to exercise the life of religion, the poAver to
do so still flows into him from God, and is an integral part
of his vitality as a human being. Neglecting the privileges
4:\ W
506 THREE DEGREES OF HUMAN LIFE.
of the two higher lives, man degrades himself into the con-
dition of a mere globe of inanimate earth and "water; caring
only for the sensuous life and the rational, he is a mere
world of trees and plants, useless because there is no animal
to feed upon them.
289. Between these three lives there are discrete degrees
as decided as those of material nature. There is no con-
tinuity between them, any more than between mineral and
plant, or between plant and animal ; each preserves its own
plane of beginning and of end. Hence the impossibility of
a man ever becoming rational who attends only to the plea-
sures of external sense; or religious by the mere culture of
intelligence and morality. It is no more possible than to
procure flowers by sowing crystals, or birds by planting
acorns. But though severed by discrete degrees, the three
lives are intimately bound together, the highest mediately
beholden to the lowest. All, moreover, are good, and excel-
lent in their degree, because every one of them has its own
dignifying duty. The religious life is intended to minister
to our Maker; the rational to the religious; the sensuous to
the rational; each lower life thus, eventually, to ends of
piety and the praise of Grod. There is no greater mistake
than to contemn or disparage the sensuous life. Whatever
is subservient to delight of sense, is conducive, while used
temperately, to the best interests of humanity. The perfec-
tion of a Christian character does not consist in ignoring and
despising the sensuous, which at no time can it practically
dispense with, but in honoring all things in their proper
places and degrees, rejecting none, but regenerating all.
Educators have much to learn in respect of this. How
foolish, for example, the doctrine which would persuade a
girl that beauty is valueless, and dress only vanity. It is
false altogether. Beauty is of value; so is dress, and of
great value. The thing to teach is their just value; that
VALUE OF THE SENSUOUS LIFE. 507
there must be something beneath the dress, and interior to
the beauty, better than the silk and the rosy cheek, and
without which they are truly no more than rags and ugli-
ness. To dress tastefully and prettily is one of the first and
finest of the fine arts ; elegance of attire is a part of the very
method and style of nature; clothed in our very choicest,
we are still not to compare with the lilies of the field. Using
the sensuous life aright is taking the crystal from the quarry, '
and converting it into a magnifying lens. Unimpaired in
itself, the investiture of it with the new and higher use en-
hances the loftiest pleasures of our philosophy. Everything
in the sensuous life may be made beautiful and poetical if
we will bring it up into our higher thoughts, instead of
sacrificing those higher thoughts to it; for the sensuous life,
like the world, does not so much want subjugating, as right
using. Men say "nature" teaches them to do so and so,
and excuse even licentiousness on the plea of following
nature. Very good. We can never do better than follow
and obey nature. But it must be an enlarged, not a partial
survey of nature that we must take. The partial study
makes it seem natural to abide in the sensuous ; the enlarged
study shows that it is infinitely more natural to come out of
the sensuous, or rather, to value it only as the basis, No-
thing is lost of the enjoyment of it, by finding "nature" as
much in the rational and the spiritual life. While the
sensuous life, thought of for itself alone, too often becomes a
sensual, and thence a vicious life; and thence again, full of
dangers and anxieties, and usually ends ill, perhaps in rot-
tenness and I'ags, or at least in a peevish and despicable
discontent; the property of the spiritual life, thought of first,
and of the rational life, duly honored, is to infuse itself into
everything below, giving an unexpected zest to the enjoy-
ment even of the merest animal pleasures, so that the volup-
508 VIRTUE DEVELOPED BY SOCIETY.
tuary, who pities and despises what is above him, after all,
misses his own aim and expectation.
290. So with the rational life. If it be foolish to despise
the sensuous, a thousand times more foolish is that dis-
esteem of the secular and intellectual which is often thought
so helpful to true piety. The Bible requires the abasement
of nothing on the part of man beyond his preposterous self-
ishness and pride. The design of our Lord, in his divine
teachings, is to make us, not religionists, but perfect men.
This he does not propose to do by the suppression of any
part of our nature, but by developing the whole. "If it
could be proved that Christianity interdicted the exercise
of the intellectual life of man in the very slightest degree, it
would have as little of the truthful, the heavenly, and the
j^ractical in it, as if it forbade the theological element." It
never can be religion to contemn and disregard what "God
so loved" as to visit in order that he might redeem it. To
forsake the world is to miss its highest usefulness. The
hermit may have few vices, but he can have no genuine and
lively virtues, for these are only developed by social con-
gress. It is worthy of note that the most exquisite produc-
tions of Art are precisely those which approximate to the
representation of spiritual, intellectual, and sensuous beauty
in a single subject. The best artists are those who can
receive and apply this great truth, that the beau ideal of a
Christian character is the regenerated triple nature.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
INSTINCT AND It E AS ON.
291. The brilliant instruction we derive from considering
the three great kingdoms of nature as a trilogy answering
to the threefold expressions of the Divine Life, is most
largely realized when we turn our minds to the contempla-
tion of Instinct and Reason, a true idea of which forces is
not possible until that instruction be listened to and applied.
As there are three expressions of life, so are there three
great classes of phenomena. Those of the lowest degree of
life, or the life of inorganic nature, are the domain of Che-
mistry and Physics; those of the physiological, or inorganic
expression, constitute the Instincts ; those of the spiritual
degree disclose Reason. The first are identified with the
mineral world ; the second with plants and animals, in-
cluding the material body of man, or his temporal and ter-
restrial nature; the third pertain peculiarly to himself, since
he alone is concerned with the immortal and celestial.
Each degree of life prefigures the next above; chemical
phenomena prefigure instinct ; and instinct beautifully pre-
figures reason ; but like minerals, plants, and animals, which
are their pictures, they are altogether and eternally distinct,
because between each there is the barrier of a discrete de-
gree. Never, therefore, was there a greater mistake than
that of Helvetius, Condillac, Smellie, and those other au-
thors who contend that reason is no more than the maximum
development of instinct ; in plain English, that " reason "
43 « 509
510 INSTINCT CO-ORDINATE WITH LIFE.
means "more instinct," and "instinct" "less reason." This
is virtuall)'^ to deny that there is any difference between man
and brute, and thus to pronounce both of them imperfect.
The doctrine arose, without doubt, from the false notion of
a continuous chain of being.
292. Instinct, accordingly, in its true idea, holds a much
larger signification than the performance of certain ingeni-
ous works, cognizable by our senses. It does not consist
simply in those actions and trains of action which books on
the subject of instinct ordinarily confine themselves to, such
as the nest-building of birds, and the hunting, by the new-
born infant, for the mother's breast. For technical pur-
poses, it may be useful so to restrict the term, but viewed
philosophically, instinct is co-ordinate and co-extensive with
life itself. The actions commonly called instinctive are ex-
hibitions in a wider form, of the very same formative energy
which previously moulds the various organs of the body,
and maintains them in their functional activity. This is
strikingly illustrated in the operation of the "constructive"
instincts, such as impel to the fabrication of coverings,
clothing, and the various kinds of dwellings, all of which
are a kind of ultimated and externalized organization.
God is the organizing framer and preserver of the world of
living things ; instinct is the method by which his energy
takes effect. It is the general faculty of the entire living
fabric, underlying and determining all activities which tran-
spire, either invisibly in the organs themselves, or as played
forth to observation ; thus bearing exactly the same relation
to the general structure which the constructive chemical
forces bear to the crystal. Instinct, in a word, is the opera-
tion of Life, whether promoting the health, the preserva-
tion, or the reproduction of an organized frame, or any part
of such frame, and whether animal or vegetable. " The
law of instinct," as Mason Good well puts it, " is the law of
TWO DEGREES OF INSTINCT. 511
the living principle; instinctive actions are the actions of the
living principle, pervading and regulating organized matter
as gravitation pervades and regulates unorganized matter,
and uniformly operating, by definite means, to the general
welfare of the individual system, or its separate organs, ad-
vancing them to perfection, preserving them in it, or laying
a foundation for their reproduction, as the nature of the
case may require. It applies equally to plants and to ani-
mals, and to every part of the plant as well as to every part
of the animal, so long as such pai-t continues alive."* Vi-
rey uses similar terms — " Internal impulses of life constitute
acts of instinct in plants the same as in animals. . .
"We distinguish, therefore, two degrees of instinct, first, that
of the interior functions, or of the mechanism or organiza-
tion ; secondly, that of the spontaneous outward impulses."
Cams also, when he calls upon us to observe how a plant
" through internal instinct, and under external relations, un-
folds itself from an obscure and insignificant seed." To the
same effect writes the eminent physiologist. Dr. Laycock.
" Inherent," says he, " in the primordial cell of every organ-
ism, whether it be animal or vegetable, and in all the tissues
which are developed out of it, there is an intelligent power
or agent, which acting in all cases independently of the con-
sciousness of the organism, and Avh ether the latter be en-
dowed with consciousness or not, forms matter into machines
and machinery of the most singular complexity, with the
most exquisite skill, and of wondrous beauty, for a fixed,
manifest, and predetermined object — namely, the preserva-
tion and welfare of the individual, and the continuance of
the species. This quasi-inieWigeni agent works with an ap-
})arently perfect knowledge of number, geometry, mathema-
Book of Nature, Series 2, Lecture iv.
512 TWO-FOLD OBJECT OP INSTINCT.
ties, and of the properties of matter as known to the human
intellect under the term ' natural philosophy' or physics —
that is to say, with a perfect knowledge of chemistry, elec-
tricity, magnetism, mechanics, hydraulics, optics, acoustics —
but as far transcending the limited knowledge of the hu-
man intellect as the structure and adaptations of living or-
ganisms exceed in beauty and fitness the most finished
works of man I take it as an established prin-
ciple that the ^Masi-intelligent agent which operates in the
construction of organisms, directs the use of the organs con-
structed."* Between the work of simple " vitality" or " vi-
tal power," as it is customary to call it, and the externalized
operations popularly understood by the term Instinctive,
there is thus no real difference but that of method and prox-
imate object. It is the same force which first clothes the
bird with plumage, and then impels it to build its beautiful
little nest, and line it with soft feathers. The essential unity
of the two classes of phenomena may readily be apprehended
by comparing their final purposes, which are in every point
alike. Whether we take the operations of simple "vitality,"
so called, or those of palpable, externalized "instinct," in the
popular sense of the word — all have reference either to the
temporal welfare of the individual, or to the continuance of
the species. Self-maintenance and propagation of the kind,
are the two grand purposes for which the mediate or physi-
ological expression of life is communicated by the Almighty
to his creatures. From the first moment of their existence,
plant and animal alike are actively employed in building
up organs, repairing waste, and keeping the whole system in
* See for a full and admirable exposition of the views enunciated
in the above extract, the article on the Brain in the British ami
Foreign Medico-Chirurgical EevieM' for July, 1855.
THE "divinity THAT STIRS WITHIN US." 513
lusty health, unless hindered by extraneous obstacles. A
portion of their vital energy is simultaneously directed to
such activities with regard to surrounding objects, as shall
complement those transpiring within the fabric. No new
principle is employed in the effectuation of those activities ;
they are the application of the one common law and method
of life to the furtherance of the same common designs, only
on a grander scale, and hence Avith organs often specially
provided. The two kinds of phenomena taken together,
form the system of vital economy by which the organism
and the species alike endure. Doubtless, man may train
and turn the usages of instinct to a different purpose, but
wherever it is undisturbed by the influence of human rea-
son, the predetermination is essentially to one or other of the
two offices that have been mentioned. The force, called by
its right name, is the life of the "Divinity that stirs within
us," but for whose continued influx into every organ and
cell of plant and animal, they would instantly dissolve.
Truly was it said by the philosophers of old, Deus est anima
brutorum. God is the life of the brutes, and no less so of
the lilies of the field. Virgil is not so wide of the truth as
some have fancied, when he says that the bees have in them
a portion of the Divine mind. If " in Him we live and
move, and have our being," how much more the helpless
creatures of the plain, Avhose dependence, we should do well
to note, is an infi_nitely greater truth than their mdepen-
dence. Not that the creature is a mere cup into which life
is poured despotically though benevolently. Though all
creatures depend on God, they are still required to co-
operate with him. God does one part — He does everything
in reality, but one part more peculiarly — the other is ap-
pointed to the creature to effect as of itself. To this end
are instituted what men call the " laws of nature." Every
living thing is put in a certain relation with the external
W«
514 INSTINCTS AND OUTWAllD STIMULI.
world, and the whole of the external world has an express
relation with every living creature ; the economy and the
very existence, both of the total and every atom, being
made to depend on the mutual adaptation, and on the per-
sonal activity of every part. The instincts are not played
forth purely by the Divine life, arbitrarily swaying and
ruling the creature. They are always in response to certain
stimuli from without.* We experience every day that im-
pressions made on the organs of sense, or on peculiarly sen-
sitive parts of the body, induce muscular acts, sometimes ex-
ceedingly complex, and absolutely independent of the will.
Often it happens that such impressions give rise to actions
which are not only involuntary, but are performed uncon-
sciously. The vital activities which constitute Instinct,
whether interior or externalized, are referable to identically
the same origin; they are grounded, that is to say, in the
process designated by the physiologists, "remote sympathy."
The extremities of the nervous filaments, which terminate
chiefly on the surface of the body, receive impressions cal-
culated to excite them ; thence those impression are commu-
nicated, by a succession of nervous influences, to the muscu-
lar organs, which acknowledge them, and reply by perform-
ing certain movements on a definite plan. The spider
weaves its web, and the bee constructs its honeycomb.
Briefly, particular impressions, conveyed by nerves to the
nervous centre they have peculiar reference to, call forth
particular acts, seemingly deliberate, but in reality uncon-
scious. What these acts shall be, and what purpose they
* The well-known opinion of Sir Isaac Newton, that the actions
of brutes are under the constant, direct, and immediate direction of
the Deity, is answered with all the care and respect which it de-
serves, though with a leaning in its favor, in the Dialogues, oil
Instinct of Lord Brougham.
FOUR GREAT CLASSES OF INSTINCTS. 515
shall subserve, is no longer a physiological question; they
belong to the inmost life of the creature, the seat of tlie
reception of the Divine love. That the proximate source
of at least the externalized acts of instinct, is the "remote
sympathy" above spoken of, is illustrated by the errors
which instinct sometimes commits. The moth burns its
wings in the flame of the candle; Blumenbach's ape pinched
out the painted drawings of beetles from a book on Ento-
mology, and ate them. Such acts cannot be referred to the
Deity: the)'' belong purely to the weakness of the finite.
The sensational stimuli of the instincts, both in brutes and
mankind, may be seen fully described in that masterly per-
formance, the Principles of Physiology of John Augustus
Unzer. (Sydenham Society's Vol., 1851.)
293. The particular phenomena of Instinct are referable
to four great classes; namely, the instinct of Self-Preserva-
tion, the instinct of Self-defense, the instinct of Propagation,
and the instinct of Love to offspring. It would be easy to
show how these operate in the very inmost economy of or-
ganic life, but it will suffice here to speak of them as ulti-
mated into "instinct," popularly so termed. The first is that
which leads every living creature to seek and consume food,
to sleep and otherwise cherish itself, also, in many cases, to
construct dwellings and traps for the capture of jDrey, and
to migrate to milder latitudes during the winter. The skil-
ful artisanship of the industrial classes of the Insect world,
as the bee, the ant, and the wasp, illustrates this instinct in
its maximum; the minimum pertains perhaps to the serpent
tribe, in which few examples of ingenuity have been noticed.
To this instinct, it may be added, belong the greater part of
those wonderful and entertaining anecdotes which form the
bulk of most treatises on the theme before us. The second
instinct, that of Self-defense, is illustrated in the use by
various creatures, of those natural weapons with which they
516 SPECIAL INSTIiXCTS.
are armed in case of assault, as the sting, the talon, and the
teeth. The ejection of poison belongs to the same series,
along with the paralyzing shock of the electric eel, and the
shrouding ink of the cuttle-fish. Here also are to be referred
the anecdotes of pretended death by many of the lower
animals when closely pursued, especially insects ; and of the
hiding of others in retreats of the same color as themselves.
Birds, for example, often protect themselves by keeping
close to the ground, the color of their plumage rendering it
difficult to i^erceive them till they rise. In the instinct of
Self-defense are likewise comprehended all those interior
operations of "vitality" which provide the different species
of living things with a panoply of protecting skin. The
maximum operation of this appears in the scales of fishes,
in the armor of the rhinoceros, in the carapace of the turtle
and the tortoise, and in the shells of the mollusca. Hair,
fur, wool, feathers, &c., are so many varied modes of efiec-
tuating the same principle. The instinct of self-defense is
much more lively in brutes than it is in man. So serious
are their exj)osures to danger, and so limited their powers of
perceiving it, that it is made to operate in them with a force
only equaled by its instantaneousness. The most interesting
example is presented perhaps in the well-known timid cau-
tion of the elephant, which will never cross a bridge without
first trying its strength with one foot. The third of the
leading forms of instinct, the instinct of Propagation, com-
prises that long, beautiful, and most interesting episode in
the history of life which, beginning with the selection of a
mate of complementary sex, underlies all the delights and
energies of existence, and is the means, under Providence,
whereby " the face of the earth" is " renewed." In connec-
tion with this instinct is best illustrated the law of special
instincts, i. e., the particular modifications of the general or
fundamental one whereby the whole of its intent becomes
INSTINCT OF PAIRING. 517
gradually and surely effectuated. Such an instinct is that
of pairing, one of the most admirable in nature. Every
species of animal, where the rearing of the young requires
the attention of both parents, is subject to it; all such birds,
for example, as build their nests in trees. The young of
these birds are hatched blind, and bare of feathers, so that
they require the nursing care of both parents till their eyes
are opened and they are able to fly ; to this end the male
feeds his mate as she sits brooding on her eggs, and cheers
her Avith a song. Another of the special instincts belonging
to the general one of Propagation, specially deserving notice,
is that by which the sexes draw near at such periods of the
year as will cause their young to be ushered into the world
precisely when their food is most abundant. Though the
time of gestation varies so widely in the different species of
herbivorous quadrupeds, previous things are so ordained that
the young appear early in summer, when grass is plentiful ;
the Iambs and the young goats, which are born after a five
months' gestation, come with the first steps of spring, be-
cause they love short grass, such as a foal or a young cow
could scarcely live upon. The young of pairing birds are
similarly produced in early summer, when the Aveather is
warm and genial, and they have a long season before them
wherein to grow and become vigorous, and able to resist the
cold of winter. With the exception of Henry Home of
Karnes, who gives a chapter to it in the Sketches of the
History of Man, (Book 1, Sect, vi.. Appendix,) aU:thorshave
treated this wonderful instinct with a neglect quite unac-
countable. Other special instincts belonging to this class,
eminently interesting to contemplate, though like the last-
mentioned, commonly overlooked as regards brutes, are
those of modesty, chastity, and conjugal fidelity. The last
gives efficiency to the instinct for pairing, and is indispensa-
ble to the nurture of the young, wherever this devolves
44
518 INSTINCT OF PLANTS.
upon both parents; modesty animates the same instinct in
its beginnings, and gives it delicacy and bloom. The most
faithful of the animals beloAV man are the pairing birds; the
most modest is the elephant. The last of the four geat
Instincts, Love to offspring, is like Self-preservation, one of
the principal centres of anecdote. The animal world over-
flows Avith that beautiful impulse to which we every one of
us owe our being, — that sweet, unworded passion, only in a
weaker form, which induces the mother to hold her offspring
whole nights and days in her fond arms, and press it to her
bosom with silent gladness. If there be one thought more
touching than another, when the roll of half a life-time has
either given or denied us a pretty little one of our own, it is
that of the patient, yearning, unreckoned hours when Ave
lay unconscious on our mother's knees. Poor, tedious, Avail-
ing, unthankful little animals, she at least cared for us and
prized us, and though unsightly and uninteresting to all
the Avorld beside, saAv in all our little face all the beauty of
the angels.
Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife
Blest into mother, in the innocent look
Or even the piping cry of lips that brook
No pain nor small suspense, a joy perceives.
Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook
She sees her little bud put forth its leaves.
294. The instinct of Plants is similarly played forth in
maintenance of the individual, and propagation of the spe-
cies. To these ends they are endowed Avith a variety and
an elaborateness of curious impulse quite as high, in propor-
tion to their sphere of being, as that Avhich is observable in
the Animal Kingdom. Except as objects of nomenclature
and classification, plants, ordinarily, are little cared for;
they are passed by as destitute of all that makes animals so
interesting; feeling, consciousness. Abolition, undoubtedly they
TENDRILLED AND TWINING PLANTS. 619
are short of; their economy is nevertheless so strangely like
our own, that it is no wonder a few enthusiasts in every age,
as Empedocles among the ancients, and Darwin and Dr,
Percival* among the moderns, have fancied them suscep-
tible of pleasures and pains, emotions and ideas. As with
animals, there is in plants both an inward vitality and a
series of externalized actions, complementing the interior
ones, the two together making up the sum of the vegetable
economy. Wherever the health and well-being of the indi-
vidual, or the efficient play of the reproductive forces, may
be involved, we find the one grand general principle of
Instinct in operation. It is not peculiar to any particular
part of the plant; it pertains to the whole, and resides in the
whole, operating at every point, according to the exigency.
As examples of the externalized instincts of plants, may be
cited the ingenious methods whereby such as possess stems
too weak to stand upright without assistance, manage, never-
theless, to lift themselves into the air. The sweet-pea and
its congeners, the passion-flower, the bryony, the vine, and
many others, effect this by converting the extremities of
their leaves, or a portion of their flower-stalks, into tendrils,
with which they clasp their stouter neighbors, often stretch-
ing a long way in order to reach them; the Virginian-
creeper puts out curious little organs like hands, having a
sucker at the end of every finger, by means of which it
attaches itself to its prop; other slender plants are found
twining spirally, as the hop, the convolvulus, and the wood-
bine, each kind adopting the particular method of climbing
for which its organization more especially adapts it. The
tendrilled plants are destitute of these organs while young,
* Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manches-
ter, Series I. Vol. 2.
520 INSTINCTS OF SOME AQUATIC PLANTS.
and at first the twining plants grow vertically; the instinct
only comes into operation Avhen the occasion for it arises.
The wonderful instincts of certain aquatic plants, as the
Rujopia maritima, and the Vallisneria, are well known to
every botanist. The first-named curls its flower-stalks spi-
rally, so as by coiling and uncoiling, according to the chang-
ing depth of water, to keep its blossoms on a level with the
surface. The other, the Vallisneria, produces its male and
female flowers on different plants ; at the nuptial season, the
former detach themselves, and floating about upon the
stream, join company with the females. The innumerable
curious facts familiar to the phytologist in regard to the
germination of seeds, the sleep of plants, the power of accom-
modation to adverse circumstances, and other such, points in
vegetable history are, properly, illustrations of Instinct, and
should be treated of in the same way as the ^i^osi-reasoning
acts of brutes.
CHAPTER XXIX.
INSTIX-CT AND HE AS ON CONTINUED.
295. Instinct, belonging to the physiological expression
of life, or that which animates organized material forms,
has no other end or function than the maintenance of those
forms; whence, moreover, it never operates without mani-
festing effects in the organic mechanism: Reason, on the
other hand, has no relation to the body, except as the soul's
lodging and instrument; it belongs to the soul, purely and
abidingly, and may be exercised without giving the slightest
external token. Instead of framing bodily organs, and ori-
ginating physical offspring, and inducing the various phy-
sical acts on which these two great aims depend for their
effectuation, it spans the sciences, sails deliciously through
the heavenly realms of poetic analogy, penetrates the signi-
ficance of things, and looks into the very mind of God him-
self. The life whose phenomena are the instincts, impels us
only to eat, to drink, to propagate, to preserve our fabric
safe and sound ; the spiritual life, the phenomena of which
are forms of reason, gives power, not to do corporeal things,
but to think, and to rise emotionally towards the source of
life. It is by reason of this supra-instinctive life that man
stands as the universal master. God, in creating a being
who can be at once cognizant of his Creator and of himself,
appoints him vicegerent over all. "Man thinks," says
Buffon, "hence he is master over creatures which do not
think." With adaptitude for thinking comes power of
44 « 521
522 THE SOURCE AND CENTRE OF MAN'S DESIRES.
spiritual desire. In brutes (that is to say, where the in-
stinctive ex^Dression of life is all) there is nothing which
reaches further than temporal, terrestrial, purely physical
w^ants; man aspires to spiritual and invisible things; he
desires the delights of intelligence, emotion, and imagina-
tion; the source and centre of all his desires, however
unconsciously it may be to himself, being heavenly and
divine. They come of the soul's insatiable and inalienable
need of God. "This sentiment," as finely said by Victor
Cousin, "the need of the Infinite, is the foundation of the
greatest passions and the most trifling desires. It is the
infinite that we love, while we believe that we are loving
finite things, even while we are loving truth, beauty, virtue.
And so surely is it the infinite itself that attracts and charms
us, that its higher manifestations do not satisfy us till we
have referred them to their immortal origin. A sigh of the
soul in the presence of the starry heavens, the passions of
glory and ambition express it better without doul^t, but they
do not express it more than those vulgar loves which wan-
der from object to object in a perpetual circle of anxious
desires, poignant disquietudes, and mournful disenchant-
ments." If brutes in any case had spiritual desires (which
is tantamount to the possession of reason, seeing that these
two faculties are complementary to one another) they would
worship. The feeblest glimmering of reason among the most
ignorant and savage of our race, is expressed, without ex-
ception, in acknowledgment and adoration of an unseen
power, some "Great Spirit," before whom they bow them-
selves, whose favor they seek, and whose frowns they fear
and deprecate. No brute thus approaches its Maker, nor is
it able. The ox, in its rich pasture, never raises its eyes in
gratitude towards heaven ; it spends its whole existence in
purely material satisfactions, and desires nothing beyond
herbage and drink. It is from the same aptitude to think
INSTINCT IN MAN. 523
of and to love God that man alone is able to appreciate his
transcript in the splendor and sweet beauty of outward
nature. However exquisite the organs of sense may be in
brutes, "eyes have they, but they see not; ears have they,
but they hear not." As tersely expressed by the old poet,
fovs opd Kal foDf aKouci' r aWa Kcjtpa xai TV(p\a.
'Tis mind alone that sees and hears ; all things besides are deaf and
blind. Epicharmus.
296. This, it is, accordingly, the spiritual degree of life,
peculiarly characterized by capacity for rising to its source,
which distinguishes between man and the brute. Man has
the instinctive life, the same as the brute ; but he has the
spii'itual life in addition. He has it by virtue of his possess-
ing a "spiritual body," so organized as to receive eon-
sciously the divine love and wisdom, and to be able to reflect
them back upon their Almighty giver in the shape of admi-
ration of his works, and worship of him as Father and
Saviour. This it is which, establishing a distinction be-
tween human nature and the very noblest of brute natures,
such as no exquisiteness or complexity of mere physical or-
ganization can be compared with for a moment, keeps them
infinitely more distinct than animal and plant, or even or-
ganic and inorganic substance. Though there is one life, —
the instinctive, common to all organic things ; here is
another, the spiritual, peculiarly and unapproachably
human, so that though plants may be charming, and ani-
mals beautiful, man alone can be sublime. What glorious
privileges attend this life ! We do not think of it, but
everything superior to the mere gratification of bodily ap-
petite and provision for physical wants, comes of our being-
gifted with a spiritual organism, receptive of spiritual life ;
in fact, it is this very same divine gift Avhich separates man,
524 POWERS GIVEN P.Y THE SPIRITUAL LIFE.
even as to his animal form and nature, from the brutes.
How varied and beautiful are the attitudes he can assume !
No animal can deport itself as man does, nor can any ani-
mal but man move in the graceful undulations of the dance.
Embodiments, each one of them, of a single and separate
principle, brutes can do just one thing, concordant with
their simplicity ; man, as the compend of the world, can do
all things. Another striking fact of the same nature is, that
while the eyes of animals are always of the same color in the
same species, the human eye, the symbol of human intellect,
is of the most beautiful diversity. The only brute in which
there is a tendency to variety in this particular, is the horse,
which animal, it will be remembered, is in the Word of
God, and therefore in nature, the representative of intelli-
gence.* Man, for the same reason, is the upright animal.
While other creatures have their faces turned earthwise, he is
d.vdpco7ioz'\ " the looker upwards."
Pronaque cum spectent animalia csetera terram,
Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri
Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.
(While other animals bend their looks downwards to earth. He
gave to man a lofty countenance, commanded him to lift his face to
heaven, and behold with upturned eyes the stars. — Ovid, Met. i.
84—86.)
Lactantius, in reference to these celebrated lines, contends
* That the curious white-haired varieties of many animals, called
Albinos or LeuccetJiiops, have pink eyes, the white rabbit for example,
argues nothing to the contrary, because the Albino condition is ab-
normal. See the article " Albino" in the Penny Cyclopaedia, or the
article " Eye" in Todd's Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physioloarv,
p. 161.
■f napa rd ai/<j ixOpciv, according to Plato.
ILLUSTEATIONS OF DISCRETE DEGREES. 525
that the erect form of man is palpably a proof of his being
designed to look upwards alone, that whatever tends to at-
tract his attention to merely terrestrial objects, is contrary
to his nature.* To the sjDiritual body of man is likewise to
be referred his possession of a face. Other animals, as Pliny
observes, have only some kind of muzzle or beak. Hence,
too, that other eminent characteristic of man, the visibility
of the mouth. " With wild beasts and cattle," says Apuleius,
in his Discourse on Magic, " the mouth is low-seated, and
brought down to a level with the legs ; it lies close to the
grass on which they feed, and is scarcely ever to be seen ex-
cej)t when they are dead, or in a state of exasperation, and
ready to bite ; whereas in man you look upon no feature be-
fore this, when he is silent ; and on none more frequently
while he is in the act of speaking." The same is the origin of
the variety of the human voiee, so different from the mono-
tony of that of brutes, and even from the most perfect sing-
ing of a bird. The cries and notes of the inferior animals,
serve on this account, as the Avell-known bases of their names,
in every language, both ancient and modern; cuckoo, peewit,
/JoDC, j^ojuj^o^, &c. The great distinction between the human
voice and the brute is that the former is adapted to articu-
lation. No brute can divide its voice as man does, whence
the ancient Homeric epithet of " voice-dividing man." All
these things are illustrations of Discrete degrees. Whether
we take attitude, countenance, or voice, the ending of the
brute idea is absolute, the beginning of the human entirely
new.
297. Man, it was said in the preceding paragraph, has
the instinctive life, the same as the brute ; he has it, how-
ever, as much more amply as in organization he is superior.
* Divinarum Iiistitutioniini, Lib. 2, cap. 1.
frlij ENNOBLEMENT OF INSTINCT IN MAN.
Flowing, as it does, into a frame so mucli nobler than that
of the brutes, it assumes, in its new recipient, a proportion-
ately nobler nature. The law of promotion, above described,
whereby principles and faculties lifted from a lower platform
to a higher, are there applied to new and greater purposes,
here finds not only confirmation, but its most conspicuous
example ; the very instinct which carries brutes only to
physical ends, in man leads to moral ones besides. Hunger,
for example, which in brutes impels simply to eat, invites
man to social gatherings whose object, at least collaterally,
is the " feast of reason." The brutes feeding together on the
grass, do no more than feed ; to men the highest delight of
meal-time is their cheerful and salubrious company and
conversation. Eating, as such, is at the best, a finite plea-
sure ; it has none of that savor of the infinite Avhich all true
and great pleasures must needs possess ; but it gives occa-
sion for such pleasures to be developed, and hence becomes
in man, a noble function. " I did not calculate the gratifi-
cation of those banquets," says Cicero, " by the pleasures of
the body, so much as by the meetings of friends and con-
versations. Well did our ancestors style the reclining of
friends at an entertainment convivium, since it carries with
it a union of life."* How marked, again, in respect of the
instinct of propagation ! The brute fulfills the physical end,
and ceases there ; man goes furthei", — he loves, and becomes
human in proportion as he loves honorably and faithfully.
Mere animal love is a very low pleasure ; were he incapable
of any higher, man would never have become even civilized.
"Happily directed and controlled," says Feuchsterleben,
" love is the artist of the most exquisite spiritual develop-
ments that human nature is susceptible of; whereas he who
* De. Senectnte, (Jap. 13.
INSTINCT OF LOVE OF HOME, 527
nevei' loves, becomes egotistical, mean, narrow-minded,
covetous, and but too often, an unnatural sensualist.'" So
with the instincts of conjugal fidelity, love to ofFsprmg, and
that exalted and beautiful one, the love of Home. They
lead brute and man alike into states of physical well-being ;
in man, when properly developed, they are seeds no less of
moral, intellectual, and even religious welfare. How many
blissful emotions arise out of the instinct of Home ! The
bird seeks its nest simply for shelter ; man, after the toils of
the day, goes homeward, not merely to sup and rest himself
but to feel in the bosom of affection, and in the SAveet prattle
of his little flock, that to Mm it is still the Golden Age. "To
Adam and Eve Paradise was home ; to the virtuous among
their descendants home is Paradise." Many things which
apjjear to belong to the spiritual degree of life, are thus, in
reality, only high developments of the Instinctive. To dis-
tinguish between the two, we have but to ask concerning any
particular faculty, Is it possessed both by man and animal?
However lustrously a given faculty may shine in man, if we
find it anywhere among the brutes, it is still no more than a
part of the instinctive life. " We may rest assured," says
Sidney Smith, " that whatever principles in the shape of in-
stincts are given to animals for their preservation and pro-
tection, are also instincts in man ; and that what in them is
a propensity or desire, is not in him anything else."* Should
we be at a loss to know whether a given faculty be thus
shared, the place of its origin and its nature are determina-
ble by its End. For it is not in working for a purpose ; not
in the mere contemplation of results, and adjusting things
thereto ; not even in the perception of cause and efiect, —
that man differs from the brute; — it is in working for a
* Principles of Phrenology, p. 123.
528 HUMAN INSTINCT EXPANSIVE AND CUMULATIVE.
purpose having relation to the spiritual and immortal, and
in contemplating causes and issues that lie altogether be-
yond the reach and bearing of the physical. Every instinct,
however, in 7nan, prefigures and presignifies a sentiment be-
longing to the spiritual life. Amativeness, for example, the
seat of which is the </>o^-/^ (common to all living creatures,)
is found over again in the TCveopM. (which man alone pos-
sesses,) in the shape of sjDiritual and unsensuous love. It is
the same idea, moulded on a higher type. The correspon-
dence between our higher and lower nature is one of the
most wonderful features of our humanity. Every man who
will watch himself, may see his animal, sensuous, external
manhood, duplicated within, in higher workmanshij).
298. Instinct, in man, is not only applied to higher pur-
poses ; it is ex]Dansive and cumulative. These, indeed, are
the characters by which it is peculiarly distinguished from
the instinct of brutes, which remains the same from age to
age, as expressed in every attempt at definition. Why thus
expansive, will appear when we consider the especial pro-
vince of the instinctive life with regard to the spiritual.
Though the former may exist without the latter, as happens
with brutes, it is impossible for the spiritual life to exist
without the instinctive. What sustains us and preserves us
as animals (which we must needs be if we are to be men), is
essentially Instinct — not reason. The latter is the source
of all our highest enjoyments, as human beings ; it is the
instrument also of our progression, but it is by instinct that
we are rendered capable of becoming human beings. " The
basis of humanity is animalism. Man lives before he thinks ;
he eats before he reasons ; he is social before he is civilized ;
loves even against reason, and becomes a Nimrod long be-
fore he is a Nestor." As the ground on which his spiritual
nature is based, the instinctive faculties of man are made
capable of a corresponding and adequate expansiveness.
HIGHER PRINCIPLES ENNOBLE THE LOWER. 529
Throughout the universe it is a law that higher principles
shall descend into the next inferior, infusing into them a
dignity and excellence which is neither native to them, nor
attainable, except by communication from above ; God gives
first effect to it by imparting his glory to his nearest image,
"crowning" him with his divine "majesty and honor;" —
all things in their turn pour a largess of their nobler nature
on those beneath. Keason, under this great law, impreg-
nates and ennobles instinct ; the instinctive life similarly
descends into the inanimate Avorld, so far as the latter is
competent to receive it. " Of the qualities," says Philo,
" which the soul has received from God, it gives a share to
the irrational portion of our nature, so that the mind is vi-
vified by God, and the irrational part by the mind." The
spiritual life can only expand by having a plane beneath it
on which to rest ; this plane is furnished by the instinctive
life, every enlargement of which in power and empire offers
so much new scope and opportunity to the soul. The lower
animals have no spiritual life thus to grow and dilate in
them ; their powers, therefore, instead of being expansive, are
determinate. They work, but only within the confines of
their little circles, and after a thousand years' employ, are
still where they began. In man on the other hand, by vir-
tue of the inflowing spiritual life, they are capable of indefi-
nite extension, and grow and spread like watered trees.
Every year sees some new application of them, and the
fruits of their exercises fill the earth. Nothing so plainly
distinguishes between man and brutes as the absolute no-
thingness of effect in the work of the latter. Unless the
coral-islands be esteemed an exception, of all the past la-
bors of all the animals that ever existed, there is not a trace
extant: we see only what is accomplished by the individuals
contemporaneous with ourselves.
45
530 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE.
299. Instinct, being thus co-ordinate with Life, comprises
not only " vitality," and the unconscious external acts ordi-
narily intended by the term — it is the inmost principle also
of a large part of Intelligence, namely, all such intelligence,
whether susceptible of cultivation or otherwise, as is applied
to the effectuation of physical good. It is a higher type of
intelligence which seeks spiritual good. Intelligence, so far
as it relates to material well-being, is not a distinct faculty ;
it is referable to the instinctive life, equally in brutes and
mankind. It is quite a mistake to suppose that instinct has
nothing of intelligence connected with it— that it is uni-
formly and necessarily blind. Often it may be so, and in
brutes perhaps it is the rule, but there are no tribes of crea-
tures in which intelligence is not largely and most evidently
exhibited, over and above their unconscious skill. The
books upon instinct undeniably establish this. " Many ani-
mals," Spurzheim remarks, " modify their actions according
to external circumstances ; they even select one among dif-
ferent motives. A dog may be hungry, but with the oppor-
tunity he will not eat, because he remembers the blows he
has received for having done so under similar circum-
stances."* All the best writers on instinct concur in this
opinion. " One might as well call all the actions of man
rational," says the author of the Natural History of Enthu-
siasm, " as all of the inferior, instinctive." Sir Benjamin
Brodie, in his interesting "Psychological Inquiries," ex-
presses his conviction that " if we study the habits of ani-
mals, we cannot doubt that there are many which, however
much they are dependent on their instincts, ^ro/ii also by
experience, though in a less degree than man." Old brutes
Philosophical Principles of Phrenology, p. 3.
MEMORY. 531
are more cunning than young ones. An experienced fox
diflers materially from a novice in the chase ; he foresees
many snares, and endeavors to avoid them. We must re-
member, further, that brutes in all probability have much
more intelligence than we can become aware of, from their
want of words, from our own inattention, and from our ig-
norance of the import of the symbols which they use in
giving intimations to one another and to ourselves. lu
short, neither is intelligence to be attributed to man as his
prerogative, nor is the brute to be defined as a being of in-
variably unconscious impulse. It is important to observe,
however, that the understanding of brutes is affected solely
through external or sensational stimuli. Human intelli-
gence having reference to physical things, may be excited
either by these or by the interior intelligence of the soul :
intelligent acts are performed by brutes, on the other hand,
only when the external, sensational stimulus which first
called them forth, again affects the creature, and in precisely
the same manner. That is to say, while Reason, or the in-
telligence of the spiritual life, may operate independently
of external stimuli — after it has once been excited by
them — and does not require the aid of the external senses ;
the activity of the intelligence of brutes dejoends for its ex-
citation always and wholly upon such stimuli. This is par-
ticularly observable in acts where memory is concerned.
Memory, in the true idea of it, is a faculty of the spiritual
life, and can be exercised without any external or sensa-
tional stimulus— we lie quietly on our pillows, and in the
dead of night can reproduce what we choose. Brutes have
no such power ; they remember only through the medium
of an outward sense — the dog, for instance, largely through
the sense of smell. It is true that dogs betoken memory
in dreams, as long ago described in the verses of ]^u-
532 MEN ALONE REMEMBER PRINCIPLES.
eretius,* but as this is clearly a recollection of mere events,
in no way involving memory of principles, there can be
little doubt that it is susceptible of the same physiologi-
cal explanation as bears upon their waking acts. Men
alone remember principles ; brutes simply remember circum-
stances. In the former, memory is a spiritual function, and
involves a complication of ideas ; in the latter it belongs to
the instinctive life, and refers but to a single impression.
Other acts of memory in brutes which appear at first sight
difficult to reconcile with the principle of external stimulus,
such as the return of bees to the hive, and of migratory
birds to their native countries, though problems to-day, are
referable, without doubt, to the same origin as the dreams
of the hounds. " Exceptions of this sort," it is well re-
marked by Dr. Martyn Paine, " are but few, and if they be
admitted to surpass our present knoAvledge, the probability
will be allowed, through the weight of analogies, that even
these problems will be seen to be related to the common
physiological laws which rule the instinctive principle in its
ordinary operations, and more especially so as they refer, in
common with the rest, to the wants of organic life."f It is
precisely the same with those ^tmsi-intelligent acts which
are induced in certain animals by training— the various
tricks, for example, which the elephant and the monkey are
taught to play. Unlike genuine intelligence, or the facul-
ties of" the spiritual life, the superinduced conditions of the
instinctive are never awakened except under the stimuli
* Venantumque canes in molli ssepe qniete
Jactant crura tamen subito, &c.
De Eerum jS'atura, iv. 988-1004.
f A Discourse on the Soul and Instinct, physiologically distin-
guished from Materialism: New York, 1849. A very valuable little
Essay.
"moral sense" in brutes. 533
which origmally promoted them, and then only in direct
relation with those stimuli. So, too, with what some au-
thors call the "moral sense" of animals. Man alone has a
moral sense, justly so called, seeing that it can only exist
where there is a spiritual organism comj)etent to receive the
knowledge of God. The dog, for instance, is sometimes said
to act from conscience — that it " manifests a sense of wrong-
when it surprises the game in a manner opposed to its in-
structions, or does any other analogous acts. But this ma-
nifestation happens only under the influence of those physi-
cal causes which lead the creature to act more habitually in
a different manner. The sense of wrong does not originate
from the act, or on account of the act, but is inspired by
the presence of the creature's master, whom it associates
with the suffering which it endured when its instinct was
undergoing discipline."* In thus recognizing the intelli-
gence of brutes, we may seem to be advancing the very doc-
trine above repudiated, that "instinct" is "less reason," and
"reason" "more instinct." Not so. The term Reason, as
commonly used, includes intelligence both as to physical
ends and as to spiritual ones. With the former kind, in-
stinct undoubtedly is identical, passing into it by degrees of
Continuity; but from the latter it is separated by a Discrete
degree, and is therefore absolutely distinct.
300. It is easy to see that much of what is pojoularly
called "Reason" was in its first exercise purely instinct.
Long experience has thrown the early history of human
usages so remotely to the rear, and we are naturally so
prone to ascribe everything that is wise and good to " Rea-
son," — as though we were too proud or too selfish to allow
* A Discourse on the Soul and Instinct, physiologically distin-
guished from Materialism : New York, 1849, p. 112.
45 «
534 INSTINCT SUPERSEDED BY REASON.
that the inferior animals have anything in common with
us, — that Instinct not only goes without its fair shai^e of
credit, in our estimate of human nature, but is well-nigh
ignored. In the infancy of our race, thousands of the acts
which we now ascribe to Reason, must unquestionably have
been impulses of instinct; destitute of the experience which
now guides u?, the first members of mankind must have
proceeded, iu innumerable cases, as the brutes do still; as
experience accumulated, the instinctive procedures would
gradually be superseded by thoughtful ones, and eventually
they would come to be regarded as purely rational. The
selection of food, for instance, must originally have been de-
termined by an instinct in no respect different from that
whieh leads the living brute to eat what is good for it, and
to reject the unwholesome and the poisonous. JSfow, men
may exercise their reason on the choice of new edibles; they
have plenty of exjDerience to proceed upon ; but if instinct
had not directed them at the first, while deliberating what
to eat, they would have starved. All arts and sciences may
be referred back to simple instincts of the same character ;
— instincts having physical welfare for their End, and excited
by sensational stimuli; their expansion and enrichment, as
time has rolled along, they owe to the descending of the
spiritual life on to the plane where they begin. Brutes
have neither art nor science, because although they have
instincts, they have no spiritual life to fertilize them.
This latter is the reason also why the instincts of brutes
are made to work with such admirable precision from the
very moment of birth. As they have nothing further to
receive, they are made perfect at the outset.
CHAPTER XXX.
S VMM Alty.— INSPIRATION,
301. If there be any coherence and validity in the rea-
sonings contained in the foregoing pages, the conclusion
must needs be that everything of which human intelligence
is cognizant, whether animate or inanimate, material or
spiritual, depends on the personal support of the Creator,
and that Life is One and Omnipresent; in other Avords, that
God is the supra-natural ground of all phenomena, whether
physical, physiological, or intellectual; and that all begin-
nings and endings are displays of his divine life in opera-
tion;-— life which flowing continuously into his creation,
never begins or ends, but always is. " Natural laws" there
are, plentiful and amazing, through which his Divine wills
are effectuated, but God is the great mover and upholder
of those laws; there are no laws independently of Him, and
all things are sustained by law. He who said "I bring a
cloud over the earth," teaches us thereby that he is the direct
and personal agent in all natural phenomena, however slight
and apparently casual they may be, no less than in all
spiritual phenomena. " Even the blind heathen named their
supreme deity 'cloud-driving Jupiter;' and shall not Ave, thus
taught by God himself, still more explicitly and reverently
own the living Jehovah, the God in Avhom we live, and move
and have our being, as the Creator of every cloud that flings
its shadow over earth? We own him in the uproar of the
tempest; let us own him in the stillness of the calm. We
535
536 ALL KNOWLEDGE DERIVED,
own him in the huge billow; let us own hira in the ripple
that sinks quietly to rest upon the strand. We own him in
the whirlwind; let us own him in the placid breeze of even-
ing." It is no trifling source of mere pleasure thus to recog-
nize the Creator in the ordinary occurrences of the world.
It sweetens every moment of our time; unites us delight-
fully to the beauties of nature; and associates us with its
varied objects as with so many friends and companions.
302. Viewed in this way, the whole earth is a scene of
Inspiration, — inspiration of sustaining and directing force,
as regards its objects and physical phenomena, and of the
power of thought and feeling as regards the soul. Life and
Inspiration, in fact, go together. Inspiration is literally
"breathing into;" Life is that which is inbreathed. Man
could neither think nor feel were he not a subject of inspira-
tion ; he does nothing purely of himself except choose. It is
permitted him to elect by his free-will what things he will
love and seek to possess, but all the vitality which he briug-s
to bear upon the acquisition of those things, all the efforts
which he makes in connection with the object of his love,
have their well-spring and maintenance in God, — "Tjjyj
TiTijcov, "the fountain of fountains." Every vessel that is
presented to him, God fills with his sustaining life, leaving
the recipient to deal with it how he will; whether it be a
pure vessel, or a foul. Life is poured into it all the same ;
the quality is preserved or mai-red according to the condi-
tion of the receptacle. We talk of our acquiring know-
ledge of what surrounds us by virtue of our intellect. True.
We do so, nevertheless, only in so far as God first inspires
our intellect. We know nothing of a single object of crea-
tion in a manner absolutely original. As finite things in
their very nature are derived, our knowledge, as finite
beings, must also be derivative. As the light of the sun
makes nature, which in its absence is dai'k, jyhysically visible ;
liN'SPIRATION. 537
SO the light of heaven makes it intellectually visible, and
without that light we could know nothing about it. Man's
physical eye does not see by virtue of any inherent property,
but by the aid of the sunbeam ; so the intellectual eye does
not perceive by virtue of innate poAver to perceive, but
through that light which "has come into the world." We
know, in short, just so much of things as God inspires us to
know ; — a slender and fragmentary knowledge at the best, —
even in its highest degree, mere opinion, since the real nature
of things can only be known by the Infinite. Still, it is
enough of them that we know, being just what is needful
to our happiness, — the design of the Almighty in all that he
confers.
303. Inspiration, accordingly, in its full and essential
sense, comprises every form and every variety of influx
with which the Creator animates and instructs mankind.
To attribute it simply to the "holy men of God" who
" spake as they were moved by the holy ghost," is a mistake.
In the inspiration of Moses, the Prophets, the Psalmists,
and the Evangelists, Divine illumination is shown in its
highest and immediate degree, not in its only one. There
are as many degrees below it as there are grades of physical
structure beneath the consummate frame of man. God is
continually visiting the souls of all human beings with a
certain amount of inspiration; awarding to every individual
the kind and quality suited to his capacity and appointed
sphere of duty, and replenishing him Avith new supplies,
according to his needs. St. Paul particularizes some of
these "diversities of operations." To one is given the word
of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge, to another
prophecy, to another, divers kind of tongues, to another the
interpretation of tongues. Influx or inspiration from God,
however, is always in proportion to the out-pouring from
ourselves of what lie entrusts us with. New inspiration can
X *
538 OUR BEST THOUGHTS FROM GOD.
only enter us through our communicating to our fellow-men
the good things we have previously received. We must bless
them with whatever affection and intellect can bestow, if we
would ourselves be newly blessed by God. This is what he
intended us to learn from the incident of the widow's cruse
of oil, which was replenished in the degree that the contents
Avere poured away. Lynch puts the matter clearly and con-
cisely. "The thinking man," he observes, "as another good
result of his thoughtfulness, will get to feel how truly and
impressively best thoughts and inward visions are gifts of
God. When our ' views,' as we significantly say, are most
earnest, most solemn, or most beautiful, we are often con-
scious of being in a state rather than of making an effort."*
Goethe held similar opinions, as related in his conversations
with Eckermann ; — " No productiveness of the highest kind,
no remarkable discovery, no great thought which bears fruit
and has results, is in the power of any one. Such things are
elevated above all earthly control; man must consider them
as unexpected gifts from above, as pure children of God,
which he must receive and venerate with joyful thanks."
All men who closely watch their inner life become conscious
of these high truths, — at least as that life developes. The
sign of growth of the soul is that it gradually loses confi-
dence in its volitional reasonings about best and highest
things, and rej)oses trust rather in what it feels to be given.
Though it is our duty to think and work with all our might,
we lose nothing by " tarrying the Lord's leisure." "JSTewton
confessed that to his patience he owed everything. An
apple plucked from the tree was the death and ruin of
our race; an apple falling from the tree told the story of the
fstars."
304. It is from the perception of this universal and con-
Memorials of Theophilus Trinal, p. 14
POETICAL INSPIRATION, 539
Slant influx from heaven, that we speak in daily converse
of being inspired with hope, inspired with courage, inspired
■with veneration; also of the inspiration of the musician,
the inspiration of the poet. For in using such phrases
of course we recognize an inspirer, or we mean nothing.
All come from the same source, and a single principle ex-
plains every variety. The relation between the inspiration
of the Poet, justly so called, and that of the Bible, is pe-
culiarly important. Before we can properly understand
what biblical inspiration is, it has been well said, we must
understand what jjoetical inspiration is. The two things are
more closely allied than many suppose. No intelligent
reader of Scripture needs to be reminded that the resem-
blance of their written results is most intimate and profound ;
the poetic interpretation of nature stands, in fact, on a level
with the interpretation of the symbolic language of Holy
Writ. Philology goes no deeper than the surface ; the inner
arcana belong to Poetry, and it is only poetical minds of the
highest order that can bring them forth in their true colors.
The poetry of the Bible is one of the features that especially
stamp its divine origin ; it discloses the composition of the
Mind that uttered it ; and deserves as keen attention as its
simple doctrines. If that God were only Intellect, — if there
were only a head shown in nature and the Bible, then the
scientific and philological interpretation would compass all.
But he is Love also. Therefore the world and his word are
no less full of heart, so that there is endless poetic interpre-
tation needed likewise. Poetry was rightly accounted in old
times the language of the gods. To view nature in a poetical,
is an approach towards viewing it in a religious, light. The
ancients expressed themselves in terms similar to our own ,
with regard to inspiration. Homer describes his heroes as
" inspired with valor" by their guardian deities ; and in nar-
rating the famous story of Penelope and her web, piously
540 POLYTHEISM.
makes her say that her ingenious schemes were " breathed
into her by a god." (Odyssey xix. 138.) He has a passage
also to precisely the same purpose as St. Paul's, saying that
to one God gives dancing, to another music, to another a
prudent mind, to another valor, &c. (Iliad xiii. 727 — 733.)
In the 8th Odyssey he repeats it in a varied and more ele-
gant form, — " One man is weaker, but God adorns him with
words, and he discourses with mild modesty ; another in his
form is like the immortals, but grace is not set as a crown
around his speech." (170 — 177.) Seneca comments upon
inspiration in singularly eloquent terms. " Without God,"
he observes, " there is no great man. It is He who inspires
us with great ideas and exalted designs. When you see a
man superior to his passions, hapj^y in adversity, calm amid
surrounding storms, can }'ou forbear to confess that these
qualities are too exalted to have their origin in the little in-
dividual whom they ornament? A god inhabits every
virtuous man, and without God there is no virtue." (Epis-
tles, 41, 73.) The "paganism" and "polytheism" of such
men deserves a milder judgment than is often passed upon
it. However vicious and defective in some respects, it rested
on a pure and reverent religious feeling, which needed but
Christianity to give it a right direction. That which distin-
guishes Christianity from the moralism of Seneca, is not so
much an absolute difference in the principles mculcated, as
the power which it brings, by virtue of its immediate origin,
to carry them out practically in the life. Polytheism, m-
deed, regarded in its better aspect, was but the designation
under many names, of the one universal Father, just as in
Scripture the single Jehovah is styled the Mighty One, the
Lion, the Shepherd, and by hundreds of other names in
turn. The more philosophical of the ancients were fully
alive to the fact of such being the veritable intent of their
theological doctrines. "It is of very little consequence,"
LIFE IMPARTED, NOT CREATED, 641
says the author just quoted, " by what name you call the
first Nature, the Divine Reason that presides over the uni-
verse, and fills all the parts of it. He is still the same God.
We Stoics sometimes call him Father Bacchus, because he
is the universal life that animates nature ; sometimes Mer-
cury, because he is the Eternal Reason, Order, and Wisdom.
You may give him as many names as you please, provided
you allow but one sole principle universally present." (De
Beneficiis, Lib. iv. cap. 7-8.) St. Augustin, probably with
these passages, and similar ones in the Philosophical Dis-
sertations of Maximus Tyrius, (xxix., &c.) before his
mind, puts the matter in the same generous light. " It
was one God," he observes, " the universal Creator and
Sustain er, who in the ethereal spaces was called Jupiter,
in the sea Neptune, in the sun Phoebus, in the fire
Vulcan, in the vintage Bacchus, in the harvests Ceres, in
the forests Diana, in the sciences Minerva." (Z)e Civ.
Dei. iv. 2.)
305. Briefly, then, and finally, we must never attempt to
think of Life, in any of its manifestations, apart from, or
independently of God. Life is uncreate, and wherever Life
is, He is. The same grand principles which we find at the
summit of creation, or in the intelligence of man, and which
we acknowledge, unhesitatingly, to be by influx of the divine
life, are embodied in every kingdom below man, in another
0,nd humbler manner ; animals, plants, and minerals seve-
rally and in turn presenting them, after the likeness of de-
scending octaves. What are Intelligence and Emotion in
tlie soul, reappear, as we descend, in the shape of Instinct,
Vitality, and the physical properties of inanimate matter;
the higher the End, and thence the Form, the more noble is
the presentation ; as the dignity of the End diminishes, and
Jilong with it the grandeur of the form, so does the intensity
of the life. With every step in descent, there is a decline in
46
542 LIFE EPITOMIZED IN GENIUS.
power ; some energy ceases, some faculty disappears, yet the
essential principle runs the entire length, and is found at
the end as j^erfect as at the beginning. It is by no means
the same manifestation that we find. Each new manifesta-
tion is lower than the next above by a discrete degree ;
hence while there are innumerable analogies between them,
little pertains absolutely in common, save their one, divine
origination. The hardest to connect together are doubtless
the life of the mineral and the life of the soul. It must be
done by the intermediate degrees. When we reflect how
beautifully the organizing life of the body rejDeats, on its
lower plane, the organizing life of the soul, it is not difficult
to see that the operation of the crystalizing force in mine-
rals is analogous to that of the vital force in plants and ani-
mals, — that crystalization, in fact, is mineral organization.
Both in organic and in inorganic bodies, the atom'3 are
drawn together and disj)osed with unerring precision, and
with the most exquisite symmetry. The lower physical
forces prepare the way. By attraction, matter is simply
collected together, — one atom held to another, even of the
most heterogeneous kind ; Chemical Affinity superadds to
attraction, the choice of particular atoms, which combine
moreover, in definite proportions ; Crystalization brings the
atoms thus held together into fixed geometrical solid:;,
moulding them, as it were, with the finger of vitality. The
correspondence of the life of the soul with that of the body
appears most plainly perhaps in what is called Genius.
That admirable and wondrous faculty which on the lowest
piano constructs crystals, turning the opaque and grim;''
charcoal into chaste and lucid diamond; — which on the
higher plane constructs blood, and sap, and tissues, builds
them into organs, and then impels them to achieve beautifuj
and useful works ; — that same faculty reappears on the
highest or spiritual plane, as constructive, formative Intel-
ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTIC OF LIFE. 543
lectual force, enabling its possessor, with the help of memory
as a handmaid, to become the poet, the sculptor, or the
painter. The essential characteristic of Life is its construc-
tive, organizing force, and this is precisely what character-
izes Genius,
TIMES AND SEASON'S.
PART I,
While to the poet and the thoughtful man the changes
of Times and Seasons are in the highest degree beautiful
and suggestive, even to the most indifferent and selfish they
are surrounded with an agreeable interest. None view
their progress Avithout regard, however little they may be
attracted by their sweet pictures and phenomena, or moved
by the amenities and wisdom of their ministry. This is be-
cause the changes incidental to nature are, on the one hand,
a kind of counterpart or image of the occurrences and vicis-
situdes of human life ; and on the other, the circumstances
by which its business and pleasures are in large measure
suggested and controlled. The consummation of the old
year, and the opening of the new, brings with it, accord-
ingly, a fine significance, and a pleasurable importance.
So, in their degree, the transitions of Winter into Spring,
of Spring into Summer, of Summer into Autumn ; and so,
in their degree, the alternations of day and night. The
longer the interval, the more interesting is the change.
The close of the year occupies the foremost place in this
universal interest, from its completing a well-defined and
comprehensive cycle of natural mutations. It is by this
circumstance rendered an appropriate epoch for the mea-
surement of life and being ; and hence there fasten on it
peculiar momentousness and solemnity, which remain inse-
46 * 546
546 TIMES AND SEASONS,
parably attached though the season be unknown or forgot-
ten. Days and nights follow too rapidly to serve such a
purpose; and the endings of months and seasons are insuffi-
ciently distinct, except as regards Autumn, which in its ma-
turity and fruits fulfills the very cycle in question. Only as
the result of these mutations does the year exist. Were
there no primroses to die with the spring, no lilies to vanish
with the summer ; were there not sequences of leaf and
flower, sunshine and starlight, there would even be no Time.
For Time, like Space, pertains but to the material circum-
ference of creation, that is to the visible half of the universe,
and is only appreciable through its medium. It is by ob-
jective nature alone that the ideas both of Time and Space
are furnished, and they are sustained in us only so long as
we are in contact with it. The movements of the heavenly
bodies contribute the most exact and obvious data, because
expressly given " for signs, and for seasons, and for days,
and for years."* But the heavens are not our only time-
piece. Another is spread over the surface of the earth in
its living products. The phenomena connected with plants
and the habits of the lower animals, constitute in themselves
a complete system of chronometry; indicating not merely
seasons, but even days and hours. In the times of the leaf-
ing of trees, the blooming of flowers, the ripening of fruits,
the appearance of insects, the singing and nest-building of
* The fine poetic fancy of the ancients deified the various divi-
sions of time, and placed them as attendants on the Sun, himself a
god of the highest rank. See the beautiful description in Ovid's
Metamorphoses, ii. 26-30, where they are represented as standing
round his throne, and wearing the insignia proper to their offices
in the economy of nature. Hence come the innumerable allusions
in poetry to " the Hours," as goddesses : —
"The Graces, and the rosy-bosomed Hours." — Milton
TIMES AND SEASONS. 647
birds, the departure and return of the migratory kinds,
and of every other such incident of unmolested nature,
there is nothing chanceful or uncertain. Every event tran-
spires at a fixed point in the series of changes it belongs
to. So precise, in particular, are the hours at which differ-
ent kinds of flowers open, that it is not only possible, but
easy to form a " dial of Flora," b}^ planting them in the or-
der of their expansion. A yeiy little botany will enable
any one to notice, during the early part of the day, espe-
cially before the dew is off the grass, how one flower antici-
pates another. And not only as to opening in the morning,
but as to closing in the afternoon and evening. Nothing is
more pleasant to the lover of nature, than to watch their
gradual retirement to rest, and the wonderful diversities of
mode in which they shut their petals. The curious coinci-
dences between many of these phenomena, (as of certain
birds returning from their winter quarters at the identical
times when certain flowers come into bloom) have an espe-
cial interest, seeing that they not only indicate times, but
supply striking illustrations of the lovely sympathies of na-
ture, for in nature there is nothing without a friend. Celes-
tial and atmospheric phenomena, if they have fewer of the
charms of variety, in their splendors compensate it tenfold.
How beautiful to note the phases of the moon, the chame-
leon tintings of the sky, the traveling of the planets, and
the circling round the pole of the seven bright stars of the
sleepless Bear ! With what gladness and enthusiasm, too,
in 'the cold, inanimate winter, we view the rising of Orion,
and his brilliant quarter of the heavens. The cheerlessness
of the earth is forgotten in the magnificence overhead, and
we thank God for unfolding so much glory. Every event,
moreover, having its own poetical relations, at once refreshes
the heart, and places before the mind some elegant item in
tlie innumerable harmonies of the universe. In the perpe-
548 TIMES AND SEASONS.
tiial sparkle of the Bear is presented au image of the ever-
wakeful eyes of Providence ; and in the alternate waxing
and waning of the moon, a beautiful picture of the oscilla-
tions in man's fortunes. Hence we find Plutarch using the
latter to describe the chequered life of Demetrius ; and
Dante, to pourtray the varying fortunes of Florence : —
E come '1 volger del ciel della luna
Cuopre ed iscuopre i liti senza posa,
Cosi fa di Fiorenza la Fortura.
(Paradiso, xvi., 82-84.)
(As the revolution of the moon's heavenly sphere hides and reveals
the strand unceasingly, so fortune deals with Florence.)
The regularity with which the phenomena of nature recur,
and their determinate and unvarying character, are ex-
pressed even in many names. Spring is literally the season
of growth; summer that of sunshine; autumn (from augeo)
that of increase or fertility; winter that of the "windy
storm and tempest." All languages possess equivalent
terms. "Zif," the name of the second Hebrew month, or
from thenew moon of May to that of June, signifies literally,
"the splendor of flowers." "ChorejDh," the name for au-
tumn, in the same language, means "the gathering season,"
or time of harvest and fruits. The names given to the
months by the French Revolutionists of 1789, every one
will remember as in deference to the same instinctive prin-
ciple.
Times, years, seasons, accordingly, are not to be esteemed
a part of creation, but simply an accident or result of it.
Our personal experiences concur with nature in testifying
this, for to no two men has time the same duration, nor does
any individual reckon it always by the same dial. To the
slothful, time has the feet of a snail; to the diligent, the
wings of an eagle. Impatience lengthens, enjoyment
TIMES AND SEASONS. 549
shortens it. The unhappy and desolate see nothing but
weary tedium; with the cheerful it glides like a stream.
" The time," says the unhappy poet, in his wretched exile,
"goes so slowly, you would think it was standing still. The
summer does not shorten my nights, nor the winter my days.
Do the usual periods really perform their wonted courses?
Everything is protracted with my eyes."* How different
when we are satisfied and glad ! Let us go amid new and
delightful sceneries, such as vividly excite and animate us,
and when over, the days seem to have been hours, the weeks
to have been days. Let us retire into the quiet, secluded
sanctuaries of thought, losing ourselves in memory or hope,
and how complete again is the departure of all conception
of either time or space. As in Dreamland, distance col-
lapses, and years and life-times contract into a few shining
moments. So, too, when pursuing occupations under the
influence of deep feeling, — "Jacob served seven years for
Rachel, yet they seemed to him but a few days, for the love
he had to her." In Milton, Eve beautifully says to
Adam, —
With thee conversing, I forget all time;
All seasons, and their change, all please alike.
Time, therefore, as in reference to material existence it
simply denotes change, in reference to the spiritual or inner
life, is but another name for emotional states or attitudes.
The man who not only feels to, but actually does live longest,
in other words, sees most time, is he who, taking God for a
sweet, guiding, and enveloping thought, and quick to read
Nature, receives from it the greatest number of impress^
sions,
Natural mutations are emblems both of the external or
Ovid. Tristia, Book v., Elegy x.
550 TIMES AND SEASONS.
corporeal life, and of the inner or spiritual life. And this
is equally the case whether the history of a year or of a day
be taken. For nature, though she seems endlessly diversi-
fied, proceeds on but few methods, of which her diversities
ai'e varied expressions. Whatever department we may se-
lect, whether organization, music, or language, the pheno-
mena of life or those of insensible matter, one or two lead-
ing ideas are all that can be discriminated. Not that the
talent of nature, though great for species, is poor for genera,
because nature, as a manifestation of the Infinite, is com-
petent, necessarily, to express his infinite attributes. It is
that with a view to presenting a sublime and intelligible
unity, such as man's mind shall apprehend with profit and
delight, she better loves to repeat, over and over again, a
few fixed and elegant designs, than to amaze and confound
with an endless multiplicity. When, therefore, from the
outward expression, we penetrate towards the interior idea^
it is always to find some old, familiar fashion ; and to learn
that shapes and complexions are but liveries or costumes
appropriate to their several occasions. The history and
lapse of a day agree, accordingly, with the history of a year,
of which the day is a miniature. Winter corresponds with
night, summer with noon, spring with morning, whence the
beautiful phrase in 1 Sam. ix. 26, "the spring of the day,"
and in Lucretius, the equivalent fades verna diei (i. 10.)
The history of a life-time conforms in turn with both the year
and the day, as shown in our speaking of life's morning,
noon, and evening; of its spring, summer, autumn, and
winter; its April, its May, and its December. For all or-
ganized beings are but successions of phenomena, commenc-
ing, like the year, in darkness and apparent passivity, and
ending in surrender to the effacing fingers of decay. " Even-
ing," says Aristotle, "has the same relation to day that old
age has to life. Therefore evening may be called the old
TIMES AND SEASONS. 561
age of the day, and old age the evening of life, or, as it is
styled by Empedocles, 'the setting of life.' " Nothing has
more pleased the poets than to descant on the similitudes so
strikingly displayed, especially on behalf of the four seasons,
Ovid, for instance, in that extraordinary catalogue of muta-
tions, the fifteenth book of the Metamorphoses; Young, in
the sixth book of the Night Thoughts; and Thomson, at the
conclusion of his "Winter:" —
Behold, fond man !
See here thy pictm-ed life ! Pass some few years,
Thy flowering Spring, thy Summer's ardent strength,
Thy sober Autumn, fading into age,
And pale concluding Winter comes at last,
And shuts the scene.
Prose literature likewise affords numerous allusions to these
analogies. They are a constant subject also with sculptors
and painters, whose highest function is faithfully to repro-
duce in objective forms what the poetic faculty seeks else-
where to delineate in words. The famous riddle of the
Sphynx, the solution of which by Qildipus cost her her life,
will occur to the recollection of every one — "What animal
is that which in the morning goes upon four legs, at mid-day
upon two, in the evening upon three?" On the identifica-
tion of youth with Spring was no doubt founded the ancient
belief that it was in the Spring that the world was created :
a notion supported, among the moderns, by Stukeley, in his
chapter called "Cosmogonia, or the World's Birth-day."
(Palceoffraphia Sacra, p. 44.) It needs no very deep science
to perceive that if the world were created in any season, it
must have been created in all four, since it is always Spring
someivhere, always Summer, Autumn, and Winter, in one
part of the globe or another. If it be intended merely to
assert that it was Spring in the latitude where our first
parents began their lives, then, perhaps, the fancy may be
552 TIMES AND SEASONS.
allowed. According to Venerable Bede, the question was
first determined at a council held at Jerusalem, about the
year 200. After a learned discussion, reported verbatim, it
is finally decided that the world's birth-day was Sunday,
April 8th, or at the vernal equinox, and at the foil of the
moon! ( 6»pera, torn. 2, pp. 346, 347. Ed. Basil, 1563.)
Dwelling as we do, in the heart of the material and fugi-
tive, it is perfectly natural that winter and night should be
regarded as representative of the last stage of our existence.
Yet their truest agreement is not with decay. It is rather
with the darkness and passivity which preliminate life, and
out of which life springs. Everywhere in creation the dim
and shapeless is prior in point of time. The universal law
is that the passive shall precede the active, ignorance know-
ledge, indifierence love. This is why the narrative of the
creation opens with saying that the earth was without form
and void, and darkness upon the face of the deep ; and why
among the ancients. Night Avas finely styled " mother of all
things."
With him enthroned,
Sat sable-vested Night, eldest of things.
The cosmogony of the Greeks, as given by Hesiod, and of
every ancient nation of which any records survive, opens
with darkness, out of whose womb presently proceeds light.
Such is the order acknowledged, indeed, by all the greatest
poets who have ornamented the world. What a fine line is
that in Mephistopheles' address to Faust, when he first
introduced himself, —
Ein Theil der Finstermiss die sich das Licht gebar.
(Part of the darkness which brought forth Light !)
If we would observe a philosophic order, winter, therefore,
should stand first, not last, in the scheme of the seasons, as
TIMES AND SEASONS 553
among the ancient Egyptians, with whom harmonies were an
exact science, and who drew the sun at the wanter solstice as
an infant, at the vernal equinox as a youth, at the summer
solstice as a man of middle age, and at the autumnal equi-
nox as one in his maturity.* The other seasons would then
fall into their rightful places, Autumn, or the period of ripe-
ness, crowning the noble annals. For autumn, in turn, it is
far less just to regard as emblematic of bodily decrepitude,
than of consummation, maturity and riches. Job gives a
beautiful example of its legitimate symbolic use when,
recalling the days of his prosperity, he denominates them
his f]in (cliorepli,) literally, as above mentioned, his time of
gathering in fruits. The authorized version neutralizes this
eloquent figure by translating it " in the days of my youth"
But that the word here certainly signifies Autumn, is plain
from the remainder of the chapter, even without consulting
its etymology. Pindar uses Autumn for the perfection of
physical beauty. (Isth, 2, 5. Nem. 5, 6.) Sir Thomas
Browne applies the same name to the Resurrection. The
dating of the year from a day in the depth of winter is
itself a testimony to the true position of the seasons in
question.
By virtue of the primitive relations which so wonderfully
link the spiritual and the material, the growth of the year
has precisely the same analogies with the development of
the intellect and affections, as with the history of the body.
Winter answers to their germ-stage, summer to their flow-
ers, autumn to their maturity. Hence the elegant and fa-
miliar metaphors by which the first buddings of the intellect
and affections are called their Spring. The Greek poets not
infrequently put Autumn, in like manner, for ripened intel-
■^ MacrobiuE, Saturnalia, Lib. 1, cap. 21.
47 Y
554 TIMES AND SEASONS.
ligence and wisdom, as ^schylus, in his tragedy of the
Suppliants.* Gifted with the sight of these fine analogies,
few things are more delightful to the accomplished mind
than to note the early primrose and anemone, the wood-sor-
rel, and the young, uncurling ferns. It sees in them, and
in all delicate buds, the pictorial counterparts of its own
first steps — images of the pretty little flowers of fancy and
affection put forth from the heart of a child. The same cir-
cumstances originate an important part of the pleasure with
which the mind regards the verdure of trees newly-leafed,
the activities and the music of birds, and the thousand other
fair conditions of the j^ear in its adolescence. It sees re-
flected in them its own felt progress. In that perfect sea
of rich poetry, " Festus," both the physical and the spiritual
symbolism of the year are given in a single passage : —
We women have four seasons, like the year.
Our spring is in our lightsome, girlish days,
"When the heart laughs within us for sheer joy.
Summer is when we love and are beloved ;
Autumn when some young thing with tiny hands.
And rosy cheeks, and flossy, tendrilled locks,
Is wantoning about us day and night.
And Winter is when those we loved have perished,
For the heart ices then.
Some miss one season, some another ; this
Shall have them early ; and that, late.
The soul, as it quickens towards God (which is quite a
different thing from growth in the loves and intellectualities
of the simply secular life), similarly views itself reflected
wherever the vernal is gushing forth, and loves to think
how profound is the dependence on Him " who changeth
the times and the seasons, who giveth wisdom to the wise,
=^ 998, 1015.
TIMES AND SEASONS. 555
and revealeth the deep and secret things." A more com-
plete and admirable image than is here presented, it would
be difficult to find. For like the seeds and roots which lie
hidden in the cold, bai-e earth during winter, full of splen-
did capacity and life, are the latent desires in the una-
wakened soul for what is good and heavenly, inherited from
the golden age ; and when once quickened, nothing can re-
press their energy, or forbid their shooting into a luxuriant
and flowery vesture for the surface late so naked. We
should never desire to be regenerated Avere it not for the re-
mains of original innocence, which thus repose, like sleeping
angels, in our hearts. Martineau appropriately opens his
beautiful book, " Endeavors after the Christian Life," with
sketching this truest spring-time of the soul, this beginning
of its real, productive life. " The thoughts which constitute
religion are too vast and solemn to remain subordinate.
They are germs of a growth which, with true nurture, must
burst into independent life, and overspread the whole soul.
When the mind, beginning to be busy for itself, ponders the
ideas of the infinite and eternal, it detects, as if by sudden
inspiration, the immensity of the relations which it bears to
God and immortality. The old formulas of religious in-
struction break their husk, and give forth the seeds of won-
der and of love. Everything that before seemed great and
worthy is dwarfed ; and secular affinities sink into nothing-
ness compared with the heavenly world which has been dis-
covered. There is a period when earnest spirits become
thus possessed ; disposed to contrast the grandeur of their
new ideal with the littleness of all that is actual, and to look
with a sublimated feeling, which in harsher natures passes
into contempt, on pursuits and relations once sufficient for
the heart's reverence." " Pray that your flight be not in
the winter," means ''before the frosts of indifference to God
have melted."
556 TIMES AND SEASONS.
The sequence of morning to night pourtrays precisely the
same facts, because each perfect and independent day of
twenty-four hours is a year in little, and therefore the ana-
logue of the entire spiritual history. We speak, accord-
ingly, of the night of ignorance, the night of superstition,
the dawn of reason, the dawn of the understanding. Hence,
too, the innumerable beautiful figures in which these things
are spoken of under the equivalent names of "darkness"
and " light." As with the transition from ignorance into
knowledge, so with the nobler progress "vvhich introduces lis
to God. Before we know him, it is night, afterwards it is
morning and day. It is in the night that he comes to us,
just as it is during the night of nature that the sun ap-
proaches (for it is not morning till he is risen), whence the
beautiful figure in the parable, that the cry of the bride-
groom's coming is heard at " midnight." It was for the
same reason that the angels announced the nativity to the
shepherds by night leather than by day — a ministry sweetly
renewed, with all its heavenly light and music, wherever
the "flocks" of the heart are seen to be watched and
cherished.
To the same class of facts belong the circumstances of our
Lord being born into the material world in the depth of
winter ; and of the crucifixion taking place during chilly,
wintry weather, as shown by the people kindling a fire and
warming themselves. These are iiot mere accidents in the
historj^, but representative occurrences inseparably con-
nected with the spiritual ones they accompany. In several
ancient languages the name of God is literally " light," or
" morning." Such is the case with the Greek 6eoz and the
Latin Deus (whence the French Dieu, and our own word
Deity ^ both of which, together with the name of the old In-
dian god Dyaus, rest on the Sanscrit root div, to shine or
irradiate. The Greek Zeo(; and the Latin Jtt-piter are from
TIMES AND SEASONS. 557
the same source, by permutation of sounds, as shown by the
inflections dcFo^, Jovis, &c., and by the derivatives divum
(whence divine and divinity) and dies, the day, literally " the
shining." Jupiter, and the equivalent Diespater, Diespiter,
signify, literally, " father of light." With the same root are
doubtless connected the Celtic di, dian, and the Anglo-Saxon
dcEgan, whence our current dawn and day.
But more than one such day is needful to regenerate a
man. He must go through many successive stages, intro-
duced to one day after another, through the medium of
many nights of labor and struggle. And that we may be
familiarized with it from the first, this is just what is
depicted at the very entrance to God's Word. In their
"evenings and mornings," and the accompanying serial
ci'eations, the opening verses of Genesis sublimely picture
the development of the various emotions and perceptions
proper to the Christian character, which gradually open
out, like the days of a week. For there are no leaps in the
history of spiritual progress, — no violent transitions. There
can be no seventh day's rest in heaven without six preceding
ones of work, which every man must perform for himself, at
God's suggestion, and with God's help. "Let there be
light" is only the introductory act, — the showing the way.
At first man is not conscious how much is needed of him.
It seems sufficient that light has broken. He knows not
how bare and desolate is his heart, nor that, until a third,
and a fourth, and a fifth day shall have clothed it with
siJiritual counterparts of the "living creatures," the "grass,"
the "herbs," and the "fruit-trees," it will be only a desert,
and can neither "rejoice" nor "blossom as the rose." Of
such a course of developments, accordingly, growth in religion
is made up, each stage having its own evening and morning,
just as each year of life has its winter and summer. For
"evening" here signifies, not the twilight of a day that is
47 *
568 TIMES AND SEASONS.
past, but the whole of the dark portion of the tweuty-four
hours, and "morning" the whole of the light portion. The
two together make up a complete period in the history, just
as a night and a day combined, (the latter dating from
midnight,) make up each of the three hundred and sixty-five
"days" of the solar year.
The creation of man comes last, because it is not until
such a series of developments has taken place, that the
intellect and affections attain that upright and noble attitude
in reference to God, which constitutes genuine manliness.
PART II.
Times and seasons correspond with the life of man in a
twofold manner. First, there is the image of his gradual
development, both as to body and soul, presented, as above
described, in each complete and independent year and day.
Secondly, there is the image of his innumerable changes and
vicissitudes, presented in the varied qualities and occurrences
of seasons, days, and hours in general. For as Avith winter
and summer, light and darkness, heat and cold, rain and
sunshine, clouds and azure, music and silence, — for even the
wind and the waters are still at times, — so Avith health and
sickness, hunger and content, fatigue and vigor; no state or
condition is lasting. Down even to the minute and secret
phenomena of what the physiologists call " molecular death,"
namely, the continual decay and rei^lacement of the animal
tissues, Change is the universal condition of existence. And
while so marked a feature of the inanimate -world, and of
the animal life, infinitely more true of the soul, because of
its infinitely higher capabilities and senses. At one moment
buoyant with hope, at another depressed by disappomtment
or misgivings ; cheerful to-day, mournful to-morrow ; in the
course even of a few minutes it Avill run through a long series
of intensest emotions. Change, accordingly, has in all ages
been the chosen theme of the moralist and the preacher;
while, as at once the most solemn yet most animating, the
most sad yet most beautiful subject on which the human mind
can dAvell, poetry and philosophy have ever held a friendly
559
560 TIMES AND SEASONS.
rivalry in describing its loveliness, and interpreting its les-
sons.* Well styled by Feltham, "the great lord of the uni-
verse," all the best charms of objective nature, and all the
noblest attitudes of the intellect and affections owe their
being to its magic touch. Incessantly at work, transfiguring,
dissolving, and recombining, it makes the physical world one
vast kaleidoscope wherein new and unthought-of charms
are brought to view with every turn of day and season.
Changed, not destroyed, our lament for the beautiful as it
glides from out our grasp, is but to lament that brighter
things are coming. For there is no truth more sublime than
that decay, death, and disajDpearance are not annihilation,
but simply the attendants on change of form. Annihilation is
an impossible thing. Nor is there any truth more consola-
tory. The chrysalis is the cradle of the butterfly at the
same moment that it is the tomb of the grub; the flowers of
the summer cease to smile, that the fruits of autumn may
step forth. So Avith the changes of the inner life. For as
changes and contrasts are the springs of all our haj)piness
and enjoyment in connection with the external life, as well
as productive of the most charming aspects and conditions
of nature ; so is it from changes in our spiritual states that
we acquire true Avisdom, and that our affections become in-
vited into their loveliest and most sacred channels. No
one, for instance, is capable of truly and heartily sympa-
thizing with the troubles of another, until he has himself
been touched by sorrow. How beautiful and pathetic, be-
cause so faithful to nature, is that passage in the first vEneid
* As beautiful for its succinctness, as tlie 15th book of the Meta-
morphoses is remarkable for its detail, on tlie subject of change, is
the fine passage in the CEdipus Coloneus, of Sophocles, beginning
<L <pi\raT' Aiyfwf naT, (607-615.) With the former compare Lucretius,
"Mutat enim, mundi naturam totius setas," &c. Lib. v. 826-834.
TIMES AND SEASONS. 561
where the gentle but unfortunate Dido speaks for the genu-
ineness of her sympathy on the ground of her own experi-
ence of misfortune. It is, indeed, by reason of this neces-
sity, that the laws and phenomena of the natural world are
as we find them. Throughout the universe, whatever ex-
ists, exists not so much for its own sake, as for the sake of
something higher and nobler than itself. Night does not
unroll its shades solely that the body may rest and sleep ;
nor does winter diffuse its frosts only that the trees and
plants may hybernate, and the soul refit itself for feeding
them. They have a nobler use than this. They have les-
sons to give. They exist, like all other natural mutations,
that they may be emblematic of the vicissitudes so import-
ant to the spirit; and that from studying the glory and
beauty which arise from them, we may learn what is the
end and promise of our own. " We often live under a
cloud," says a thoughtful writer, " and it is well for us that
we should. Uninterrupted sunshine would parch our hearts :
we w^ant shade and rain to cool and refresh them." If this
be true of the secular side of our constitution, how much
more so of the heavenly ! It shows why Scripture history
(which has a didactic intent throughout) is one continuous
detail of misfortune and success, trouble and consolation ; —
the narrative, for instance, of the pilgrimage of the Israel-
ites, universally acknowledged to be typical of the way of
regeneration. In this, every one is beset by hindrances and
temptations, which, though sorely oppressive while they last,
nevertheless give place in turn to triumph. The hunger
and thirst, and bitter streams, all shoAV what must be anti-
cipated, but no less so the supply of food, and the sweeten-
ing of the waters. It is a happy thing for a man to feel
famished, and that the waters are bitter, for it is the sign
of an amending nature, and leads him to cry to God for
help. If we are not often so impelled, it is a proof that we
562 TIMES AND SEASONS.
are but little advanced upon our journey. There can be no
virtue or gladness without trial and suffering in the first
place. There is no buying corn of Joseph till there has
been a famine in the land ; nor can any man laiow what
are the green pastures and the still rivers, till he has been
in the valley of the shadow of death. God cannot lead him
thither till he has felt how Aveak he is in himself Until
this experience shall have been gone through, they are a
mere mirage of the imagination. " It must needs be that
the Son of Man suffer before he enter into his glory." In
its aptitude for grievances, temptations, and perplexities,
conjoined with its free-will, the spirit of man is constituted,
accordingly in the very best manner possible for urging him
on towards heaven. Though they are painful to him, they
are privileges.* That was a deep insight into the economy
of Providence which saw that —
Sweet are the uses of adversity.
Had Flavins Boethius never been imprisoned by Theodoric,
he had never written his " Consolations of Philosophy." To
a prison also we owe the " Pilgrim's Progress."
As with numbers of other splendid truths, we uncon-
sciously express the excellency of alternation in various
words of common discourse, as temper, temperament, tem-
perature. For all these terms have an immediate affinity
with the Latin tempus, "time." Literally, therefore, to
" temper," signifies to combine or intermingle different
* In reference to these matters may be quoted Lord Bacon's ad-
mirable precept that " we should practice all things at two several
times, the one when the mind is best disposed, the other when it is
worst disposed ; that by the one you may gain a great step ; by the
other you may work out the knots and stonds of the mind," (Adv.
of Learning, Book ii.)
TIMES AND SEASONS. 563
states or conditions, just as seasons, days and nights are in-
termingled by nature. And as the object of such intermin-
gling is to benefit and ameliorate, the idea of benevolence
incorporates with it. Thus, " God tempers the wind to the
shorn lamb." Virgil often uses the word in this way.
When the sunburnt land is refreshed by water, he says that
" arentia temperat arva," " it tempers the thirsty fields ;" and
a little further on, " cum frigidus aera Vespera temperat,"
" when cool evening tempers the air." The sun, Cicero finely
calls mundi temperatio, " the temperer of the world." As a
substantive, "temper" denotes our general character or dispo-
sition, because compounded of various ingredients. Accord-
ing to the predominance of one element or another, it is good
temper, or ill temper, mild temper, or harsh temper. To be
"temperate" is not to remain in anyone season or state, but
to give everything its proper meed of attention, in deference
not only to the rules of health, but to the instructions of the
Preacher, when he tells us that " there is a time for every-
thing," and that " God hath made everything beautiful (or
good) in its season." The "intemperate" man, whether in
things of body or mind, is he who, bestowing his love exclu-
sively on the spring or the summer, in the morning or the
evening, refuses to enjoy more than a single season ; and
thereby neutralizes both the pleasures he selects, and the
kind offices of the remainder of the year. Who so much
enjoys the calm, sweet friendship of the summer, as he who
has fought with the asperities of winter ? " Temperature,"
in its primitive sense, denotes that agreeable condition of the
atmosphere which results from the due admixture of heat
and cold.
We use the word "season" in much the same Avay, and
for a similar reason, season being a kind of synonym of
time.
664 TIMES AND SEASONS.
" Earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice."
Experiencing the mutations of nature, then, in our own
daily history, and vividly so as regards the spiritual half of
our being, the names of the divisions of times and seasons
become the appropriate metaphors wherein to speak of our
varied states of heart and mind. There is no other lan-
guage for the purpose. Nor are any figures referring to
time so frequent, from the circumstance of the present de-
partment of the correspondence having been far more
largely recognized than that which regards the symbolism
of the year in the collective ; which arises in turn, from
the fact that men are prone to affix their attention to
passing events and contiguous objects, rather than to rise
to the panoramas of philosophy. Spring, for instance, is
everywhere identified with hope. Men see that in all their
qualities the two things are naturally and inseparably ac-
cordant; and this is probably a reason why descriptions
of spring are more plentiful than those of any other sea-
son. For Hope, the only heritage of many men, and
the light, life, and nepenthe of all, is naturally foremost
among the emotions, and the most agreeable to think and
write about ; and it cannot be supposed that the mind ever
fastens with a pure and animated affection on natural ob-
jects and appearances, simply because they are pleasing to
the eye and ear. That in nature always most interests us
which bears the closest affinity with the feelings we most
prize, and those feelings are most prized which yield us our
highest satisfaction and solace. Eousseau pourtrays the
symbolic character of the spring in the most beautiful man-
ner : — " To the appearance of spring the imagination adds
that of the seasons which are to follow. To the tender buds
which are perceived by the eye, it adds flowers, fruits,
TIMES AND SEASONS. 565
shades, and sometimes the mysteries they conceal. It
brings into one point of view the things that are to succeed,
and sees things less as they are than as it wishes them to be.
In the autumn, on the contrary, we can only contemplate
the scene before us. If we wish to anticipate the spring,
our course is stopped by winter, and our frozen imagination
expires amid snows and fogs." {Emile, lib. 1, tome 1, 448.)
Spring, like the morning, is used also as the emblem of
peace and gladness after misfortune, and with perfect pro-
priety, because the season of returning hope. Shelley gives
a charming example : —
Thou Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart
Fell like bright Spring upon some herbless plain.
How beautiful, and calm, and free thou wert.
In thy young wisdom !
Pindar also, having first called calamity and bereavement
by the name of vnpu.c, or " snow storm," — -
vvv (5' av iitra x^^l^^P^ov ttoikiXo) //i/i/oii' ^d(pov,
XOuv 0}TE (potViKCOtariv av6r]<TSv poSoi;.
" But now again, after the wintry darkness of the changing months,
(this happy household) like the earth, has blossomed with purple
flowers."— Js</i. iii. 36, 37.
So in the elegant poetry of Ovid, —
Nee fera tempestas toto tamen horret in anno ;
Et tibi (crede mihi) tempora veris erunt.
" Bleak winter does not freeze throughout the year ; and to thee,
too, believe me, the sweet hours of Spring will yet arrive." — Fasti,
i. 485-6.
In the Tristia of the same author, the word verno, literally,
to be like the spring, is applied to the joyous warbling of the
birds over their newly-made nests, one of the most sweet and
inspiring accompaniments of the vernal season : —
48
566 TIMES AND SEASONS.
Prataqne pubescunt variorum flore colorum ;
Indociliqne loquax gutture vernat avis.
" The meadows are decked with flowers of many hues ; and the
prattling birds carol with their untaught throats." — Lib. iii., EL
xii. 7, 8.
Summer and winter accord with prosperity and adversity.
Hence the famous lines at the opening of Richard the
Third :—
" Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by the sun of York."
jEschykis, in the Prometheus, cites winter with admirable
effect : —
Kairoi Kal \kyova^ dSvpojiai
dedaavTOv xsinCsva, Kal Sia(pdopdv
piopipDs. (642-644.)
" And yet do I grieve even to speak of this heaven-gent winter,
and the ruin of my form."
It is finely introduced, also, in line 1015 of the same play.
But fairly to quote examples of these two figures, would be
to illustrate the spontaneity with which they have been used
by the best poets of all ages. Language finding no terms
so fit, they become a part of its current coin. There is,
however, one beautiful fact in connection with the emblem-
ism of the seasons which should not be passed over. As in
every part of the year some particular department of nature
is in its highest glory and perfection, so at each period of
life some particular intellectual faculty is in the ascendant,
some sentiment is most persuasive, some passion most im-
perious. Johnson has well treated of the latter circum-
stances in a paper on the "Climacterics of the Mind."
(Rambler, No. 151.) Each season of the year, like each
hour of the day, suggests also its own particular themes for
thought and conversation ; so that when living in our true
TIMES AND SEASONS. 567
and proper relations with nature, there springs up a delicious
and rewarding sympathy in our minds, which at once em-
bellishes the world without, and gladdens and fertilizes the
little Avorld within. Keenly sensible of the operation of this
beneficent law, the meditative find it alike easy and agree-
able to classify their thoughts and ideas under the names
of the months and seasons. The Italian prose poet of the
17th century, Partenio Giannettasio, divides his lively and
versatile book, Annus Enruditus, into four portions, naming
them Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter.
Of the particular months of the year. May, as the most
celebrated for its charms, is also the most frequently used in
metajDhor. Perhaps the most elegant instances of the latter
are those occurring in the minor poems of Schiller, pieces
many of them inimitable, except to paraphrase, even in the
hands of his most successful translator — Bulwer. Thus —
Deine Seele gleicli der Spiegelwelle,
Silberklar und sonnenhelle,
Maiet nocli den triiben Herbst um dich.
Literally,
" Thy soul, like the mirror-wave, silver-clear and sun-bright, still
3Iays the dim Autumn round thee." — {Melancholie an Laura.)
As with the four seasons, and with the months, so with day
and night. No two days are exactly alike. Somewhere, in
the look either of the sky or of the earth, there is sure to
have been a change. Even the nights differ in kind. What
a contrast between an atmosphere choked with black and
melancholy vapors, and the transparent sky of a frosty
winter's night, when the innumerable stars are glittering,
or the round moon is "walking in her brightness." Take
but a single portion of day or night, and the minutes them-
selves are found inconstant. One lovely tint of sunrise or
of sunset comes but as the herald of another. While we
568 TIMES AND SEASONS.
watch the purpling of the great cloud-mountains of the west,
and- the surge of liquid gold above their brows, the sprinkled
roses of the zenith have shed their leaves and fled. So with
the successive hues of the brighter mornjngs of Summer and
early Autumn. He was no poor observer who gave to their
heavenly splendors the immortal epithets of y.poxonerrko^
and pbdood/iToXoQ.^ Precisely similar, as to their muta-
bility, are the states or attitudes assumed by us in our inner
lives. Every one is sensible that there are light and dark-
ness which are not of the sky ; and that peace and happi-
ness are in sweet natural agreement with the morning, when
the light breaks forth, and everything is glad ; sorrow and
disappointment with the gloom of evening ; and their ex-
tremest and bitterest degrees with the darkness of deep
night. Hence, in the languages of all nations, we find such
similes as the morning of hope, the noon of enjoyment, the
night of sorrow ; every one of them taking also the briefer
and pleasant form of metaphor, and thus resting on our in-
tuitions for translation. What can be more exquisite and
touching than when poor Electra, in Sophocles, exclaims to
her long-lost brother, the only friend she has in the world —
vvv (5' I'xa) <TC' T7pov(pavrig 6i
(piXrdrav EXtJ*' Trpoanipii/.
" But now I have thee ; and thou hast dmmed upon me with most
dear aspect." — {Electra, 1285-6.)
In calamity, says the Arabic proverb, there is hope, for the
end of a dark night is the dawn.
The life of religion experiences the same vicissitudes.
Consisting of six principal evening-mornings, its minuter
history records, nevertheless, an infinity of little ones ; just
* " Safiron-robed" and " rosy -fingered."
TIMES AND SEASONS. 569
as the three-score-and-ten years of the animal life are made
up of some five-and-twenty thousand miniatures of years.
Involuntarily and strangely to us, there are perpetual oscil-
lations betAveen love and indifference towards what is right.
Without knowing how or why, we find every now and then,
that we have traveled into the " strange country" of the
prodigal son.* Scripture, accordingly, is replenished with
allusions to day and night, morning and evening, in these,
their particular senses, niglit and evening being used to de-
note the sorrow and despondency of the soul ; morning and
day to express faith, hope, and joy. The context always
indicates whether the words refer to stages of the spiritual
development in general, or simply to its often-repeated con-
ditions. In the Psalms these figures are especially abundant.
Thus — " At midnight I will rise to give thanks to thee, be-
cause of thy righteous judgments." Here is shown how
under the deepest sense of sin and disobedience, a sincere
and contrite heart will yet remember and be grateful for
God's mercy. To the same purport is Ps. Ixiii. 6, — "When
I meditate on thee in the night-watches, because thou hast
been my help, in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice."
Out of the cold and darkness of such night, as out of winter,
burst light and beauty. No state of despondency or mourn-
ing is so deep that in due time it does not give Avay to hope
and rejoicing. Our "youth is renewed like the eagle's."
When his sorrows pass into peace, David exclaims, because
of this — " I will sing of thy mercy in the morning." And
elsewhere, that though " weeping may endure for a night,
* " Moral epochs have their course as well as the seasons. We
can no more hold them fast than we can hold sun, moon, and stars.
Our faults perpetually return upon us, and herein lies the subtlest
difficulty of self-knowledge." — Goethe, Dichtung unci Wahrheit, book
xiii., vol. 3, p. 123.
48 S'
o70 TIMES AND SEASONS.
joy Cometh in the mornuig." And to show again that
whatever may be our state, the mind should always be di-
rected towards God, he says of " the righteous man," that
'' in His law doth he meditate both day and night." All
these passages acquire their highest interest and significance
from our realizing them within ourselves. It was for this
end they were designed. Beautiful and practical as they
are in the letter, and affecting as the recorded utterances of
an individual, they truly become God's word to us only in
proportion that we feel that we repeat them for ourselves,
and not so much with our lips, as in the inmost recesses of
our being. The history of the ravens bringing food to
Elijah while in the Avilderness, both " in the morning" and
" in the evening," has the same personal relation to us, and
is to be interpreted after the same manner. Whenever,
like the proj>het, we are dwelling " by the brook Cherith,"*
God's benevolent remembrance lets no period pass over
without giving appropriate supplies of nourishment. All
that he asks is faith in him, and then he will cheer the
darkest night. It is a glorious privilege to have the power
of honoring God hj faith. Angels can adore and love, but
only man, the suffering, self-made exile, surrounded by
doubts and error, pain and temptation, tempest and dark-
ness, can honor his God hj faith.
" Day" is used not only in the senses above specified, but
also as a metonymy for time, periods, and seasons in gene-
ral, and thence as a metaphor for states and conditions of
all possible kinds, whether good or evil. "Time," "period,"
and " season," are similarly used as figures for " day." We
speak of days of rejoicing, a day of trouble, times of success,
* To dwell "by the brook Cherith" signifies to be in the endu-
rance of temptations. Though the truths of the Word are then in
obscurity to man's mind, he is nevertheless supported by them.
TIMES AND SEASONS. 571
seasons of hope, the days of one's youth. " Behold, I will
add unto thy days, fifteen years." (Is. xxxviii. 5.) It is im-
portant to note this meaning of the word, because of its fre-
quent use in Scripture to denote states in general, whatever
their quality. " Give us this day our daily bread," is in its
higher sense, a prayer for the spiritual assistance best suited
to the' condition of our soul at the moment of preferring the
request.
So varied is the moral significance of Times and Seasons
that they might yet be contemplated in new relations, and
with new and agreeable profit. How beautiful, for in-
stance, is the agreement of the morning and the Spring with
childhood, in the further respect of its peculiar innocence
and purity ! It is by reason of this agreement that in
Scripture, the innocence and purity so vitally essential to
the life of the Christian, are frequently denoted by or sym-
bolized in childhood ; as when our Lord placed the little
child " in the midst," thereby shoAving that innocence should
be the centre of thought and deed. For every act of the
Saviour's, as well as every word, has its spiritual meaning
and instruction ; and if, with His divine help, we do not
strive, in every daily duty, to place the little child in the
midst, each of us for ourselves, in the principles and method
of our actions, we are not truly attending to His behests.
Hence, too, His divine warning that unless we become " as
little children," we can " in no wise enter the kingdom of
heaven." It is for the same reason that the Lord is imaged
as " the Lamb." In the unaffected simplicity of all its lit-
tle ways, in the sharing of its food, for example, with those
around, the little child is the sweetest emblem of the Chris-
tian, Avhile the exquisite delicacy of its frame is the outward
and visible picture of its moral qualities. Hence the deep
significance of the history of Naaman, who, when he had
obediently washed himself in the Jordan for his leprosy.
572 TIMES AND SEASONS.
" became clean, and his flesh like the flesh of a little child."
In the future state we shall probably enjoy all the varieties
of temporal life at the same moment ; the wisdom of age,
the vigor of manhood, the grace of youth, the innocence of
infancy.
Again, morning is pre-eminently the time of beauty.
Hence the innumerable similes of " beautiful as the morn-
ing," and " fair as the morning." With its added attributes
of innocence and purity, it becomes the emblem of female
youthfulness. In " Festus," accordingly, we have the
"maiden moi'n," and the "virgin morn." A "mVgin" is
literally, " one in her spring," both as to time and to moral
state. And as the latter is the higher signification of this
beautiful word, the Bible applies it to both sexes. " These
are they which are virgins, which follow the Lamb whither-
soever he goeth."
Finally, may be noticed the ancient, pleasing, and uni-
versal fancy that heaven is a land of perpetual spring and
sunshine.
" There everlasting Spring abides.
And never-withering flowers."
In conformity Avith this belief, the pictures sought to be
drawn of the future state of the blessed have in every age
used spring and daylight for their unvarying landscape.
But it may be questioned if this be right. Milton perhaps
is nearer the truth when he makes Raphael tell Adam that
in heaven, as on earth, there are changes of times and sea-
sons, morning and evening : —
"For we have also our evening and our morn."
" The face of" brightest heaven had changed
To grateful twilight (for night comes not there
In darker veil), and roseate dews disposed
All but the unsleeping eyes of God to rest."
TIMES AND SEASONS. 573
He gives the reason also why it should be so : —
" For change delectable."
There can be no doubt that that grand unity of design
which links together every law and item of the visible uni-
verse, extends also to the heavenly world ; making it a sub-
lime prototype in spiritual scenery and phenomena, of what
here below is witnessed in material shape. Time reigns in the
world of matter ; state, in the world of spirit, each answering
to the other. When, therefore, we enter the eternal coun-
try, the golden city of the great King, though we shall have
parted from the sweet presence of months and seasons as we
now know them, it will be to find that they Avere only the
weak, shadowy representatives of spiritual states infinitely
more glorious and inspiring. The times and seasons which
here owe their being to the sun of nature, will then be spi-
ritually reproduced by the Sun of Righteousness, who is its
life and light ; save that what here is winter will be dis-
armed of all its cold and bitterness ; and what is night, of
all its dismalness and terrors. It is in tribe nights, when the
skies put forth their radiant splendors, that even in this
present life we see most of God.
INDEX,
PAGE
Actinia 467, 4S2
Action the spring of Happiness 311
Adansonia 134, 139
Age, signification of tlie word 314
-not a matter of birthdays... .254, 257
death from old 123
Ages, criteria of. 134
Air, office of the 77
Algse, duration of life in 151
Indian and Antarctic 493
Amaranths 413
Amnsement, rationale of. 303, 323
Analogy, philosopliy, ofiBce and
value of 425
distinction between Cor-
i-ospondence and 426
Analogies between minerals and
flowers 432, 434, 463
of plants 475, 480
—of animals 480, 485
between plants and ani-
mals 154, 486-496
of the seasons 553
Anima and animus, signification of 235
Anima mundi 32
Animal signifies "breather" 77
"Animal soul" 230
"Animal functions" 46
Animals and plants, comparative
structure of 147
duration of life in 152
food of 63
physical powers of the lower 459
happiness of the lower 403
Animalcules 23, 462, 480
Annual plants, value to man of. 138
Antediluvians, longevity of the 167
Antetypes of nature, spiritual 177,
189, 420
Apparitions 221
Appetite, 'duty to have a good one 70
Apples, why sacred to Venus 444
Aristienetus, quoted 443, 504
Art, its primary source 180
Natural Theology of 181
principles of. 109, 508
Asphyxia 121
Atmosphere, functions of the 77
evils of an impure 94
a solution 94
Autumn, emblematic character of..... 553
Autumnal foliage and sunset 457
Beauty, motion needful to 106
value of personal 289
Beetles 461
Bible, best evidence of truth of the... 188
Bichat, quoted 43, 121
Birds, longevity of. 158
singing of. 355, 445
nuptial plumage of. 351, 355
instincts of. 517
Blennius, pholis 483
Blood, the 60, 87, 101, 118
specific differences begin in tiie 464
Bones, structure and growth of.. ...170-173
Books and reading 287
criteria of good ones 290
friendship of. 296
Bosom, the female, images in nature of 440
Botany, pleasures and rewards of. 271
Brain, the 121
Breath, the sign and symbol of
life 86, 116
of the dying, superstitions
respecting 117
Browne, Dr. Hem\v, quoted 121
Sir Thomas, quoted 365, 414
Brutes, their want of reason 522
intelligence of 530
supposed immorality of. 401
BufFon, quoted 168
Burial-grounds, intramural 98
popular errors regarding 409
Butterfly, emblem of the Resurrec-
tion 351
life of the 143
Calendar of Nature 546
Cardan, .Jerome, quoted 413
Carlyle, quoted...... 219, 265
Carnivora, vegetable 63, 438
Carpenter, quoted 55
Carus, quoted 14, 32, 511
Cellular plants 479
Cemeteries 98
Cerealia 48
Cereus, night-flowering 438
Chivin of Nature 447
Change the universal law 201
Cheerfulness, secret of. 316
Chemistry, ultimatum of 30
575
576
INDEX.
PAGE
Cholera 119
Ciliary motion 19
Classical education 274
Classification of plants and animals,
true idea of 494
Clevedon, view from 421
Clouds, the 107
Coal plants 206
Coleridge, quoted 192, 441
Common things, value of 266, 275
Coniferse 138
Conversation, Art of 319
Corals 148
Correlation of Forces 55
Correspondence, or analogy between
the spiritual and material 175, 194
Cousin, Victor, quoted 454
Cryptogamia, enormous fertility of.... 22
Crystals 131
Cupid and Psyche, fable of 346
Curiosity the appetite of the mind.... 284
Dead, sorrow for the 391
Death, causes of Physical 115-121
rationale of Ill, 241
mistaken ideas respecting 399
— -fear of 396
real nature and meaning of 386
spiritual 333
is rejuvenescence 365
of friends, use of. 392
Scriptural senses of the word.. 337
true and false emblems of. 412
the aliment of life 345
Degrees, discrete and continuous 454
Delesseria sanguinea 51, 151
DesmidiefB 463, 467
Desmodium gyrans 19
Dionasa muscipula 18, 63, 437
Diseases, origin of. 369
representative character of... 380
D'Israeli, quoted 191, 362
Dreams 414
Drosera 63, 437, 469
Duration of life 119
' in animals 152
in plants 132
Eating, pleasures of. 68-71
Echo 84
Education, true and false 272, 285, 326
Eggs, tenacity of life in 21
Ehrenburg, quoted 148, 468
Electricity 54
Elements of matter, primitive 30, 126
Elephant 157, 165
Emblems of death, true and false 412
Ennui '. 317
Epicurism 70, 317
Evening primrose ." 438
Exogens and Bndogens, differences
between 489
Eye and the ear, the 82
Eyes of brutes and man 524
Eye, the epitome of the body 504
Faith and works 300
Fecundity, comparative 165
Feeding and procreation, analogies of 75
Feelings, truths of the 217
PAOB
Ferns 361
Fichte, quoted 258, 264, 345
Fishes, lease of life in 159
Flom'ens, quoted 168, 169
Flowers, structure of. 475
■ night-blooming 363
Food, particulars respecting 57
Form, law of 233
true idea of 495
Frost-flowers 4-32
Functions of organized beings 465
Fungi ." .16, 140, 167, 490, 492
Phosphorescent 442
Generalization 428
Genius, characteristics of. 312, 429, 542
Geographical associations of plants
and animals 488
Geology, facts in ,,.... 12, 357, 485
the poem of ....20.5, 357
Gestation, periods of 164
Ghost, meaning of the word 231
Ghost-belief 217, 243
God, personality of 31
distinct from nature 32, 498
true idea of. 36, 301, 400
■ unity of. 498
Good, Dr. Mason, quoted 218, 510
Gosse, quoted 22, 441, 468, 483
Guyot, Arnold, quoted 23
Happiness, secret of. 314, 389
Harvey, Dr., quoted 148
Head, the, the epitome of man 504
Health 366
Heart and Lungs, the 86
Heat, animal 93
■ relation of to life 53
Heaven, true idea of 182, 230
Heliotrope 49
Herder, quoted 346
Hitchcock, quoted 28
Home, instinct of. 527
Homology 473
in plants 475
Hope 271
the " breath of Life" 271
Humboldt, quoted 53, 104
Hunger, considerations upon 61
— • the source of moral order.... 68
significance of in Scripture.. 281
and love 75
Hybrids, fewness of real ones 463
why infertile 190
Ice-plant 498
Imagination, office and rewards of
the 185,270,284, 415
Immortality, rationale of. 399
Inactivity, destinictive results of. 317
Inorganic nature, life of. 23, 105
Insanity 367
Insects, their voracity 66
their sizes , 122
their term of life 161
their metamorphoses 351
Inspiration, true idea of. 536
Instinct and reason, considerations
upon 509
four leading species of. 515
IINDEX.
677
PAGE
Instinct ill plants 518
ill man 526
Intellect contingent upon external
nature 499
Language, philosophy of 228, 499
figurative 14, 226
a form of poetry 225
Latent life 20
Laws of Nature 28. 374
Laycock, Dr., quoted 355, 511
Leaf, the, the type of the plant 476
Leases of life, the various 128
Life, derived from God 26
varieties of. 38
tliree degrees of in man 505
definitions of. 43-44
etymology cf the word 101
names applied to 43
consists in action and reaction of
complementaries 34
Life of inorganic nature 24, 40
depends on food 57
is motion 100
an everlasting spiral 235
blessedness and privileges of. 250
is love 259
should be made the most of. 388
is poetry 269
Scripture senses of the word 310
uncreate 26
general idea of. 11-14
Light, relation of to life 49-53
Linaria vulgaris 478
Love 527
of Nature 264
of offspring, instinct of 518
Lucernaria auricula 468
Man the epitome of nature 466, 497
characteristics of 207
Mantis religiosa 162
Marriage, conducive to longevity 173
the universal beginning...o6, 89
Martineau, quoted 34, 253
Materialists and Spiritualists 192
Matter and Substance 179
Memory, permanence of. 416
Menander, quoted 260
Microcosm, man a 195, 500
Mildew, origin, &c. of. 22, 480
Mind in advanced life 256
" Ministry of tlie Beautiful" 306
Miracles 372-380
Mistletoe 165
Molecular death 58
Monkeys 488
Mortality and Immortality 386
Mosses 436
Motion the universal sign of life. ..100-108
Music ." 82
and light, analogy of 384
Mystery 211
"Mysticism" 192
Mythology 365
Natural history, uses and rewards of.. 271
Nature, true idea of. 177
unity of. 471
love of. 264
49
PAGE
Nature, soothing influence of. 277
Nervous fluid 120
Nettle 442
Nuptial season, Beauties attendant
upon the 855
Odyle -18
Oersted, quoted 106
Orange-blossom, why worn by brides. 444
Orchidere 96,442, 487
Ornithogalum unibellatum 434
Oscillatoria 19
Ovid, quoted 109
Oxalideaj 18
Palingenesis 190
Palm-trees 137
" Panthea," Hunt's, quoted 13
Pantheism 31
PapilionacesB 441
Parasitic plants 63
Parrots 488
" Perfection," meaning of, as spoken
of natural forms 461
Petrarch, quoted 296, 367
Philo Juda;us, quoted 182, 336
Philosophy, true principles of. 471
Physics, physiology, and psychology.. 208
Plants, food of. 63
respiration of 95
sleep of 438
sexuality of. 439
instinct of. 518
lactation in 76, 439
leases of life in 132
Play, rationale of 322
Plurality of Worlds 12
Pneuma, signification of. 237
Poetry, true idea, office and rewards
of 222, 267, 387
Polytheism 540
Pomegranate 443
Prefigurations of nature 431
in minerals 432
in plants 436
in animals 445
Procreation the great end of nature.. 141
dignity and sanctity of... 354
Promotion, law of, in material nature 466
inhuman body 503
Proof pertains only to inferior truths 187
Propagation, instinct of. 517
Proteus, fable of 155
Protococcus 45
Psyche, signification of. 236
Puberty, relation of, to length of
life 145, 164
Radclitfe, Dr., quoted 25
Ray, quoted 17
Reading, objects and delights of 296
Reason, true idea of. 379
Rejuvenescence, law of. 344
in human body 352
■ ■ in human mind 361
in Institutions 363
in animals 347
of the eartli 357
Religion, true idea of 298, 423, 503
and philanthropy 73
578
INDEX.
PAGE
Reproduction the gresit aim of nature 142
Reptiles, longevity of. 160
Respiration, apparatus and office of..85-93
Resurrection, true idea of the 339, 406
Kicherand, quoted 43
Richter, quoted 272
Rosaceae 360
Rousseau, quoted 66, 263
Ruskin, quoted 125,276, 424
Sanitary Reforms 95
Schiller, quoted 262
Schlelden, quoted 21, 149, 442
Seasons, analogies of the 554
Sects, religious, only two really dis-
tinct ones 302
Seeds, structure of 76, 439
vitality of. 21
Self-defense, instinct of 515
Sell-preservation, instinct of. 515
Senses, ofiBce of the 185
sympathy between the 90
Sensitive-plant 19, 451
Sensuous life, office and importance of
the 607
Sexual principle, universality of the.. 88
Shakspere, Christianity of .308
Shells, forms of 235
Skeletons, vegetable 437
Sleep 349
of plants 438
Snow-crystals 434
Soul, the, a spiritual body 213, 245
is the man 239, 409
true idea of the 208
etymology of the word 229
Sound and color, analogy between.... 384
Spatangus 473
Species, constancy of, depends on
spiritual nature 463
importance of attention to 454
Spencer, Herbert, quoted 13, 44
Spiral, in nature 234
Spirit, signification of. 232
Spiritual degree of life 207
world, the 176, 419
Sponges 16
Spring, symbolism of 554, 564
begins in autumn 350
Substance and matter 179
Sunday, true idea of its observance... 300
PAGi
Swan, singing of the 413
Swedenborg, quoted 89, 454
Teeth, the 464
Temperance and moral purity 76
Tennyson, quoted 117
iheocritus quoted 444
Theology a progressive science 342
Time, origin of idea of. 546
makes no one old necessarily.... 256
Toads in stones 123
Tortoises 160
Tranquility 276
Trees, structure of. 135, 147
longevity of 133
analogy of, with the world.139, 369
analogy of man with 501
in cemeteries 98
Tritonia arborescens 491
Tropics, vegetation of the 53
Truths, apparent and genuine 33
popular indifference to 213
Tschudi, quoted 50
Uliici, quoted 308
Unity of Nature 470^97
Use of law 39, 175, 208
Vallisueria 103
"Varieties" 464
Vegetarianism 67
Vegetative functions 46, 465
Vertebral Archetype 473
in plants 477
Virey, quoted 511
Virgil, quoted 80, 125
Virgin Mary, the, why worshiped 254
"Vital force" 27
tissue 47
stimuli, the 48
Vitality of seeds 21
Want, the sotirce of Happiness 314
Wellingtonia gigantea 13S
Wilkinson, J. J. Garth, quoted 56
Wind, the 77-80
Women's letters 268
Work, true idea and uses of. 328
Worlds, plurality of 12
Young, number of, at a birth 165
Youth and age, true idea of 249
a condition to which we attain 258
Zephyrs, literally the " life-bringers" 77
Zoophytes 16, 453, 468
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