H-Bahai
Digital Library




A HISTORY OF THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPE.
BY JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER, M.D., LL.D.,



Index Page

Pp. 1-167

Pp. 168-325

Pp. 326-470

Pp. 471-631




Page 471

INVENTION OF PRINTING. 471

ful change. It had become obviously useless any longer to assert an immobility of humanity when men were standing face to face with the new forms into which it had been transposed. New ideas had driven out old ones. Natural phenomena could not again be likened to human acts, nor the necessities of man regarded as determining the movements of the universe. A better appreciation of the nature of evidence was arising, perhaps in part through the influence of the lawyers, but in part through a commencing taste for criticism. We see it in such facts as the denial that a miracle can be taken as the proof of any thing else than the special circumstances with which it is connected; we see it in the assertion that the martyrdom of men in support of a dogma, so far from proving its truth, proves rather its doubtfulness, no geometer having ever thought it worth his while to die in order to establish any mathematical proposition, truth needing no such sacrifices, which are actually unserviceable and useless to it, since it is able spontaneously to force its own way. In Italy, where the popular pecuniary interests were obviously identical with those of the Church, a dismal disbelief was silently engendering. And now occurred an event the results of which it is impossible to exaggerate. About A.D. 1440 the art of printing seems to have been invented in Europe. It is not material to our purpose to inquire into the its particulars of its history, whether we should attribute it to Coster of Haarlaem or Gutemberg of Mentz, or whether, in reality, it was introduced by the Venetians from China, where it had been practiced for nearly two thousand years. In Venice a decree was issued in 1441 in relation to printing, which would seem to imply that it had been known there for some years. Coster is supposed to have printed the " Speculum Humanse Salvationis" about 1440, and Gutemberg and Faust the Mentz Bible without date, 1455. The art reached perfection at once; their Bible is still admired for its beautiful typography. Among the earliest specimens of printing extant is an exhortation to take up arms against the Turks, 1454; there are also two letters of indulgence of Nicolas V. of the same date. In the beginning each

Page was engraved on a block of wood, but soon movable types were introduced. Impressions of the former kind pass under the name of block books; at first they were sold as manuscripts. Two of Faust's workmen commenced printing in Italy, but not until 1465; they there published an edition of "Lactantius," one of "Cicero de Officiis," and one of "Augustine de Civitate Dei." The art was carried to France 1469, and in a few years was generally practiced in all the large European towns. The printers were their own booksellers; the number of copies in each edition usually about three hundred. Folios were succeeded by quartos, and in 1501 duodecimos were introduced. Very

Page 472

472 PROGRESS OF PRINTING IN EUROPE.

soon the price of books was reduced by four fifths, and existing interests required regulations not only respecting the cost, but also respecting the contents. Thus the University of Paris established a tariff for their sale, and also exercised a supervision in behalf of the Church and the State. From the outset it was clear that printing would inevitably influence the intellectual movement synchronously occurring. Some authors have endeavored to estimate the intellectual condition of different countries in Europe at the close of the fifteenth century by the literary activity they displayed in the preparation and printing of editions of books. Though it is plain that such estimates can hardly be rigorously correct, since to print a book not only implies literary capacity, but also the connections of business and trade, and hence works are more likely to be issued in places where there is a mercantile activity, yet such estimates are perhaps the most exact that we can now obtain; they also lead us to some very interesting and unexpected results of singular value in their connection with that important epoch. Thus it appears that in all Europe, between 1470 and 1500, more than ten thousand editions of books and pamphlets were printed, and of them a majority in Italy, demonstrating that Italy was in the van of the intellectual movement. Out of this large number, in Venice there had been printed 2835; Milan, 625; Bologna, 298; Rome, 925; fifty other Italian cities had presses; Paris, 751; Cologne, 530; Nuremberg, 382; Leipsic, 351; Bale, 320; Strasburg, 526; Augsburg, 256; Louvain, 116; Mentz, 134; Deventer, 169; London, 130; Oxford, 7'; St. Alban's, 4. Venice, therefore, took the lead. England was in a very backward state. This conclusion is confirmed by many other circumstances, which justify the statement that Italy was as far advanced intellectually in 1400 as England in 1500. Paris exhibits a superiority sixfold over London, and in the next ten years the disproportion becomes even more remarkable, for in Paris four hundred and thirty editions were printed, in London only twenty-six. The light of learning became enfeebled by distance from its Italian focus. As late as 1550, a complete century after the establishment of the art, but seven works had been printed in Scotland, and among them not a single classic. It is an amusing proof how local tastes were consulted in the character of the books thus put forth, that the first work issued in Spain, 1474, was on the "Conception of the Virgin." The invention of printing operated in two modes altogether distinct: first, in the multiplying and cheapening of books, and, second, in substituting reading for pulpit instruction. First, as to the multiplication and cheapening of books, there is no reason to suppose that the supply had ever been inadequate. As, under the Ptolemies, book manufacture was carried forward

Page 473

CONSEQUENCES OF PRINTING. 473

in the Museum at Alexandria to an extent which fully satisfied demands, so in all the great abbeys there was an apartment-the Scriptorium-for the copying and making of books. Such a sedentary occupation could not but be agreeable to persons of a contemplative or quiet habit of life. But Greece, Rome, Egypt-indeed, all the ancient governments except that of China, were founded upon elements among which did not appear that all-important one of modern times, a reading class. Information passed from mouth to mouth, not from eye to eye. With a limited demand, the compensation to the copier was sufficient, and the cost to the purchaser moderate. It is altogether a mistake to suppose that the methods and advantages of printing were unknown. Modifications of that art were used wherever occasion called for them. We do not need the Roman stamps to satisfy us of that fact; every Babylonian brick and signet ring is an illustration. Printing processes of various kinds were well enough known. The real difficulty was the want of paper. That substance was first made in Europe by the Spanish Moors from the fine flax of Valentia and Mercia. Cotton paper, sold as charta Damascena, had been previously made at Damascus, and several different varieties had long been manufactured in China. Had there been more readers, paper would have been more abundantly produced, and there would have been more copiers-nay, even there would have been printers. An increased demand would have been answered by an increased supply. As soon as such a demand arose in Europe the press was introduced, as it had been thousands of years before in China. So far as the public is concerned, printing has been an unmixed advantage; not so, however, in its bearing on authors. The longevity of books is greatly impaired, a melancholy conclusion ed. to an ambitious intellect. The duration of many ancient books which have escaped the chances of time is to be hoped for no more. In this shortening of their term the excessive multiplication of works greatly assists. A rapid succession soon makes those of distinction obsolete, and then consigns them to oblivion. No author can now expect immortality. His utmost hope is only this, that his book may live a little longer than himself. But it was with printing as with other affairs of the market-an increased demand gave origin to an increased supply, which, in its turn reacting, increased the demand. Cheap books bred readers. When the monks, abandoning their useless and lazy life of saying their prayers a dozen times a day, turned to the copying and illustrating of manuscripts, a mental elevation of the whole order was the result; there were more monks who could read. And so, on the greater scale, as books through the press became more abundant, there were more to whom they became a necessity.

Page 474

474 EFFECT UPON THE CHURCH

But, secondly, as to the change which ensued in the mode of communicating information-a change felt instantly in the ecclesiastical, and, at a later period, in the political world. The whole system of public worship was founded on the condition of a non-reading people; hence the reading of prayers and the sermon. Whoever will attentively compare the thirteenth with the nineteenth century can not fail to see how essential oral instruction was to the former, how subordinate to the latter. The invention of the printing-press pit instruction gave an instant, a formidable rival to the pulpit. It made possible that which had been impossible before in Christian Europe direct communication between the government and the people without any religious intermedium, and was the first step in that important change subsequently carried out in America, the separation of Church and State. Though in this particular the effect was desirable, in another its advantages are doubtful, for the Church adhered to her ancient method when it had lost very much of its real force, and this even at the risk of falling into a lifeless and impassive condition. And yet we must not undervalue the power once exercised on a non-reading community by oral and scenic teachings. What could better instruct it than a formal congregating of neighborhoods people. together each Sabbath-day to listen in silence and without questioning? In those great churches, the architectural grandeur of which is still the admiration of our material age, nothing was wanting to impress the worshiper. The vast pile, with its turrets or spire pointing to heaven; its steep inclining roof; its walls, with niches and statues; its echoing belfry; its windows of exquisite hues and of every form, lancet, or wheel, or rose, through which stole in the many-colored light; its chapels, with their pictured walls; its rows of slender, clustering columns,'and arches tier upon tier; its many tapering pendants; the priest emerging from his scenic retreat; his chalice and forbidden wine; the covering paten, the cibory, and the pix. Amid clouds of incense from smoking censers, the blaze of lamps, and tapers, and branching candlesticks, the tinkling of silver bells, the play of jeweled vessels and gorgeous dresses of violet, green, and gold, banners and crosses were borne aloft through lines of kneeling worshipers in processional services along the aisles. The chanting of litanies and psalms gave a foretaste of the melodies of heaven, and the voices of the choristers and sounds of the organ now thundered forth glory to God in the highest, now whispered to the broken in spirit peace. If such were the influences in the cathedral, not less were those that gathered round the little village church. To the peasant it was endeared by the most touching incidents of his life. At its font his parents had given him his name; at its altar he had plighted his matrimonial vows; beneath the little grass mounds in its

Page 475

THE PULPIT AND THE PRESS. 475

yard there awaited the resurrection those who had been untimely taken away. Connected thus with the profoundest and holiest sentiments of humanity, the pulpit was for instruction a sole and sufficient means. Nothing like it had existed in paganism. The irregular, ill-timed, occasional eloquence of the Greek republican orators can not for an instant be set in comparison with such a steady and enduring systematic institution. In a temporal as well as in a spiritual sense, the public authorities appreciated its power. Queen Elizabeth was not the only sovereign who knew how to thunder through a thousand pulpits. For a length of time, as might have been expected, considering its power and favoring adventitious circumstances, the pulpit maintained itself successfully against the press. Nevertheless, its eventual subordination was none the less sure. If there are disadvantages in the method of acquiring knowledge by reading, there are also signal advantages; for, though upon the printed

Page the silent letters are mute and unsustained by any scenic help, yet often-a wonderful contradiction-they pour forth emphatic eloquence, that can make the heart leap with emotion, or kindle on the cheek the blush of shame. The might of persuasiveness does not always lie in articulate speech. The strong are often the silent. God never speaks. There is another condition which gives to reading a great advantage over listening. In the affairs of life, how wide is the difference between having a thing done for us and doing it ourselves! In the latter case, how great is the interest awakened, how much more thorough the examination, how much more perfect the acquaintance. To listen implies merely a passive frame of mind; to read, an active. But the latter is more noble. From these and other such considerations, it might have been foreseen that the printing-press would at last deprive the pulpit of its supremacy, making it become ineffective, or reducing it to an ancillary aid. It must have been clear that the time would arrive when, though adorned by the eloquence of great and good men, the sermon would lose its power for moving popular masses or directing public thought. Upon temporal as well as ecclesiastical authority influence of this great change was also felt. During the Turktish war of 1563 newspapers first made their appearance in Venice. They were in manuscript. The "Gazette de France" commenced in 1631. There seems to be doubt as to the authenticity of the early English papers reputed to have been published during the excitement of the Spanish Armada, and of which copies remain in the British Museum. It was not until the civil wars that, under the names of Mercuries, Intelligences, etc., newspapers fairly established themselves in England. What I have said respecting the influence of the press upon religious

Page 476

476 APPROACH OF THE REFORMATION.

life applies substantially to civil life also. Oratory has sunk into a secondary position, being every day more and more thoroughly supplanted by journalism. No matter how excellent it may be in its sphere of action, it is essentially limited, and altogether incompetent to the influencing of masses of men in the manner which our modern social system requires. Without a newspaper, what would be the worth of the most eloquent parliamentary attempts? It is that which really makes them instruments of power, and gives to them political force, which takes them out of a little circle of cultivated auditors, and throws them broadcast over nations. Such was the literary condition of Western Europe, such the new power that had been found in the press. These were but initiatory to the great drama now commencing. We have already seen that synchronously with this intellectual there was a moral impulse coming into play. The two were in harmony. At the time now occupying our attention there was a possibility for the moral impulse to act under several different forms. The special mode in which it came into effect was determined by the pecuniary necessities of Italy. It very soon, however, assumed larger proportions, and became what is known to us as the Reformation. The movement against Rome that had been abandoned for a century was now recommenced. The variation of human thought proceeds in a continuous manner, new ideas springing out of old ones either as corrections or developments, but never spontaneously originating. With them as with organic forms, each requires a germ, a seed. The intellectual phase of humanity observed at any moment is therefore an embodiment of many different things. It is connected with the past, is in unison with the present, and contains the embryo of the future. Human opinions must hence, of absolute necessity, undergo transformation. What has been received by one generation as undoubted, to a subsequent one becomes so conspicuously fallacious as to excite the wonder of those who do not distinctly appreciate the law of psychical advance that it could ever have been received as true. These phases of transformation are not only related in a chronological way, so as to be obvious when we examine the ideas of society at epochs of a few years or of centuries apart- they exist also contemporaneously in different nations or in different social grades of the same nation, according as the class of persons considered has made a greater or less intellectual progress. Notwithstanding the assertion of Rome, the essential ideas of the Italian system had undergone unavoidable modifications. An illiterate people, easily imposed upon, had accepted as true the asseveration that there had been no change even from the apostolic times. But the time had now come when that fiction could no longer be main-

Page 477

CONTEMPORANEOUS STATE OF EUROPE. 477

tained, the divergence no longer concealed. In the new state of things, it was impossible that dogmas in absolute opposition to reason, such as that of transubstantiation, could any longer hold their ground. The scholastic theology and scholastic philosophy, though supported by the universities, had become obsolete. With the revival of pure Latinity and the introduction of Greek, the foundations of a more correct criticism were laid. An age of erudition was unavoidable, in which whatever could not establish its claims against a searching examination must necessarily be overthrown. We are thus brought to the great movement known as the Reformation. The term is usually applied in reference to the Protestant nations, and therefore is not sufficiently comprehensive, for all Europe was in truth involved. A clear understanding of its origin, its process, its effects, is perhaps best obtained by an examination of the condition of the northern and southern nations, and the issue of the event in each respectively. Germany had always been sincere, and therefore always devout. Of her disposition she had given many proofs from the time when the Emperor Otho descended into Italy, his expedition having been, as was said, an armed procession of ecclesiastics resolved to abate the scandals of the Church. The Councils of Constance and Basle may be looked upon as an embodiment of the same sentiment. The resolution to limit the papal authority and to put a superior over the pope arose from a profound conviction of the necessity of such a measure. Those councils were precursors of the coming Reformation. In other countries events had long been tending in the same direction: in Sicily and Italy by the acts of Frederick II; in France through those of Philip the Fair. The educated had been estranged by the Saracens and Jews; the enthusiastic by such works as the Everlasting Gospel; the devout had been shocked by the tale of the Templars and the detected immoralities in Rome; the patriotic had been alienated by the assumptions of the papal court and its incessant intermeddling in political affairs; the inferior, unreflecting orders were in all directions exasperated by its importunate, unceasing exactions of money. In England, for instance, though less advanced intellectually than the southern nations, the commencement of the Reformation is perhaps justly referred as far back as the reign of Edward III., who, under the suggestion of Wiclif, refused to do homage to the pope, but a series of weaker princes succeeding, it was not until Henry VII. that the movement could be continued. In that country the immediately exciting causes were no doubt of a material kind, such as the alleged avarice and impurity of the clergy, the immense amount of money taken from the realm, the intrusion of foreign ecclesiastics. In the South of France and in Italy, where the intellectual condition was much more advanced, the movement was cor-

Page 478

478 SUPEREROGATION AND INDULGENCE.

respondingly of a more intellectual kind. To this difference between the north and the south must be referred not only the striking geographical distribution of belief which was soon apparent, but also the speedy and abrupt limitation of the Reformation, restrictedly so called. In recent ages, under her financial pressure, Rome had asserted that the infinite merits of our Savior, together with the good works of supererogation of many holy men, constituted, as' it were, a fund from which might be discharged penalties of sins of every kind, for the dead as well as the living, and therefore available for those who had passed into Purgatory, as well as for us who remain. This fund, committed to the care of St. Peter and his successors, may be disbursed, under the form of indulgences, by sale for money. A traffic in indulgences was thus carried on to a great extent through the medium of the monks, who received a commission upon the profits. Of course, it is plain that the religious conception of such a transaction is liable to adverse criticism-the bartering for money so holy a thing as the merit of our Redeemer. This was, however, only the ostensible explanation, which it was judged necessary to present to sincerely pious communities; behind it there lay the real reason, which was essentially of a political kind. It was absolutely necessary that papal Rome should control a revenue far beyond that arising in a strictly legitimate way. As all the world had been drained of money by the senate and Caesars for the support of republican or imperial power, so too there was a need of a like supply for the use of the pontiffs. The collection of funds had often given rise to contentions between the ecclesiastical and temporal authorities, and in some of the more sturdy countries had been resolutely resisted. To collect a direct tax is often a troublesome affair; but such is human nature-a man from whom it might be difficult to extort the payment of an impost lawfully laid, will often cheerfully find means to purchase for himself indulgence for sin. In such a semi-barbarian but yet religious population as that with which the Church was dealing, it was quite clear that this manner of presenting things possessed singular advantages, an obvious equivalent being given for the money received. The indulgence implied not only a release from celestial, but also, in many cases, from civil penalties. It was an absolute guarantee from hell. It is said that the attention of Martin Luther, formerly an Augustinian monk, was first attracted to this subject by the traffic having been conferred on the Dominicans instead of upon his own order at the time when Leo X. was raising funds by this means for building St. Peter's at Rome, A.D. 1517. That was probably only an insinuation of Luther's adversaries, and is very far from being borne out by his subsequent conduct. His first public movement was the putting forth of ninety-five theses against the practice. He posted them on the

Page 479

MARTIN LUTHER.-REFORMATION IN GERMANY. 479

door of the cathedral of Wittenberg, and enforced them in his sermons, though at this time he professed obedience to the papal authority. With a rapidity probably unexpected by him, his acts excited public attention so strongly, that, though the pope was at first disposed to regard the whole affair as a mere monkish squabble for gains, it soon became obvious, from the manner in which the commotion was spreading, that something must be done to check it. The pope therefore summoned Luther to Rome to answer for himself; but, through the influence of certain great personages, and receiving a submissive letter from the accused, he, on reconsideration, referred the matter to Cardinal Cajetan, his legate in Germany. The cardinal, on looking into the affair, ordered Luther to retract; and now came into prominence the mental qualities of this great man. Luther, with respectful firmness, refused; but remembering John Huss, and fearing that the imperial safe-conduct which had been given to him would be insufficient for his protection, he secretly returned to Wittenberg, having first, however, solemnly appealed from the pope, ill informed at the time, to the pope when he should have been better instructed. Thereupon he was condemned as a heretic. Undismayed, he continued to defend his opinions; but, finding himself in imminent danger, he fell upon the suggestion which, since the days of Philip the Fair, had been recognized as the true method of dealing with the papacy, and appealed to a general council as the true representative of the Church, and therefore superior to the pope, who is not infallible any more than St. Peter himself had been. To this denial of papal authority he soon added a dissent from the doctrines of purgatory, auricular confession, absolution. It was now that the grand idea which had hitherto silently lain at the bottom of the whole movement emerged into prominence-the right of individual judgment under the dogma that it is not papal authority which should be the guide of life, but the Bible, and that the Bible is to be interpreted by private judgment. Thus far it had been received that the Bible derives its authenticity and authority from the Church; now it was asserted that the Church derives her authenticity and authority from the Bible. At this moment there was but one course for the Italian court to take with the audacious offender, for this new doctrine of the right of exercising private judgment in matters of faith was dangerous to the last extreme, and not to be tolerated for a moment. Luther was therefore ordered to recant, and to burn his own works, under penalty, if disobedient, of being excommunicated, and delivered over unto Satan. The bull thus issued directed all secular princes to seize his person and punish his crimes. But Luther was not to be intimidated; nay, more, he retaliated. He denounced the pope, as Frederick and the Fratricelli had formerly done, as the Man of Sin, the Anti-Christ. He called

Page 480

480 REFORMATION IN SWITZERLAND.

upon all Christian princes to shake off his tyranny. In the presence of a great concourse of applauding spectators, he committed the volumes of the canon law and the bull of excommunication to the flames. The pope now issued another bull expelling him from the Church. This was in January, 1521. This separation opened to Luther an unrestrained career. He forthwith proceeded to an examination of the Italian system of theology and policy, in which he was joined by many talented men who participated in his views. The Emperor Charles V. found it necessary to use all his influence to check the spreading Reformation. But it was already too late, for Luther had obtained the firm support of many personages of influence, and his doctrines were finding defenders among some of the ablest men in Europe. An imperial diet was therefore held at Worms, before which Luther, being summoned, appeared. But nothing could induce him to retract his opinions. An edict was published putting him under the ban of the empire; but the Elector of Saxony concealed him in the castle of Warburg. While he was in this retirement his doctrines were rapidly extending, the Augustinians of Wittenberg not hesitating to change the usages of the Church, abolishing private masses, and giving the cup as well as the bread to the laity. While Germany was agitated to her centre, a like revolt against Italian supremacy broke out in Switzerland. It too commenced on the question of indulgences, and found a leader in Zuinglius. Even at this early period the inevitable course of events was beginning to be plainly displayed in sectarian decomposition; for, while the German and Swiss Reformers agreed in their relation toward the papal authority, they differed widely from each other on some important doctrinal points, more especially as to the nature of the Eucharist. The Germans supposed that the body and blood of Christ are actually present in the bread and wine in some mysterious way; the Swiss believed that those substances are only emblems or symbols. Both totally rejected the Italian doctrine of transubstantiation. The old ideas of Berengar were therefore again fermenting among men. An attempt was made, under the auspices of the Landgrave of Hesse, to compose the dissension in a conference at Marburg; but it was found, after a long disputation, that neither party would give up its views, and they therefore separated, as it was said, in Christian charity, but not in brotherhood. At the first Diet of Spires, held in 1526, it was tried to procure the execution of the sentence passed upon Luther, but the party of the Reformation proved to be too strong for the Catholics. At a second diet, held at the same place three years subsequently, it was resolved that no change should be made in the established religion before the action of a general council, which had been recommended by both diets, should

Page 481

PROGRESS AND EXTENT OF THE REFORMATION. 481

be known. On this occasion the Catholic interest preponderated sufficiently to procure a revocation of the power which had been conceded to the princes of the empire of managing for a time the ecclesiastical matters of their own dominions. Against this action several princes and cities protested, this being the origin of the designation Protestants subsequently given to the Reformers. At a diet held the following year at Augsburg, a statement, composed by Luther and Melancthon, of the doctrines of the Reformers was presented; it also treated to some extent of the errors and superstitions of the Catholics. This is what is known as the Confession of Augsburg. But the diet not only rejected it, but condemned most of its doctrines. The Organization of Protestants, therefore, in an assembly at Smalcalde, contract- the Reformation ed a treaty for their common defense, and this may be looked upon as the epoch of organization of the Reformation. This league did not, however, include the Reformers of Switzerland, who could not conscientiously adopt the Confession of Augsburg, which was its essential basis. The Sacramentarians, as they were called, became thus politically divided from the Lutherans. Moreover, in Switzerland the process of decomposition went on, Calvin establishing a new sect, characterized by the manner in which it insisted on the Augustinian doctrines of predestination and election, by the abolition of all festivals, and the discontinuance of Church ceremonies. At a later period the followers of Zuinglius and Calvin coalesced. The political combinations which had thus occurred as Protestantism rapidly acquired temporal power gave rise, as might have been anticipated, to wars. The peace of Augsburg, 1555, furnished the Reformers the substantial advantages they sought-freedom from Italian ecclesiastical authority, the right of all Germans to judge for themselves in matters of religion, equality in civil privileges for them and the Catholics. A second time, sixty-four years subsequently, war broke out-the Thirty Years' War-and finally the dispute was composed by the treaty of Westphalia. This may be regarded as the culmination of the Reformation. Peace was made in spite of all the intrigues and opposition of Rome. The doctrines of the Reformation were adopted with singular avidity throughout the north of Europe, and established themselves for a time in France and in Italy. Even as early as 1558 movement a report of the Venetian embassador estimates the Catholics of the German empire at only one tenth of the population. For twenty years not a student of the University of Vienna had become a priest. Such was the Reformation among the German nations. It is not possible, however, to comprehend correctly that great movement without understanding the course of events in Italy, for that peninsula was involved, though in a very different way. In its intel-

Page 482

482 CONTEMPORANEOUS STATE OF ITALY.

lectual condition it was far in advance of the rest of Europe, as is proved by such facts as those to which we have alluded respecting the printing of books. Between it and the nations of which we have been speaking there was also a wide difference in material interests. What was extorted from them was enjoyed by it. The mental and material condition of Italy soon set a limit to the progress of the Reformation. The Italians had long looked upon the transalpine nations with contempt. On the principle that the intellectually strong may lawfully prey on the intellectually weak, they had systematically drained them of their wealth. As we exchange with savages beads, and looking-glasses, and nails, for gold, they had driven a profitable barter with the valiant but illiterate barbarians, exchanging possessions in heaven for the wealth of the earth, and selling for money immunities or indulgences for sin. But in another respect they had looked upon them with dread-they had felt the edge of the French and German sword. The educated classes, though seeking the widest liberty of thought for themselves, were not disposed to more than a very select propagandism of opinions, which plainly could only be detrimental to the pecuniary interests of their country. Their faith had long ago ceased to be that of conviction; it had become a mere outward patriotic acquiescence. Even those who were willing enough to indulge themselves in the utmost latitude of personal free-thinking never made an objection when some indiscreet zealot of their own kind was compelled by ecclesiastical pressure to fly beyond the Alps. No part of Europe was so full of irreligion as Italy. It amounted to a philosophical infidelity among the higher classes; to Arianism among the middle and less instructed; to an utter carelessness, not even giving itself the trouble of disbelief, among the low. The universities and learned academies were hot-beds of heresy; thus the University of Padua was accused of having been for long a focus of atheism, and again and again learned academies, as those of Modena and Venice, had been suppressed for heresy. The device of the Academy of the Lyncei indicated only too plainly the spirit of these institutions; it was a lynx, with its eyes turned upward to heaven, tearing the tripleheaded Cerberus with its claws. Nor was this alarming condition restricted to Italy; France had long participated in it. From the University of Paris, that watch-tower of the Church, the alarm had often been sounded; now it was against men, now against books. Once, under its suggestions, the reading of the physics and metaphysics of Aristotle had been prohibited, and works of philosophy interdicted until they should have been corrected by the theologians of the Church. The physical heresies of Galileo, the pantheism of Cesalpinus, had friendly counterparts in France. Even the head of the Church, Leo X, at the inception of the Reformation, could not escape obloquy, and stories were

Page 483

ARREST OF THE REFORMATION. 483.

circulated touching his elevation to the pontificate at once prejudicial to his morals and to his belief. In such an ominous condition, the necessity of carrying out the policy to which Italy had so long been committed perpetually forced the papal government to acts against which the in- structed judgment of its own officials revolted. It was a continual struggle between their duty and their disposition. Why should they have thought it expedient to suppress the Koran when it was printed in Venice, 1530? why, when Paul IV., 1559, promulgated the Index Expurgatorius of prohibited books, was it found necessary that not less than forty-eight editions of the Bible should be included in it, sixty-one printers put under the ban, and all their publications forbidden, at first the interdict being against all prohibited books, and, on this being found insufficient, even those that had not been permitted being prohibited? Why was it that Galileo was dealt with so considerately and yet so malignantly? It was plain that toleration, either of men or books, was altogether irreconcilable with the principles of the Holy See, and that under its stern exigencies the former must be disposed of, and the latter suppressed or burnt, no matter what personal inclinations or favoring sentiments might be in the way. If any faltering took place in the carrying out of this determination, the control of Rome over the human mind would be put into the most imminent jeopardy. So stood affairs in Italy at the beginning and during the active period of the Reformation, the ancient system inexorably pressing upon the leading men, and impelling them to acts against which their better judgment revolted. They were bound down to the interests of their country, those interests being interwoven with conditions which they could no longer intellectually accept. For men of this class the German and Swiss reformations did not go far enough. They affirmed that things were left just as inconsistent with reason, just as indefensible as before. Doubtless they considered that the paring away of the worship of saints, of absolution for money, penances, indulgences, freedom from papal taxation, the repudiation of intrusive foreign ecclesiastics, was all to the detriment of the pecuniary interests of Italy. They affirmed that the doctrines put forth by the Reformers made good their ground, not through the force of reason, but through appeals to the ignorant, and even to women; not through an improved and sounder criticism, but, as it was declared, through the inward light of the Spirit; that nothing had been done to alleviate the ancient intolerant dogmatism, the forcible suppression of freedom of thought. Leo X., it is well known, at first altogether mistook the nature of the Reformation. He was a man of refined tastes and pleasure, delighting in sumptuous feasts, and too often scandalizing the devout by his indecent conversation and licentious conduct. He gloried

Page 484

484 ARREST OF THE REFORMATION.

in being the patron of the learned, devoting all his attention to the progress of literature and the fine arts, a connoisseur in antiques. The amenities of the life of an accomplished gentleman were not to be disturbed. He little dreamt that in the coarse German monk there was an antagonist worthy of the papacy. The gay Italians looked upon Luther with ineffable contempt, as introducing ideas even more absurd than those he was trying to displace, and, what was perhaps a still greater offense, upholding his bad doctrines in worse Latin. They affected to believe that they discerned a taint of insanity in the Reformer's account of his conflicts with the Devil, yet were willing to concede that there was a method in his madness, since he was bent on having a wife. In their opinion, the result of the German movement must be exceedingly detrimental to learning, and necessarily lead to the production of very vulgar results, exciting among the common people a revolutionary and destructive spirit. Nor was this personal distaste for Luther altogether undeserved. The caricatures which that great man permitted himself to put forth were too indelicate to be described to a modern reader. They would be worthy of Our disgust and indignation did we not find some palliation in the coarseness of the communities and times in which he lived. Leo awoke to his blunder when it was too late, and found that he had been superciliously sneering at what he should have combated with all his migit. It is now more than three centuries since the Reformation commenced, and we are able, with some degree of accuracy, to ascertain its influence. Founded as it was on the right of private interpretation of the Scriptures, it introduced a better rule of life, and made a great advance toward intellectual liberty. It compelled men to be more moral, and permitted them to be more learned. For the traditions of superstition it substituted the dictates of common sense; it put an end to the disgraceful miracles that for so many ages had been the scandal of Europe. The assertion of the Italians that it was a great injury to letters is untrue. Though not to be regarded in any respect as a learned man, Luther approved of the study of Greek and Hebrew, recognized by all parties to be dangerous to the Latin system. And even if the accusation is admitted that he approved of their cultivation, not from any love to them, but from hatred to it, the world was equally a gainer. Toward the close of his life it seemed as if there was no other prospect for papal power than total ruin; yet at this day, out of three hundred millions of Christians, more than half owe allegiance to Rome. Almost as if by enchantment the Reformation suddenly ceased to advance. Rome was not only able to check its spread, but even to gain back a portion of what she had lost. The cause of this, which may seem at first an extraordinary result, is not to be attributed to any supernatural influence, as some have supposed. When natural causes suffice, it is needless to look for supernatural.

Page 485

CAUSES OF THAT ARREST. 485

Though there might be sovereigns who, like Henry VIII., had personal reasons for discontent with the Italian court; though there were some who sought to usurp the power and prerogatives of the popes; though there might be nobles who, as the Prince of Wales' tutor wrote to Sir W.

Paget, were " importunate wolves, as are able to devour chantries, cathedral churches, universities, and a thousand times as much;" some who desired the plunder of establishments endowed by the piety of ages, and who therefore lent all their influence in behalf of this great revolution; there was among such and above such that small but all-important body of men who see human affairs from the most general point of view. To these, whatever might be the nation to which they happened to belong, it was perfectly evident that the decomposition of faith which had set in, if permitted to go on unchecked, could not possibly end in any other way than in producing an anarchy of sects. In their opinion the German Reformation did not go far enough. It still practically left untouched the dependency of the Church upon the State. In the southern nations of the Continent it had merely irritated the great European ulcer, whereas what was required was the complete amputation of the rotten mass. In their judgment it was better to leave things as they were until a thorough eradication could be accomplished, and this, at the time, was obviously impossible. Not understanding, perhaps, how much -human affairs are developed according to law, and how little by the volition of individuals, they liberally conceded that Catholicism had been the civilizing agency of Europe, and had become inwoven with the social fabric for good or for evil. It could not now be withdrawn without pulling the whole texture to pieces. Moreover, the curtain of papal authority, which at one time enveloped all Europe in its ample folds, had, in the course of these late events, been contracted and stretched across the Continent, dividing the northern and southern nations from each other. The people of the south saw on its embroidered surface nothing but forms of usefulness and beauty, they on the north a confusion of meaningless threads. But the few who considered it as a whole, and understood the relations of both sides, knew well enough that the one is the necessary incident of the other, and that it is quite as useless to seek for explanations as to justify appearances. To them it was perfectly clear that the tranquillity and happiness of Christendom were best subserved by giving no encouragement to opinions which had already occasioned so much trouble, and which seemed to contain in their very constitution principles of social disorganization. A second reason for the sudden loss of expansive force in the Reformation is found in its own intrinsic nature. The principle of decomposition which it represented, and with which it was inextricably entangled, necessarily implied oppugnancy. For a short

Page 486

486 CAUSES OF THAT ARREST.

season the attention of Protestantism was altogether directed to the papal authority from which it had so recently separated itself; but, with its growing strength and ascertained independence, that object ceased to occupy it, becoming, as it were, more distant and more obscure. Upon the subordinate divisions which were springing from it, or which were of collateral descent from the original Catholic stock, the whole view of each denomination was concentrated. The bitterness once directed against the papacy lost none of its intensity when pointed at rivals or enemies nearer home. Nor was it alone dissensions among the greater sects, oppositions such as those between the Church of England and the Church of Scotland, whose discords were founded on points admitted by all to be great and essential; the same principle ran down through all the modes of sectarian combination as they emerged into life, producing among those of equal power struggles, and in the strong toward the weak persecution. Very soon the process of decomposition had advanced to such an extent that minor sects came into existence on very unessential points. Yet even among these little bodies there was just as much acrimony, just as much hatred as among the great. These differences were carried into the affairs of civil life, each sect forming a society within itself, and abstaining, as far as might be, from associations with its rivals. Of such a state of things the necessary result was weakness, and, had there been no other reason, this in itself would have been quite sufficient in the end to deprive Protestantism of its aggressive power. An army divided against itself is in no condition to make warfare against a watchful and vigorous enemy. But this was not all. It was in the nature of Protestantism from its outset that it was not constructive. Unlike its great antagonist, it contained no fundamental principle that could combine distant communities and foreign countries together. It originated in dissent, and was embodied by separation. It could not possess a concentrated power, nor recognize one apostolic man who might compress its disputes, harmonize its powers, wield it as a mass. For the attainment of his aims the Protestant had only wishes, the Catholic had a will. The Church of England, of Scotland, or of any other Protestant nation, undoubtedly did discharge its duty excellently well for the community in which it was placed, but, at the most, it was only a purely local institution, altogether insignificant in comparison with that great old Church, hoary and venerable with age, which had seen every government and every institution in Europe come into existence, many of them at its bidding, which had extirpated paganism from the Roman empire, compelled the Caesars to obey its mandates, precipitated the whole white race upon the Holy Land; that great old Church, once the more than imperial sovereign of Christendom, and of which the most respectable national Church was only a fragment of a fragment.

Page 487

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION AND THE INQUISITION. 487

Very different was it with Catholicism. It possessed an organization which concentrated in the hand of one man irresistible power, and included all the southern countries of Europe not Mohammedan. 'It could enforce its policy by the armies and fleets of obedient kings. It is not surprising, when this state of things is considered, that the spread of the Reformation was limited to its first fervor that the men who saw its origin saw also its culmination. It is not to be wondered at that, with the political weakening arising from a tendency to subdivision and disintegration on one side, and the preparing of a complete and effective organization against the danger that was threatening on the other, the issue should have turned out as it did. Rome, awaking at last to her danger, met the Reformation with four weapons-a counter-reformation, an increased vigor in the Inquisition, the institution of the Jesuits, and a greater embellishment of worship. The disposition of the northern nations was to a simplification of worship, that of the south to adorn it with whatever could captivate the senses. Ranke asserts that the composition of the mass of Marcellus by Palestrina, 1560, had a wonderful effect in the revival of religion; there can be no doubt that it constituted an epoch in devotion. But of all these, the first and best was moral change which she instantly imposed upon herself. Henceforth it was her intention that in the chair of St. Peter should never again be seen atheists, poisoners, thieves, murderers, blasphemers, adulterers, but men, who, if they were sometimes found, as must be the case, considering the infirmities of humanity, incompetent to deal with the great trials which often befell them, were yet of such personal purity, holiness of life, and uprightness of intention as to command profound respect. Those scandals that hitherto had every where disgraced her began to disappear, a true reformation, but not a schism, occurring through all ecclesiastical grades. Had Protestantism produced no other result than this, it would have been an unspeakable blessing to the world. By another very different means the Italian power sought to insure its domination-by an increased activity of the Inquisition. It is difficult to understand how men of capacity could have justified this iniquitous institution. Certainly it could not have been upon any principles of Christian morality, nor even upon those of high statesmanship. For the Inquisition to accomplish its purpose, it must needs be as all-seeing as Providence, as inexorable as the grave; not inflicting punishments which the sufferer could remember, but remorselessly killing outright; not troubling itself to ascertain the merits of a case and giving the accused the benefits of a doubt, but regarding suspicion and certainty as the same thing. If worked with the unscrupulous, impassive resolution of Machiavellianism, this great engine for the coercion of the human mind could be made to accomplish its purpose.

Page 488

488 THE JESUIT.

It thoroughly extinguished Protestantism in Spain and Italy, and in those countries maintained a barrier against the progressive reason of man. But the most effective weapon to which the papacy resorted was the institution of the order of the Jesuits. It was established by a bull of Paul III., 1540, the rules being that the general chosen for life should be obeyed as God; that they should vow poverty, chastity, obedience, and go wherever they were commanded; their obedience was to the pope, not to the Church a most politic distinction, for thereby an unmistakable responsibility was secured. They had no regular hours of prayer; their duties were preaching, the direction of consciences, education. By the Jesuits Rome penetrated into the remotest corners of the earth, established links of communication with her children who remained true to her in the heart of Protestant countries, and, with a far-seeing policy for the future, silently engrossed the education of the young. At the confessional she extorted from women the hidden secrets of their lives and those of their families, took the lead in devotion wherever there were pious men, and was equally foremost in the world of fashion and dissipation. There was no guise under which the Jesuit might not be found-a barefoot beggar, clothed in rags; a learned professor, lecturing gratuitously to scientific audiences; a man of the world, living in profusion and princely extravagance; there have been Jesuits the wearers of crowns. There were no places into which they did not find their way: a visitor to one of the loyal old families of England could never be sure but that there was a Jesuit hidden in the garret or secreted behind the wainscot of the bedroom. They were the advisers of the leading men of the age, sat in the cabinets of kings, and were their confessors. They boasted that they were the link between religious opinion and literature. With implicit and unquestioning obedience to his superior, like a good soldier, it was the paramount duty of the Jesuit to obey his orders, whatever those orders might be. It was for him to go, at the summons of a moment, with his life in his hand, to the very centre of pagan or of re, formed and revolted countries, where his presence was death by law, and execute the mission intrusted to him. If he succeeded, it was well; if he should fall, it was also well. To him all things were proper for the sake of the Church. It was his business to consider how the affair he had in hand was to be most surely accomplished-to resort to justifiable means if they should appear sufficient, if not, to unjustifiable; to the spiritual weapon, but also to be prepared with the carnal; to sacrifice candor if the occasion should require, if necessary even truth, remembering that the end justifies the means, if that end is the good of the Church. While some religious orders were founded on retirement, and aimed

Page 489

THEIR SUPPRESSION. 489

at personal improvement by solitude, the Jesuits were instructed to mix in the affairs of men, and gather experience in the ways of worldly wisdom. And since it is the infirmity of humanity, whatever may be the vigor of its first intentions, too often to weary in well-doing, provision was made to re-enforce the zeal of those becoming lukewarm, to admonish the delinquent, by making each a spy on all the others, under oath to reveal every thing to his superior. In that manner a control was exercised over the brotherhood in all parts of the world. In Europe they had, in a very short time, stealthily but largely engrossed public education; had mixed themselves up with every public affair; were at the bottom of every intrigue, making their power felt through the control they exerted over sovereigns, ministers of state, and great court ladies, influencing the last through the spiritual means of the confessional, or by the more natural but equally effectual entanglements of requited love. Already they had recognized the agency of commerce in promoting and diffusing religious belief, and hence simultaneously became great missionaries and great merchants. With the Indies, East and West, they carried forward extensive commercial undertakings, and had depots in various parts of Europe. In these operations they were necessarily absolved from their vows of poverty and became immensely rich. In South America they obtained a footing in Paraguay, and commenced their noble attempt at the civilization of the Indians, bringing them into communities, teaching them social usages, agricultural arts, and the benefits arising to themselves and the community from labor. They gave them a military organization, subdivided, according to the European system, into the customary arms-infantry, cavalry, artillery; they supplied them with munitions of war. It was their hope that from this basis they should be able to spread the rule of the Church over America, as had been done in preceding ages over Europe. An intolerable apprehension of their invisible presence and unscrupulous agency made all Europe put them down at last. The amenities of exquisite courteousness, the artifices of infinite dissimulation, can not forever deceive. Men found, bybitter experience, that under the silken glove there was an iron hand. From their general in Rome, who was absolute commander of their persons and unchallengeable administrator of their prodigious wealth, down to the humblest missionary who was. wearing away his life among the Andes, or on the banks of the Hoang-ho, or in the solitary prairies of Missouri, or under the blazing sun of Abyssinia; whether he was confessing the butterfly ladies of Paris, whispering devilish suggestions into the ear of the King of Spain, consoling the dying peasant in an Irish cabin, arguing with mandarins in the palace of the Emperor of China, stealing away the hearts of the rising generation in the lower schools and academies, extorting the admiration of learned societies by the profundity of his

Page 490

490 EFFECTS OF CRITICISM.

philosophy and the brilliancy of his scientific discoveries; whether he was to be seen in the exchanges and marts of the great capitals, supervising commercial operations on a scale which up to that time had been attempted by none but the Jews; whether he was held in an English jail as a suspected vagabond, or sitting on the throne of France; whether he appeared as a great landed proprietor, the owner of countless leagues in the remote parts of India or South America; whether he was mixing with crowds in the streets of London, and insinuating in Protestant ears the rights of subjects to oppose and even depose their monarchs, or in the villages of Castile and Leon, preaching before Catholic peasants the paramount duty of a good Christian implicitly to obey the mandates of his king; wherever the Jesuit was, or whatever he was doing, men universally felt that the thing he had in hand was only auxiliary to some higher, some hidden design. The stealth, and silence, and power became at last so intolerable that they were banished from France, Spain, Portugal, and other Catholic countries. But such was their vitality that, though the order was abolished by a papal bull in 1773, they have been again restored. Though it is sometimes said that Rome in this manner, by her admirable combinations and irresistible movement, succeeded at last in checking the Reformation, a full consideration of the state of affairs would lead us to receive that assertion with very considerable restriction. She came out of the conflict much less powerful than she had entered it. If we attribute to her policy all that it can justly claim, we must also attribute to causes over which she had no kind of control their rightful influence. The Reformation had been, to no small extent, due to the rise of criticism, which still continued its development, and was still fruitful of results. Latin had fallen from its high estate; the modern languages were in all directions expanding and improving; the printing-press was not only giving Greek learning to the world, but countless translations and commentaries. The doctrine successfully established by Luther and his colleagues, the right of private interpretation and judgment, was the practical carrying out of the organic law of criticism to the highest affairs with which man can be concerned-affairs of religion. The Reformation itself, philosophically considered, really meant the casting off of authority, the installation of individual inquiry and personal opinion. If criticism, thus standing upon the basis of the Holy Scriptures, had not hesitated to apply itself to an examination of public faith, and, as the consequence thereof, had laid down new rules for morality and the guidance of life, it was not to be expected that it would hesitate to deal with minor things-that it would spare the philosophy, the policy, the literature of antiquity. And so, indeed, it went on, comparing classical authors with classical authors, the fathers with the fathers, often the same writer with

Page 491

SECESSION OF THE GREAT CRITICS. 491

himself. Contradictions were pointed out, errors exposed, weakness detected, and new views offered of almost every thing within the range of literature. From this burning ordeal one book alone came out unscathed. It was the Bible. It spontaneously vindicated for itself what Wiclif in the former times, and Luther more lately, had claimed for it. And not only did it hold its ground, but it truly became incalculably more powerful than ever it had been before. The press multiplied it in every language without end, until there was scarcely a cottage in reformed Europe that did not possess a copy. But if criticism was thus the stimulating principle that had given life to the Reformation, it had no little to do with its pause; and this is the influence over which Rome had no kind of control, and to which I have made allusion. The phases through which the Reformation passed were dependent on the coincident advances of learning. First it relied on the Scriptures, which were to the last its surest support; then it included the fathers. But, from a more intimate study of the latter, many erudite Protestants were gradually brought back to the ancient fold. Among such may be mentioned Erasmus, who by degrees became alienated from the Reformers, and subsequently Grotius, the publication of whose treatise, "De jure belli et pacis," 1625, really constituted an epoch in the political system of Europe. This great man had gradually become averse to the Reformation, believing that, all things considered, it had done more harm than good; he had concluded that it was better to throw differences into oblivion for the sake of peace, and to enforce silence on one's own opinions, rather than to expect that the Church should be compelled to accommodate herself to them. If such men as Erasmus, Casaubon, and Grotius had been brought to this dilemma by their profound philosophical meditations, their conclusion was confirmed among the less reflecting by the unhappy intolerance of the new as well as the old Church. Men asked what was the difference between the vindictiveness with which Rome dealt with Antonio de Dominis, at once an ecclesiastic and a natural philosopher, who, having gone over to Protestantism and then seceded, imprudently visited Rome, was there arrested, and, dying, his body was dug up and burnt, and the rigor of Calvin, who seized Servetus, the author of the " Christianismi Restitutio," and in part the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, when he happened to pass through Geneva, and committed him to the flames. Criticism had thus, in its earlier stage, produced well-marked results. As it developed it lost none of its power. It had enthroned patristic theology; now it wrenched from its hand the scepter. In the works of Daille it showed that the fathers are of no kind of use they are too contradictory of one another; even Jeremy Tay-

Page 492

492 CONTINUATION OF THE REFORMATION IN AMERICA.

lor speaks of their authority and reputation as clean gone forever. In a few years they had sunk into desuetude, a neglect shared by many classical authors, whose opinions were now only quoted with a respectful smile. The admiration for antiquity was diminishing under the effect of searching examination. Books were beginning to appear, turning the old historians into ridicule for their credulity. The death of Servetus was not without advantage to the world. There was not a pious or thoughtful man in all reformed Europe who was not shocked when the circumstances under which that unhappy physician had been brought to the stake at Geneva by John Calvin were made known. For two hours he was roasted in the flames of a slow fire, begging for the love of God that they would put on more wood, or do something to end his torture. Men asked, with amazement and indignation, if the atrocities of the Inquisition were again to be revived. On all sides they began to inquire how far it is lawful to inflict the punishment of death for difference of opinion. It opened their eyes to the fact that, after all they had done, the state of civilization in which they were living was still characterized by its intolerance. In 1546 the Venetian embassador at the court of Charles V. reported to his government that in Holland and Friesland more than thirty thousand persons had suffered death at the hands of justice for Anabaptist errors. From such an unpromising state of things toleration could only emerge with difficulty. It was the offspring, not of a philosophical charity, but of the checked animosities of ever-multiplying sects, and their detected impossibility of coercing one another. The history of the Reformation does not close, where many European authors have imagined, in a balanced and final distribution of the north and south between the Protestant and the Catholic. The predestined issue of sectarian differences and dissensions is individual liberty of thought. So long as there was one vast overshadowing, intolerant corporation, every man must bring his understanding to its measure, and think only as it instructed him to do. As soon as dissenting confessions gathered sufficient military power to maintain their right of existence-as soon as from them, in turn, incessant offshoots were put forth, toleration became not only possible, but inevitable, and that is perhaps as far as the movement has at this time advanced in Europe. But Macaulay and others who have treated of the Reformation have taken too limited a view of it, supposing that this was its point of arrest. It made another enormous stride when, at the American Revolution, the State and the Church were solemnly and openly dissevered from one another. Now might the vaticinations of the prophets of evil expect to find credit; a great people had irrevocably broken off its politics from its theology, and it might surely have been expected that the unbridled interests, and instincts, and passions of

Page 493

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 493

men would have dragged every thing into the abyss of anarchy. Yet what do we, who are living nearly a century after that time, find the event to be? Sectarian decomposition, passing forward to its last extreme, is the process by which individual mental liberty is engendered and maintained. A grand and imposing religious unity implies tyranny to the individual; the increasing emergence of sects gives him increasing latitude of thought-with their utmost multiplication he gains his utmost liberty. In this respect, unity and liberty are in opposition; as the one diminishes, the other increases. The Reformation broke down unity; it gave liberty to masses of men grouped together in sufficient numbers to insure their position; it is now invisibly, but irresistibly making steps, never to be stayed until there is an absolute mental emancipation for man. Great revolutions are not often accomplished without much suffering and many crimes. It might have been supposed before the event, perhaps it is supposed by many who are not privileged to live among the last results, that this decomposition of religious faith must be to the detriment of personal and practical piety. Yet America, in which, of all countries, the Reformation at the present moment has farthest advanced, should offer to thoughtful men much encouragement. Its cities are filled with churches built by voluntary gifts; its clergy is voluntarily sustained, and is, in all directions, engaged in enterprises of piety, education, mercy. What a difference between its private life and that of ecclesiastics before the Reformation! Not, as in the old times, does the layman look upon them as the cormorants and curse of society; they are his faithful advisers, his honored friends, under whose suggestion and supervision are instituted educational establishments, colleges, hospitals, whatever can be of benefit to men in this life, or secure for them happiness in the life to come.

Page 494

494 SOCIAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND.

CHAPTER XXI. DIGRESSION ON THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND AT THE END OF THE AGE OF FAITH. RESULTS PRODUCED BY THE AGE OF FAITH

Condition of England at the Suppression of the Monasteries. Condition of England at the Close of the seventeenth Century.-Locomotion, Literature, Libraries.-Social and private Life of the Laity and Clergy.-Brutality in the Administration of Law.-Profligacy of Literature.-The Theatre, its three Phases.-Miracle, Moral, and Real Plays. Estimate of the Advance made in the Age of Faith Comparison with that already made in the Age of Reason. /

ARRIVED at the commencement of the Age of Reason, we might profitably examine the social condition of those countries destined to become conspicuous in the new order of things. I have not space to present such an examination as extensively as it deserves, and must limit my remarks to that nation which, of all others, is most interesting to the American reader-that England, which we picture to ourselves as foremost in civilization, her universities dating back for many centuries; her charters and laws, on which individual, and therefore social liberty rests, spoken of as the ancient privileges of the realm; her people a clear-headed race, lovers and stout defenders of freedom. During by far the greater part of the past period she had been Catholic, but she had also been reformed-ever, as she will always be religious. A correct estimate of her national and individual life will point out to us all that had been done in the Age of Faith. From her condition we may gather what is the progress made by man when guided by such theological ideas as those which had been her rule of life. The following paragraphs convey an instructive lesson. They dissipate some romantic errors; they are a verdict on a political system from its practical results. What a contrast with the prodigious advancement within a few years when the Age of Reason had set in! How strikingly are we reminded of the inconsequential, the fruitless actions of youth, and the deliberate, the durable undertakings of manhood! For many of the facts I have now to mention the reader will find authorities in the works of Lord Macaulay and Mr. Froude on English history. My own reading in other directions satisfies me that the picture here offered represents the actual condition of things. At the time of the suppression of the monasteries in England the in-

Page 495

MONASTERIES, CASTLES, CABINS. 495

fluences which had been in operation for so many centuries had come to an end. Had they endured for a thousand years longer they could have accomplished nothing more. The condition of human life shows what their uses and what their failures had been. There were forests extending over great districts; fens forty or fifty miles in length, reeking with miasm and fever, though round the walls of the abbeys there might be beautiful gardens, green lawns, shady walks, and many murmuring streams. In trackless woods where men should have been, herds of deer were straying; the sandy hills were alive with conies, the downs with flocks of bustard. The peasant's cabin was made of reeds or sticks plastered over with mud. His fire was chimneyless-often it was made of peat. In the objects and manner of his existence he was but a step above the industrious beaver who was building his dam in the adjacent stream. There were highwaymen on the roads, pirates on the rivers, vermin in abundance in the clothing and beds. The common food was peas, vetches, fern roots, and even the bark of trees. There was no commerce to put off famine. Man was altogether at the mercy of the seasons. The population, sparse as it was, was perpetually thinned by pestilence and want. Nor was the state of the townsman better than that of the rustic; his bed was a bag of straw, with a fair round log for his pillow. If he was in easy circumstances, his clothing was of leather; if poor, a wisp of straw wrapped round his limbs kept off the cold. It was a melancholy social condition when nothing intervened between reed cabins in the fen, the miserable wigwams of villages, and the conspicuous walls of the castle and monastery. Well might they who lived in those times bewail the lot of the plague-stricken peasant, and point, not without indignation, to the troops of pilgrims, mendicants, pardoners, and ecclesiastics of every grade who hung round the Church, to the nightly wassail and rioting drunkenness in the castle-hall, secure in its moats, its battlements, and its warders. The local pivots round which society revolved were the red-handed baron, familiar with scenes of outrage and deeds of blood, and the abbot, indulging in the extreme of luxury, magnificent in dress, exulting in his ambling palfrey, his hawk, his hounds. Rural life had but little improved since the time of Caesar; in its physical aspect it was altogether neglected. As to the mechanic, how was it possible that he could exist where there were no windows made of glass, no, not of oiled paper, no workshop warmed by a fire. For the poor there was no physician, for the dying the monk and his crucifix. The aim was to smooth the sufferer's passage to the next world, not to save him for this. Sanitary provisions there were none except the paternoster and the ave. In the cities the pestilence walked unstayed, its triumphs numbered by the sounds of the death-crier in the streets or the knell for the soul that was passing away.

Page 496

496 STATE OF MORAL.

Our estimate of the influence of the system under which men were thus living as a regulator of their passions may at this point derive much exactness from incidents such as those offered by the history of syphilis and the usages of war. For this purpose we may for a moment glance at the Continent. The attention of all Europe was suddenly arrested by a disease which broke out soon after the discovery of America. It raged with particular violence in the French army commanded by Charles VIII. at the siege of Naples, A.D. 1495, and spread almost like an epidemic. It was syphilis. Though there have been medical authors who supposed that it was only an exacerbation of a malady known from antiquity, that opinion cannot be maintained after the learned researches of Astruc. That it was something recognized at the time as altogether new seems to be demonstrated by the accusations of different nations against each other of having given origin to it. Very soon, however, the truth appeared. It had been brought by the sailors of Columbus from the West Indies. Its true character, and the conditions of its propagation, were fully established by Fernel. Now, giving full weight to the fact that the virulence of a disease may be greatest at its first invasion, but remembering that there is nothing in the history of syphilis that would lead us to suppose it ever was, or indeed could be infectious, but only contagious, or communicated by direct contact from person to person; remembering also the special circumstances under which, in this disease, that contagion is imparted, the rapidity of its spread all over Europe is a significant illustration of the fearful immorality of the times. If contemporary authors are to be trusted, there was not a class, married or unmarried, clergy or laity, from the holy father, Leo X., to the beggar by the wayside, free from it. It swept over Europe, not as Asiatic cholera did, running along the great lines of trade, and leaving extensive tracts untouched, settling upon and devastating great cities here and there, while others had an immunity. The march of syphilis was equable, unbroken, universal, making good its ground from its point of appearance in the southwest, steadily and swiftly taking possession of the entire Continent, and offering an open manifestation and measure of the secret wickedness of society.' If thus the sins man practices in privacy became suddenly and accidentally exposed, that exposure showing how weak is the control that any system can exercise over human passions, we are brought to the same melancholy conclusion when we turn to those crimes that may be perpetrated in the face of day. The usages of war in the civil contests of the fifteenth century, or in the religious conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth, are perfectly appalling; the annals of those evil days are full of wanton and objectless barbarities,

Page 497

CONDITION OF THE LOWER ORDERS. 497

refusal of quarter, murder in cold blood, killing of peasants. Invading armies burnt and destroyed every thing in their way; the taking of plunder and ransom of prisoners were recognized sources of wealth. Prosperous countries were made "a sea of fire;" the horrible atrocities of the Spaniards in America were rivaled by those practiced in Europe; deliberate directions were given to make whole tracts "a desert." Attempts had been made to introduce some amelioration into warfare again and again, either by forbidding hostilities at certain times, as was the object of the "truces of God," repeatedly enforced by ecclesiastical authority, or by establishing between the combatants themselves those courtesies which are at once the chief grace and glory of chivalry; but, to judge by the result as offered, even so late as the eighteenth century, those attempts must be regarded as having proved altogether abortive. England, at the close of the Age of Faith, had for long been a chief pecuniary tributary to Italy, the source from which large revenues had been drawn, the fruitful field in which herds of Italian ecclesiastics had been pastured. A wonderful change was impending. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the island was far more backward intellectually and politically than is commonly supposed. Its population hardly reached five millions, and was stationary at that point, not so much because of the effects of civil and foreign war as merely through the operation of ordinary economical causes. There was no reason to call more men into existence. It was regarded as good statesmanship to maintain the population at a constant standard. The municipal policy corresponded to the national; it was not so much advanced as that contemporaneously existing in Peru. Swarms of idle ecclesiastics had set such a pernicious example that the indisposition among common people to work had become quite a formidable difficulty. In every village there were stocks for the punishment of "valiant beggars," as they were termed. By the act of 1531, vagrants "whole and mighty in body" caught begging for the first time might be whipped at the cart-tail; the second time their ears were to be slit; by the act of 1536, if caught the third time, they were to be put to death. In all directions large towns were falling into decay, a misfortune popularly attributed to the laziness of the lower orders, but in reality due to causes of a very different kind. Hitherto land had been the representative of authority and the source of power. Society had been organized upon that imperfect basis; a descending scale of landed proprietors had been established, and in that system every man had a place assigned to him, just as in Peru, though less perfectly. It was a system of organized labor, the possession of land being a trust, not a property. But now commerce was beginning to disturb the foundations on which all these arrangements had been sustained, and to compel a new distribution of population; trading compa-

Page 498

498 CONDITION OF THE CLERGY.

nies were being established; men were unsettled by the rumors or realities of immense fortunes rapidly gained in foreign adventure. Maritime enterprise was thus not only dislocating society, but even destroying its spirit, substituting self-interest for loyalty. A nation so illiterate that many of its peers in Parliament could neither read nor write, was hardly able to trace the troubles befalling it to their proper source with one voice it imputed them to the bad example and short comings of the clergy. Long before Henry VIII., England was ready for the suppression of the monasteries. She regarded them as the very hot-beds of her evils. There were incessant complaints against the clergy for their scandalous lusts, for personal impurities such as in modern times we do not allude to, for their holding of livings in plurality, for their extortion of exorbitant profits, and neglect in the discharge of their duty. In the public opinion, to so great an extent had these immoralities gone that it was openly asserted that there were one hundred thousand women in England made dissolute by the clergy. It was well known that brothels were kept in London for their use. It was affirmed that the confessional was shamefully abused, and, through it, advantage taken of females; that the vilest crime in an ecclesiastic might be commuted for money, six shillings and eightpence being sufficient in the case of mortal sin. Besides these general causes of complaint, there were some which, though of a minor, were not of a less irritating kind; such, for instance, as the mortuary, soul-shot, or corpse present, a claim for the last dress worn by persons brought to a priest for burial, or some exaggerated commutation thereof. That such was the demoralized condition of the English Church, and such its iniquitous relations to the people, we have the most unimpeachable evidence, under circumstances of an imposing and solemn character. The House of Commons brought an accusation against the clergy before the king. When Parliament met A.D. 1529, that House, as its very first act, declared to the sovereign that sedition and heresy were pervading the land, and that it had become absolutely necessary to apply a corrective. It affirmed that the troubles into which the realm had fallen were attributable to the clergy; that the chief foundation, occasion, and cause thereof was the parallel jurisdiction of the Church and State; that the incompatible legislative authority of convocation lay at the bottom of the mischief. Among other specific points it alleged the following: That the houses of convocation made laws without the royal assent, and without the consent or even the knowledge of the people; that such laws were never published in the English language, and that, nevertheless, men were daily punished under them without ever having had an opportunity to eschew the penalties; that the demoralization extended from the Archbishop of Canterbury down to the lowest priest, that dignitary having tampered

Page 499

ACCUSATION OF PARLIAMENT AGAINST THEM. 499

with the dispatch of justice in his Court of Arches; that parsons, vicars, priests, and curates were in the habit of denying the administration of the sacraments save upon the payment of money; that poor men were harassed without any legal cause in the spiritual courts for the mere purpose of extortion, and exorbitant fees were exacted from them without cause; that the probate of wills was denied except on the gratification of the appetite of prelates and ordinaries for money; that the high ecclesiastics extorted large sums for the induction of persons into benefices, and that they did daily confer benefices on "young folk," their nephews and relatives, being minors, for the purpose of detaining the fruits and profits in their own hands; that the bishops illegally imprisoned, sometimes for a year or more, persons in their jails, without informing them of the cause of their imprisonment or the name of their accuser; that simple, unlearned men, and even "well-witted" ones, were entrapped by subtle questions into heresy in the ecclesiastical courts, and punishment procured against them. These are serious charges; they imply that the Church had degenerated into a contrivance for the extortion of money. The House of Commons petitioned the king to make such laws as should furnish a remedy. The king submitted the petition to the bishops, and required of them an answer. In that answer the ecclesiastical manner of thought is very striking. The bishops insist that the laws of the realm shall give way to the canon law, or, if incompatible, shall be altered so as to suit it; they identify attacks on themselves with those on the doctrine of the Church, a time-honored and well-tried device; they affirm that they have no kind of enmity against the laymen, "their ghostly children," but only against the pestilent poison of heresy; that their authority for making laws is grounded on the Scriptures, to which the laws of the realm must be made to conform; that they can not conscientiously permit the king's consent to the laws, since that would be to put him in the stead of God, under whose inspiration they are made; that, as to troubling poor men, it is the Holy Ghost who inspireth them to acts tending to the wealth of his elect folk, that, if any ecclesiastic hath offended in this respect, though "in multis offendimus omnes," as St. James hath it, let him bear his own fault, and let not the whole Church be blamed; that the Protestants, their antagonists, are lewd, idle fellows, who have embraced the abominable opinions recently sprung up in Germany; that there are many advantages in commuting Church penances and censures for money; that tithes are a divine institution, and that debts of money owing to God may be recovered after one hundred or seven hundred years of non-payment, since God can never lose his rights thereto; that, however, it is not well to collect a tithe twice over; that priests may lawfully engage in secular occupations of a cer-

Page 500

500 COMPULSORY SUBMISSION OF THE CLERGY.

tain kind; that the punishments inflicted on the laymen have been for the health of their souls, and that, generally, the saints may claim powers to which common men are not entitled. A fierce struggle between the Commons and the bishops ensued; but the House was firm, and passed several bills, and among them the Clergy Discipline Act. The effect was to cut down ecclesiastical incomes, probate and legacy duties were defined, mortuaries were curtailed, extortionate fees for burial terminated, clergymen were forbidden to engage in farming, tanning, brewing, or to buy merchandise for the purpose of selling it again. It was made unlawful any longer to hold eight or nine benefices, or to purchase dispensations for not doing duty; they were compelled to reside in the parishes for the care of which they were paid, under penalty of ~10 a month; and it was made a high penal offense to obtain dispensations from any of the provisions of this act from Rome. Nothing could be more significant of the position of the parties than the high-toned, the conservative moderation of these acts. The bishops did not yield, however, without a struggle. In all directions is compelled from the pulpits arose a cry of "atheism," "lack of faith," "heresy." But the House resolutely stood to its ground. Still more, it sent its speaker to the king with a complaint against the Bishop of Rochester, who had dared to stigmatize it as "infidel." The bishop was compelled to equivocate and apologize. The English nation and their king were thus together in the suppression of the monasteries; they were together in the enforcing of ecclesiastical reforms. It was nothing but this harmony which so quickly brought the clergy to reason, and induced them, in 1532, to anticipate both Parliament and the people in actually offering to separate themselves from Rome. In the next year the king had destroyed the vast power which in so many centuries had gathered round ecclesiastical institutions, and had forced the clergy into a fitting subordination. Henceforth there was no prospect that they would monopolize all the influential and lucrative places in the realm; henceforth, year by year, with' many vicissitudes and changes, their power continued to decline. Their special pursuit, theology, was separated more and more perfectly from politics. In the House of Lords, of which they had once constituted one half, they sank to a mere shadow. Henry VIII. can not, therefore, be properly considered as the author of the downfall of ecclesiasticism in England, though he was the instrument by which it was ostensibly accomplished. The derisive insinuation that the Gospel light had flashed upon him from Anna Boleyn's eyes was far from expressing all the truth.' The nullity of papal disciplines, excommunications, interdicts, penances, proved that the old tone of thought was utterly decayed. This oblivion

Page 501

THE ROADS, LOCOMOTION, AND MAILS. 501

of old emotions, this obsoleteness of old things, was by no means confined to England. On the Continent the attacks of Erasmus on the monks were every where received with applause. In 1527 one printer issued an edition of 24,000 copies of the Colloquies of Erasmus, and actually sold them all. He understood the signs of the times. From this digression on parties and policy in England, let us again return to special details, descending for that purpose to the close of the seventeenth century. For a long time London had been the most populous capital in Europe; yet it was dirty, ill at the close of the built, without sanitary provisions. The deaths were one in twenty-three each year; now, in a much more crowded population, they are not one in forty. Much of the country was still heath, swamp, warren. Almost within sight of the city was a tract twenty-five miles round nearly in a state of nature; there were but three houses in it. Wild animals roamed here and there, very much as they do in our Western territories. It is incidentally mentioned that Queen Anne, on a journey to Portsmouth, saw a herd of five hundred red deer. With such small animals as the marten and badger, found every where, there was still seen occasionally the wild bull. Nothing more strikingly shows the social condition than the provisions for locomotion. In the rainy seasons the roads were all but impassable, justifying the epithet often applied to them of being in a horrible state. Through such gullies, half filled with mud, carriages were dragged, often by oxen, or, when horses were used, it was as much a matter of necessity as in the city a matter of display to drive half a dozen of them. If the country was open the track of the road was easily mistaken. It was no uncommon thing for persons to lose their way, and have to spend the night out in the air. Between places of considerable importance the roads were sometimes very little known, and such was the difficulty for wheeled carriages that a principal mode of transport was by pack-horses, of which passengers took advantage, stowing themselves away between the packs. We shall probably not dissent from their complaint that this method of traveling was hot in summer and cold in winter. The usual charge for freight was thirty cents per ton per mile. Toward the close of the century what were termed " flying coaches" were established; they could move at the rate of from thirty to fifty miles in a day. Many persons thought the risk so great that it was a tempting of Providence to go in them. The mail-bag was carried on horseback at about five miles an hour. A penny-post had been established in the city, but with much difficulty, for many long-headed men, who knew very well what they were saying, had denounced it as an insidious "popish contrivance." Only a few years before the period under consideration Parliament

Page 502

502 LIBRARIES, PRINTING-PRESSES, SOCIAL DISCIPLINE.

had resolved that " all pictures in the royal collection which contained representations of Jesus or the Virgin Mother should be burnt; Greek statues were delivered over to Puritan stone-masons to be made decent." A little earlier, Lewis Muggleton had given himself out as the last and greatest of the prophets, having power to save or damn whom he pleased. It had been revealed to him that God is only six feet high, and the sun only four miles off. The country beyond the Trent was still in a state of barbarism, and near the sources of the Tyne there were people scarcely less savage than American Indians, their " half-naked women chanting a wild measure, while the men, with brandished dirks, danced a war-dance." At the beginning of the eighteenth century there were thirty-four counties without a printer. The only press in England north of the Trent was at York. As to private libraries, there were none deserving the name. "An esquire passed for a great scholar if Hudibras, Baker's Chronicle, Tarleton's Jests, and the Seven Champions of Christendom lay in his hall-window." It might be expected that the women were ignorant enough when very few men knew how to write correctly or even intelligibly, and it had become unnecessary for clergymen to read the Scriptures in the original tongues. Social discipline was very far from being of that kind which we call moral. The master whipped his apprentice, the pedagogue his scholar, the husband his wife. Public punishments partook of the general brutality. It was a day for the rabble when some' culprit was set in the pillory to be pelted with brickbats, rotten eggs, and dead cats; when women were fastened by the legs in the stocks at the market-place, or a pilferer flogged through the town at the carttail, a clamor not unfrequently arising unless the lash were laid on hard enough " to make him howl." In punishments of higher offenders these whippings were perfectly horrible; thus Titus Oates, after standing twice in the pillory, was whipped, and, after an interval of two days, whipped again. A virtuoso in these matters gives us the incredible information that he counted as many as seventeen hundred stripes administered. So far from the community being shocked at such an exhibition, they appeared to agree in the sentiment that, "since his face could not be made to blush, it was well enough to try what could be done with his back." Such a hardening of heart was in no little degree promoted by the atrocious punishments of state offenders: thus, after the decapitation of Montrose and Argyle, their heads decorated the top of the Tolbooth; and gentlemen, after the rising of Monmouth, were admonished to be careful of their ways, by hanging in chains to their park gate the corpse of a rebel to rot in the air. To a debased public life private life corresponded. The houses of the rural population were huts covered with straw-thatch; their in

Page 503

PUBLIC MORALITY. 503

mates, if able to procure fresh meat once a week, were considered to be in prosperous circumstances. One half of the families in England could hardly do that. Children of six years old were not unfrequently set to labor. The lord of the manor spent his time in rustic pursuits; was not an unwilling associate of peddlers and drovers; knew how to ring a pig or shoe a horse; his wife and daughters "stitched and spun, brewed gooseberry wine, cured marigolds, and made the crust for the venison pasty." Hospitality was displayed in immoderate eating, and drinking of beer, the guest not being considered as having done justice to the occasion unless he had gone under the table. The dining-room was uncarpeted; but then it was tinted with a decoction of " soot and small beer." The chairs were rush-bottomed. In London the houses were mostly of wood and plaster, the streets filthy beyond expression. After nightfall a passenger went at his peril, for chamber windows were opened and slop-pails unceremoniously emptied down. There were no lamps in the streets until Master Heming established his public lanterns. As a necessary consequence, there were plenty of shoplifters, highwaymen, and burglars. As to the moral condition, it is fearfully expressed in the statement that men not unfrequently were willing to sacrifice their country for their religion. Hardly any personage died who was not popularly suspected to have been made away with by poison, an indication of the morality generally supposed to prevail among the higher classes. If such was the state of society in its serious aspect, it was no better in its lighter. We can scarcely credit the impurity and immodesty of the theatrical exhibitions. What is said about them would be beyond belief if we did not remember that they were the amusements of a community whose ideas of female modesty and female sentiment were altogether different from ours. Indecent jests were put into the mouths of lively actresses, and the dancing was not altogether of a kind to meet our approval. The rural clergy could do but little to withstand this flood of immorality. Their social position for the last hundred years had been rapidly declining; for, though the Church possessed among her dignitaries great writers and great preachers, her lower orders, partly through the political troubles that had befallen the state, but chiefly in consequence of sectarian bitterness, had been reduced to a truly menial condition. It was the business of the rich man's chaplain to add dignity to the dinner-table by saying grace " in full canonicals," buth4e was also intended to be a butt for the mirth of the company. " The young Levite," such was the phrase then in use, "might fill himself with the corned beef and the carrots, but as soon as the tarts and cheese-cakes made their appearance he quitted his seat, and stood aloof till he was summoned to return thanks for the repast," the daintiest part of which he had not tasted. If need arose, he

Page 504

504 ADMINISTRATION OF LAW.

could curry a horse, " carry a parcel ten miles," or " cast up the farrier's bill." The "wages" of a parish priest were at starvation-point. The social degradation of the ecclesiastic is well illustrated by an order of Queen Elizabeth, that no clergyman should presume to marry a servant girl without the consent of her master or mistress. The clergy, however, had not fallen into this condition without in a measure deserving it. Their time had been too much occupied in persecuting Puritans and other sectaries, with whom they would have gladly dealt in the same manner as they had dealt with the Jews, who, from the thirteenth century till Cromwell, were altogether interdicted from public worship. The University of Oxford had ordered the political works of Buchanan, Milton, and Baxter to be publicly burnt in the court of the schools. The immortal vagabond, Bunyan, had been committed to jail for preaching out of his head the way of salvation to the common people, and had remained there twelve years, the stout old man refusing to give his promise not to offend in that manner again. The great doctrine inculcated from the pulpit was submission to temporal power. Men were taught that rebellion is a sin not less deadly than witchcraft. On a community thirsting after the waters of life were still inflicted wearisome sermons respecting "the wearing of surplices, position at the Eucharist, or the sign of the cross at baptism," things that were a stench in the nostrils of the lank haired Puritan, who, with his hands clasped on his bosom, his face corrugated with religious astringency, the whites of his eyes turned upward to heaven, rocking himself alternately on his heels and the tips of his toes, delivered, in a savory prayer uttered through his nose, all such abominations of the Babylonish harlot to the Devil, whose affairs they were. In administering the law, whether in relation to political or religious offenses, there was an incredible atrocity. In London, the crazy old bridge over the Thames was decorated with grinning and mouldering heads of criminals, under ah idea that these ghastly spectacles would fortify the common people in their resolves to act according to law. The toleration of the times may be understood from a law enacted by the Scotch Parliament, May 8,1685, that whoever preached or heard in a conventicle should be punished with death and the confiscation of his goods. That such an infamous spirit did not content itself with mere dead-letter laws there is too much practical evidence to permit any one to doubt. A silly laboring man, who had taken it into his head that he could not conscientiously attend the Episcopal worship, was seized by a troop of soldiers, "rapidly examined, convicted of non-conformity, and sentenced to death in the presence of his wife, who led one little child by the hand, and it was easy to see was about to give birth to another. He was shot before her face, the widow

Page 505

PUBLIC PUNISHMENTS. 505

crying out in her agony,' Well, sir, well, the day of reckoning will come.'" Shrieking Scotch Covenanters were submitted to torture by crushing their knees flat in the boot; women were tied to stakes on the sea-sands and drowned by the slowly advancing tide because they would not attend Episcopal worship, or branded on their cheeks and then shipped to America; gallant but wounded soldiers were hung in Scotland for fear they should die before they could be got to England. In the troubles connected with Monmouth's rising, in one county alone, Somersetshire, two hundred and thirty-three persons were hanged, drawn, and quartered, to say nothing of military executions, for the soldiers amused themselves by hanging a culprit for each toast they drank, and making the drums and fifes play, as they said, to his dancing. It is needless to recall such incidents as the ferocity of Kirk's lambs, for such was the name popularly given to the soldiers of that colonel, in allusion to the Paschal lamb they bore on their flag- or the story of Tom Boilman, so nicknamed from having been compelled by those veterans to seethe the remains of his quartered friends in melted pitch. Women, for such idle words as women are always using, were sentenced to be whipped at the cart's-tail through every market town in Dorset; a lad named Tutching condemned to be flogged once a fortnight for seven years. Eight hundred and forty-one human beings judicially condemned to transportation to the West India islands, and suffering all the horrible pains of a slave-ship in the middle passage, "were never suffered to go on deck;" in the holds below, " all was darkness, stench, lamentation, disease, and death." One fifth of them were thrown overboard to the sharks before they reached their destination, and the rest obliged to be fattened before they could be offered in the market to the Jamaica planters. The court ladies, and even the Queen of England herself, were so utterly forgetful of womanly mercy and common humanity as to join in this infernal traffic. That princess requested that a hundred of the convicts should be given to her. "The profit which she cleared on the cargo, after making a large allowance for those who died of hunger and fever during the passage, can not be estimated at less than a thousand guineas." It remains to add a few words respecting the state of literature. This, at the end of the seventeenth century, had become indescribably profligate, and, since the art of reading was by no means generally cultivated, the most ready method of literary communication was through theatrical representation. It was for that reason that playwriting was the best means of literary remuneration, if we except the profit derived from the practice which, to some extent, survives, though its disgraceful motive has ceased, of dedicating books to rich men for the sake of the fee they would give. It is said that books have actually been printed in consideration of the profits of the dedication. Espe

Page 506

506 THE THEATRE.

cially in the composition of plays was it judged expedient to minister to the depraved public taste by indecent expressions, or allusions broad and sly. The playwright was at the mercy of an audience who were critical on that point, and in a position, if he should not come up to the required standard, to damn him and his work in an instant. From these remarks must be excepted the writings of Milton, which are nowhere stained by such a blemish. And yet posterity will perhaps with truth assert that Paradise Lost has wrought more intellectual evil than even its base contemporaries, since it has familiarized educated minds with images which, though in one sense sublime, in another are most unworthy, and has taught the public a dreadful materialization of the great and invisible God. A Manichean composition in reality, it was mistaken for a Christian poem. The progress of English literature not only offers striking proofs of the manner in which it was affected by theatrical representions, but also furnishes an interesting illustration of that necessary course through which intellectual development must pass. It is difficult for us, who live in a reading community, to comprehend the influence once exercised by the pulpit and the stage in the instruction of a non-reading people. As late as the sixteenth century they were the only means of mental access to the public, and we should find, if we were to enter on a detailed examination of either one or the other, that they furnish a vivid reflection of the popular intellectual condition. Leaving to others such interesting researches into the comparative anatomy of the English pulpit, I may, for a moment, direct attention to theatrical exhibitions. There are three obvious phases through which the drama has passed, corresponding to as many phases in the process of intellectual development. These are respectively the miracle play, corresponding to the stage of childhood; the moral, corresponding to that of youth; the real, corresponding to that of manhood. In them respectively the supernatural, the theological, the positive predominates. The first went out of fashion soon after the middle of the fifteenth century, the second continued for about one hundred and fifty years, the third still remains. By the miracle play is understood a representation of Scripture incidents, enacted, however, without any regard to the probabilities of time, place, or action; such subjects as the Creation, the fall of man, the Deluge, being considered as suitable, and in these scenes, without any concern for chronology, other personages, as the pope or Mohammed, being introduced, or the Virgin Mary wearing a French hood, or Virgil worshiping the Savior. Our forefathers were not at all critical historians; they indulged without stint in a highly pleasing credulity. They found no difficulty in admitting that Mohammed was originally a cardinal, who turned heretic out of spite because he was not

Page 507

MIRACLE PLAYS. 507

elected pope; that, since the taking of the true cross by the Turks, all Christian children have twenty-two instead of thirty-two teeth, as was the case before that event; and that men have one rib less than women, answering to that taken from Adam. The moral play personifies virtues, vices, passions, goodness, courage, honesty, love. The real play introduces human actors, with a plot free from the supernatural, and probability is outraged as little as possible. Its excellency consists in the perfect manner in which it delineates human character and action. The miracle play was originally introduced by the Church, the first dramas of the kind, it is said, having been composed by Gregory Nazianzen. They were brought from Constantinople by the Crusaders; the Byzantines were always infatuated with theatrical shows. The parts of these plays were often enacted by ecclesiastics, and not unfrequently the representations took place at the abbey gate. So highly did the Italian authorities prize the influence of these exhibitions on the vulgar, that the pope granted a thousand days of pardon to any person who should submit to the pleasant penance of attending them. All the arguments that had been used in behalf of picture-worship were applicable to these plays; even the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension were represented. Over illiterate minds a coarse but congenial influence was obtained; a recollection, though not an understanding of sacred things. In the play of " the Fall of Lucifer," that personage was introduced, according to the vulgar acceptation, with horns, and tail, and cloven hoof; his beard, however, was red, our forefathers having apparently indulged in a singular antipathy against hair of that color. There still remain accounts of the expenses incurred on some of these occasions, the coarse quaintness of which is not only amusing, but also shows the debased ideas of the times. For instance, in "Mysteries," enacted at Coventry, are such entries as "paid for a pair of gloves for God;" " paid for gilding God's coat;" " dyvers necessaries for the trimmynge of the Father -of Heaven." In the play of the "Shepherds" there is provision for green cheese and Halton ale, a suitable recruitment after their long journey to the birthplace of our Savior. " Payd to the players for rehearsal: imprimis, to God, iis. viiid.; to Pilate his wife, iis.; item, for keeping fyer at hell's mouth, iiid." A strict attention to chronology is not exacted; Herod swears by Mohammed, and promises one of his councilors to make him pope. Noah's wife, who, it appears, was a termagant, swears by the Virgin Mary that she will not go into the ark, and, indeed, is only constrained so to do by a sound cudgeling administered by the patriarch, the rustic justice of the audience being particularly directed to the point that such a flogging should not be given with a stick thicker than her husband's thumb. The sentiment of modesty seems not to have been very exacting, since in the play of "the Fall of Man" Adam and Eve appear entirely naked; one

Page 508

508 MIRACLE PLAYS AND REAL PLAY.

of the chief incidents is the adjustment of the fig-leaves. Many such circumstances might be related, impressing us perhaps with an idea of the obscenity and profanity of the times. But this would scarcely be a just conclusion. As the social state improved, we begin to find objections raised by the more thoughtful ecclesiastics, who refused to lend the holy vestments for such purposes, and at last succeeded in excluding these exhibitions from consecrated places. After dwindling down by degrees, these plays lingered in the booths at fairs or on market-days, the Church having resigned them to the guilds of different trades, and these, in the end, giving them up to the mountebank. And so they died. Their history is the outward and visible sign of a popular intellectual condition in process of passing away. The mystery and miracle plays were succeeded by the moral play. It has been thought by some, who have studied the history of the English theatre, that these plays were the result of the Reformation, with the activity of which movement their popularity was coincident. But perhaps the reader who is impressed with the principle of that definite order of social advancement so frequently referred to in this book will agree with me that this relation of cause and effect can hardly be sustained, and that devotional exercises and popular recreations are in common affected by antecedent conditions. Of the moral play, a very characteristic example still remains under the title of " Everyman." It often delineates personification and allegory with very considerable power. This short phase of our theatrical career deserves a far closer attention than it has hitherto obtained, for it has left an indelible impression on our literature. I think that it is to this, in its declining days, that we are indebted for much of the machinery of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Whoever will compare that work with such plays as "Everyman" and " Lusty Juventus," can not fail to be struck with their resemblances. Such personages as "Good Counsel," "Abominable Living," "Hypocrasie," in the play, are of the same family as those in the Progress. The stout Protestantism of both is at once edifying and amusing. An utter contempt for "holy stocks and holy stones, holy clouts and holy bones," as the play has it, animates them all. And it can hardly be doubted that the immortal tinker, in the carnal days when he played at tipcat and romped with the girls on the village green at Elstow, indulged himself in the edification of witnessing these dramatic representations. As to the passage from this dramatic phase to the real, in which the character and actions of man are portrayed, to the exclusion of the supernatural, it is only necessary to allude with brevity -indeed, it is only necessary to recall one name, and that one name is Shakspeare. He stands, in his relations to English literature, in the same position that the great Greek sculptors stood with respect to an-

Page 509

DISSEMINATION OF INTELLIGENCE.-NEWSPAPERS. 509

cient art, embodying conceptions of humanity in its Various attributes with indescribable skill, and with an exquisite agreement to nature. Not without significance is it that we find mystery in the pulpit and mystery on the stage. They appertain to social infancy. Such dramas as those I have alluded to, and many others that, if space had permitted, might have been quoted, were in unison with the times. The abbeys were boasting of such treasures as the French hood of the Virgin, " her smocke or shifte," the manger in which Christ was laid, the spear which pierced his side, the crown of thorns. The transition from this to the following stage is not without its political attendants, the prohibition of interludes containing any thing against the Church of Rome, the royal proclamation against preaching out of one's'own brain, the appearance of the Puritan upon the national stage, an increasing acerbity of habit and sanctimoniousness of demeanor. With peculiar facility we may therefore, through an examination of the state of the drama, determine national mental condition. The same may be done by a like examination of the state of the pulpit. Whoever will take the trouble to compare the results together can not fail to observe how remarkably they correspond. Such was the state of the literature of amusement; as to political literature, even at the close of the period we are considering, it could not be expected to flourish after the judges had declared that no man could publish political news except he had been duly authorized by the crown. Newspapers were, however, beginning to be periodically issued, and, if occasion called for it, broadsides, as they were termed, were added. In addition, newsletters were written by enterprising individuals in the metropolis, and sent to rich persons who subscribed for them; they then circulated from family to family, and doubtless enjoyed a privilege which has not descended to their printed contemporary, the newspaper, of never becoming stale. Their authors compiled them from materials picked up in the gossip of the coffee-houses. The coffee-houses, in a non-reading community, were quite an important political as well as social institution. They were of every kind, prelatical, popish, Puritan, scientific, literary, Whig, Tory. Whatever a man's notions might be, he could find in London, in a double sense, a coffee-house to his taste. In towns of considerable importance the literary demand was insignificant; thus it is said that the father of Dr. Johnson, the lexicographer, peddled books from town to town, and was accustomed to open a stall in Birmingham on market-days, and it is added that this supply of literature was equal to the demand. The liberty of the press has been of slow growth. Scarcely had printing been invented when it was found necessary every where to place it under some restraint, as was, for instance, done by Rome in her Index Expurgatorius of prohibited books, and the

Page 510

510 LIBERTY OF THE PRES.

putting of printers who had offended under the ban; the action of the University of Paris, alluded to (p. 472), was essentially of the same kind. In England, at first, the press was subjected to the common law; the crown judges themselves determined the offense, and could punish the offender with fine, imprisonment, or even death. Within the last century this power of determination has been taken from them, and a jury must decide, not only on the fact, but also on the character of the publication, whether libelous, seditious, or otherwise offensive. The press thus came to be a reflector of public opinion, casting light back upon the public; yet, as with other reflectors, a portion of the illuminating power is lost. The restraints under which it is laid are due, not so much to the fear that liberty would degenerate into license, for public opinion would soon correct that; they are rather connected with the necessities of the social state. Whoever will examine the condition of England at successive periods during her passage through the Age of Faith will see how slow was her progress, and will, perhaps, be surprised to find at its close how small was her advance. The ideas that had served her for so many centuries as a guide had rather obstructed than facilitated her way. B-at whoever will consider what she has done since she fairly entered on her Age of Reason will remark a wonderful contrast. There has not been a progress in physical conditions only - a securing of better food, better clothing, better shelter, swifter locomotion, the procurement of individual happiness, an extension of the term of life. There has been a great moral advancement. Such atrocities as those mentioned in the foregoing paragraphs are now impossible, and so unlike our own manners that doubtless we read of them at first with incredulity, and with difficulty are brought to believe that these are the things our ancestors did. What a difference between the dilatoriness of the past, its objectless exertions, its unsatisfactory end, and the energy, the well-directed intentions of the present age, which have already yielded results like the prodigies of romance.

Page 511

THE AGE OF REASON IN EUROPE, 511

. CHAPTER XXII. THE EUROPEAN AGE OF REASON. REJECTION OF AUTHORITY AND TRADITION, AND ADOPTION OF SCIENTIFIC TRUTH.-DISCOVERY OF THE TRUE POSITION OF THE EARTH IN THE UNIVERSE.

Ecclesiastical Attempt to enforce the GEOCENTRIC DOCTRINE that the Earth is the Centre of the Universe, and the most important Body in it. The HELIOCENTRIC DOCTRINE that the Sun is the Centre of the Solar System, and the Earth a small Planet, comes gradually into Prominence. Struggle between the Ecclesiastical and Astronomical Parties.-Activity of the Inquisition.Burning of Bruno.-Imprisonment of GALILEO. INVENTION OF THE TELESCOPE. - Complete Overthrow of the Ecclesiastical Idea.- Rise of Physical Astronomy.-NEWTON.-Rapid and resistless Development of all Branches of Natural Philosophy. Final Establishment of the Doctrine that the Universe is under the Dominion of mathematical, and, therefore, necessary Laws. Progress of Man from Anthropocentric Ideas to the Discovery of his true Position and Insignificance in the Universe.

THE Age of Reason in Europe was ushered in by an astronomical controversy. Is the earth the greatest and most noble body in the universe, round which, as an immovable centre, the sun, and the various planets, and stars revolve, ministering by their light and other qualities to the wants and pleasures of man, or is it an insignificant orb -a mere point-submissively revolving, among a crowd of compeers and superiors, around a central sun? The former of these views was authoritatively asserted by the Church; the latter, timidly suggested by a few thoughtful and religious men at first, in the end gathered strength and carried the day. Behind this physical question-a mere scientific problem-lay something of the utmost importance-the position of man in the universe. The conflict broke out upon an ostensible issue, but every one saw what was the real point in the dispute. In the history of the Age of Reason in Europe, which is to fill the remaining pages of this book, I am constrained to commence with this astronomical controversy, and have therefore been led by that circumstance to complete the survey of the entire period from the same, that is, the scientific point of view. Many different modes of treating it spontaneously present themselves; but so vast are the subjects to be brought under consideration, so numerous their connections, and so limited the space at my disposal, that I must give the preference

Page 512

512 THE ASTRONOMICAL CONTROVERSY.

to one which, with sufficient copiousness, offers also precision. Whoever will examine the progress of European intellectual advancement thus far manifested will find that it has concerned itself with three great questions: 1. The ascertainment of the position of the earth in the universe; 2. The history of the earth in time; 3. The position of man among living beings. Under this last is ranged all that he has done in scientific discovery, and all those inventions which are the characteristics of the present industrial age. Where am I? What am I? we may imagine to have been the first exclamations of the first man awakening to conscious existence. Here, in our Age of Reason, we have been dealing with the same thoughts. They are the same which, as we have seen, occupied Greek intellectual life. When Halley's comet appeared in 1456, it was described by those who saw it as an object of "unheard-of magnitude;" its tail, which shook down "diseases, pestilence, and war" upon earth, reached over a third part of the heavens. It was considered as connected with the progress of Mohammed II., who had just then taken Constantinople. It struck terror into all people. From his seat, invisible to it, in Italy, the sovereign pontiff, Calixtus III., issued his ecclesiastical fulminations; but the comet in the heavens, like the sultan on the earth, pursued its course undeterred. In vain were all the bells in Europe ordered to be rung to scare it away; in vain was it anathematized; in vain were prayers put up in all directions to stop it. True to its time, it punctually returns from the abysses of space, uninfluenced by any thing save agencies of a material kind. A signal lesson for the meditations of every religious man. Among the clergy there were, however, some who had more correct cosmic ideas than those of Calixtus. A century before Copernicus, Cardinal de Cusa had partially adopted the heliocentric theory, as taught in the old times by Philolaus, Pythagoras, and Archimedes. He ascribed to the earth a globular form, rotation on its axis, and a movement in space; he believed that it moves round the sun, and both together round the pole of the universe. By geocentric theory is meant that doctrine which asserts the earth to be the immovable centre of the universe; by heliocentric and theory that which demonstrates the sun to be the centre of our planetary system, implying, as a necessary inference, that the earth is a very small and subordinate body revolving round the sun. I have already, in sufficient detail, described how the Roman Church had been constrained by her position to uphold the geocentric doctrine. She had come to regard it as absolutely essential to her system, the intellectual basis of which she held would be sapped if this doctrine should be undermined. Hence it was that such an alarm was shown at the assertion of the globular form of the

Page 513

GEOCENTRIC AND HELIOCENTRIC DOCTRINES. 513

earth, and hence the surpassing importance of the successful voyage of Magellan's ship. That indisputable demonstration of the globular figure was ever a solid support to the scientific party in the portentous approaching conflict. Preparations had been silently making for a scientific revolution in various directions. The five memoirs of Cardinal Alliacus "On the Concordance of Astronomy with Theology," show the turn that thought was taking. His Imago mundi was published in 1460, and is said to have been a favorite work with Columbus. In the very Cathedral of Florence, Toscanelli had constructed his celebrated gnomon, 1468, a sun-ray, auspicious omen! being admitted through a plate of brass in the lantern of the cupola. John Muller, better known as Regiomontanus, had published an abridgment of Ptolemy's Almagest, 1520. Euclid had been printed with diagrams on copper as long before as 1482, and again in Venice twenty-three years subsequently. The Optics of Vitello had been published 1533. Fernel, physician to Henry II of France, had even ventured so far, supported by Magellan's voyage, as to measure, 1527, the size of the earth, his method being to observe the height of the pole at Paris, then to proceed northward until its elevation was increased exactly one degree, and to ascertain the distance between the stations by the number of revolutions of his carriage wheel. He concluded that it is 24,480 Italian miles round the globe. The last attempt of the kind had been that of the Khalif Almaimon seven hundred years previously on the shore of the Red Sea, and with nearly the same result. The mathematical sciences were undergoing rapid advancement. Rhaeticus had published his trigonometrical tables; Cardan, Tartaglia, Scipio Ferreo, and Stefel were greatly improving algebra. The first formal assertion of the heliocentric theory was made in a timid manner, strikingly illustrative of the expected opposition. It was by Copernicus, a Prussian, speaking of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies; the year was about 1536. In his preface, addressed to Pope Paul III, whether written by himself, or, as some have affirmed, for him by Andreas Osiander, he complains of the imperfections of the existing system, states that he has sought among ancient writers for a better way, and so had learned the heliocentric doctrine. " Then I too began to meditate on the motion of the earth, and, though it appeared an absurd opinion, yet, since I knew that in previous times others had been allowed the privilege of feigning what circles they chose in order to explain the phenomena, I conceived that I might take the liberty of trying whether, on the supposition of the earth's motion, it was possible to find better explanations than the ancient ones of the revolutions of the celestial orbs." " Having, then, assumed the motions of the earth, which are hereafter explained, by laborious and long observation I at length found that, if

Page 514

514 - COPERNICUS.

the motions of the other planets be compared with the revolution of the earth, not only their phenomena follow from the suppositions, but also that the several orbs and the whole system are so connected in order and magnitude that no one point can be transposed without disturbing the rest, and introducing confusion into the whole universe." The apologetic air with which he thus introduces his doctrine is again remarked in his statement that he had kept his book for thirty-six years, and only now published it at the entreaty of Cardinal Schomberg. The cardinal had begged of him a manuscript copy. " Though I know that the thoughts of a philosopher do not depend on the judgment of the many, his study being to seek out truth in all things as far as is permitted by God to human reason, yet, when I considered how absurd my doctrine would appear, I long hesitated whether I should publish my book, or whether it were not better to follow the example of the Pythagoreans and others, who delivered their doctrine only by tradition and to friends." He concludes: " If there be vain babblers, who, knowing nothing of mathematics, yet assume the right of judging on account of some place of Scripture perversely wrested to their purpose, and who blame and attack my undertaking, I heed them not, and look upon their judgments as rash and contemptible." Copernicus clearly recognized not only the relative position of the earth, but also her relative magnitude. He says the magnitude of the world is so great that the distance of the earth from the sun has no apparent magnitude when compared with the sphere of the fixed stars. To the earth Copernicus attributed a triple motion-a daily rotation on her axis, an annual motion round the sun, a motion of declination of the axis. The latter seemed to be necessary to account for the constant direction of the pole; but as this was soon found to be a misconception, the theory was relieved of it. With this correction, the doctrine of Copernicus presents a clear and great advance, though in the state in which he offered it he was obliged to retain the mechanism of epicycles and eccentrics, because he considered the planetary motions to be circular. It was the notion that, since the circle is the most simple of all geometrical forms, it must therefore be the most natural, which led to this imperfection. His work was published in 1543. He died a few days after he had seen a copy. Against the opposition it had to encounter, the heliocentric theory made its way slowly at first. Among those who did adopt it were some whose connection served rather to retard its progress, because of the ultraism of their views or the doubtfulness of their social position. Such was Bruno, who contributed largely to its introduction into England, and who was the author of a work on the Plurality of Worlds, and of the conception that every star is a sun, having opaque

Page 515

THE MARTYRDOM OF BRUNO. 515

planets revolving round it-a conception to which the Copernican system suggestively leads. Bruno was born seven years after the death of Copernicus. He became a Dominican, but, like so many other thoughtful men of the times, was led into heresy on the doctrine of transubstantiation. Not concealing his opinions, he was persecuted, fled, and led a vagabond life in foreign countries, testifying that wherever he went he found skepticism under the polish of hypocrisy, and that he fought not against the belief of men, but against their pretended belief. For teaching the rotation of the earth he had to fly to Switzerland, and thence to England, where, at Oxford, he gave lectures on cosmology. Driven from England, France, and Germany in succession, he ventured in his extremity to return to Italy, and was arrested in Venice, where he was kept in prison in the Piombi for six years without books, or paper, or friends. Meantime the Inquisition demanded him as having written heretical works. He was therefore surrendered to Rome, and, after a farther imprisonment of two years, tried, excommunicated, and delivered over to the secular authorities, to be punished " as mercifully as possible, and without the shedding of his blood," the abominable formula for burning a man alive. He had collected all the observations that had been made respecting the new star in Cassiopeia, 1572; he had taught that space is infinite, and that it is filled with self-luminous and opaque worlds, many of them inhabited-this being his capital offense. He believed that the world is animated by an intelligent soul, the cause of forms but not of matter; that it lives in all things, even such as seem not to live; that every thing is ready to become organized; that matter is the mother of forms and then their grave; that matter and the soul of the world together constitute God. His ideas were therefore pantheistic, "Est Deus in nobis." In his "Cena de le Cenere" he insists that the Scripture was not intended to teach science, but morals only. The severity with which he was treated was provoked by his asseverations that he was struggling with an orthodoxy that had neither morality nor belief. This was the aim of his work entitled "The triumphant Beast." He was burnt at Rome, February 16, 1600. With both a present and prophetic truth, he nobly responded, when the atrocious sentence was passed upon him, " Perhaps it is with greater fear that ye pass this sentence upon me than I receive it." His tormentors jocosely observed, as the flames shut him out forever from view, that he had gone to the imaginary worlds he had so wickedly feigned. This vigorous but spasmodic determination of the Church to defend herself was not without effect. It enabled her to hold fast the timid, the time-servers, the superficial. Among such may be mentioned Lord Bacon, who never received the Copernican system. With the audacity of ignorance, he presumed to criticise what he did not under

Page 516

516 LORD BACON.

stand, and, with a superb conceit, disparaged the great Copernicus says, "In the system of Copernicus there are many and grave difficulties; for the threefold motion with which he encumbers the earth is a serious inconvenience, and the separation of the sun from the planets, with which he has so many affections in common, is likewise a harsh step; and the introduction of so many immovable bodies in nature, as when he makes the sun and stars immovable, the bodies which are peculiarly lucid and radiant, and his making the moon adhere to the earth in a sort of epicycle, and some other things which he assumes, are proceedings which mark a man who thinks nothing of introducing fictions of any kind into nature, provided his calculations turn out well." The more closely we examine the writings of Lord Bacon, the more unworthy does he seem to have been of the great reputation which has been awarded to him. The popular delusion to which he owes so much originated at a time when the history of science was unknown. They who first brought him into notice knew nothing of the old school of Alexandria. This boasted founder of a new philosophy could not comprehend, and would not accept, the greatest of all scientific doctrines when it was plainly set before his eyes. It has been represented that the invention of the true method of physical science was an amusement of Bacon's hours of relaxation from the more laborious studies of law and duties of a court. His chief admirers have been persons of a literary turn, who have an idea that scientific discoveries are accomplished by a mechanico-mental operation. Bacon never produced any great practical -result himself, no great physicist has ever made any, use of his method. He has had the same to do with the development of modern science that the inventor of the orrery has had to do with the discovery of the mechanism of the world. Of all the important physical discoveries, there is not one which shows that its author made it by the Baconian instrument. Newton never seems to have been aware that he was under any obligation to Bacon. Archimedes, and the Alexandrians, and the Arabians, and Leonardo da Vinci did very well before he was born; the discovery of America by Columbus and the circumnavigation by Magellan can hardly be attributed to him, yet they were the consequences of a truly philosophical reasoning. But the investigation of nature is an affair of genius, not of rules. No man can invent an organon for writing tragedies and Epic poems. Bacon's system is, in its own terms, an idol of the theatre. It would scarcely guide a man to a solution of the riddle of AElia Laelia Crispis, or to that of the charade of Sir Hilary. Few scientific pretenders have made more mistakes than Lord Bacon. He rejected the Copernican system, and spoke insolently of its great author; he undertook to criticise adversely Gilbert's treatise "De Magnete;" he was occupied in the condemnation of any

Page 517

THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM. 517

investigation of final causes, while Harvey was deducing the circulation of the blood from Aquapendente's discovery of the valves in the veins; he was doubtful whether instruments were of any advantage, while Galileo was investigating the heavens with the telescope. Ignorant himself of every branch of mathematics, he presumed that they were useless in science, but a few years before Newton achieved by their aid his immortal discoveries. It is time that the sacred name of philosophy should be severed from its long connection with that of one who was a pretender in science, a time-serving politician, an insidious lawyer, a corrupt judge, a treacherous friend, a bad man. But others were not so obtuse as Bacon. Gilbert, one of the best of the early English experimentalists, an excellent writer on magnetism, adopted the views of Copernicus. Milton, in Paradise Lost, set forth in language such as he only could use the objections to the Ptolemaic, and the probabilities of the Copernican system. Some of the more liberal ecclesiastics gave their adhesion. Bishop Wilkins not only presented it in a very popular way, but also made some sensible suggestions explanatory of the supposed contradictions of the new theory to the Holy Scriptures. It was, however, among geometricians, as Napier, Briggs, Horrox, that it met with its best support. On the Continent the doctrine was daily making converts, and nightly gathering strength from the accordance of the tables of the motions of the heavenly bodies calculated upon its principles with actual observation. It is by no means uninteresting to notice the different classes of men among whom this great theory was steadily winning its way. Experimental philosophers, Republican poets, Episcopal clergymen, Scotch lords, west of England schoolmasters, Italian physicists, Polish pedants, painstaking Germans, each from his own special point of view, was gradually receiving the light, and doubtless, from such varied influence, the doctrine would have vindicated its supremacy at last, though it might have taken along time. On a sudden, however, there occurred a fortunate event, which led forthwith to that result by a new train of evidence, bringing the matter, under the most brilliant circumstances, clearly to the apprehension of every one. This great and fortunate event was the invention of the telescope. It is needless for us to enter on any examination of the authorship of this invention. It is enough for our purpose to know that Lippershey, a Dutchman, had made one toward the close of 1608, and that Galileo, hearing of the circumstance, but without knowing the particulars of the construction, in April or May of the following year invented a form of it for himself. Not content with admiring how close and large it made terrestrial objects, he employed it for examining the heavens. On turning it to the moon, he found that she has

Page 518

518 INVENTION OF THE TELESCOPE.

mountains casting shadows, and valleys like those of the earth. The discovery of innumerable fixed stars-not less than forty were counted by him in the well-known group of the Pleiades-up to that time unseen by man, was felt at once to offer an insuperable argument against the opinion that these bodies were created only to illuminate the night; indeed, it may be said that this was a deathblow to the time-honored doctrine of the human destiny of the universe. Already Galileo began to encounter vulgar indignation which accused him loudly of impiety. On January 7th, 1610, he discovered three of Jupiter's satellites, and a few days later the fourth. To these he gave the designation of the Medicean stars, and in his "Sidereal Messenger" published an account of the facts he had thus far observed. As it was perceived at once that this planet offered a miniature representation of the ideas of Copernicus respecting the solar system, this discovery was received by the astronomical party with the liveliest pleasure, by the ecclesiastical with the most bitter opposition, some declaring that it was a mere optical deception, some a purposed fraud, some that it was sheer blasphemy, and some, fairly carrying out to its consequences the absurd philosophy of the day, asserted that, since the pretended satellites were invisible to the naked eye, they must be useless, and, being useless, they could not exist. Continuing his observations, Galileo found that Saturn differs in an extraordinary manner from other planets; but the telescope he used not being sufficient to demonstrate the ring, he fell into the mistake that the body of the planet is triple. This was soon followed by the discovery of the phases of Venus, which indisputably established for her a motion round the sun, and actually converted what had hitherto, on all hands, been regarded as one of the weightiest objections against the Copernican theory, into a most solid support. " If the doctrine of Copernicus be true, the planet Venus ought to show phases like the moon, which is not the case;" so said the objectors. Copernicus himself saw the difficulty, and tried to remove it by suggesting that the planet might be transparent. The telescope of Galileo forever settled the question by showing that the expected phases do actually exist. In the garden of Cardinal Bandini at Rome, A.D. 1611, Galileo publicly exhibited the spots upon the sun. He had observed them the proceding year. Goaded on by the opposition his astronomical discoveries were bringing upon him, he addressed a letter in 1613 to the Abbe Castelli, for the purpose of showing that the Scriptures were not intended as a scientific authority. This was repeating Bruno's offense. Hereupon the Dominicans, taking the alarm, commenced to attack him from their pulpits. It shows how reluctantly, and with what misgivings the higher ecclesiastics entered upon the quarrel, that Maraffi, the general of the Dominicans, apologized to Gali-

Page 519

GALILEO. 519

leo for what had taken place. The astronomer now published another letter reiterating his former opinions, asserting that the Scriptures were only intended for our salvation, and otherwise defending himself, and recalling the fact that Copernicus had dedicated his book to Pope Paul III. Through the suggestion of the Dominicans, Galileo was now summoned to Rome to account for his conduct and opinions before the Inquisition. He was accused of having taught that the earth moves; that the sun is stationary; and of having attempted to reconcile these doctrines with the Scriptures. The sentence was that he must renounce these heretical opinions, and pledge himself that he would neither publish nor defend them for the future. In the event of his refusal he was to be imprisoned. With the fate of Bruno in his recollection, he assented to the required recantation, and gave the promise demanded. The Inquisition then proceeded to deal with the Copernican system, condemning it as heretical; the letters of Galileo, which had given rise to the trouble, were prohibited; also Kepler's epitome of the Copernican theory, and also the work of Copernicus. In their decree prohibiting this work " de Revolutionibus," the Congregation of the Index, March 5, 1616, denounced the new system of the universe as "that false Pythagorean doctrine utterly contrary to the Holy Scriptures." Again it appears how reluctant the Roman authorities were to interfere, and how they were impelled rather by the necessity of their position than by their personal belief in the course they had been obliged to take. After all that had passed, the pope, Paul V., admitted Galileo to an audience, at which he professed to him personally the kindest sentiments, and assured him of safety. When Urban VIII succeeded to the pontifical chair, Galileo received the distinction of not less than six audiences; the pope conferred on him several presents, and added the promise of a pension for his son. In a letter to the Duke of Florence his holiness used the most liberal language, stated how dear to him Galileo was, that he had very lovingly embraced him, and requested the duke to show him every favor. Whether it was that, under these auspicious circumstances, Galileo believed he could with impunity break through the engagement he had made, or whether an instinctive hatred of that intellectual despotism and hypocrisy which was weighing upon Europe became irrepressible in his breast, in 1632 he ventured on the publication of his work, "The System of entitled "The System of the World," its object being to establish the truth of the Copernican doctrine. It is composed in the dialogue form, three speakers being introduced, two of them true philosophers, the third an objector. Whatever may have been the personal opinion of the pope, there can be no doubt that his duty rendered it

Page 520

520 THE TRIAL OF GALILEO.

necessary for him to act. Galileo was therefore again summoned before the Inquisition, the Tuscan embassador expostulating against the inhumanity of thus dealing with an old man in ill health. But no such considerations were listened to, and Galileo was compelled to appear at Rome, February, 1633, and surrender himself to the Holy Office. The pope's nephew did all in his power to meet the necessity of the Church and yet to spare the dignity of science. He paid every attention to the personal comfort of the accused. When the time came for Galileo to be put into solitary confinement, he endeavored to render the imprisonment as light as possible; but, finding it to prey upon the spirits of the aged philosopher, he, on his own responsibility, liberated him, permitting him to reside in the house of the Tuscan embassador. The trial being completed, Galileo was directed to appear, on June 22, to hear his sentence. Clothed in the penitential garment, he received judgment. His heretical offenses were specified, the pledges he had violated recited; he was declared to have brought upon himself strong suspicions of heresy, and to be liable to the penalties thereof; but from these he might be absolved if, with a sincere heart, he would abjure and curse his heresies. However, that his offenses might not altogether go unpunished, and that he might be a warning to others, he was condemned to imprisonment during the pleasure of the Inquisition, his dialogues were prohibited by public edict, and for three years he was directed to recite, once a week, the seven penitential psalms. In his garment of disgrace the aged philosopher was now made to fall upon his knees before the assembled cardinals, and, with his hand on the Gospels, to make the required abjuration of the heliocentric doctrine, and to give the pledges demanded. He was then committed to the prison of the Inquisition; the persons who had been concerned in the printing of his book were punished; and the sentence and abjuration were formally promulgated, and ordered to be publicly read in the universities. In Florence, the adherents of Galileo were ordered to attend in the Church of Santa Croce to witness his disgrace. After a short imprisonment in the jail of the Inquisition, he was ordered to Arcetri, and confined in his own house. Here severe misfortunes awaited him; his favorite daughter died; he fell into a state of melancholy; an application that he might go to Florence for the sake of medical advice was refused. It became evident that there was an intention to treat him with inexorable severity. After five years of confinement, permission was reluctantly accorded to him to remove to Florence for his health; but still he was forbidden to leave his house, or receive his friends, or even to attend mass during Passion Week without a special order. The grand-duke tried to abate this excessive severity, directing his embassador at the court of Rome to plead the venerable age and ill health of the immortal convict, and that it was desirable to

Page 521

HIS PERSECUTION AND DEATH. 521

permit him to communicate certain scientific discoveries he had made to some other person, such as Father Castelli. Not even that was accorded unless the interview took place in the presence of an official of the Inquisition. Soon after Galileo was remanded to Arcetri. He spent the weary hours in composing his work on Local Motion, his friends causing it to be surreptitiously published in Holland. His infirmities and misfortunes now increased. In 1637 he became totally blind. In a letter he plaintively says, referring to this calamity, " So it pleases God, it shall therefore please me also." The exquisite refinement of ecclesiastical vengeance pursued him remorselessly, and now gave him permission to see his friends when sight was nr longer possible. It was at this period that an illustrious stranger, the author of Paradise Lost, visited him. Shortly after he became totally deaf; but to the last he occupied himself with investigations respecting the force of percussion. He died, January, 1642, in the seventy-eighth year of his age, the prisoner of the Inquisition. True to its instincts, that infernal institution followed him beyond the grave, disputing his right to make a will, and denying him burial in consecrated ground. The pope also prohibited his friends from raising to him a monument in the church of Santa Croce, in Florence. It was reserved for the nineteenth century to erect a suitable memorial in his honor. The result of the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo was thus to bring the earth to her real position of subordination and to give sublimer views of the universe. Moestlin expresses correctly the state of the case when he says, "What is the earth and the ambient air with respect to the immensity of space? It is a point, a punctule, or something, if there be any thing, less." It had been brought down to the condition of one of the members of a family-the solar system. And since it could be no longer regarded as holding all other bodies in submissive attendance upon it, dominating over their movements, there was reason to suppose that it would be found to maintain interconnections with them in the attitude of an equal or subordinate; in other words, that general relations would be discovered expressive of the manner in which all the planetary members of the solar system sustain their movements round the sun. Among those whose minds were thoroughly occupied with this idea, Kepler stands pre-eminently conspicuous. It is not at all surprising, considering the mode of thought of those times, that he regarded his subject with a certain mysticism. They who condemn his manner of thus viewing things do not duly appreciate the mental condition of the generation in which he lived. Whatever may be said on that point, no one can deny him a marvelous patience, an almost superhuman painstaking disposition. Guess after guess, hypothesis

Page 522

522 KEPLER.

after hypothesis, he submitted to computations of infinite labor, and doubtless he speaks the melancholy truth when he says, " I considered and reflected till I was almost mad." Yet, in the midst of repeated disappointment, he held, with a truly philosophical determination, firmly to the belief that there must be some physical interconnection among the parts of the solar system, and that it would certainly be displayed by the discovery of laws presiding over the distances, times, and velocities of the planets. In these speculations he was immersed before the publications of Galileo. In his " Mysterium Cosmographicum" he says, " In the year 1595 I was brooding with the whole energy of my mind on the subject of the Copernican system." In 1609 he published his work entitled "On the Motion of Mars." This was the result of an attempt, upon which he had been engaged since the beginning of the century, to reconcile the motions of that planet to the hypothesis of eccentrics and epicycles. It ended in the abandonment of that hypothesis, and in the discovery of the two great laws now known as the first and second laws of Kepler. They are respectively that the orbits of the planets are elliptical, and that the areas described by a line drawn from the planet to the sun are proportional to the times. In 1617 he was again rewarded by the discovery which passes under the designation of Kepler's third law: it expresses the relation of the mean distances of the planets from the sun with the times of their revolutions-" the squares of the periodic times are in the same proportion as the cubes of the distances." In his " Epitome of the Copernican Astronomy," published 1622, he showed that this law likewise holds good for the satellites of Jupiter as regards their primary. Humboldt, referring to the movement of Jupiter's satellites, remarks: It was this which led Kepler, in his 'Harmonices Mundi,' to state, with the firm confidence and security of a German spirit of philosophical independence, to those whose opinions bore sway beyond the Alps, Eighty years have elapsed during which the doctrines of Copernicus regarding the movement of the earth and the immobility of the sun have been promulgated without hinderance, because it was deemed allowable to dispute concerning natural things and to elucidate the works of God, and, now that new testimony is discovered in proof of the truth of those doctrines-testimony which was not known to the spiritual judges, ye would prohibit the promulgation of the true system of the structure of the universe.'" Thus we see that the heliocentric theory, as proposed by Copernicus, was undergoing rectification. The circular movements admitted into it, and which had burdened it with infinite perplexity, though they had hitherto been recommended by an illusive simplicity, were demonstrated to be incorrect. They were replaced by the real

Page 523

LEONARDO DA VINCI. 523

ones, the elliptical. Kepler, as was his custom, ingenuously related his trials and disappointments. Alluding on one occasion to this, he says: " My first error was that the path of a planet is a perfect circle-an opinion which was a more mischievous thief of my time, in proportion as it was supported by the authority of all philosophers, and apparently agreeable to metaphysics." The philosophical significance of Kepler's discoveries was not recognized by the ecclesiastical party at first. It is chiefly this, that they constitute a most important step to the establishment of the doctrine of the government of the world by law. But it was impossible to receive these laws without seeking for their cause. The result to which that search eventually conducted not only explained their origin, but also showed that, as laws, they must, in the necessity of nature, exist. It may be truly said that the mathematical exposition of their origin constitutes the most splendid monument existing of the intellectual power of man. Before the heliocentric theory could be developed and made to furnish a clear exposition of the solar system, which is obviously the first step to just views of the universe, it was necessary that the science of mechanics should be greatly improved-indeed, it might be said, created; for during those dreary ages following the establishment of Byzantine power, nothing had been done toward the acquisition of correct views either in statics or dynamics. It was impossible that Europe, in her lower states of life, could produce men capable of commencing where Archimedes had left off. She had to wait for the approach of her Age of Reason for that. The man of capacity at last came. Leonardo da Vinci was born A.D. 1452. The historian Hallam, enumerating some of his works observes, "His knowledge was almost preternatural." Many of his writings still remain unpublished. Long before Bacon, he laid down the maxim that experience and observation must be the foundation of all reasoning in science; that experiment is the only interpreter of nature, and is essential to the ascertainment of laws. Unlike Bacon, who was ignorant of mathematics, and even disparaged them, he points out their supreme advantage. Seven years after the voyage of Columbus, this great man-great at once as an artist, mathematician, and engineer-gave a clear exposition of the theory of forces obliquely applied on a lever; a few years later he was well acquainted with the earth's annual motion. He knew the laws of friction, subsequently demonstrated by Amontons, and the principle of virtual velocities; he described the camera obscura before Baptista Porta, understood aerial perspective, the nature of colored shadows, the use of the iris, and the effects of the duration of visible impressions on the eye. He wrote well on fortification, anticipated Castelli on hydraulics, occupied himself with the fall of

Page 524

524 PROGRESS OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY.

bodies on the hypothesis of the earth's rotation, treated of the times of descent along inclined planes and circular arcs, and of the nature of machines. He considered, with singular clearness, respiration and combustion, and foreshadowed one of the great hypotheses of geology, the elevation of continents. This was the commencement of the movement in Natural Philosophy; it was followed up by the publication of a work on the principles of equilibrium by Stevinus, 1586. In this the author established the fundamental property of the inclined plane, and solved, in a general manner, the cases of forces acting obliquely. Six years later Galileo's treatise on Mechanics appeared, a fitting commencement of that career which, even had it not been adorned with such brilliant astronomical discoveries, would alone have conferred the most illustrious distinction upon him. The dynamical branch of Mechanics is that which is under most obligation to Galileo. To him is due the establishment of the three laws of motion. They are to the following effect, as given by Newton: (1.) Every body perseveres in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a right line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon. (2.) The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impressed, and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed. (3.) To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction, or the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts. Up to this time it was the general idea that motion can only be maintained by a perpetual application, impression, or expenditure of force. Galileo himself for many years entertained that error, but in 1638 he plainly states in his "Dialogues on Mechanics" the true law of the uniformity and perpetuity of motion. Such a view necessarily implies a correct and clear appreciation of the nature of resistances. No experimental motion that man can establish is unrestrained. But a perception of the uniformity and perpetuity of motion lies at the very basis of physical astronomy. With difficulty the true idea was attained to. The same may be said as respects rectilinear direction, for many supposed that uniform motion can only take place in a circle. The establishment of the first law of motion was essential to the discovery of the laws of falling bodies, in which the descent is made under the influence of a continually acting force, the velocity increasing in consequence thereof. Galileo saw clearly that, whether a body is moving slowly or swiftly, it will be equally affected by gravity. This principle was with difficulty admitted by some, who

Page 525

THE LAWS OF MOTION. 525

were disposed to believe that a swiftly moving body would not be as much affected by a constant force like gravity as one the motion of which is slower. With difficulty, also, was the old Aristotelian error eradicated that a heavy body falls more swiftly than a light one. The second law of motion was also established and illustrated by Galileo. In his "Dialogues" he shows that a body projected horizontally must have, from what has been said, a uniform horizontal motion, but that it will also have compounded therewith an accelerated motion downward. Here again we perceive it is necessary to retain a steady conception of this intermingling of forces without deterioration, and, though it may seem simple enough to us, there were some eminent men of those times who did not receive it as true. The special case offered by Galileo is theoretically connected with the paths of military projectiles, though in practice, since they move in a resisting medium, the air, their path is essentially different from the parabola. Curvilinear motions, which necessarily arise from the constant action of a central force, making a body depart from the rectilinear path it must otherwise take, are chiefly of interest, as we shall presently find, in the movements of the celestial bodies. A thorough exposition of the third law of motion was left by Galileo to his successors, who had directed their attention especially to the determination of the laws of impact. Indeed, the whole subject was illustrated and the truth of the three laws verified in many different cases by an examination of the phenomena of freely falling bodies, pendulums, projectiles, and the like. Among those who occupied themselves with such labors may be mentioned Torricelli, Castelli, Viviani, Borelli, Gassendi. Through the investigations of these, and other Italian, French, and'English natural philosophers, the principles of Mechanics were solidly established, and a necessary preparation made for their application in astronomy. By this time every one had become ready to admit that the motion of the planetary bodies would find an explanation on these principles. The steps thus far taken for an explanation of the movements of the planets in curvilinear paths therefore consisted in the removal of the old misconception that for a body to continue the motion forward in a straight line a continued application of force is necessary, the first law of motion disposing of that error. In the next place, it was necessary that clear and distinct ideas should be held of the combination or composition of forces, each continuing to exercise its influence without deterioration or diminution by the other. The time had now come for it to be shown that the perpetual movement of the planets is a consequence of the first law of motion; their elliptic paths, such as had been determined by Kepler, a consequence of the second. Several persons almost simultaneously had been brought

Page 526

526 NEWTON.

nearly to this conclusion without being able to solve the problem completely. Thus Borelli, A.D. 1666, in treating of the motions of Jupiter's satellites, distinctly shows how a circular motion may arise under the influence of a central force; he even uses the illustration so frequently introduced of a stone whirled round in a sling. In the same year a paper was presented to the Royal Society by Mr. Hooke "explicating the inflection of a direct motion into a circular by a supervening attractive principle." Huygens also, in his "Horologium Oscillatorium," had published some theorems on circular motions, but no one as yet had been able to show how elliptical orbits could, upon these principles, be accounted for, though very many had become satisfied that the solution of this problem would before long be given. In April, 1686, the Principia of Newton was presented to the Royal Society. This immortal work not only laid the foundation of Physical Astronomy, it also carried the structure thereof very far toward its completion. It unfolded the mechanical theory of universal gravitation upon the principle that all bodies tend to approach each other with forces directly as their masses, and inversely as the squares of their distances. To the force producing this tendency of bodies to approach each oth5r the designation of attraction of gravitation, or gravity, is given. All heavy bodies fall to the earth in such a way that the direction of their movement is toward its centre. Newton proved that this is the direction in which they must necessarily move under the influence of an attraction of every one of the particles of which the earth is composed, the attraction of a sphere taking effect as if all its particles were concentrated in its centre. Galileo had already examined the manner in which gravity acts upon bodies as an accelerating force, and had determined the connection between the spaces of descent and the times. He illustrated such facts experimentally by the use of inclined planes, by the aid of which the velocity may be conveniently diminished without otherwise changing the nature of the result. He had also demonstrated that the earth's attraction acts equally on all bodies. This he proved by inclosing various substances in hollow spheres, and showing that, when they were suspended by strings of equal length and made to vibrate, the time of oscillation was the same for all. Upon the invention of the air-pump, a more popular demonstration of the same fact was given by the experiment proving that a gold coin and a feather fall equally swiftly in an exhausted receiver. Galileo had also proved, by experiments on the leaning tower of Pisa, that the velocity of falling bodies is independent of their weight. It was for these experiments that he was expelled from that city. Up to the time of Newton there were only very vague ideas that the

Page 527

THEORY OF UNIVERSAL GRAVITATION. 527

earth's attraction extended to any considerable distance. Newton was led to his discovery by reflecting that at all altitudes accessible to man gravity appears to be undiminished, and that, therefore, it may possibly extend as far as the moon, and actually be the force which deflects her from a rectilinear path, and makes her revolve in an orbit round the earth. Admitting the truth of the law of the inverse squares, it is easy to compute whether the moon falls from the tangent she would describe if the earth ceased to act upon her by a quantity proportional to that observed in the case of bodies falling near the surface. In the first calculations made by Newton, he found that the moon is deflected from the tangent thirteen feet every minute; but, if the hypothesis of gravitation was true, her deflection should be fifteen feet. It is no trifling evidence of the scrupulous science of this great philosopher that hereupon he put aside the subject for several years, without, however, abandoning it. At length, in 1682, learning the result of the measures of a degree which Picart had executed in France, and which affected the estimate of the magnitude of the earth which he had used, and therefore the distance of the moon, he repeated the calculations with these improved data. It is related that " he went home, took out his old papers, and resumed his calculations. As they drew to a close, he became so much agitated that he was obliged to desire a friend to finish them." The expected coincidence was verified. And thus it appeared that the moon is retained in her orbit and made to revolve round the earth by the force of terrestrial gravity. These calculations were founded upon the hypothesis that the moon moves in a circular orbit with a uniform velocity. But in the Principia it was demonstrated that when a body moves under the influence of an attractive force, varying as the inverse squares of the distances, it must describe a conic section, with a focus at the centre of force, and under the circumstances designated by Kepler's laws. Newton, therefore, did far more than furnish the expected solution of the problem of elliptical motion, and it was now apparent that the existence of those laws might have been foreseen, since they arise in the very necessities of the case. This point gained, it is obvious that the evidence was becoming unn questionable, that as the moon is made to revolve round the earth through the influence of an attractive force exercised by the earth, so likewise each of the planets is compelled to move in an elliptical orbit round the sun by his attractive force. The heliocentric theory, at this stage, was presenting physical evidence of its truth. It was also becoming plain that the force we call gravitation must be imputed to the sun, and to all the planetary bodies as well as to the earth. Accordingly, this was what Newton asserted in respect to all material substance.

Page 528

528 THE PRINCIPIA.

But it is a necessary consequence of this theory that many apparent irregularities and perturbations of the bodies of the solar system must take place by reason of the attraction of each upon all the others. If there were but one planet revolving round the sun, its orbit might be a mathematically perfect ellipse; but the moment a second is introduced, perturbation takes place in a variable manner as the bodies change their positions or distances. An excessive complication must therefore be the consequence when the number of bodies is great. Indeed, so insurmountable would these difficulties be, that the mathematical solution of the general problem of the solar system would be hopeless were it not for the fact that the planetary bodies are at very great distances from one another, and their masses, compared with the mass of the sun, very small. Taking the theory of gravitation in its universal acceptation, Newton, in a manner that looks as if he were divinely inspired, succeeded in demonstrating the chief inequalities of the moon and planetary bodies; in determining the figure of the earth-that it is not a perfect sphere, but an oblate spheroid; in explaining the precession of the equinoxes and the tides of the ocean. To such perfection have succeeding mathematicians brought the doctrine, that the most complicated movements and irregularities of the solar system have been satisfactorily accounted for and reduced to computation. Trusting to these principles, not only has it been found possible, knowing the mass of a given planet, to determine the perturbations it may produce in adjacent ones, but even the inverse problem has been successfully attacked, and from the perturbations the place and mass of a hitherto unknown planet determined. It was thus that, from the deviations of Uranus from his theoretical place, the necessary existence of an exterior disturbing planet was foreseen, and our times have witnessed the intellectual triumph of geometers directing where the telescope should point in order to find a new planet. The discovery of Neptune was thus accomplished. It adds to our admiration of the wonderful intellectual powers of Newton to know that the mathematical instrument he used was the ancient geometry. Not until subsequently was the analytical method resorted to and cultivated. This method possesses the inappreciable advantage of relieving us from the mental strain which would otherwise oppress us. It has been truly said that the symbols think for us. Mr. Whewell, looking at the thing from this point of view, observes: "No one for sixty years after the publication of the Principia, and with Newton's methods, no one up to the present day, has added any thing of value to his deductions. We know that he calculated all the principal lunar inequalities; in many of the cases he has given us his processes, in others only his results. But who has present-

Page 529

CONSEQUENCES OF NEWTON'S DISCOVERIES. 529

ed in his beautiful geometry or deduced from his simple principles any of the inequalities which he left untouched? The ponderous instrument of synthesis, so effective in his hands, has never since been grasped by any one who could use it for such purposes; and we gaze at it with admiring curiosity, as on some gigantic implement of war which stands idle among the memorials of ancient days, and makes us wonder what manner of man he was who could wield as a weapon what we can hardly lift as a burden." Such was the physical meaning of Newton's discoveries; their philosophical meaning was of even greater importance. The paramount truth was resistlessly coming into prominence- that the government of the solar system is under necessity, and that it is mathematically impossible for the laws presiding over it to be other than they are. Thus it appears that the law of gravitation holds good throughout our solar system. But the heliocentric theory, in its most general acceptation, considers every fixed star as being, like the sun, a planetary centre. Hence, before it can be asserted that the theory of gravitation is truly universal, it must be shown that it holds good in the case of all such other systems. The evidence offered in proof of this is altogether based upon the observations of the two Herschels on the motions of the double stars. Among the stars there are some in such close proximity to each other that Sir W. Herschel was led to suppose that it would be possible, from observations upon them, to ascertain the stellar parallax. While engaged in these inquiries, which occupied him for many years, he discovered that many of these stars are not merely optically in proximity, as being accidentally in the same line of view, but are actually connected physically, revolving round each other in regular orbits. The motion of these double suns is, however, in many instances so slow as to require many years for a satisfactory determination. Sir J. Herschel therefore continued the observations of his father, and, with other mathematicians, investigated the characteristics of these motions. The first instance in which the true elliptic elements of the orbit of a binary star were determined was given by M. Savary in the case of X Ursae Majoris, indicating an elliptic orbit of 584 years. But the period of others, since determined, is very much longer; thus, in a Coronae, it is, according to Mr. Hind, more than 736 years. From the fact that the orbits in which these stars move round each other are elliptical, it necessarily follows that the law of gravitation, according to the inverse square, holds good in them. Considering the prodigious distances of these bodies, and the departure, as regards structure of the systems to which they belong, from the conditions obtaining in our unisolar system, we may perhaps assert the prevalence of the law of gravitation throughout the universe. LL

530 DOUBLE STARS-SECULAR INEQUALITIES.

If, in association with these double suns-sometimes, indeed, they are triple, and occasionally, as in the case of E Lyre, quadruple-there are opaque planetary globes, such solar systems differ from ours not only in having several suns instead of a single one, but, since the light emitted is often of different tints, one star shining with a crimson and another with a blue light, the colors not always complementary to one another, a wonderful variety of phenomena must be the result, especially in their organic creations; for organic forms, both vegetable and animal, primarily depend on the relations of colored light. How varied the effects where there are double, triple, or even quadruple sunrises, and sunsets, and noons, and the hours marked off by red, or purple, or blue tints! It is impossible to look back on the history of the theory of gravitation without sentiments of admiration, and, indeed, of pride. How felicitous has been the manner in which have been explained the inequalities of a satellite like the moon under the disturbing influence of the sun: the correspondence between the calculated and observed quantities of those inequalities; the extension of the doctrine to satellites of other planets, as those of Jupiter; the determination of the earth's figure; the causes of the tides; the different force of gravity in different latitudes, and a multitude of other phenomena. The theory asserted for itself that authority which belongs to intrinsic truth. It enabled mathematicians to point out facts not yet observed, and to foretell future events. And yet how hard it is for truth to force its way when bigotry resists. In 1771, the University of Salamanca, being urged to teach physical science, refused, and this was its answer: "Newton teaches nothing that would make a good logician or metaphysician; and Gassendi and Descartes do not agree so well with revealed truth as Aristotle does." Among the interesting results of Newton's theory may be mentioned its application to secular inequalities, such as the acceleration of the moon's mean motion, that satellite moving somewhat quicker now than she did ages ago. Laplace detected the cause of this phenomenon in the influence of the sun upon the moon, combined with the secular variation of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit. Moreover, he showed that this secular inequality of the motion of the moon is periodical, that it requires millions of years to re-establish itself, and that, after an almost inconceivable time, the acceleration becomes a retardation. In like manner, the same mathematician explained the observed acceleration in the mean motion of Jupiter, and retardation of that of Saturn, as arising from the mutual attraction of the two planets, and showed that this secular inequality has a period of 9291 years. With such slow movements may be mentioned the diminution of the obliquity of the ecliptic, which has been proceeding for ages, but which will reach

Page 531

AGE OF THE WORLD. 531

a limit and then commence to increase. These secular motions ought not to be without interest to those who suffer themselves to adopt the patristic chronology of the world, who suppose that the earth is only six thousand years old, and that it will come to an end in about one thousand years more. They must accept, along with that preposterous delusion, its necessary consequences, that the universe has been so badly constructed, and is such a rickety machine, that it can not hold together long enough for some of its wheels to begin to revolve. Astronomy offers us many illustrations of the scale upon which the world is constructed as to time, as well as that upon which it is constructed as to space. From what has been said, the conclusion forces itself upon us that the general laws obtaining as respects the earth, hold good likewise for all other parts of the universe; a conclusion sustained not only by the mechanism of such motions as we have been considering, but also by all evidence of a physical kind accessible to us. The circumstances under which our sun emits light and heat, and thereby vivifies his attendant planets, are indisputably the same as those obtaining in the case of every fixed star, each of which is a self-luminous sun. There is thus an aspect of homogeneousness in the structure of all systems in the universe, which, though some have spoken of it as if it were the indication of a uniformity of plan, and therefore the evidence of a primordial idea, is rather to be looked upon as the proof of unchangeable and resistless law. What, therefore, now becomes of the doctrine authoritatively put forth, and made to hold its sway for so many centuries, that the earth is not only the central body of the universe, but, in reality, the most noble body in it; that the sun and other stars are mere ministers or attendants for human use? In the place of these utterly erroneous and unworthy views, far different conceptions must be substituted. Man, when he looks upon the countless multitude of stars-when he reflects that all he sees are only a little portion of those which exist, yet that each is a light and life-giving sun to multitudes of opaque, and, therefore, invisible worlds-when he considers the enormous size of these various bodies and their immeasurable distance from one another, may form an estimate of the scale of magnitude on which the world is constructed, and learn therefrom his own unspeakable insignificance. In one beat of a pendulum a ray of light would pass eight times round the circumference of the earth. Thus we may take the sunbeam as a carpenter does his measuring-rule; it serves as a gauge in our measurements of the universe. A sunbeam would require more than three years to reach us from a Centauri; nine and a quarter years from 61 Cygni; from a Lyrse twelve years. These are stars whose parallax has been determined, and which are therefore nearest to us.

Page 532

532 THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.

Of suns visible to the naked eye there are about 8000, but the telescope can discern in the Milky Way more than eighteen millions, the number visible increasing as more powerful instruments are used. Our cluster of stars is a disk divided into two branches at about one third of its length. In the midst of innumerable compeers and superiors, the sun is not far from the place of bifurcation, and at about the middle of the thickness. Outside the plane of the Milky Way the appearance would be like a ring, and, still farther off, a nebulous disk. From the contemplation of isolated suns and congregated clusters we are led to the stupendous problem of the distribution of matter and force in space, and to the interpretation of those apparent phantoms of self-luminous vapor, circular and elliptic disks, spiral wreaths, rings and fans whose edges fade doubtfully away, twins and triplets of phosphorescent haze connected together by threads of light and grotesque forms of indescribable complexity. Perhaps in some of these gleaming apparitions we see the genesis, in some the melting away of universes. There is nothing motionless in the sky. In every direction vast transformations are occurring, yet all things proclaim the eternity of matter and the undiminished perpetuity of force. The theory of gravitation, as delivered by Newton, thus leads us a knowledge of the mathematical construction of the solar system, and inferentially likewise to that of other systems; but it leaves without explanation a large number of singular facts. It explains the existing conditions of equilibrium of the heavenly bodies, but it tells us nothing of their genesis; or, at the best, in that particular it falls back on the simple fiat of God. The facts here referred to conduct us, however, to another and far higher point of view. Some of them, as enumerated by Laplace, are the following: 1. All the planets and their satellites move in ellipses of such small eccentricity that they are nearly circles; 2. The movements of the planets are in the same direction and nearly in the same plane; 3. The movements of the satellites are in the same direction as those of the planets; 4. The movements of rotation of these various bodies and of the sun are in the same direction as their orbitual motions, and in planes little different. The nebular hypothesis requires us to admit that all the ponderable material now constituting the various bodies of the solar system once extended, in a rarefied or nebulous and rotating condition, beyond the confines of the most distant planet. That postulate granted, the structure and present condition of the system may be mathematically deduced. For, as the vast rotating spheroid lost its heat by radiation, it contracted, and its velocity of rotation was necessarily increased; and thus were left behind from its equatorial zone, by reason of the centrifugal

Page 533

THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 533

force, rotating rings, the same result occurring periodically again and again. These rings must lie all in one plane. They might break, collapsing into one rotating spheroid, a planet; or into many, asteroids; or maintain the ring-like form. From the larger of these secondary rotating spheroids other rings might be thrown off, as from the parent mass; these, in their turn breaking and becoming spheroids, constitute satellites, whose movements correspond to those of their primaries. We might, indeed, advance a step farther, and show how, by the radiation of heat from a motionless nebula, a movement of rotation in a determinate direction could be engendered, and that upon these principles, the existence of a nebulous matter admitted, and the present laws and forces of nature regarded as having been unchanged, the manner of origin of the solar system might be deduced, and all those singular facts previously alluded to explained; and not only so, but there are spontaneously suggested the cause of many minor peculiarities not yet mentioned. For it follows from the nebular hypothesis that the large planets should rotate rapidly, and the small ones more slowly; that the outer planets and satellites should be larger than the inner ones. Of the satellites of Saturn, the largest is the outermost; of those of Jupiter, the largest is the outermost save one. Of the planets themselves, Jupiter is the largest, and outermost save three. These can not be coincidences, but must be due to law. The number of satellites of each planet, with the doubtful exception of Venus, might be foreseen, the presence of satellites and their number being determined by the centrifugal force of their primary. The hypothesis also points out the time of revolution of the planets in their orbits, and of the satellites in theirs; it furnishes a reason for the genesis and existence of Saturn's rings, which are indeed its remaining witnesses-their position and movements answering to its requirements. It accounts for the physical state of the sun, and also for the physical state of the earth and moon as indicated by their geology. It is also not without furnishing reasons for the existence of comets as integrant members of our system; for their singular physical state; for the eccentric, almost parabolic orbits of so many of them; for the fact that there are as many of them with a retrograde as with a direct motion; for their more frequent occurrence about the axis of the solar system than in its plane; and for their general antithetical relations to planets. If these and very many other apparently disconnected facts follow as the mechanical necessities of the admission of a gravitating nebula-a very simple postulate-it becomes important to ascertain whether, by actual observation, the existence of such material forms may be demonstrated in any part of the universe. It was the actual telescopic observation of such objects that led Herschel to the neb-

Page 534

534 THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.

ular hypothesis. He concluded that there are two distinct kinds of nebulae, one consisting of clusters of stars so remote that they could not be discerned individually, but that these may be discerned by sufficient telescopic power; the other being of a hazy nature, and incapable of resolution. Nebula do not occur at random in the heavens: the regions poorest in stars are richest in them; they are few in the plane of our sidereal system, but numerous about its poles, in that respect answering to the occurrence of comets in the solar system. The resolution of many of these hazy patches of light into stars by no means disproves the truly nebulous condition of many others. Notwithstanding the great authority of the astronomers who introduced it, the nebular hypothesis has encountered much adverse criticism; not so much, however, from its obvious scientific defects, such as its inability to deal with the case of Uranus, as from moral and extraneous considerations. There is a line in Aristophanes which points out precisely the difficulty. A reluctance to acknowledge the presidency of law in the existing constitution and movements of the solar system has been yielded only to be succeeded by a reluctance to acknowledge the presidency of law in its genesis. And yet whoever will reflect on the subject will be drawn to the conclusion that the principle involved was really settled by Newton in his Principia-that is to say, when it became geometrically certain that Kepler's laws originate in a mathematical necessity. As matters now stand, the nebular hypothesis may be regarded as the first superficial, and therefore imperfect, glimpse of a series of the grandest problems soon to present themselves for solution-the mathematical distribution of matter and force in space, and the variations of that distribution in time. Such is the history of the dispute respecting the position of the earth in the universe. Not without reason, therefore, have I assigned the pontificate of Nicolas V. as the true close of the intellectual dominion of the Church. From that period the sceptre had passed into another hand. In all directions Nature was investigated, in all directions new methods of examination were yielding unexpected and beautiful results. On the ruins of its ivy-grown cathedrals, Ecclesiasticism, surprised and blinded by the breaking day, sat solemnly blinking at the light and life about it, absorbed in the recollection of the night that had passed, dreaming of new phantoms and delusions in its wished for return, and vindictively striking its talons at any derisive assailant who incautiously approached too near. I have not space to describe the scientific activity displayed in all directions; to do it justice would demand volumes. Mathematics, physics, chemistry, anatomy, medicine,

Page 535

SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITY OF THE AGE OF REASON. 535

and all the many branches of human knowledge received an impulse. Simultaneously with the great events I have been relating, every one of these branches was advancing. Vieta made the capital improvement of using letters as general symbols in algebra, and applied that science to geometry. Tycho, emulating Hipparchus of old, made a new catalogue of the stars; he determined that comets are beyond the moon, and that they cut the crystalline firmament of theology in all directions. Gilbert wrote his admirable book on the magnet; Gesner led the way to zoology, taking it up at the point to which the Saracens had continued Aristotle, by the publication of his work on the history of animals; Belon at the same time, 1540, was occupied with fishes and birds. Fallopius and Eustachius, Arantius and Varolius, were immortalizing themselves by their dissections: the former reminding us of the times of Ptolemy Philadelphus, when he naively confesses " the Duke of Tuscany was obliging enough to send living criminals to us, whom we killed and then dissected." Piqcolomini laid the foundations of general anatomy by his description of cellular tissue. Coiter created pathological anatomy, Prosper Alpinus diagnosis, Plater the classification of disease, and Ambrose Pare modern surgery. Such were the occupations and prospect of science at the close of the sixteenth century. Scarcely had the seventeenth opened when it became obvious that the movement, far from slackening, was only gathering force. It was the age of Galileo. Descartes introduced the theory of an ether and vortices; but, hearing of the troubles that had befallen Galileo, was on the point of burning his papers. Several years later, he was restrained from publishing his Cosmos "from a pious desire not to treat irreverently the decrees of the holy chair against the planetary movement of the earth." This was in 1633, when the report of the sentence of the Inquisition was made known. He also developed Vieta's idea of the application of algebra to geometry, and brought into prominence the mechanical fact, destined to an important application in physical astronomy, that every curvilinear deflection is due to a controlling force. To him, among Europeans, also is to be attributed the true explanation of the rise of water in an exhausted space-" the weight of the water counterbalances that of the air." Napier perfected his great and useful invention of logarithms. Hydraulics was created by Castelli, hydrostatics by Torricelli, who also discovered barometric variations: both were pupils of Galileo. Fabricius ab Aquapendente discovered the valves in the veins, Servetus almost detected the course of the circulation. Harvey completed what Servetus had left unfinished, and described the entire course of the blood; Asellius discovered the lacteals; Van Helmont introduced the theory of vitality into medicine, and made the practice or art thereof consist in regulating by diet the archeus, whose seat he affirmed to be in the stomach. In strong contrast with

Page 536

536 SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITY OF THE AGE OF REASON.

this phantasy, Sanctorio laid the foundation of modern physiology by introducing the balance into its inquiries. Pascal, by a decisive experiment, established the doctrines of the weight and pressure of the air, and published some of the most philosophical treatises of the age: his Provincial Letters did more than any thing to ruin the name of the Jesuits." The contagion spread to the lawyers: in 1672 appeared Puffendorf's work on the Law of Nature and Nations. The phlogistic theory, introduced by Beccher and perfected by Stahl, created chemistry, in contradistinction to the Arabian alchemy. Otto Guericke invented the airpump, Boyle improved it; Hooke, among many other discoveries, determined the essential conditions of combustion. Far above all contemporaries in mathematical learning and experimental skill, Newton was already turning his attention to the "reflections, refractions, inflections, and colors of light," and introducing the idea of attractions into physics. Ray led the way to comparative anatomy in his synopsis of quadrupeds; Swammerdam improved the art of dissection, applying it to the general history of insects; Lister published his synopsis of shells; Tournefort and Malpighi devoted themselves to botany; Grew discovered the sexes of plants, Brown the quinary arrangement of flowers. Geology began to shake loose from the trammels of theology, and Burnet's Sacred theory of the Earth could not maintain its ground against more critical investigations. The Arabian doctrine of the movement of the crust of the earth began to find supporters. Lister ascertained the continuity of strata over great distances; Woodward improved mineralogy; the great mathematician, Leibnitz, the rival of Newton, propounded the doctrine of the gradual cooling of the globe, the descent of its strata by fracture, the deposit of sedimentary rocks, and their induration. Among physicians, Willis devoted himself to the study of the brain, traced the course of the nerves and classified them, and introduced the doctrine of the localization of functions in the brain. Malpighi and Lewenhoeck applied the microscope as an aid to anatomy; the latter discovered spermatozoa. Graaf studied the function of the generative organs; Borelli attempted the application of mathematics to muscular movement; Duverney wrote on the sense of hearing, Mayow on respiration; Ruysch perfected the art of injection, and improved minute anatomyBut it is in vain to go on. The rest of these pages would be consumed in an attempt to record the names of the cultivators of science, every year increasing in number, and to do justice to their works. From the darkness that had for so many ages enveloped it, the human mind at last emerged into light. The intellectual motes were dancing in the sunbeam, and making it visible in every direction. Despairing thus to do justice to individual philosophers and individual discoveries, there is, however, one most important event to which I must to which I must prominently allude. It is the foundation of

Page 537

PRIMITIVE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS. 537

learned societies. Imitating the examples of the Academia Secretorum Naturae, instituted at Naples, 1560, by Baptista Porta, and of the Lyncean Academy, founded 1603 by Prince Frederick Cesi at Rome for the promotion of natural philosophy, the Accademia del Cimento was established at Florence, 1637; the Royal Society of London, 1645; and the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, 1666. Arrived at the close of the description of this first great victory of scientific truth over authority and tradition, it is well for us to pause and look back on the progress of man from the erroneous inferences of his social infancy to the true conclusions of his maturity-from anthropocentric ideas, which in all nations and parts of the world have ever been the same, to the discovery of his true position and insignificance in the universe. We are placed in a world surrounded with illusions. The daily events of our life and the objects before us tend equally to deceive us. If we cast our eyes on the earth, it seems to be made only to minister to our pleasures or our wants. If we direct our attention to the sky, that blue and crystalline dome, the edges of which rest on the flat land or the sea a glacial vault, which Empedocles thought was frozen air, and the fathers of the Church the lowest of the seven concentric strata of heavens-we find a thousand reasons for believing that whatever it covers was intended by some Good Being for our use. Of the various living things placed with us beneath it, all are of an inferior grade when compared with ourselves, and all seem intended for us. The conclusions at which we thus arrive are strengthened by a principle of vanity implanted in our hearts, unceasingly suggesting to us that this pleasant abode must have been prepared for our reception, and furnished and ornamented expressly for our use. But reflection teaches us that we came not hither of ourselves, and that doubtless the same Good Being who prepared this delightful abode brought us as tenants into it. From the fact of our own existence, we are insensibly and inevitably led to infer the existence of God; from the favorable circumstances in which our lot is cast, we gather evidences of his goodness; and in the energy which natural phenomena often display, we see the tokens of his power. What other explanation can we give of tempests in the sea or lightning in the heavens? Moreover, it is only during a part of our time-our waking hours-that we are brought in relation with these material things; for the rest, when we are asleep, a state in which we spend more than a third part of our life, we are introduced to other scenery, other beings, another world. From these we gather that there are agents of an intangible and more ethereal mould, perhaps of the nature of Him who brought us here, perhaps his subordinates and messen-

Page 538

538 PRIMITIVE NATURAL THEOLOGY.

gers. Whence do they issue and whither do they go? Is there not beyond the sky above us a region to which our imperfect vision can not penetrate, but which may be accessible to them from the peaks of elevated mountains, or to be reached only with wings? And thus we picture to ourselves a heaven shut off from earth, with all its sins and cares, by the untroubled and impenetrable sky a place of light and repose, its pavement illuminated by the sun and countless other shining bodies-a place of peace, but also a place of power. Still more, a thousand facts of our life teach us that we are exposed to influences of an evil nature as well as to those that are good. How often, in our dreams, does it happen that we are terror-stricken by the approach of hideous forms, faces of fearful appearance, from which we vainly struggle to escape. Is it not natural for us to attribute the evil we see in the world to these as the good to those? and, since we can not conceive of the existence of beings without assigning them a place, where shall we find for these malignant spirits a habitation? Is it not in the dark region beneath the ground, far away from the realms of light-a region from which, through the volcano, smoke and burning sulphur are cast into this upper world-a place of everlasting fire and darkness, whose portals are in caves and solitudes of unutterable gloom? Placed thus on the boundary between such opposing powers, man is the sport of circumstances, sustained by beings who seek his happiness, and tempted by those who desire his destruction. Is it at all surprising that, guided by such obvious thoughts and simple reasonings, he becomes superstitious? that he sees in every shadow a spirit, and peoples every solitary place with invisibles? that he casts a longing look to the good beings who can protect him, seeking to invoke their aid by entreaties, and to propitiate their help by free-will sacrifices of things that are pleasant and valuable? Open to such influences himself, why should he not believe in the efficacy of prayer? His conscious superiority lends force to his suspicion that he is a worthy object for the opposing powers to contend for, a conclusion verified by the inward strifes he feels, as well as by the trials of life to which he is exposed. But dreams at night, and sometimes visions by day, serve to enforce the conclusion that life is not limited to our transitory continuance here, but endures hereafter. How often at night do we see the well-known forms of those who have been dead a long time appearing before us with surprising vividness, and hear their almost forgotten voices? These are admonitions full of the most solemn suggestions, profoundly indicating to us that the dead still continue to exist, and that what has happened to them must also happen to us, and we too are destined for immortality. Perhaps involuntarily we asso-

Page 539

ITS GRADUAL CORRECTION. 539

ciate these conclusions with others, expecting that in a future life good men will enjoy the society of good beings like themselves, the evil being dismissed to the realms of darkness and despair. And, as human experience teaches us that a final allotment can only be made by some superior power, we expect that He who was our Creator shall also be our Judge; that there is an appointed time and a bar at which the final destination of all who have lived shall be ascertained, and eternal justice measure out its punishments and rewards. From these considerations there arises an inducement for us to lead a virtuous life, abstaining from wickedness and wrong; to set apart a body of men who may mediate for us, and teach us by precept and example the course it is best for us to pursue; to consecrate places, such as groves or temples, to which we may resort, as the more immediate habitations of the Deity. Such are the leading doctrines of Natural Theology of primitive man both in the old and new continent. They arise from the operations of the human mind considering the fitness of things. Just as we have in Comparative Anatomy the structure of different animals examined, and their identities and differences set forth, thereby establishing their true relations; just as we have in Comparative Physiology the functions of one organic being compared with those of another, to the end that we may therefrom deduce their proper connections, so, from the mythologies of various races of men, a Comparative Theology is to be constructed. Alone through such a science can correct conclusions be arrived at respecting this, the most important of the intellectual operations of man-the definite process of his religious opinions. But it must be borne in mind that Comparative Theology illustrates the result or effect of the phase of life, and is not its cause. As man advances in knowledge he discovers that of his primitive conclusions some are doubtless erroneous, and many require better evidence to establish their truth incontestably. A more prolonged and attentive examination gives him reason, in some of the most important particulars, to change his mind. He finds that the earth on which he lives is not a floor covered over with a starry dome, as he once supposed, but a globe self-balanced in space. The crystalline vault, or sky, is recognized as an optical deception. It rests upon the earth nowhere, and is no boundary at all; there is no kingdom of happiness above it, but a limitless space, adorned with planets and suns. Instead of a realm of darkness and woe in the depths on the other side of the earth, men like ourselves are found there, pursuing, in Australia and New Zealand, the innocent pleasures and encountering the ordinary labors of life. By the aid of such lights as knowledge gradually supplies, he comes at last to discover that this, our terrestrial habitation, in-

Page 540

540 THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS.

stead of being a chosen, a sacred spot, is only one of similar myriads, more numerous than the sands of the sea, and prodigally scattered through space. Never, perhaps, was a more important truth discovered. All the visible evidence was in direct opposition to it. The earth, which had hitherto seemed to be the very emblem of immobility was demonstrated to be carried with a double motion, with prodigious velocity, through the heavens; the rising and setting of the stars were proved to be an illusion; and, as respects the size of the globe, it was shown to be altogether insignificant when compared with multitudes of other neighboring ones insignificant doubly by reason of its actual dimensions, and by the countless numbers of others like it in form, and doubtless, like it, the abodes of many orders of life. And so it turns out that our earth is a globe of about twenty-five thousand miles in circumference. The voyager who circumnavigates it spends no inconsiderable portion of his life in accomplishing his task. It moves round the sun in a year, but at so great a distance from that luminary that, if seen from him, it would look like a little spark traversing the sky. It is thus recognized as one of the members of the solar system. Other similar bodies, some of which are of larger, some of smaller dimensions, perform similar revolutions round the sun in appropriate periods of time. If the magnitude of the earth is too great for us to attach to it any definite conception, what shall we say of the compass of the solar system? There is a defect in the human intellect which incapacitates us for comprehending distances and periods that are either too colossal or too minute. We gain no clearer insight into the matter when we are told that a comet which does not pass beyond the bounds of the system may perhaps be absent on its journey for more than a thousand years. Distances and periods such as these are beyond our grasp. They prove to us how far human reason excels imagination, the one measuring and comparing things of which the other can form no conception, but in the attempt is utterly bewildered and lost. But as there are other globes like our earth, so too there are other worlds like our solar system. There are self-luminous suns exceeding in number all computation. The dimensions of this earth pass into nothingness in comparison with the dimensions of the solar system, and that system, in its turn, is only an invisible point if placed in relation with the countless hosts of other systems which form, with it, clusters of stars. Our solar system, far from being alone in the universe, is only one of an extensive brotherhood, bound by common laws and subject to like influences. Even on the very verge of creation, where imagination might lay the beginning of the realms of chaos,

Page 541

THE POSITION OF MAN. 541

we see unbounded proofs of order, a regularity in the arrangement of inanimate things, suggesting to us that there are other intellectual creatures like us, the tenants of those islands in the abysses of space. Though it may take a beam of light a million of years to bring to our view those distant worlds, the end is not yet. Far away in the depths of space we catch the faint gleams of other groups of stars like our own. The finger of a man can hide them in their remoteness. Their vast distances from one another have dwindled into nothing. They and their movements have lost all individuality; the innumerable suns of which they are composed blend all their collected light into one pale milky glow. Thus extending our view from the earth to the solar system, from the solar system to the expanse of the group of stars to which we belong, we behold a series of gigantic nebular creations rising up one after another, and forming greater and greater colonies of worlds. No numbers can express them, for they make the firmament a haze of stars. Uniformity, even though it be the uniformity of magnificence, tires at last, and we abandon the survey, for our eyes can only behold a boundless prospect, and conscience tells us our own unspeakable insignificance. But what has become of the time-honored doctrine of the human destiny of the universe? that doctrine for the sake of which the controversy I have described in this chapter was raised. It has disappeared. In vain was Bruno burnt and Galileo imprisoned; the truth forced its way, in spite of all opposition, at last. The end of the conflict was a total rejection of authority and tradition, and the adoption of scientific truth.

Page 542

542 THE EUROPEAN AGE OF REASON,

CHAPTER XXIII. THE EUROPEAN AGE OF REASON-( Continued). HISTORY OF THE EARTH.-HER SUCCESSIVE CHANGES IN THE COURSE OF TIME.

Oriental and Occidental Doctrines respecting the Earth in Time.-Gradual Weakening of the Latter by astronomical Facts, and the Rise of Scientific Geology. Impersonal Manner in which the Problem was eventually solved, chiefly through Facts connected with Heat. Proofs of limitless Duration from inorganic Facts. -Igneous and Aqueous Rocks. Proofs of the same from organic Facts.-Successive Creations and Extinctions of living Forms, and their contemporaneous Distribution. Evidences of a slowly declining Temperature, and, therefore, of a long Time.-The Process of Events by Catastrophe and by Law.-Analogy of Individual and Race Development.-Both are determined by unchangeable Law. Conclusion that the Plan of the Universe indicates a Multiplicity of Worlds in infinite Space, and a Succession of Worlds in infinite Time.

A VICTORY could not be more complete nor a triumph more brilliant than that which had been gained by science in the contest concerning the position of the earth. Though there followed closely thereupon an investigation of scarcely inferior moment-that respecting the age of the earth-so thoroughly was the ancient authority intellectually crushed that it found itself incapable of asserting by force the patristic idea that our planet is less than six thousand years old. Not but that a resistance was made. It was, however, of an indirect kind. The contest might be likened rather to a partisan warfare than to the deliberate movement of regular armies under recognized commanders. In its history there is no central figure like Galileo, no representative man, no brilliant and opportune event like the invention of the telescope. The question moves on to its solution impersonally. A little advance is made here by one, there by another. The war was finished, though no great battle was fought. In the chapter we are entering upon there is, therefore, none of that dramatic interest connected with the last. Impersonally the question was decided, and, therefore, impersonally I must describe it. In Oriental countries, where the popular belief assigns to the creation of man a very ancient date, and even asserts for some empires a duration of hundreds of thousands of years, no difficulty as respects the age of the earth was felt, there seeming to have been time enough for every event that human researches have detected to transpire. But in the West, where the doctrine that not only the

Page 543

PROBLEM OF THE AGE OF THE EARTH. 543

earth, but the universe itself, was intended for man, has been carried to its consequences with exacting rigor, circumstances forbid us to admit that there was any needless delay between the preparation of the habitation and the introduction of the tenant. They also force upon us the conclusion that a few centuries constitute a very large portion of the time of human existence, since, if we adopt the doctrine of an almost limitless period, we should fall into a difficulty in explaining what has become of the countless myriads of generations in the long time so past, and, considering that we are taught that the end of the world is at hand, and must be expected in a few years at the most, we might seem to arraign the goodness of God in this, that he has left to their fate immeasurably the larger proportion of our race, and has restricted his mercy to us alone, who are living in the departing twilight of the evening of the world. But in this, as in the former case, a closer examination of the facts brings us to the indisputable conclusion that we have decided unworthily and untruly; that our guiding doctrine of the universe being intended for us is a miserable delusion; that the scale on which the world is constructed as to time answers to that on which it is constructed as to space; that, as respects our planet, its origin dates from an epoch too remote for our mental apprehension; that myriads of centuries have been consumed in its coming to its present state; that, by a slow progression, it has passed from stage to stage, uninhabited, and for a long time uninhabitable by any living thing; that, in their proper order and in due lapse of time, the organic series have been its inhabitants, and of these a vast majority, whose numbers are so great that we can not offer an intelligible estimate of them, have passed away and become extinct, and that finally, for a brief period, we have been its possessors. Of the intentions of God it becomes us, therefore, to speak with reverence and reserve. In those ages when there was not a man upon the earth, what was the object? Was the twilight only given that the wolf might follow his flying prey, and the stars made to shine that the royal tiger might pursue his midnight maraudings? Where was the use of so much that was beautiful and orderly, when there was not a solitary intellectual being to understand and enjoy? Even now, when we are so much disposed to judge of other worlds from their apparent adaptedness to be the abodes of a thinking and responsible order like ourselves, it may be of service to remember that this earth itself was for countless ages a dungeon of pestiferous exhalations and a den of wild beasts. It might moreover appear that the conclusions to which we come, both as respects the position and age of the world, must necessarily have for their consequences the diminution and degradation of man, the rendering him too worthless an object for God's regard. But here again we fall into an error. True, we have debased

Page 544

544 THE BEGINNING AND END OF THE WORLD.

his animal value, and taught him how little he is-how insignificant are the evils, how vain the pleasures of his life. But, as respects his intellectual principle, how does the matter stand? What is it that has thus been measuring the terrestrial world, and weighing it in a balance? What is it that has been standing on the sun, and marking out the orbits and boundaries of the solar system? What is it that has descended into the infinite abysses of space, examined the countless worlds that they contain, and compared and contrasted them together? What is it that has shown itself capable of dealing with magnitudes that are infinite, even of comparing infinites together? What is it that has not hesitated to trace things in their history through a past eternity, and been found capable of regarding equally the transitory moment and endless duration? That which is competent to do all this, so far from being degraded, rises before us with an air of surpassing grandeur and inappreciable worth. It is the soul of man. From the facts given in the last chapter respecting the relations of the earth in space, we are next led to her relations in time. So long as science was oppressed with the doctrine of the human destiny of the universe, which, as its consequence, made this earth the great central body, and elevated man to supreme importance, there was much difficulty in treating the problem of the age of the world. The history of the earth was at first a wild and fictitious cosmogony. Scientific cosmogony arose, not from any theological considerations, but from the telescopic ascertainment of the polar compression of the planet Jupiter, and the consequent determination by Newton that the earth is a spheroid of revolution. With a true cosmogony came a better chronology. The patristic doctrine had been that the earth came into existence but little more than five thousand years ago, and to this a popular opinion long current was added, that its end might be very shortly expected. From time to time periods were set by various authorities determining the latter event, and, as true knowledge was extinguished, the year 1000 came to be the universally appointed date. In view of this, it was not an uncommon thing for persons to commence their testamentary bequests with the words, " In expectation of the approaching end of the world." But the tremendous moment passed by, and still the sun rose and set, still the seasons were punctual in their courses, and Nature wore her accustomed aspect. A later day was then predicted, and again and again disappointment ensued, until sober-minded men began to perceive that the Scriptures were never intended to give information on such subjects, and predictions of the end of the world fell into discredit, abandoned to the illiterate, whose morbid anticipations they still amuse. As it was thus with the end of our planet, so it was as regards her

Page 545

AGE OF THE WORLD PROVED BY THE MOTION OF LIGHT. 545

origin. By degrees evidence began to accumulate casting a doubt on her recent date, evidence continually becoming more and more cogent. In no insignificant manner did the establishment of the heliocentric theory, aided by the discoveries of the telescope, assist in this result. As I have said, it utterly ruined past restoration the doctrine of the human destiny of the universe. With that went down all arguments which had depended on making man the measure of things. Ideas of unexpected sublimity as to the scale of magnitude on which the world is constructed soon enforced themselves, and proved to be the precursors of similar ideas as to time. At length it was perceived by those who were in the van of the movement that the Bible was never intended to deliver a chronological doctrine respecting the beginning any more than the end of things, and that those well-meaning men who were occupied in wresting it from its true purposes were engaged in an unhappy employment, for its tendency could be no other than to injure the cause they designed to promote. Nevertheless, so strong were the ancient persuasions, that it was not without a struggle that the doctrine of a long period forced its way-a struggle for the age of the earth, which, in its arguments, in its tendencies, and in its results, forcibly recalls the preceding one respecting the position of the earth; but, in the end, truth overrode all authority and all opposition, and the doctrine of an extremely remote origin of our planet ceased to be open to dispute. In a scientific conception of the universe, illimitable spaces are of necessity connected with limitless time. The discovery of the progressive motion of light' offered the means of an absolute demonstration of this connection. Rays emitted by an object, and making us sensible of its presence by impinging on the eye, do not reach us instantaneously, but consume a certain period in their passage. If any sudden visible effect took place in the sun, we should not see it at the absolute moment of its occurrence, but about eight minutes and thirteen seconds later, this being the time required for light to cross the intervening distance. All phenomena take place in reality anterior to the moment at which we observe them by a time longer in proportion as the distance to be traveled is greater. There are objects in the heavens so distant that it would take many hundreds of thousands of years for their light to reach us. Then it necessarily follows, since we can see them, that they must have been created and must have been shining so long. The velocity with which light moves was first determined by the Danish astronomer Rimer from the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, November, 1675. It was, therefore, a determination of the rate for reflected solar light in a vacuum, and gave 198,000 miles in a second. In 1727, Brad-

Page 546

546 SLOW COOLING OF THE EARTH

ley determined it for direct stellar light by his great discovery of the aberration of the fixed stars. More recently, the experiments of M. Foucault and those of M. Fizeau, by the aid of rotating mirrors or wheels, have confirmed these astronomical observations, Fizeau's determination of the velocity approaching that of Romer. Probably, however, the most correct is that of Struve, 191,515 miles per second. This astronomical argument, which serves as a general introduction, is strengthened by numerous physical and physiological facts. But of different methods by which the age of the earth may be the age of the earth through elucidated, I shall prefer that which approaches it through the phenomena of heat. Such a manner of viewing the problem has led to its determination in the minds of many thinking men. As correct astronomical ideas began to prevail, it was perceived that all the heat now on the surface of our planet is derived from the sun. Through the circumstance of the inclination of her axis of rotation to the plane of her annual motion, or through the fact of her globular form occasioning the presentation of different parts of her surface, according to their latitudes, with more or less obliquity, and hence the reception of less or more of the rays, there may be local and temporary variations. But these do not affect the general principle that the quantity of heat thus received must be the same from year to year. This thermometric equilibrium not only holds good for the surface, it may also be demonstrated for the whole mass of the planet. The day has not shortened by the 1/200 of a second since the time of Hipparchus, and therefore the decrease of heat can not have been so much as the 1/300 of a Fahrenheit degree, on the hypothesis that the mean dilatation of all terrestrial substances is equal to that of glass, 1/180,000 for one degree. If a decline had taken place in the intrinsic heat of the earth, there must have been a diminution in her size, and, as a necessary consequence, the length of the day must have become less. The earth has therefore reached a condition of equilibrium as respects temperature. A vast body of evidence has, however, come into prominence, establishing with equal certainty that there was in ancient times a far higher temperature in the planet; not a temperature concerned with a fraction of a degree, but ranging beyond the limits of our thermometric scale. The mathematical figure of the earth offers a resistless argument for its ancient liquefied condition-that is, for its originally high temperature. But how is this to be co-ordinated with the conclusion just mentioned? Simply by the admission that there have elapsed prodigious, it might almost be said limitless periods. As thus the true state of affairs began to take on a shape, it was perceived that

Page 547

ITS- PRESENT INTERIOR HEAT. 547

the age of the earth is not a question of authority, not a question of tradition, but a mathematical problem sharply defined: to determine the time of cooling of a globe of known diameter and of given conductibility by radiation in a vacuum. In such a state of things, what could be more unwise than to attempt to force opinion by the exercise of authority? How unspeakably mischievous had proved to be a like course as respects the globular form of the earth, which did not long remain a mere mathematical abstraction, but was abruptly brought to a practical issue by the voyage of Magellan's ship. And on this question of the age of the earth it would have been equally unwise to become entangled with or committed to the errors of patristicism-errors arising from well-meant moral considerations, but which can never exert any influence on the solution of a scientific problem. One fact after another bearing upon the question gradually emerged into view. It was shown that the diurnal variations of temperature-that is, those connected with night and day extend but a few inches beneath the surface, the seasonal ones, connected with winter and summer, to many feet; but beyond this was discovered a stratum of invariable temperature, beneath which, if we descend, the heat increases at the rate of 1~ Fahr. for every fifty or seventy feet. The uniformity of this rate seemed to imply that, at depths quite insignificant, a very high temperature must exist. This was illustrated by such facts as that the water which rushes up from a depth of 1794 feet in the Artesian well of Grenelle has a temperature of 82~ Fahr. The mean temperature of Paris being about 51~ Fahr., these numbers give a rate of 1~ for every fifty-eight feet. If, then, the increase of heat is only 1000 per mile, at a depth of less than ten miles every thing must be red hot, and at thirty or forty in a melted state. It was by all admitted that the rise of temperature with the depth is not at all local, but occurs in whatever part of the earth the observation may be made. The general conclusion thus furnished was re-enforced by the evidence of volcanoes, which could no longer be regarded as merely local, depending on restricted areas for the supply of melted material, since they are found all over the land and under the sea, in the interior of continents and by the shores, beneath the equator and in the polar regions. It had been estimated that there are probably two thousand aerial or subaqueous eruptions every century. Some volcanoes, as AEtna, have for thousands of years poured forth their lavas, and still there is an unexhausted supply. Every where a common source is indicated by the rudely uniform materials ejected. The fact that the lines of volcanic activity shift pointed to a deep source; the periodic increments and decrements of force bore the same interpretation. They far transcend the range of history. The volcanoes of central France date from the

Page 548

548 ARGUMENTS FOR FORMER HIGH TRMPERATURE.

Eocene period; their power increased in the Miocene, and continued through the Pliocene; those of Catalonia belong to the Pliocene, probably. Coupled with volcanoes, earthquakes, with their vertical, horizontal, and rotary vibrations, having a linear velocity of from twenty to thirty miles per minute, indicated a profound focus of action. The great earthquake of Lisbon was felt from Norway to Morocco, from Algiers to the West Indies, from Thuringia to the Canadian lakes. It absolutely lifted the whole bed of the North Atlantic Ocean. Its origin was in no superficial point. A still more universal proof of a high temperature affecting the whole from the mass of the interior of the globe was believed to be presented in the small mean density of the earth, a density not more than 5.66 times that of water, the mean density of the solid surface being 2.7, and that of the solid and sea-surface together 1.6. But this is not a density answering to that which the earth should have in virtue of the attraction of her own parts. It implied some agent capable of rarefying and dilating, and the only such agent is heat. Although the law of the increase of density from the upper surface to the centre is unknown, yet a comparison of the earth's compression with her velocity of rotation demonstrated that there is an increasing density in the strata as we descend. The great fact, however, which stands prominently forth is the interior heat. Not only were evidences thus offered of the existence of a high temperature, and, therefore, of the lapse of a long time by the present circumstances of the globe; every trace of its former state, duly considered, yielded similar indications, the old evidence corroborating the new. And soon it appeared that this would hold good whether considered in the inorganic or organic aspect. In the inorganic, what other interpretation could be put on the universal occurrence of igneous rocks, some in enormous mountain ranges, some ejected from beneath, forcing their tortuous way through the resisting superincumbent strata; veins of various mineral constitution, and, as their relations with one another showed, veins of very different dates? What other interpretation of layers of lava in succession, one under another, and often with old disintegrated material between? What of those numerous volcanoes which have never been known to show any signs of activity in the period of history, though they sometimes occur in countries like France, pre-eminently historic? What meaning could be assigned to all those dislocations, subsidences, and elevations which the crust of the earth in every country presents, indications of a loss of heat, of a contraction in diameter, and its necessary consequence, fracture of the exterior consolidated shell along lines of least resistance? And though it was asserted by some that the catastrophes of which these are the evidences were occasioned by forces of

Page 549

ITS CONSEQUENCE A LONG DURATION. 549

unparalleled energy and incessant operation-unparalleled when compared with such terrestrial forces as we are familiar with-that did not, in any respect, change the interpretation, for there could have been no abrupt diminution in the intensity of those forces, which, if they had lessened in power, must have passed through a long, a gradual decline. In that very decline there thus spontaneously came forth evidences of a long lapse of time. The whole course of Nature satisfies us how gradual and deliberate are her proceedings; that there is no abrupt boundary between the past and the present, but that the one insensibly shades off into the other, the present springing gently and imperceptibly out of the past. If volcanic phenomena and all kinds of igneous manifestations-if dislocations, injections, the intrusion of melted material into strata were at one time more frequent, more violent-if, in the old times, mundane forces possessed an energy which they have now lost, their present diminished and deteriorated condition, coupled with the fact that for thousands of years, throughout the range of history, they have been invariably such as we find them now, should be to us a proof how long, how very long ago those old times must have been. Thus, therefore, was perceived the necessity of co-ordinating the scale of time with the scale of space, and such views of the physical history of the earth were extended to celestial bodies which were considered as having passed through a similar course. In one, at least, this assertion was no mere matter of speculation, but of actual observation. The broken surface of the moon, its volcanic cones and craters, its mountains, with their lava-clad sides and ejected blocks glistening in the sun, proved a succession of events like those of the earth, and demonstrated that there is a planetary as well as a terrestrial geology, and that in our satellite there is evidence of a primitive high temperature, of a gradual decline, and, therefore, of a long process of time. Perhaps, also, considering the rate of heat-exchange in Venus by reason of her proximity to the sun, the pale light which it is said has been observed on her non-illuminated part is the declining trace of her own intrinsic temperature, her heat lasting until now. If astronomers sought in systemic causes an explanation of these facts -if, for instance, they were disposed to examine how far in the obliquity of the ecliptic were connected changes. therewith-it was necessary at the outset to concede that the scale of time on which the event proceeds is of prodigious duration, this secular variation observing a slow process of only 45".7 in a century; and hence, since the time of Hipparchus, two thousand years ago; the plane of the ecliptic has approached that of the equator by only a quarter of a degree. Or if, again, they looked to a diminishing of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, they were compelled to admit the same postulate,

Page 550

550 THE LENGTH OF TIME SHOWN BY AQUEOUS EFFECTS,

and deal with thousands of centuries. Under whatever aspect, then, the theory was regarded, if once a former high temperature was admitted, and the fact coupled therewith that there has been no sensible decline within the observation of man, whether the explanation was purely geological or purely astronomical, the motion of heat in the mass of the earth is so slow, yet the change that has taken place is so great, the variations of the contemplated relations of the solar system so gradual -under whatever aspect and in whatever way the fact was dealt with, there arose the indispensable concession of countless centuries. To the astronomer such a concession was nothing extraordinary. It is not because of the time required that he entertains any doubt that the sun and his system accomplish a revolution round a distant centre of gravity in nineteen millions of years, or that the year of E Lyrae is half a million of ours. He looks forward to that distant day when Sirius will disappear from our skies, and the Southern Cross be visible, and Vega the polar star. He looks back to the time when gamma Draconis occupied that conspicuous position, and the builders of the great pyramid, B.C. 3970, gave to its subterranean passage an inclination of 26~ 15', corresponding to the inferior culmination of that star. He tells us that the Southern Cross began to be invisible in 52~ 30' N., 2900 years before our era, and that it had previously attained an altitude of more than 10~. When it disappeared from the horizon of the countries on the Baltic, the pyramid of Cheops had been erected more than a thousand years. We must pass by a copious mass of evidence furnished by causes of change operating on the earth's surface, though these add very weighty proof to the doctrine of a long period. The filling up of lakes, the formation of deltas, the cutting power of running water, the deposit of traverties, the denudation of immense tracts of country, the carrying of their detritus into the sea, the changes of shores by tides and waves, the formation of strata hundreds of miles in length, and imbedding therein of fossil remains in numbers almost beyond belief, furnished many interesting and important facts. Of these not a few presented means of computation. It would not be difficult to assign a date for such geographical events as the production of the Caspian and Dead Seas from an examination of the sum of saline material contained in their waters or deposited in their bed, with the annual amount brought into them by their supplying rivers. Such computations were executed as respects the growth of Lower Egypt and the backward cutting of Niagara Falls, and; though they might be individually open to criticism, their mutual accordance and tendency furnished an evidence that could not be gainsaid. The continual accumulation of such evidence ought not to be without its weight on those who are still disposed to treat slightingly the power of geological facts in developing truth.

Page 551

AND BY CHANGES OF LEVEL IN LAND AND SEA. 551

To such facts were added all those, with which volumes might be filled, proving the universality of the movements of the solid crust of the earth-strata once necessarily horizontal now indined at all angles, strata unconformable to one another-a body of evidence most copious and most satisfactory, yet demonstrating from the immensity of the results how slowly the work had gone on. How was it possible to conceive that beds many hundred feet in thickness should have been precipitated suddenly from water? Their mechanical condition implied slow disintegration and denudation in other localities to furnish material; their contents showed no trace of violence; they rather proved the deposition to have occurred in a tranquil and quiet way. What interpretation could be put upon facts continually increasing in number like those observed in the southeast of England, where fresh-water beds a thousand feet thick are covered by other beds a thousand feet thick, but of marine origin? What upon those in the north of England, where masses once uplifted a thousand feet above the level, and, at the time of their elevation, presenting abrupt precipices and cliffs of that height, as is proved by the fractures and faults of the existing strata, have been altogether removed, and the surface left plain? In South Wales there are localities where 11,000 feet in thickness have been bodily carried away. Whether, therefore, the strata that have been formed, and which remain to strike us with astonishment at their prodigious mass, were considered; or those that have been destroyed, not, however, without leaving unmistakable traces of themselves; the processes of wearing away to furnish material as well as, the accumulation, of necessity required the lapse of long periods of time. The undermining of cliffs by the beating of the sea, the redistribution of sands and mud at the bottom of the ocean, the washing of materials from hills into the lowlands by showers of rain, its transport by river courses, the disintegration of soils by the influence of frost, the weathering of rocks by carbonic acid, and the solution of limestone by its aid in water these are effects which, even at the quickest, seem not to amount to much in the course of the life of a man. A thousand years could yield but a trifling result. We have already alluded to another point of view from which these mechanical effects were considered. The level of the land and sea has unmistakably changed. There are mountain eminences ten or fifteen thousand feet in altitude in the interior of continents over which, or through which, shells and other products of the sea are profusely scattered. And though, considering the proverbial immobility of the solid land and the proverbial instability of the water, it might at first be supposed much more likely that the sea had subsided than that the land had risen, a more critical examination soon led to a change of opinion. Before our eyes, in some countries, elevations and depressions are taking

Page 552

552 PROOF FROM ORGANIC REMAIN.

place, sometimes in a slow, secular manner, as in Norway and Sweden, that peninsula on the north rising, and on the south sinking, at such a rate that, to accomplish the whole seven hundred feet of movement, more than twenty-seven thousand years would be required if it had always been uniform as now. Elsewhere, as on the southwestern coast of South America, the movement is paroxysmal, the shore-line lifting for hundreds of miles instantaneously, and then pausing for many years. In the Morea also, range after range of old sea-cliffs exist, some of them more than a thousand feet high, with terraces at the base of each; but the Morea has been well known for the last twenty-five centuries, and in that time has undergone no material change. Again, in Sicily, similar interior sea-cliffs are seen, the rubbish at their bases containing the bones of the hippopotamus and mammoth, proofs of the great change the climate has undergone since the sea washed those ancient beaches. Italy, pre-eminently the historic country, in which, within the memory of man, no material change of configuration has taken place, since the Pleistocene period, very late geologically speaking, has experienced elevations of fifteen hundred feet. The seven hills of Rome are of the Pliocene, with fluviatile deposits and recent terrestrial shells two hundred feet above the Tiber. There intervened between the older Pliocene and the newer a period of enormous length, as is demonstrated by the accumulated effects taking place in it, and, indeed, the same may be said of every juxtaposed pair of distinctly marked strata. It demanded an inconceivable time for beds once horizontal at the bottom of the sea to be tilted to great inclinations; it required also the enduring exertion of a prodigious force. Ascent and descent may be detected in strata of every age; movements sometimes paroxysmal, but more often of a tranquil and secular kind. The coal-bearing strata, by gradual submergence, attained in South Wales a thickness of 12,000 feet, and on our own continent, in Nova Scotia, a total thickness of 14,570 feet; the uniformity of the process of submergence and its slow steadiness is indicated by the occurrence of erect trees at different levels: seventeen such repetitions may be counted in a thickness of 4515 feet. The age of the trees is proved by their size, some being four feet in diameter. Round them, as they gradually went down with the subsiding soil, calamites grew at one level after another. In the Sydney coal-field fifty-nine fossil forests thus occur in superposition. Such was the conclusion forcing itself from considerations connected with inorganic nature. It received a most emphatic endorsement from the organic world, for there is an intimate connection between the existence and well-being both of plants and animals, and the heat to which they are exposed. Why is it that the orange and lemon do not grow in New York? What is it that will inevitably ensue if these exotics be exposed to one of our cold winters?

Page 553

LOCALIZATION OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS. 553

What is it that must take place if, in Florida or other of the Southern states, a season of unusual rigor should occur? Does not heat thus confine within a fixed boundary the spread of those plants? And so, again, how many others there are which grow luxuriantly with us, but are parched up and killed if fortuitously carried beneath a hot tropical sun. To every one there is a climate which best suits the condition of its life, and certain limits of heat and cold beyond which its existence is not possible. If the mean annual heat of the earth's surface were slowly to rise, and, in the course of some centuries, the temperature now obtaining in Florida should obtain in New York, the orange and lemon would certainly be found here. With the increasing heat those plants would commence a northward march, steadily advancing as opportunity was given. Or, if the reverse took place, and for any reason the heat of the torrid zone declined until the winter's cold of New York should be at last reached under the equator, as the descent went on the orange and lemon would retreat within a narrow and narrower region, and end by becoming extinct, the conditions of their exposure being incompatible with the continuance of their life. From such considerations it was therefore seen that not only does heat arrange the limits of the distribution of plants, erecting round them boundaries which, though invisible, are more insuperable than a wall of brass, it also regulates their march, if march there is to be-nay, even controls their very existence, and to genera, and species, and individuals appoints a period of duration. Such observations apply not alone to plants; the animal kingdom offers equally significant illustrations. Why does the white bear enjoy the leaden sky of the pole and his native iceberg? Why does the tiger restrict himself to the jungles of India? Can it be doubted that, if the mean annual temperature should decline, the polar bear would come with his iceberg to corresponding southern latitudes, or, if the heat should rise, the tiger would commence a northward journey? Does he not, indeed, every summer penetrate northward in Asia as far as the latitude of Berlin, and retire again as winter comes on? Why is it that, at a given signal, the birds of passage migrate, pressed forward in the spring by the heat, and pressed backward in the autumn by the cold? The annual migration of birds illustrates the causes of geological appearances and extinctions. Do we not herein recognize the agent that determines animal distribution? We must not deceive ourselves with any fancied terrestrial impediment or restraint. Let the heat rise but a few degrees, and the turkey-buzzard, to whose powerful wing distances are of no moment and the free air no impediment, would be seen hovering over New York; let it fall a few degrees, and he would vanish from the streets of Charleston; let it fall a little more, and he

Page 554

554 CREATIONS AND EXTINCTIONS

would vanish from the earth. Shell-fish, once the inhabitants of the British seas, retired during the glacial period to the Mediterranean, and with the returning warmth have gone back northward again. Animals are thus controlled by heat in an indirect as well as a direct way. Indirectly; for, if their food be diminished, they must seek a more ample supply; if it fails, they must perish. Doubtless it was insufficient food, as well as the setting in of a more rigorous climate, that occasioned the destruction of the mastodon giganteus, which abounded in the United States after the drift period. Such great elephantine forms could not possibly sustain themselves against the rigors of our present winters, nor could they find a sufficient supply of food for a considerable portion of the year. The disappearance of animals from the face of the earth was, as Paleontology advanced, ascertained to have been a determinate process, a condition of their existence, and either inherent in themselves or dependent on the surrounding circumstances. It was proved that the forms now existing are only an insignificant part of the countless tribes that had lived. The earth has been the theatre of a long succession of appearances and removals, of creations and extinctions, reaching to the latest times. In the Pleistocene of Sicily, 1 3 of the fossil shells are extinct; in the bonecaverns of England, out of thirty-seven mammals eighteen are extinct. But judging, from what may be observed of the duration of races contemporary with us, that their life is prolonged for thousands of years, successive generations of the same species in a long order replacing their predecessors before final removal occurs, this again resistlessly brought forward the same conclusion to which all the foregoing facts had pointed, that there have transpired since the introduction of animal life upon this globe very long periods of time. Through the operation of this law of extinction and of creation, animated nature, both on the continents and in the seas, has undergone a marvelous change. In the lias and oolitic seas, the Enaliosauria, Cetiosauria, and Crocodilia dominated as the Delphinidse and Balaenidae do in ours; the former have been eliminated, the latter produced. Along with the cetaceans came the soft-scaled Cycloid and Ctenoid fishes, orders which took the place of the Ganoids and Placoids of the Mesozoic times. One after another successive species of air-breathing reptiles have been created, continued for their appointed time to exist, and then died out. The development has been, not in the descending, but in the ascending order; the Amphitheria, Spalacotheria, Triconodon of the Mesozoic times were substituted by higher tertiary forms. Nor have these mutations been abrupt. If mammals are the chief characteristic of the Tertiary ages, their first beginnings are seen far earlier; in the triassic and oolitic formations there are a few of the lower orders struggling, as it were, to emerge. The aspect of animated nature has alto-

Page 555

DEPEND ON LAW. 555

gether changed. No more does the camelopard wander over Europe as he did in the Miocene and Pliocene times; no more are great elephants seen in the American forests, the hippopotamus in England, the rhinoceros in Siberia. The hand of man has introduced upon this continent the horse of the Old World; but the American horse, that ran on the great plains contemporary with the megatherium and megalonyx, has for tens of thousands of years been extinct. Even the ocean and the rivers are no exception to these changes. What, then, is the manner of origin of this infinite succession of forms? It is often sufficient to see clearly a portion of plan to be able to determine with some degree of certainty the general arrangement of the whole; it is often sufficient to know with precision a part of the life of an individual to guess with probable accuracy his action in some forthcoming event, or to determine the share he has borne in affairs that are past. It is enough to appreciate thoroughly the style of a master to ascertain without doubt the authenticity of an imputed picture. And so, in the affairs of the universe, it is enough to ascertain the manner of operation of a part in order to settle the manner of operation of the whole. When, therefore, it was perceived how the disappearance of vanishing forms from the surface of the globe is accomplished-that it is not by a sudden and grand providential intervention-that there is no visible putting forth of the Omnipotent hand, but slowly and silently, yet surely, the ordinary laws of Nature are permitted to take their course-that heat, and cold, and want of food, and dryness, and moisture, in the end, as if by an irresistible destiny, accomplish the event, it seemed to indicate that, as regards the introduction of new-comers, a suitableness of external conditions had called them forth, as an unsuitableness could end them. Changes in the constitution of the air or its pressure, in the composition of the sea or its depth, in the brilliancy of light or the amount of heat, in the inorganic material of a medium, will modify old forms into new ones, or compel their extinction. Birth and death go hand in hand; creation and extinction are inseparable. The variation of organic form is continuous; it depends upon an orderly succession of material events; appearances and eliminations are managed upon a common principle; they stand connected with the irresistible course of great mundane changes. It was impossible that geologists could reach any other conclusion than that such phenomena are not the issue of direct providential interventions, but of physical influences. The procession of organic life is not a motley march; it follows the procession of physical events; and, since it is impossible to re-establish a sameness of physical conditions that have once come to an end, or reproduce the order in which they have occurred, it of necessity follows that no organic form can reappear after it has once died out-once dead, it is clean gone forever.

Page 556

556 MOLECULAR CREATIONS AND EXTINCTION.

In the course of the life of individual man, the parts that constitute his system are undergoing momentary changes; those of today are not the same as those of yesterday, and they will be replaced by others to-morrow. There have been, and are every instant, interstitial deaths of all the constituent portions, and an unceasing removal of those that have performed their duty. In the stead of departing portions, new ones have been introduced, interstitial births and organizations perpetually taking place. In physiology it became no longer a question that all this proceeds in a determinate way under the operation of principles that are fixed, of laws that are invariable. The alchemists introduced no poetical fiction when they spoke of the microcosm, asserting that the system of man is emblematical of the system of the world. The intercalation of a new organic molecule in a living being answers to the introduction of a new form in the universal organic series. It requires as much power to call into existence a living molecule as to produce a living being. Both are accomplished upon the same principle, and that principle is not an incessant intervention of a supernatural kind, but the operation of unvarying law. Physical agents, working through physical laws, remove in organisms such molecules as have accomplished their work and create new ones, and physical agents, working through physical laws, control the extinctions and creations of forms in the universe of life. The difference is only in the time. What is accomplished in the one case in the twinkling of an eye, in the other may demand the lapse of a thousand centuries. The variation of organic forms, under the force of external circumstances, is thus necessary to be understood in connection with that countless succession of living beings demonstrated by geology. It carries us, in common with so much other evidence, to the lapse of a long time. Nor are such views as those to which we are thus constrained inconsistent with the admission of a Providential guidance of the world. Man, however learned and pious he may be, is not always a reliable interpreter of the ways of God. In deciding whether any philosophical doctrine is consistent or inconsistent with the Divine attributes, we are too prone to judge of those attributes by our own finite and imperfect standard, forgetting that the only test to which we ought to resort is the ascertainment if the doctrine be true. If it is true, it is in unison with God. Perhaps some who have rejected the conception of the variation of organic forms, with its postulate limitless duration, may have failed to remember the grandeur of the universe and its relations to space and to time; perhaps they do not recall the system on which it is administered. Like the anthropomorphite monks of the Nile, they conceive of God as if he was only a very large man; else how could it for a moment have been doubted that it is far more-I use the expression reverently-in the style of the great Constructor to carry out his intentions

Page 557

PALAEONTOLOGY, OR THE HISTORY OF FOSSILS. 557

by the summary operations of law? It might be consistent with the weakness and ignorance of man to be reduced to the necessity of personal intervention for the accomplishment of his plans, but would not that be the very result of such ignorance? Does not absolute knowledge actually imply procedure by preconceived and unvarying law? Is not momentary intervention altogether derogatory to the thorough and absolute sovereignty of Qod? The astronomical calculation of ancient events, as well as the prediction Mf those to come, is essentially founded on the principle that there has not in the times under consideration, and that there will never be in the future, any exercise of an arbitrary or overriding will. The corner-stone of astronomy is this, that the solar system-nay, even the universe, is ruled by necessity. To operate by expedients is for the creature, to operate by law for the Creator; and so far from the doctrine that creations and extinctions are carried on by a foreseen and predestined ordinance-a system which works of itself without need of any intermeddling-being an unworthy, an ignoble conception, it is completely in unison with the resistless movements of the mechanism of the universe, with whatever is orderly, symmetrical, and beautiful upon earth, and with all the dread magnificence of the heavens. It was in Italy that particular attention was first given to organic remains. Leonardo da Vinci asserts that they are real shells, or the remains thereof, and hence that the land and sea must have changed their relative position. At this time fossils were looked upon as rare curiosities, no one supposing that they were at all numerous, and many were the fantastic hypotheses proposed to account for their occurrence. Some referred them to the general deluge mentioned in Scripture; some to a certain plastic power obscurely attributed to the earth; some thought that they were engendered by the sunlight, heat, and rain. To Da Vinci is due the first clear assertion of their true nature that they are actually the remains of organic beings. Soon the subject was taken up by other eminent Italians. Fracaster wrote on the petrifactions of Verona; Scilla, a Sicilian, on marine bodies turned into stone, illustrating his work by engravings. Still later, Vallisneri, 1721, published letters on marine bodies found in rocks, attempting by their aid to determine the extent of the marine deposits of Italy. These early cultivators of geology soon perceived the advantage to be gained by the establishment of museums and the publication of catalogues. The first seems to have been that of John Kentman, an example that was followed by Calceolarius and Vallisneri. Subsequently Fontanelle proposed the construction of charts in accordance with fossil remains; but the principle involved was not applied on the great scale as a true geological test until introduced by Smith in connection with the English strata.

Page 558

558 PREORGANIC AND ORGANIC AGE.

To Steno, a Dane, is due the recognition of preorganic in contradistinction to organic rocks, a distinction the terms of which necessarily involve the idea of time. Soon it became generally recognized that the strata in which organic remains occur are of a later date than those devoid of them, the preorganic rocks demonstrating a preorganic time. Moreover, as facts were developed, it was plain that there are essential differences in the relations of fossils, and that, though in Italy the same species of shells may occur in the mountains that occur in the adjacent seas, this was very far from being the case uniformly elsewhere. At length the truth began to emerge, that in proportion as the strata under examination are of an older date, so are the differences between their organic remains and existing species more marked. It was also discovered that the same species often extended superficially over immense districts, but that in a vertical examination one species after another rapidly appears in a descending order-an order which could be verified in spite of the contortions, fractures, and displacements of the strata. A very important theoretical conclusion was here presented; for the rapid succession of essentially different organic forms, as the rocks were older, was clearly altogether inconsistent with one catastrophe, as the universal deluge, to which it had been generally referred. It was plain that the thickness of the strata in which they were enveloped, and the prodigious numbers in which they occurred, answered in some degree to the period of life of those fossils, since every one of.them, large or small, must have had its time of birth, of maturity, and of death. When, therefore, it could be no longer doubted that strata many hundreds of feet in thickness were crowded with such remains, it became altogether out of the question to refer their entombment to the confusion of a single catastrophe, for every thing indicated an orderly and deliberate proceeding. Still more cogent did this evidence become when, in a more critical manner, the fossils were studied, and some strata were demonstrated to be of a fresh-water and others of a marine origin, the one intercalated with the other like leaves in a book. To this fact may be imputed the final overthrow of the doctrine of a single catastrophe, and its replacement by a doctrine of periodical changes. From these statements it will therefore be understood that, commencing with the first appearance of organization, an orderly process was demonstrated from forms altogether unlike those with which we are familiar, up to those at present existing, a procedure conducted so slowly that it was impossible to assign for it a shorter duration than thousands of centuries. Moreover, it seemed that the guiding condition which had controlled this secular march of organization was the same which still determines the possibility of existence and the distribution of life. The succession of organic forms indicates a

Page 559

GRADUAL PRODUCTION OF CLIMATES. 559

clear relation to a descending temperature. The plants of the earliest times are plants of an ultratropical climate, and that primitive vegetation seemed to demonstrate that there had been a uniform climate- a climate of high temperature-all over the globe. The coal-beds of Nova Scotia exhibited the same genera and species as those of Europe, and so well marked was the botanical connection with the declining temperature in successive ages that attempts were made to express eras by their prevailing organisms; thus Brongniart's division is for the Primary strata, the Age of Acrogens; the Secondary, exclusive of the Cretaceous, the Age of Gymnogens; the third, including the Cretaceous and Tertiary, the Age of Angiosperms. It is to be particularly remarked that the Cretaceous flora, in the aggregate, combines the antecedent and succeeding periods, proving that the change was not by crisis or sudden catastrophe, but that the new forms rose gently among the old ones. After the Eocene period, dicotyledonous angiosperms became the prevalent form, and from that date to the Pleistocene the evidences of a continued refrigeration are absolute. As thus an examination was made from the most ancient to the later ages, indications were found of a climate arrangement more and more distinct-in the high latitudes, from the ultratropical through the tropical, the temperate, down to the present frigid state; in lower latitudes the declining process stopping short at an earlier point. It therefore appeared that there has been a production of climates both in an order of time and in an order of locality, the greatest change having occurred in the frigid zone, which has passed through all mean temperatures, an intermediate change in the temperate, and a minimum in the torrid zone. The general effect has thus been to present a succession of surfaces on the same planet adapted to a varied organization, and offering a more magnificent spectacle than if we were permitted to inspect many different planets; for in them there might be no necessary connection of their forms of life, but in this there is, so that, were our knowledge of Comparative Physiology more perfect, we might amuse ourselves with intercalating among the plant and animal organisms familiar to us hypothetical forms that would make the series complete, and verify our principles by their subsequent discovery in the deep strata of the earth. Does not this progression of life in our planet suggest a like progression for the solar system, which in its aggregate is passing in myriads of years through all organic phases? May we not also, from our solar system, rise to a similar conception for the universe? There are two very important considerations, on which we must dwell for the complete understanding of the consequences of these changes: 1st. The mechanism of the declining temperature; 2d. Its effect in the organic world.

Page 560

560 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF CLIMATE.

1st. A uniformly high temperature could never be manifested all over the surface of our planet through any heating influence of the sun. A high and uniform temperature unerringly points to an internal cause; and the gradual appearance of climates, manifesting a relatively increasing power of the sun, indicates the slow diminution of that internal heat. But this is precisely the conclusion which was come to from a contemplation of the earth from a purely physical point of view. So long as its intrinsic heat overpowered that derived from the sun, it was not possible that any thing answering to climates could be established; and, until a certain degree of cooling by radiation had been accomplished, the heat must have been comparatively uniform in all latitudes; but, that point gained, there necessarily ensued an arrangement of zones of different temperatures, or, in other words, climates appeared, the process being essentially slow, and becoming slower as the loss of heat went on. Finally, when loss of heat from the earth ceased, an equilibrium was reached in the climate arrangement as we now find it. Thus purely physical as well as geological considerations brought philosophers on this point to the same conclusion-that conclusion which has been so often repeated-very long periods of time. 2d. As to the effect on the organic world. Nothing can live at a temperature higher than the boiling-point of water, for the condition of life implies that there shall circulate from part to part of a living mechanism a watery liquid, sap, or blood. From this it necessarily follows that a planet, the temperature of which is above a certain limit, must necessarily have a lifeless surface; and this seemed to be the interpretation of that preorganic time to which we have referred. Moreover, when the temperature suitably descends so as to come within the limit at which life is possible, its uniformity over the surface of a planet will produce a sameness in the organization. It would be an identity if heat were the only regulating condition of life. At this stage of things, the solar heat overpowered, and a sensibly uniform temperature in all latitudes existing, still the only possible organic forms are those consistent with a high temperature, uniformity in the physical condition impressing a general uniformity in the aspect of life geographically. But the moment that climate arrangement has become possible, variety of organic form becomes possible. Now also ensues another all-important result-geographical distribution. Both of plants and animals, those whose vital conditions are inconsistent with the occurring change must retire from the affected locality. In plants this retrocession is brought to pass by the gradual sickening and death of individuals, or the impossibility of reproduction; in animals there is added thereto, because of their power of locomotion, voluntary retirement, at least in the case of individuals, and immobility

Page 561

ERA OF THE PRODUCTION OF COAL. 561

in the species is corrected by locomotion in the individual. The affected region has become unsuitable, cheerless, uncomfortable; they abandon it; and as the boundary they thus, in the one case, can not, and in the other will not overpass, advances, so do they recede before it. If the change was abrupt, or took place by a sudden crisis, there would seem to be no other possible event than an overcrowding of the unaffected region and a desolation of the part that had varied. But, since a developing cell under a new condition produces a new form, and since the physical change is taking place with extreme slowness, the appearance of modified structures ensues. And thus, by decline of temperature, two distinct results are accomplished-the production of organic forms in an order of succession, new ones replacing the old, as if they were transmutations of them, and geographical distribution. In my Physiology I have endeavored to explain in detail the principles here set forth. I have endeavored to show that the aspect of sameness presented by an animal or plant is no proof of unchangeability. Those forms retain in our times their special aspect because the conditions of the theatre in which they live do not change; but let the mean temperature rise, let the sun-rays become brighter, change the composition of the air, and forthwith the world of organization would show how profoundly it was affected. Nor need such changes, in one sense, be more than insignificant to produce prodigious results. Thus the air contains only 1/2000 of its volume of carbonic acid gas. That apparently trifling quantity taken away, in an instant the whole surface of the earth would become a desolate waste, without the possibility of vegetable life. As physical geology advanced, the Coal period was perceived to be the chief epoch in the history of our planet. Through a slow decline of temperature, a possibility had gradually been attained, so far as the condition of heat was concerned, for a luxuriant vegetable growth. All that prodigious mass of carbon now found in the earth in the various forms of coal existed as carbonic acid in the atmosphere. The proportion of free oxygen was less than at present by a volume equal to the excess of carbonic acid. A change in the constitution of this primaeval atmosphere was occasioned by the action of the light; for, under the influence of the sun-rays, plants decompose carbonic acid, appropriating its carbon, and, for the most part, setting the oxygen free. The quantity of carbon which can thus be condensed for the use of a plant, and, indeed, every such decomposing action by light, is directly proportionate to the quantity of light consumed, as experiments which I have personally made have proved. For the production of so great a weight of combustible matter a very long period of time was necessarily required, that the sun might supply the necessary luminous influence.

Page 562

562 DEPOSIT OF LIMESTONE STRATA FROM THE SEA.

For age after age the sunbeams continued their work, changing the mechanical relations and composition of the atmosphere, the constitution of the sea, and the appearance of the surface of the earth. There was a prodigious growth of ferns, lepidodendra, equisetaceae, coniferas. The percentage of oxygen in the air continually increased, that of carbonic acid continually declined; the pressure of the air correspondingly diminished, partly because of the replacement of a heavy gas by a lighter one, and partly because of the general decline of temperature slowly taking place, which diminished the absolute volume of vapor. The sea, in its deepest abysses, was likewise affected by the sunlight; not directly, but in an indirect way; for, as the removal of carbonic acid from the atmosphere went on, portions of that gas were perpetually surrendered by the ocean in order to maintain a diffusion-equilibrium between its dissolved gas and the free gas of the air. And now no longer could be held in transparent solution by the water those great quantities of carbonate of lime which had once been concealed in it, the deposit of a given weight of coal in the earth being inevitably followed by the deposit of an equivalent weight of carbonate of lime in the sea. It might have taken place as an amorphous precipitate; but the probabilities were that it would occur, as in fact it did, under forms of organization in the great limestone strata coeval with and posterior to the coal. The air and the ocean were thus suffering an invisible change through the disturbing agency of the sun, and the surface of the solid earth was likewise undergoing a more manifest, and, it may be said, more glorious alteration. Plants, in wild luxuriance, were developing themselves in the hot and dank climate, and the possibility was now approaching for the appearance of animal types very much higher than any that had yet existed. In the old heavy atmosphere, full of a noxious gas, in one but slowly-respiring cold-blooded animals could maintain themselves; but after the great change in the constitution of the air had been accomplished, the quickly-respiring and hotblooded forms might exist. Hitherto the highest advancement that animal life could reach was in batrachian and lizard-like organisms; yet even these were destined to participate in the change, increasing in magnitude and vital capacity. The pterodactyl of the chalk, a flying lizard, measures nearly seventeen feet from tip to tip of its wings. The air had now become suitable for mammals, both placental and implacental, and for birds. One after another, in their due order, appeared the highest vertebrates: marine, as the cetacean; aerial, as the bat; and in the terrestrial reaching, in the Eocene, quadrumanous animals, but not, until long after the Pliocene, man. Although the advancement of geology may hereafter lead to a correction of some of the conclusions thus attained to respecting the first dates of different organic forms, and carry them back to more ancient

Page 563

ORDER OF SUCCESSION OF ORGANISMS. 563

times, yet it is scarcely likely that any material modification of their order of occurrence will ever be made. Birds, mammals, reptiles, fishes, and invertebrates may each be detected in earlier strata; even for some of those formations now regarded as nonfossiliferous, organisms maybe found; but it is not at all probable that the preponderance of reptiles will ever cease to be the essential characteristic of the Secondary rocks, or that of mammals of the Tertiary, or that a preceding period of vast duration, in which the type of life had been the invertebrate, will ever be doubted. Nothing, probably, will ever be discovered to invalidate the physical conclusion that, while there was an excess of carbonic acid in the air, the Flora would tend to be Cryptogamic and Gymnospermic, and that there would be a scarcity of monocotyledons and dicotyledonous angiosperms in the coal; nothing to disprove the fact that the animals were slow-breathing and cold-blooded; and that it was not until after the oxygen of the air had increased, and the mean temperature had declined that birds made their appearance. Though both placental and marsupial animals may hereafter be found earlier than the Stonesfield slate; though wood and herb eating beetles, grasshoppers, dragon-flies, and May-flies may be found beneath the lias, and scorpions and cockroaches beneath the coal; though, also beneath the coal, salamanders and Sauroid batrachians, of which the archegosaurus is an example, may occur; though reptiles, as the telerpeton, may be found deeper than the old red sandstone; yet the connection between aerial constitution and form of life will never be shaken. Still will remain the facts that the geographical distribution of types was anterior to the appearance of existing species; that organisms first appeared in a liquid medium, primitively marine, then fluviatile, and at last terrestrial; that Radiates, Mollusks, Articulates, Vertebrates, were all at first aquatic, and that the Radiates have ever remained so; that the plane of greatest vital activity has ever been the sea-level, where the earth and air touch each other; that the order of individual development is the order of mundane development. Still will remain the important conclusions that the mammalian Fauna has diverged more rapidly than the testaceous; that hot-blooded animals have not had that longevity of species which has been displayed by the cold, just as we observe in the individual the possibility of muscular contraction by a given galvanic force lasts much longer in the latter than in the former; that if the hot-blooded tribes have thus a briefer duration, they enjoy a compensation in the greater energy of their life-perhaps this being the cause and that the effect; that, notwithstanding the countless forms exhibited by species, their duration is so great that they outlive vast changes in the topographical configuration of countries-the Fauna of some countries having been in existence before those countries themselves; that the plan of individual development has ever been as it is now, and that sameness of external influence produces similarity of organization.

Page 564

564 THEORIES OF PROGRESSIVE CHANGE AND CATASTROPHE.

In its early history theoretical geology presented two schools-one insisting on a doctrine of catastrophes, one on a doctrine of uniformity. The former regarded those changes which have manifestly taken place in the history of our planet as having occurred at epochs abruptly. To this doctrine the prevailing impression that there had been providential interventions lent much force. The other school, reposing on the great principle of the invariability of the laws of Nature, insisted that affairs had always gone on at the same rate and in the same way as they do now. Hence it maintained an opposition to the catastrophists, and in this, it may be said, was actually not true to its own principles. Any doctrine of uniformity, rightly considered from its most general point of view, includes an admission of catastrophes. Numerous illustrations of this truth spontaneously suggest themselves. A tower, the foundations of which are slowly yielding, may incline more and more for many centuries, but the day must come in which it will fall at last. In the uniformity of the disturbance a catastrophe was eventually involved. And thus, in what has been said respecting geological events, though they are spoken of as proceeding quietly and with uniformity, it may be understood that sudden crises are also contemplated. Moreover, they who adopt the doctrine of uniformity in an absolute sense must pay a due regard to the variations in intensity of physical acts which their own principles imply. The uniform cooling of a hot body actually means a cooling at first fast, and then slower and slower; and invariability of chemical change actually implies more violent and summary modifications at a high temperature than at one which is low. But, though it may at first sight have appeared that an admission of the doctrine of catastrophes was in harmony with a providential government of the world, and that the emergence of different organic forms in successive ages was a manifestation of creative intervention, of which it was admitted that as many as from twelve to twenty, if not more, successive instances might be recognized, we may well congratulate ourselves that those important doctrines rest upon a far more substantial basis. Rightly considered, the facts lead to a very different conclusion. Physiological investigations have proved that all animals, even man, during the process of development, pass in succession through a definite cycle of forms. Starting from a simple cell, form "man after form, in a definite order, is assumed. In this long line of advance the steps are ever, in all individuals, the same. But no one would surely suppose that the changed aspect at any moment presented is due to a providential interposition. On the contrary, it is the inevitable result of what has been taking place under the law of development, and the sure precursor of what is about to follow. In the organic world, the successive orders, and genera, and spe-

Page 565

CRITICISM ON CHANGES BY CATASTROPHE. 565

cies are the counterparts of these temporary embryonic forms of the individual. Indeed, we may say of those successive geological beings that they are mere embryos of the latest-embryos that had gained a power of reproduction. How shall we separate the history of the individual from the history of the whole? Do not the fortunes and way of progress of the one follow the fortunes and way of progress of the other? If, in a transitory manner, these forms are assumed in the individual, equally in a transitory manner are they assumed by the race. Nor would it be philosophical to suppose that the management in the one instance differs from the management in the other. If the one is demonstrably the issue of a law in action, so must the other be too. It does not matter that the entire cycle is passed through by the individual in the course of a few months, while in the race it demands ages. The standard of time that ought to be applied is the respective duration of life. In man it is much if he attains to threescore years and ten; but the entire period of human record, embracing several thousand years, offers not a single instance of the birth, maturity, and death of a species. They, therefore, who think they find in the successive species that have in an orderly manner replaced each other in the life of the earth the sure proof of Divine intervention, would do well to determine at what point the production of such forms by law ceases, and at what point their production by the immediate act of God begins. Their task will be as hard as to tell where one color in the rainbow ends and where the next commences. They will also do well to remember that, in great mundane events, the scale of time is ample, and that there may be no essential difference between a course that is run over in a few days and one that requires for its completion thousands of centuries. The co-existence of different types in the organic series was the incontrovertible fact by which was demonstrated the gradual passage from form to form without catastrophes, the argument relied upon gathering strength from such circumstances as these, that even the fossil shells of the modern Italian tuffs which are not extinct exhibit a slight want of correspondence when compared with those now inhabiting the Mediterranean, some of the old ones being twice and a half as large as the present, and that there is a numerical passage from strata containing seventy per cent of recent shells to those that are altogether recent, or contain one hundred per cent. This is manifestly indicative of a continual impression bringing on a corresponding modeling. It is the proof of a slow merging into, or of a measured assumption of, the new form-a transition, for the completion of which probably a very long time is required. That the existing reindeer is found in the same fluviatile deposits with an extinct hippopotamus seemed certainly to prove that there was a condition of things in

Page 566

566 CRITICISM ON PERMANENCE OF SPECIE.

which the co-life of those animals was possible in the same locality, and that, as the physical causes slowly changed, the one might be eliminated and the other might be left. That the regulating conditions were altogether physical was obvious from such facts as that in the bone-caves of Australia all the mammals are marsupial, and in the pampas of South America they are allied to such forms as are indigenous, armadilloes, sloths, etc., showing the tokens of lineage or hereditary transmission. For still more remote times numerous instances of a similar nature were detected; thus, throughout the whole Secondary period, the essential characteristic was the wonderful development of reptile life, while in the Tertiary it was the development of mammals. But the appearance of mammals had commenced long before that of reptiles had ceased. Indeed, the latter event is incomplete in our times; for, though the marine Saurians have been almost entirely removed, the fluviatile and terrestrial ones maintain themselves, though diminished both in species and individuals. Now such an overlapping of reptiles and mammals was altogether irreconcilable with the doctrine of a crisis or catastrophe, and, in fact, it demonstrated the changing of organisms in the changing of physical states. Cuvier maintained the doctrine of the permanence of animal species from the considerations that the oldest known do not appear to have undergone any modification, and that every existing one shows a resistance to change. If his observations are restricted to periods not exceeding human history, they may perhaps be maintained; but that duration can not be looked upon as more than a moment in the limitless progress we are considering, and it was in this view that Cuvier's doctrine proved to be incapable of defense. What does it signify if our domestic animals show no variations when compared with the corresponding images depicted on the hieroglyphic monuments of Egypt, or with the descriptions left by ancient authors? Evidence of that kind is valueless. Does the geologist ask of the architect his opinion whether there have ever been upliftings and down-sinkings of the earth? If he did, would not every structure in Europe be brought forward as an evidence that nothing of the kind had ever occurred? A leaning tower, or a church with inclining walls in Italy, might pass for nothing; the Pyramids would testify that Egypt itself had never undergone any disturbance -they remain solid on their bases, undisturbed. But what is the weight of all this when placed in opposition with the mass of evidence offered by inclined and fractured strata? And yet such is precisely the proof offered in behalf of the permanence of animals. The facts with which the zoologist deals, like those on which the architect depends, are insufficient for the purpose-they are wanting in extent of time. There have been movements in the crust of the earth, though every building in the

Page 567

EFFECT OF PHYSICAL CONDITIONS ON ORGANISMS. 567

world may be perpendicular; there have been transformations of organisms, though for four thousand years there may have been no perceptible change. If ever there had been a universal creation of all possible organic forms or combinations, forthwith vast numbers of them must have disappeared, every type being eliminated which was not in correspondence with the external conditions or with the medium in which it was placed. If the medium or the physical conditions underwent a variation, a corresponding variation in the forms that could by possibility exist must ensue, and, from a thorough study of those not eliminated, the physical conditions might be ascertained; and conversely, from a thorough knowledge of the physical conditions, the forms that could escape elimination might be designated. The facts on which Cuvier rested did not demonstrate what he supposed. His immobility of species was no consequence of an innate or intrinsic resistance possessed by them, but merely an illustration that external physical agents had not undergone any well-marked variation in the time with which he was concerned. What is here meant by variation in physical forces or conditions is not any intrinsic change in their nature, but the varied manner in which they may work by interfering with one another, or experiencing declines of intensity. From the fact that we may read in the fixed stars, through the progressive motion of light, the history of a million of past years, we may be sure that the forces of nature have undergone no intrinsic change; that light was propagated at the same rate, was capable of producing the same optical and chemical effects, and varied in its intensity by distance, as it does now; that heat determined corporeal magnitudes. These are things that in their nature are absolutely unchangeable. Always, as now, the freezing of water, and its boiling under a given pressure, must have been the same; there must have been a thermometric zero of life and an upward limit, no organic process ever going on below 32~ Fahrenheit or above 212~ Fahrenheit. But out of this invariability of natural causes variations in their condition of action arise, and it is these that affect organic forms. Of such forms, some become at length incapable of maintaining themselves in the slow progress of change; others acclimate, or accommodate, or suit themselves thereto by undergoing modifications, and this was at last discerned to be the true explanation of extinctions and appearances, events taking place very slowly in untold periods of time, and rather by imperceptible degrees than by a sudden catastrophe or crisis. The doctrine of the transmutation of species has met with no little resistance. They who have refused to receive it as one of the truths of

Page 568

568 TRANSMUTATION OF SPECIES.

Nature have perhaps not given full weight to physiological evidence. When they ask, Has any one ever witnessed such an event as the transmutation of one species into another? has any experimenter ever accomplished it by artificial means? they do not take a due account of time. In the Fables it is related that when the flowers were one evening conversing, " Our gardener," said the rose to the lily, "will live forever. I have not seen any change in him. The tulip, who died yesterday, told me that she had remarked the same thing; she believed that he must be immortal. I am sure that he never was born." Two modes have been presented by which we may conceive of the influence of physical agents upon organic forms. Their long persistent action upon the individual may give rise to modifications, developing one part, stunting another; and such variations, being transmitted in an hereditary way, may become firmly fixed at last. Thus a given plant may, in the course of ages, under the influence of unremittingly acting physical conditions, undergo a permanent change, and a really new plant arise as soon as, through the repetitions of successive generations, the modifications have become so thorough, so profound, as to be capable of transmission with certainty. Perhaps this is what has taken place with many of our kitchen-garden plants, of which the special varieties may be propagated by seeds. But there is another mode by which that result may be reached, even if we decline the doctrine of St. Augustine, who, in his work " De Civitate Dei," shows how islands may be peopled with animals by "spontaneous generation." All organic forms originally spring from a simple cell, the development of which, as indicated by the final form attained, is manifestly dependent on the physical conditions it has been exposed to during its course. If those conditions change, that final form must change correspondingly; and in this manner, since all organic beings come from the same starting-point-the same cell, as has been said, which helplessly submits to whatever impression may be put upon it-the issue is the same as though a transformation or transmutation had occurred, since the descendant is not like its ancestors. Such a manner of considering these changes is in harmony with our best physiological knowledge, since it does not limit itself to a small portion of the life of an individual, but embraces its whole cycle or career. For the more complete examination of this view I may refer to the second chapter of the second book of my Physiology. But here has arisen the inquiry, Does the modification of organic forms depend exclusively on the impressions of external influences, or is it due to a nisus or force of development residing in the forms themselves? Whether we consider the entire organic series in its succession, or the

Page 569

CAUSES OF THE MODIFICATION OF GERMS. 569

progress of an individual in his development, the orderly course presented might seem to indicate that the operation is taking place under a law an orderly progression being always suggestive of the operation of law. But a philosophical caution must, however, be here exercised; for deceptive appearances may lead us into the error of imputing to such a law, impressed by the Creator on the developing organism, that which really belongs to external physical conditions, which, on their part, are following a law of their own. What is here meant may be illustrated by the facts that occur on the habitable surface of a planet suffering a gradual decline of heat. On such a surface. a succession of vegetable types might make its appearance, and, as these different types emerged or were eliminated, we might speak of the events as creations and extinctions, and therefore as the acts of God. Or, in the second place, we might refer them to an intrinsic force of development imparted to each germ, which reached in due season its maximum, and then declined and died out; and, comparing each type with its preceding and succeeding ones, the interrelation might be suggested to us of the operation of a controlling law. Or, in the third place, we might look to the external physical condition-the decline of heat-itself taking place at a determinate rate under a mathematical law, and drawing in its consequences the organic variations observed. Now the first of these explanations in reality means the arbitrary and unchallengeable will of God, who calls into existence, and extinguishes according to his sovereign pleasure, whatever he pleases; the orderly progression we notice becoming an evidence that his volitions are not erratic, but are according to pure reason. The second implies that there has been impressed upon every germ a law of continuous organic variation-it may have been through the arbitrary fiat of God. The third implies that the successive types owe their appearance and elimination to a physical influence, which is itself varying under a strict mathematical necessity; for the law of cooling, which the circumstances force on our attention, is such a strict mathematical necessity. If at this point we balance the probabilities of these three explanations, we shall, perhaps, find ourselves biased toward the last, as physiologists have been, because of its rigorous scientific aspect, and should not be surprised to find it supported by an array of facts depending on the principle that the appearance of new forms does not observe a certain inevitable order, or stand in a certain relation to time. From individual development it might seem as if the advancing procession of an organism is such that specific forms ever appear in a certain order one after another, and at certain intervals; but the fallacy of such a conclusion is apparent when we attend to the orderly procedure of the physical conditions to which the developing organism is exposed. The passing through a given form at a given epoch is due to the

Page 570

570 MODIFICATIONS DEPEND ON PHYSICAL AGENT.

relation being to space and its conditions, not to time. And. so in the life of the earth, if development were according to time, we should have an orderly succession of grades as the earth grew older, and in all localities, at a given moment, the contemporary organisms would be similar; but if it were according to space, that rigorous procedure would not occur; in its stead we should have a broken series, the affiliation being dependent on the secularly continuous variation of the physical condition. Now this was discovered to be the case. For instance, throughout the northern hemisphere, during the Tertiary period, an extinct placental Fauna was contemporaneous with an extinct marsupial Fauna in Australia. If the development was proceeding according to time, by an innate nisus, and not according to external influences, the types for the same epoch in the two hemispheres should be the same; if under external influences, irrespective of time, they should be, as they were found to be, different. If true-going clocks, which owe their motion to their own interior mechanism, were started in all countries of the earth at the same instant, they would strike their successive hours simultaneously. But sun-dials, which owe their indications to an exterior cause, would in different longitudes tell different times, or, when the needful light was absent, their shadows would altogether fail. They count no hours' but those that are serene. As to the vegetable kingdom, the principles that hold for the animal again apply. At a very early period, even before the deposit of the coal, all the distinct forms of vegetable tissue were in existence, and nothing to prevent, so far as time was concerned, their being united together all over the world into similar structural combinations. And, in truth, as the botany of the Coal period proves, there was a far more extensive sameness than we see at present, simply because the distribution of heat was more uniform and climates were less marked. But from this point the diversity of form in climate distribution becomes more and more conspicuous, though we must descend, perhaps, as late as the Wealden before we discover any flowering plants, except Gymnosperms, as Conifers and Cycads. All this is what might be expected on the doctrine of external influence, but not on the doctrine of an innate and interior developmental force. If, at this stage, attention is once again turned to the animal kingdom, we find our opinion confirmed. The diminution of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, the deposit of coal in the earth, the precipitation of carbonate of lime in the sea, the disengagement of an increased quantity of oxygen in the air, and the reduction of atmospheric pressure-different effects contemporaneously occurring-were soon followed by the consequence which they made possible-the appearance of hot-blooded

Page 571

HEREDITARY TRANSMISSION. 571

mammals. Perhaps those first arising might, like our hibernates, lead a sluggish existence, with imperfect respiration; but, as the media improved and the temperature declined, more vigorous forms of life emerged, though we have probably to descend to the Tertiary epoch before we meet with birds, which of all animals have the most energetic respiration, and possess the highest heat. As with the atmosphere, so with the sea. Variations in its composition must control the organisms it contains. With its saline constituents its life must change. Before the sunlight had removed from the atmosphere so much of its carbonic acid, decomposing it through the agency of plants, the weight of carbonate of lime held in solution by the highly carbonated water was far greater than was subsequently possible, and the occurrence of limestone became a necessary event. With such a disturbance in the composition of the sea-water, its inhabiting organisms were necessarily disturbed. And so again, subsequently, when the solar heat began to preponderate on the surface over the subsiding interior heat, the constitution of the sea-water, as respects its salinity, was altered through difference of evaporation in different latitudes, an effect inevitably making a profound impression on marine animal life. Supported by the facts that have been mentioned respecting the later fossils of Australia and Brazil, and their analogy to forms now existing in those countries, much stress was laid on the hereditary transmission of structure, and hence the inference was drawn that such examples are of a mixed nature, depending in part on external agency, in part on an interior developmental force. From marsupial animals, marsupials will issue; from placental ones, those that are placental. But here, perhaps, an illustration drawn from the inorganic kingdom may not be without interest and use. Two pieces of carbonate of lime may be rolling among the pebbles at the bottom of a brook, one perpetually splitting into rhomboids, the other into arragonitic prisms. The fragments differ from one another not only thus in their crystalline form, but in their physical qualities, as density and hardness, and in their optical qualities also. We might say that the calc-spar crystals gave birth to calc-spar crystals, and the arragonitic to arragonite; we might admit that there is an interior propensity, an intrinsic tendency to produce that result, just as we say that there is a tendency in the marsupial to engender a marsupial; but if, in our illustration, we look for the cause of that cause, we find it in a physical impression long antecedently made, that the carbonate of lime, crystallizing at 212~ Fahr., produces arragonite, and, at a lower temperature, calc-spar; and that the physical impression thus accomplished, though it may have been thousands of years ago, was never cast off, but perpetually manifested itself in all the future history of the two samples. That which we

Page 572

572 AGE OF THE EARTH

sometimes speak of as hereditary transmission, and refer to an interior property, peculiarity, or force, may be nothing more than the manifestation of a physical impression long antecedently made. In the last place, the idea of an intrinsic force of development is in connection with time and a progression, and only comes into prominence when we examine a limited portion or number of the things under consideration. The earth, though very beautiful, is very far from being perfect. The plants and animals we see are only the wrecks of a broken series, an incomplete, and, therefore, unworthy testimonial of the Almighty power. We should judge very inadequately of some great author if only here and there a fragmentary paragraph of his work remained; and so, in the book of organization, we must combine what is left with what we can recover from past ages and buried strata before we can rise to a comprehension of the grand argument, and intelligibly grasp the whole work. Of that book it is immaterial to what

Page we turn. It tells us of effects of such magnitude as imply prodigiously long periods of time for their accomplishment. Its moments look to us as if they were eternities. What shall we say when we read in it that there are fossiliferous rocks which have been slowly raised ten thousand feet above the level of the sea so lately as since the commencement of the Tertiary times; that the Purbeck beds of the upper oolite are in themselves the memorials of an enormous lapse of time; that, since a forest in a thousand years can scarce produce more than two or three feet of vegetable soil, each dirt-bed is the work of hundreds of centuries. What shall we say when it tells us that the delta of the Mississippi could only be formed in many tens of thousands of years, and yet that is only as yesterday when compared with the date of the inland terraces; that the recession of the Falls of Niagara from Queenstown to the present site consumed thirty thousand years; that if the depression of the carboniferous strata of Nova Scotia took place at the rate of four feet in a century, there were demanded 375,000 years for its completion-such a movement in the upward direction would have raised Mont Blanc; that it would take as great a river as the Mississippi two millions of years to convey into the Gulf of Mexico as much sediment as is found in those strata. Such statements may appear to us, who with difficulty shake off the absurdities of the patristic chronology, wild and impossible to be maintained, and yet they are the conclusions that the most learned and profound geologists draw from their reading of the book of Nature. Thus, as respects the age of the earth and her relations in time, we approach the doctrine of the Orientals, who long ago ascertained that the scales of time and of space correspond to each other. More fortunate than we, they have had but one point of resistance to encounter, but that resistance they met with dissimulation, and

Page 573

THE SUCCESSION OF WORLDS. 573

not in an open way. They attempted to conceal the tendency of their doctrine by allying or affiliating it with detected errors. According to their national superstition, the earth is supported on the back of an elephant, and this on a succession of animals, the last of which is a tortoise. It is not to be supposed that the Brahmans, who wrote commentaries on the Surya Siddhanta, should for a moment have accepted these preposterous delusions-that was impossible for such great geometers; yet led, perhaps, by a wish to do nothing that might disturb public feeling, they engaged in the hopeless task of slowing that their profound philosophical discoveries were not inconsistent with the ancient traditions; that a globular and revolving earth might be sustained on a descending succession of supporting beasts. But they had the signal advantage over us that those popular traditions conceded to them that limitless time for which we have had to struggle. The progression of life on the surface of our planet is under the guidance of preordained and resistless law-it is affiliated with material and correspondingly changing conditions. It suggests that the succession of organic forms which, in a due series, the earth's surface in the long lapse of time has presented, is the counterpart of a like progress which other planets in the solar system exhibit in myriads of years, and leads us to the conception of the rise, development, and extinction of a multiplicity of such living forms in other systems-a march of life through the universe, and its passing away. Magnitudes and times, therefore, go parallel with one another. With the abandonment of the geocentric theory, and of the doctrine of the human destiny of the universe, have vanished the unworthy hypotheses of the recent date of creation and the approaching end of all things. In their stead are substituted more noble ideas. The multiplicity of worlds in infinite space leads to the conception of worlds in infinite time. This existing universe, with all its splendors, had a beginning, and will have an end; it had its predecessors, and will have its successors; but its march through all its transformations is under the control of laws as unchangeable as destiny. As a cloud, which is composed of myriads of separate and isolated spherules of water, so minute as to be individually invisible, on a summer's afternoon changes its aspect and form, disappearing from the sky, and being replaced in succeeding hours by other clouds of a different aspect and shape, so the universe, which is a cloud of suns and worlds, changes in the immensity of time its form and fashion, and that which is contemporary with us is only an example of countless combinations of a like kind, which in ancient times have one after another vanished away. In periods yet to come the endless succession of metamorphoses will still go on, a series of universes to which there is no end.

Page 574

574 THE EUROPEAN AGE OF REASON.

CHAPTER XXIV. THE EUROPEAN AGE OF REASON-(Continued). THE NATURE AND RELATIONS OF MAN.

Position of Man according to the Heliocentric and Geocentric Theories. OF ANIMAL LIFE.-The transitory Nature of living Forms.-Relations of Plants and Animals.-Animals are Aggregates of Matter expending Force originally derived from the Sun. THE ORGANIC SERIES.

-Man a Member of it.-His Position determined by Anatomical and Physiological Investigation of his Nervous System.-Its triple Form: Automatic, Instinctive, Intellectual. T7ie same progressive Development is seen in individual Man, in the entire animal Series, and in the Life of the Globe.-They are all under the Control of an eternal, universal, irresistible Law. The Aim of Nature is intellectual Development, and human Institutions must conform thereto. Summary of the Investigation of the Position of 1Man.-Production of Inorganic and Organic Forms by the Sun.-Nature of Animals and their Series.-Analogies and Differences between them and Man.-The Soul.-The World.

WHEN the ancient doctrine of the plurality of worlds was restored by Bruno, Galileo, and other modern astronomers, the resistance it encountered was mainly owing to its anticipated the bearing on the nature and relations of man. It was said, if round our sun, as a centre, there revolve so many planetary bodies, experiencing the changes of summer and winter, day and night-bodies illuminated by satellites, and perhaps enjoying twilight and other benefits such as have been conferred on the earth-shall we not consider them the abodes of accountable, perhaps of sinful, beings like ourselves? Nay, more; if each of the innumerable fixed stars is, as our sun, a central focus of light, attended by dark and revolving globes, is it not necessary to admit that they also have their inhabitants? But among so many families of intelligent beings, how is it that we, the denizens of an insignificant speck, have alone been found worthy of God's regard? It was this reasoning that sustained the geocentric theory, and made the earth the centre of the universe, the most noble of created things; the sun, the moon, the stars, being only ministers for the service of man. But, like many other objections urged in that memorable conflict, this was founded on a misconception, or, rather, on imperfect knowledge. There may be an infinity of worlds placed under the mechanical relations alluded to, but there may not be one among them that can be the abode of life. The physical conditions under which organization is possible are so numerous and so strictly limited that the chances are millions to one against their conjoined occurrence. In a religious point of view, we are greatly indebted to Geology for

Page 575

NATURE OF ANIMALS. 575

the light it has cast on this objection. It has taught us that during inconceivable lapses of time our earth itself contained no living thing. These were those preorganic ages to which reference was made in the last chapter. Then, by slow degrees, as a possibility for existence occurred, there gradually emerged one type after another. It is but as yesterday that the life of man could be maintained. Only in the presence of special physical conditions can an animal exist. Even then it is essentially ephemeral. The life of it, as a whole, depends on the death of its integrant parts. In a waterfall, which maintains its place and appearance unchanged for many years, the constituent portions that have been precipitated headlong glide finally and forever away. For the transitory matter to exhibit a permanent form, it is necessary that there should be a perpetual supply and also a perpetual removal. So long as the jutting ledge over which the waters rush, and the broken gulf below that receives them, remain unchanged, the cataract presents the same appearance. But variations in them mould it into a new shape; its color changes with a clear or a cloudy sky; the rainbow seen in its spray disappears when the beams of the sun are withdrawn. So in that collection of substance which constitutes an animal; whatever may be its position, high or low, in the realm of life, there is a perpetual introduction of new material and a perpetual departure of the old. It is a form, rather than an individual, that we see. Its permanence altogether depends on the permanence of the external conditions. If they change it also changes, and a new form is the result. An animal is therefore a form through which material substance is visibly passing, and suffering transmutation into new products. In that act of transmutation force is disengaged. That which we call its life is the display of the manner in which the force thus disengaged is expended. A scientific examination of animal life must include two primary facts. It must consider whence and in what manner the stream of material substance has been derived, in what manner and whither it passes away. And, since force can not be created from nothing, and is in its very nature indestructible, it must determine from what source that which is displayed by animals has been obtained, in what manner it is employed, and what disposal is made of it eventually. The force thus expended is originally derived from the sun. Plants are the intermedium for its conveyance. The inorganic material of a saline nature entering into their constitution is obtained from the soil in which they grow, as is also, for the most part, the water they require; but their organic substance is derived from the surrounding atmosphere, and hence it is strictly true that they are condensations from the air.

Page 576

576 RELATIONS OF PLANTS TO THE AIR.

These statements may be sufficiently illustrated, and the relation between plants and animals shown, by tracing the course of any one of the ingredients entering into the vegetable composition, and derived, as has been said, from the air. For this purpose, if we select their chief solid element, carbon, the remarks applicable to the course it follows will hold good for other accompanying elements. It is scarcely necessary to embarrass the brief exposition of vegetable life now to be given by any historical details, since these will come with more propriety subsequently. It is sufficient to mention that the chemical explanations of vegetable physiology rest essentially on the discovery of oxygen gas by Priestley, of the constitution of carbonic acid by Lavoisier, and of water by Cavendish and Watt. While the sun is shining, the green parts of plants, especially the leaves, decompose carbonic acid, one of the ingredients of the atmospheric air. This substance is composed of two elements, carbon and oxygen; the former is appropriated by the plant, and enters into the composition of elaborated or descending sap, from which forthwith organic products, such as starch, sugar, wood-fibre, acids, and bases are made. The other element, the oxygen, is for the most part refused by the plant, and returns to the air. As the process of decomposition goes on, new portions of carbonic acid are presented through mechanical movements, the trembling of the leaf breezes, and currents rising from the foliage warmed by the solar beams giving place to other cool currents that set in below. The action of a plant upon the air is therefore the separation of combustible material from that medium. Carbon is thus obtained from carbonic acid; from water, hydrogen. Plant life is chemically an operation of reduction, for in like manner ammonia is decomposed into its constituents, which are nitrogen and hydrogen; and sulphuric and phosphoric acids, which, like ammonia, may have been brought into the plant through its roots in the form of salt bodies, are made to yield up the oxygen with which they had been combined, and their sulphur and phosphorus, combustible elements, are appropriated. Every plant, from the humblest moss to the oak of a thousand years, is thus formed by the sun of material obtained from the air- combustible material once united with oxygen, but now separated from that body. It is of especial importance to remark that in this act of decomposition, force, under the form of light, has disappeared, and become incorporated with the combustible, the organizing material. This force is surrendered again, or reappears whenever the converse operation, combination with oxygen, occurs. Vegetable products thus constitute a magazine in which force is stored up and preserved for any assignable time. Hence they are adapted for animal food and for the procuring of warmth. The heat evolved in the

Page 577

RELATIONS OF ANIMALS TO PLANTS. 577

combustion of coal in domestic economy was originally light from the sun appropriated by plants in the Secondary geological times, and locked up for untold ages. The sun is also the source from which was derived the light obtained in all our artificial operations of burning gas, oil, fat, wax, for the purposes of illumination. My own experiments have proved (Physiology, p. 461) that it is the light of the sun, in contradistinction to the heat, which occasions the decomposition of carbonic acid, furnishing carbon to plants and oxygen to the atmosphere. But such is the relation of the so-called imponderable principles of chemistry to each other, and their mutual convertibility, that that which has disappeared in performing its function as light. may reappear as heat or electricity, or in the production of some mechanical effect. Food is used by all animals for the sake of the force it thus contains, the remark applying to the carnivore as well as the herbivore. In both cases the source of supply is the vegetable kingdom, indirectly or directly. The plant is thus indispensable to the animal. It is the collector and preserver of that force the expenditure of which constitutes the special display of animal life. From this point of view, animals must therefore be considered as machines, in which force, obtained as has been described, is utilized. The food they take, or the tissue that has been formed from it, is acted upon by the air they breathe, and undergoes partial or total oxydation, and now emerges again, in part as heat, in part as nerve-force, in some few instances in part as light or electricity, the force that originally came from the sun. There is, therefore, a cycle or revolution through which material particles suitable for organization incessantly run. At one moment they exist as inorganic combinations in the air or the and soil, then as portions of plants, then as portions of animals, then they return to the air or soil again to renew their cycle of movement. The metamorphoses feigned by the poets of antiquity have hence a foundation in fact, and the vegetable and animal, the organic and inorganic worlds are indissolubly bound together. Plants are reducing, animals oxydizing, machines. Plants form, animals destroy. Thus, by the light of the sun, the carbonic acid of the atmosphere is decomposed-its oxygen is set free, its carbon furnished to plants. The products obtained serve for the food of animals, and in their systems the carbon is reoxydized by the air they respire, and, resuming the condition of carbonic acid, is thrown back into the atmosphere in the breath, ready to be decomposed by the sunlight once more, and run through the same cycle of changes again. The growth of a plant and the respiration of an animal are dependent on each other. Material particles are thus the vehicles of force. They undergo no

Page 578

578 METHOD OF DETERMINING THE POSITION OF AN ANIMAL

destruction. Chemically speaking, they are eternal. And so, likewise, force never deteriorates or becomes lessened. It may assume new phases, but it is always intrinsically unimpaired. The only changes it can exhibit are those of aspect and of distribution; of aspect, as electricity, affinity, light, heat; of distribution, as when the diffused aggregate of many sunbeams is concentrated in one animal form. It is but little that we know respecting the mutations and distribution of force in the universe. We can not tell what becomes of that which has characterized animal life, though of its perpetuity we may be assured. It has no more been destroyed than the material particles of which such animals consist. They have been transmuted into new forms-it has taken on a new aspect. The sum total of matter in the world is invariable; so, likewise, is the sum total of force. These conclusions resemble in many respects those of the philosophy of Averrhoes, but they are free from the heresy which led the Lateran Council, under Leo X., to condemn the doctrines of the great Spanish Mohammedan. The error of Averrhoes consisted in this, that he confounded what is here spoken of under the designation of force with the psychical principle, and falsely applied that which is true for animals to the case of man, who is to be considered as consisting of three essentially distinct parts-a material body, upon which operate various physical forces, guided and controlled by an intelligent soul. In the following paragraphs the distinction here made is brought into more striking relief. The station of any animal in the organic series may be determined from the condition of its nervous system. To this observation man himself is not an exception. Indeed, just views of his position in the world, of the nature of his intellect and mental operations, can not be obtained except from the solid support afforded by Anatomy. The reader has doubtless remarked that, in the historical sketch of the later progress of Europe given in this book, I have not referred to metaphysics, or psychology, or mental philosophy. Cultivated as they have been, it was not possible for them to yield any other result than they did among the Greeks. A lever is no mechanical power unless it has a material point of support. It is only through the physical that the metaphysical can be discovered. An exposition of the structure, the physical forces, and the intellectual operations of man must be founded on anatomy. We can only determine the methods of action from the study of the mechanism, and the right interpretation of that mechanism can only be ascertained from the construction of its parts, from observations of the manner in which they are developed, from comparisons

Page 579

CRITICISM ON PSYCHOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS. 579

with similar structures in other animals, not rejecting even the lowest, and from an investigation of their habits and peculiarities. Believing that, in the present state of science, doctrines in psychology, unless they are sustained by evidence derived from anatomy and physiology, are not to be relied on, I have not thought it necessary to devote much space to their introduction. They have not taken apart in the recent advances of humanity. They belong to an earlier social period, and are an anachronism in ours. I have referred to these points heretofore in my work on Physiology, and perhaps shall be excused the following extract (p. 259):' The study of this portion of the mechanism of man brings us therefore in contact with metaphysical science, and some of its fundamental dogmas we have to consider. Nearly all philosophers who have cultivated in recent times that branch of knowledge, have viewed with apprehension the rapid advances of physiology, foreseeing that it would attempt the final solution of problems which have exercised the ingenuity of the last twenty centuries. In this they are not mistaken. Certainly it is desirable that some new method should be introduced, which may give point and precision to whatever metaphysical truths exist, and enable us to distinguish, separate, and dismiss what are only vain and empty speculations. "So far from philosophy being a forbidden domain to the physiologist, it may be asserted that the time has now come when no one is entitled to express an opinion in philosophy except he has first studied physiology. It has hitherto been to the detriment of truth that these processes of positive investigation have been repudiated. If from the construction of the human brain we may demonstrate the existence of a soul, is not that a gain? for there are many who are open to arguments of this class on whom speculative reasoning or a mere dictum fall without any weight. Why should we cast aside the solid facts presented to us by material objects? In his communications throughout the universe with us, God ever materializes. He equally speaks to us through the thousand graceful organic forms scattered in profusion over the surface of the earth, and through the motions and appearances presented by the celestial orbs. Our noblest and clearest conceptions of his attributes have been obtained from these material things. I am persuaded that the only possible route to truth in mental philosophy is through a study of the nervous mechanism. The experience of 2500 years, and the writings of the great metaphysical intellects attest, with a melancholy emphasis, the vanity of all other means. "Whatever may be said by speculative philosophers to the contrary, the advancement of metaphysics is through the study of physiology. What sort of a science would optics have been among men who had purposely put out their own eyes? What would have been the prog-

Page 580

580 COMPOSITION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.

ress of astronomy among those who disdained to look at the heavens? Yet such is the preposterous course followed by the so-called philosophers. They have given us imposing doctrines of the nature and attributes of the mind in absolute ignorance of its material substratum. Of the great authors who have thus succeeded one another in ephemeral celebrity, how many made themselves acquainted with the structure of the human brain? Doubtless some had been so unfortunate as never to see one! Yet that wonderful organ was the basis of all their speculations. In voluntarily isolating themselves from every solid fact which might serve to be a landmark to them, they may be truly said to have sailed upon a shoreless sea from which the fog never lifts. The only fact they teach us with certainty is, that they know nothing with certainty. It is the inherent difficulty of their method that it must lead to unsubstantial results. What is not founded on a material substratum is necessarily a castle in the air." Considering thus that scientific views of the nature of man can only be obtained from an examination of his nervous system, and that the right interpretation of the manner of action of that system depends on the guiding light of comparative anatomy and physiology, I shall, in the following exposition, present the progress of discovery on those principles. In those low tribes of life which show the first indications of a nervous system, its operation is purely mechanical. An external impression, as a touch, made upon animals of that kind, is instantly answered to by a motion which they execute, and this without any manifestation of will or consciousness. The phenomenon is exactly of the same kind as in a machine, of which, if a given lever is touched, a motion is instantly produced. In any nervous system there are two portions anatomically distinct. They are, 1st, the fibrous; 2d, the vesicular. It may be desirable to describe briefly the construction and functions of each of these portions. Their conjoint action will then be intelligible. 1st. A nerve fibre consists essentially of a delicate thread-the axis filament, as it is called-enveloped in an oil-like substance, which coagulates or congeals after death. This, in its turn, is inclosed in a thin investing sheath or membranous tube. Many such fibres bound together constitute a nerve. The function of such a nerve fibre is indisputably altogether of a physical kind, being the conveyance of influences from part to part. The axis filament is the line along which the translation occurs, the investing material being for the purpose of confining or insulating it, so as to prevent any lateral escape. Such a construction is the exact counterpart of many electrical contrivances, in which a metallic wire is coated over with sealing-wax or wrapped round with

Page 581

NERVE FIBRES AND VESICLES. 581

silk, the current being thus compelled to move in the wire without any lateral escape. Of such fibres, some convey their influences to the interior, and hence are called centripetal; some convey them to the exterior, and hence are called centrifugal. No anatomical difference in the structure of the two has, however, thus far been discovered. As in a conducting wire the electrical current moves in a progressive manner with a definite velocity, so in a nerve filament the influence advances progressively at a rate said to be dependent on the temperature of the animal examined. It seems in the cold-blooded to be much slower than in the hot. It has been estimated in the frog at eighty-five feet in a second; in man at two hundred feet-an estimate probably too low. The fibres thus described are of the kind designated by physiologists as the cerebro-spinal; there are others, passing under the name of the sympathetic, characterized by not possessing the investing medullary substance. In color they are yellowish-gray; but it is not necessary here to consider them further. 2d. The other portion of the nervous structure is the vesicular. As its name imports, it consists of vesicles filled with a gray granular material. Each vesicle has a thickened spot or nucleus upon it, and appears to be connected with one or more fibres. If the connection is only with one, the vesicle is called unipolar; if with two, bipolar; if with many, multipolar or stellate. Every vesicle is abundantly supplied with blood. As might be inferred from its structure, the vesicle differs altogether from the fibre in function. I may refer to

of my Physiology for the reasons which have led to the inference that these are contrivances for the purposes of permitting influences that have been translated along or confined within the fibre to escape and diffuse themselves in the gray granular material. They also permit influences that are coming through many different channels into a multipolar vesicle to communicate or mix with one another, and combine to produce new results. Moreover, in them influences may be long preserved, and thus they become magazines of force. Combined together, they constitute ganglia or nerve centres, on which, if impressions be made, they do not necessarily forthwith die out, but may remain gradually declining away for a long time. Thus is introduced into the nervous mechanism the element of time, and this important function of the nerve vesicle lies at the basis of memory. It has been said that the vesicular portion of the nerve mechanism is copiously supplied with blood. Indeed, the condition indispensably necessary for its functional activity is waste by oxydation. Arterial vessels are abundantly furnished to insure the necessary supply of aerated blood, and veins to carry away the wasted products of decay. Also, through the former, the necessary materials for re

Page 582

582 SIMPLE AND COMPLEX NERVOUS SYSTEM.

pair and renovation are brought. There is a definite waste of nervous substance in the production of a definite mechanical or intellectual result-a material connection and condition that must never be overlooked. Hence it is plain that unless the repair and the waste are synchronously equal to one another, periodicities in the action of the nervous system will arise, this being the fundamental condition connected with the physical theories of sleep and fatigue. The statements here made rest upon two distinct forms of evidence. In part they are derived from an interpretation of anatomical structure, and in part from direct experiment, chiefly by the aid of feeble electrical currents.. The registering or preserving action displayed by a ganglion may be considered as an effect, resembling that of the construction known as Ritter's secondary piles. It will not suit my purpose to offer more than the simplest illustration of the application of the foregoing facts. When an impression, either by pressure or in any other way, is made on the exterior termination of a centripetal fibre, the influence is conveyed with a velocity such as has been mentioned into the vesicle to which that fibre is attached, and thence, going forth along the centrifugal fibre, may give rise to motion through contraction of the muscle to which that fibre is distributed. An impression has thus produced a motion, and to the operation the designation of reflection is commonly given. This reflection takes place without consciousness. The three parts-the centripetal fibre, the vesicle, and the centrifugal fibre-conjointly constitute a simple nervous arc. A repetition of these arcs, each precisely like all the others, constitutes the first step toward a complex nervous system. Their manner of arrangement is necessarily subordinated to the general plan of construction of the animals in which they occur. Thus, in the Radiates it is circular; in the Articulates, linear, or upon an axis. But, as the conditions of life require consentaneousness of motion in the different parts, these nerve arcs are not left isolated or without connection with each other. As it is anatomically termed, they are commissured, nerve fibres passing from each to its neighbors, and each is thus brought into sympathy with all the others. The next advance is a very important one, for it indicates the general plan on which the nervous system is to be developed: it is the dedication of special nerve arcs for special duties. Thus, in the higher articulates and mollusks, there are such combinations expressly for the purpose of respiration and deglutition. Their action is altogether of the reflex kind; it takes place without consciousness. These ganglia are commissured for the sake of sympathetic action, and frequently several of them are coalesced for the sake of package. This principle of dedication to special uses is carried out in the intro

Page 583

.AUTOMATIC ANIMALS. 583

duction of ganglia intended to be affected by light, or sounds, or odors. The impressions of those agencies are carried to the ganglion by its centripetal fibres. Such ganglia of special action are most commonly coalesced together, forming nervous masses of conspicuous size; they are always commissured with those for ordinary motions, the action being reflex, as in the preceding case, though of a higher order, since it is attended with consciousness. Such being the elementary construction of a nervous system, it is plain that animal tribes in which it exists in no higher degree of complexity must be merely automata. In this remark insects must be included, for the instinct they display is altogether of a mechanical kind, and, so far as they are concerned, without design. Their actions are uniformly alike; what one does under given circumstances, under the same circumstances another will certainly do. They are incapable of education, they learn nothing by experience, and the acts they are engaged in they accomplish as well at the first trial as ever after. Of parts like those thus described, and of others of a higher order, as will be presently seen, is the most complex nervous system, even that of man, composed. It might, perhaps, be expected that for the determination of the duty of each part of such complex systems the physiologist must necessarily resort to experiment, observing what functions have been injured or destroyed when given portions have been removed by his knife. At the best, however, evidence of that kind must be very unsatisfactory on account of the shock the entire system receives in vivisections, and, accordingly, artificial evidence can, for the most part, be used only in a corroborative way. But, as Cuvier observed, the hand of Nature has prepared for us these very experiments without that drawback. The animal series, as we advance upward from its lowest member, proves to us what is the effect of the addition of new parts in succession to a nervous system, as also does any individual thereof in its successive periods of development. It is one of the most important discoveries of modern physiology that, as respects their nervous system, we can safely transfer our reasonings and conclusions from the case of the lowest to that of the highest animal tribes. The articulata present structures and a mode of action illustrating in a striking manner the nervous system of man. Lengthwise upon their ventral region is laid a double cord, with ganglia, like a string of beads; sometimes the cords are a little distance apart, but more generally they are coalesced, each pair of ganglia being fused into one. For every segment of the body a pair is supplied, each pair controlling its own segment, and acting toward it automatically, each also acting like any of the others. But in the region of the head there is a special pair, the cephalic ganglia, receiving fibres from the eyes and other

Page 584

584 INSTINCTIVE ANIMAL.

organs of sense. From them proceed filaments to the ventral cord, establishing communications with every segment. So every part has two connections, one with its own ventral ganglia, and one with the cephalic. It is not difficult to determine experimentally the functions of the ventral ganglia and those of the cephalic. If a centipede be decapitated, its body is still capable of moving, the motion being evidently of a reflex kind, originating in the pressure of the legs against the surface on which they rest. The ventral cord, with its ganglia, is hence - purely an automatic mechanism. But if, in making the decapitation, we leave a portion of the body in connection with the head, we recognize very plainly that the cephalic ganglia are exercising a governing power. In the part from which they have been cut off the movement is forward, regardless of any obstacle; in that to which they are attached there are modifications in the motions, depending on sight or other special senses; obstacles are avoided, and a variety of directions pursued. Yet still the actions are not intelligent,. only instinctive. The general conclusion therefore is, that the cephalic ganglia are of a higher order than the ventral, the latter being simply mechanical, the former instinctive; but thus far there is no trace of intelligence. In man these typical parts are all present, and discharge the functions specified. His spinal cord answers to the ventral cord of the articulates. It has its lateral communications in the same way, and each segmental portion presents the same reflex action. Toward its upper part it dilates to form the medulla oblongata, sending forth nerves for respiration and deglutition. Of these the action is still reflex, as is proved by the involuntary movements of respiration and deglutition. A portion of food being placed in the pharynx, contraction instantly occurs, the will having no kind of control over the act of swallowing. Above or in front of this enlargement is a series of ganglia, to which converge the nerves of special sense-of hearing, sight, smell; these are, therefore, the equivalents of the cephalic ganglia of insects, their function being also the same. In the lowest vertebrates, as in the amphioxus, the nervous system consists of nothing more. It may therefore be said to have only two parts-the cord and the sensory ganglia, and to have two functions -the automatic, attributable to the former, and the instinctive, attributable to the latter. But as we advance from the low vertebrates upward in the animal scale, we begin to detect new organs; on the medulla oblongata a cerebellum, and on the sensory ganglia a cerebrum. From this moment the animal displays reasoning powers, its intelligence becoming more strikingly marked as the development of the new organs is greater.

Page 585

THE BRAIN AND THE SPINAL CORD. 585

It remains to determine with exactness the function of one of these new parts, the cerebrum; the other portion, the cerebellum, being of minor interest, and connected, probably, with the locomotive apparatus. For the same reason it is unnecessary to speak of the sympathetic nerve, since it belongs to the apparatus of organic life. Confining our attention, therefore, to the true brain, or cerebrum, we soon recognize that the intelligence of an animal is, in a general manner, proportional to the relative size of this organ as compared with the sensory ganglia. We are also struck with the fact that the cerebrum does not send forth to other portions any independent fibres of its.own, nor does it receive any from them, its only means of communication being through the parts that have been described-that is to say, through the sensory and automatic apparatus. The cerebrum is therefore a mechanism of a higher order, and its relationship with the thalami optici and corpora striata indicate the conditions of its functions. It can only receive impressions which have come through them, and only act upon the body through their intermedium. Moreover, as we ascend the animal scale, we find that these cerebral parts not only increase in size, but likewise, in their turn, give rise to offshoots; secondary lobes emerging posteriorly on the primary ones, and, in due season, tertiary lobes posteriorly on the secondary. To these, in human anatomy, the designations of anterior, middle, and posterior lobes have been respectively given. In proportion as this development has proceeded, the intellectual qualities have become more varied and more profound. The relation of the cerebrum to the cranio-spinal axis is manifested by the circumstance that the latter can act without the former. In sleep the cerebrum is, as it were, torpid, but respiration, deglutition, and other reflex actions go on. If we touch the palm of a sleeping infant our finger is instantly grasped. But, though the axis can work without the cerebrum, the cerebrum can not work without the axis. Illustrations of these truths may be experimentally obtained. An animal from which the cerebrum has been purposely removed may be observed to perform actions automatic and instinctive, but never intelligent; and that there is no difference between animals and man in this respect is demonstrated by the numerous instances recorded in the works of medicine and surgery of injuries by accident or disease to the human nervous system, the effects corresponding to those artificially produced in experiments on animals. This important observation, moreover, shows that we may with correctness use the observations made on animals in our investigations of the human system. Thus, then, the matter stands. In the nervous system of man our attention is especially demanded by three essentially distinct parts-the

Page 586

586. TRIPLE CONSTRUCTION OF THE HUMAN NERVOUS SYSTEM.

spinal cord, the sensory ganglia, and the cerebrum. Of the first, the spinal cord, the action is automatic; by its aid we can of" man walk, without bestowing a thought on our movements, from place to place; by it we swallow involuntarily; by it we respire unconsciously. The second portion, the sensory ganglia, is, as toatice, the in- we have seen, the counterpart of the cephalic ganglia of invertebrates; it is the place of reception of sensuous impressions and the seat of consciousness. To these ganglia instinct is to be referred. Their function is not at all impaired by the cerebrum superposed upon them. The third portion, the cerebrum, is anatomically distinct. It is the seat of ideas. It does not directly give rise to motions, being obliged to employ for that purpose its intermediate automatic associated apparatus. In this realm of ideas thoughts spring forth suggestively from one another in a perpetual train or flux, and yet the highest branch of the nervous mechanism still retains traces of the modes of operation of the parts from which it was developed. Its action is still often reflex. Reason is not always able to control our emotions, as when we laugh or weep in spite of ourselves, under the impression of some external incident. Nay, more; the inciting cause may be, as we very well know, nothing material-nothing but a recollection, an idea-and yet it is enough. But these phenomena are perhaps restricted to the first or anterior lobes of the brain, and, accordingly, we remark them most distinctly in children and in animals. As the second and third lobes begin to exercise their power, such effects are brought under control. There is, therefore, a regular progression, a definite improvement in the nervous system of the animal series, the plan never varying, but being persistently carried out, and thus offering a powerful argument for relationship among all those successively improving forms, an observation which becomes of the utmost interest to us in its application to the vertebrates. In the amphioxus, as has been said, the cranio-spinal axis alone exists; the Cyclostome fishes are but a step higher. In fishes the true cerebrum appears at first in an insignificant manner, a condition repeated in the early embryonic state both of birds and mammals. An improvement is made in reptiles, whose cerebral hemispheres are larger than their optic lobes. As we advance to birds, a farther increase occurs; the hemispheres are now of nearly sufficient dimensions to cover over those ganglia. In the lower mammals there is another step, yet not a very great one. But from the anterior lobes, which thus far have constituted the entire brain, there are next to be developed the middle lobes. In the Rodents the progress is still continued, and in the Ruminants and Pachyderms the convolutions have become well marked. In the higher carnivora and quadrumana the posterior or tertiary lobes appear. The pas-

Page 587

NERVOUS DEVELOPMENT IN THE LIFE OF THE EARTH. 587

sage from the anthropoid apes to man brings us to the utmost development thus far attained by the nervous system. The cerebrum has reached its maximum organization by a continued and unbroken process of development. This orderly development of the nervous system in the animal series is recognized again in the gradual development of the individual man. The primitive trace, as it faintly appears in the germinal membrane, marks out the place presently to be occupied by the cranio-spinal axis, and, that point of development gained, man answers to the amphioxus. Not until the twelfth week of embryonic life does he reach the state permanently presented by birds; at this time the anterior lobes are only perceptible. In four or six weeks more the middle lobes are evolved posteriorly on the anterior, and, finally, in a similar manner, the tertiary or posterior ones are formed. And thus it appears that, compared with the nervous system of other animals, that of man proceeds through the same predetermined succession of forms. Theirs suffers an arrest, in some instances at a lower, in some at a higher point, but his passes onward to completion. But that is not all. The biography of the earth, the life of the entire globe, corresponds to this progress of the individual, to this orderly relation of the animal series. Commencing with. the oldest rocks that furnish animal remains, and advancing to the most recent, we recognize a continual improvement in construction, indicated by the degree of advancement of the nervous system. The earliest fishes did not proceed beyond that condition of the spinal column which is to be considered as embryonic. The Silurian and Devonian rocks do not present it in an ossified state. The fishes, up to the Carboniferous epoch, had a heterocercal tail, just as the embryos of osseous fishes of the present time have up to a certain period of their life. There was, therefore, an arrest in the old extinct forms, and an advance to a higher point in the more modern. The buckler-headed fishes of the Devonian rocks had their respiratory organs and much of their digestive apparatus in the head, and showed an approximation to the tadpoles or embryos of the frog. The crocodiles of the oolite had biconcave vertebrse, like the embryos of the recent ones which have gained the capability of making an advance to a higher point. In the geological order, reptiles make their appearance next after fishes, and this is what we should expect on the principle of an ascending nervous development. Not until long after come birds, later in date and higher in nervous advancement, capable not only of instinct, but also of intelligence. Of mammals, the first that appear are what we should have expected-the marsupials; but, among the tertiary rocks, very many other forms are presented, the earlier ones, whether herbivorous or carnivorous, having a closer correspondence to the archetype than the existing ones, save

Page 588

588 NERVOUS DEVELOPMENT IN MAN.

in their embryonic states, the analogies occurring in such minor details as the possession of forty-four teeth. The biography of the earth is thus, on the great scale, typical of individual life, even that of man, and the succession of species in the progress of numberless ages is the counterpart of the transmutation of an individual from form to form. As in a dissolving view, new objects emerge from old ones, and new forms spontaneously appear without the exercise of any periodical creative act. For some days after birth the actions of the human being are merely reflex. Its cranio-spinal axis alone is in operation, and thus infancy to maturity in accord- far it is only an automaton. But soon the impressions of external objects begin to be registered or preserved in the sensory ganglia, and the evidences of memory appear. The first token of this is perhaps the display of an attachment to persons, not through any intelligent recognition of relationship, but merely because of familiarity. This is followed by the manifestation of a liking to accustomed places and a dread of strange ones. At this stage the infant is leading an instinctive life, and has made no greater advance than many of the lower mammals; but they linger here, while he proceeds onward. He soon shows high powers of memory, the exercise of reason in the determinations of judgment, and in the adaptation of varied means to varied ends. Such is therefore the process of development of the nervous system of man; such are the powers which consequently he successively displays. His reason at last is paramount. No longer are his actions exclusively prompted by sensations; they are determined much more by ideas that have resulted from his former experiences. While animals which approach him most closely require an external stimulus to commence a train of thought, he can direct his mental operations, and in this respect is parted from them by a vast interval. The states through which he has passed are the automatic, the instinctive, the intellectual; each has its own apparatus, and all at last work harmoniously together. But besides this superposition of an instinctive apparatus upon an automatic one, and an intellectual upon an instinctive, the nervous system consists of two equal and symmetrical lateral portions, a right half and a left. Each person may be considered as consisting in reality of two individuals. The right half may be stricken with palsy, the left be unimpaired; one may lose its sight or hearing, the other may retain them. These lateral halves lead independent lives. Yet, though independent in this sense, they are closely connected in another. The brain of the right side rules over the left half of the body, that of the left side rules over the right of the body. On the relationships and antagonisms of the two halves of the cerebro-spinal sys-

Page 589

HIS DOUBLE INDIVIDUALITY. 589

tem must be founded our explanations of the otherwise mysterious phenomena of double and alternate life; of the sentiment of pre-existence; of trains of thought, often double, but never triple; of the willful delusions of castle-building, in which one hemisphere of the brain listens to the romance suggestions of the other, though both well know that the subject they are entertaining themselves with is a mere fiction. The strength and precision of mental operations depend as much upon the complete equivalency of the two lateral halves as upon their absolute development. It is scarcely to be expected that great intellectual indications will be given by him, one of whose cerebral hemispheres is unequal to the other. But for the detailed consideration of these topics I may refer the reader to my work on Physiology. He will there find the explanation of the nature of registering ganglia; the physical theory of memory; the causes of our variable psychical powers at different times; the description of the ear as the organ of time; the eye as the organ of space; the touch as that of pressures and temperatures; the smell and taste as those for the chemical determination of gases and liquids. From a consideration of the construction, development, and action of the nervous system of man, we may gain correct views of his relations to other organic beings, and obtain true psychical and metaphysical theories. There is not that homogeneousness in his intellectual structure which writers on those topics so long supposed. It is a triple mechanism. A gentle, a gradual, a definite development reaches its maximum in him without a breach of continuity. Parts which, because of their completion, are capable of yielding in him such splendid results, are seen in a rudimentary and useless condition in organisms very far down below. On the clear recognition of this rudimentary, this useless state, very much depends. It indicates the master-fact of psychology-the fact that Averrhoes overlooked-that, while man agrees with inferior beings in the type of his construction, and passes in his development through transformations analogous to theirs, he differs from them all in this, that he alone possesses an accountable, an immortal soul. It is true that there are some which closely approach him in structure, but the existence of structure by no means implies the exercise of functions. In the stillborn infant, the mechanism for respiration, the lungs, is completed; but the air may never enter, and the intention for which they were formed never be carried out. Moreover, it appears that the order of development in the life of individual man and the order of development in the life of the earth are the same, their common features indicating a common plan. The one is the movement of a few hours, the other of myriads of ages. This sameness of manner in their progression points out

Page 590

590 CONTROL OF LAW OVER HUMAN PROGRESS.

their dependence on a law immutable and universal. The successive appearance of the animal series in the endless course of time has not, therefore, been accidental, but as predetermined and as certain as the successive forms of the individual. In the latter we do not find any cause of surprise in the assumption of states ever increasing in improvement, ever rising higher and higher toward the perfection destined to be attained. We look upon it as the course of nature. Why, then, should we consider the extinctions and creations of the former as offering any thing unaccountable, as connected with a sudden creative fiat or with an arbitrary sentence of destruction? In this book I have endeavored to investigate the progress of humanity, and found that it shows all the phases of individual movement is according to law, the evidence employed being historical, and, therefore, of a nature altogether different from that on which our conclusions in the collateral instances rest. It may serve to assure us that the ideas here presented are true when we encounter, at the close of our investigation, this harmony between the life of the individual, the life of society, and the life of the earth. Is it probable that the individual proceeds in his movement of development under law, that the planet also proceeds in its movement under law, but that society does not proceed under law? Man, thus, is the last term of an innumerable series of organisms, which, under the domination of law, has, in the lapse of time been evolving. Law has controlled the inorganic world, and caused the earth to pass through various physical conditions, gently and continuously succeeding one another. The plastic forms of organic beings have been modeled to suit those changing conditions. The invariability is indicated by the numberless ages through which it has been maintained, its universality by its holding good in the life of the meanest individual. But it is only a part of sociology that we have considered, and of which we have investigated the development. In the most philosophical aspect the subject includes comparative as well as human sociology. For, though there may not be society where actions are simply reflex, there is a possibility of it where they are instinctive, as well as where they are intellectual. Its essential condition being intercommunication, there are necessarily modifications depending respectively on touch or upon the higher and more delicate senses. That is none the less society which, among insects, depends upon antennal contacts. Human society, founded on speech, sight, hearing, has its indistinct beginnings, its rudiments, very low down in the animal scale, as in the bell-like note which some of the nudibranchiate gasteropods emit, or the solitary midnight tapping with which the death-watch salutes his mate. Society resting on instinct is characterized by immo-

Page 591

ITS AIM IS INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 591

bility; it is necessarily unprogressive. Society resting on intellect is always advancing. But, for the present, declining this general examination of sociology, and limiting our attention strictly to that of humanity, we can not fail to be struck with the fact that in us the direction of evolution is altogether toward the intellectual, a conclusion equally impressed upon us whether our mode of examination be anatomical or historical. Anatomically we find no provision in the nervous system for the improvement of the moral save indirectly through the intellectual, the whole aim of development being for the sake of intelligence. Historically, in the same manner, we find that the intellectual has always led the way in social advancement, the moral having been subordinate thereto. The former has been the mainspring of the movement, the latter passively affected. It is a mistake to make the progress of society depend on that which is itself controlled by a higher power. In the earlier and inferior stages of individual life we may govern through the moral alone. In that way we may guide children, but it is to the understanding of the adult that we must appeal. A system working only through the moral must sooner or later come into an antagonism with the intellectual, and, if it must be does not contain within itself a means of adaptation to the changing circumstances, must in the end be overthrown. This was the grand error of that Roman system which presided while European civilization was developing. It assumed as its basis a uniform, a stationary, psychological condition in man. Forgetting that the powers of the mind grow with the possessions of the mind, it considered those who lived in past generations as being in no respect mentally inferior to those who are living now, though our children at sixteen may have a wider range of knowledge than our ancestors at sixty. That such an imperfect system could exist for so many ages is a proof of a contemporary condition of undeveloped intellect, just as we see that the understanding of a child does not revolt against the moral suasion, often intrinsically feeble, through which we attempt to influence him. But it would be as unphilosophical to treat with disdain the ideas that have served for a guide in the earlier ages of European life, as to look with contempt on the motives that have guided us in youth. Their feebleness and incompetency is excused by their suitability to the period of life to which they are applied. But whoever considers these things will see that there is a term beyond which the application of such methods can not be extended. The head of a family would act unwisely if he attempted to apply to his son at twenty-one the methods he hads uccessful used at ten; such methods could be only rendered effective by a resort to physical compulsion. A great change in the inter

Page 592

592 SUMMARY OF THE POSITION OF MAN.

vening years has taken place, and ideas once intrinsically powerful can exert their influence no more. The moral may have remained unchanged; it maybe precisely as it was-no better, no worse; but that which has changed is the understanding. Reasoning and inducements of an intellectual kind are now needful. An attempt to persist in an absolute system by constraint would only meet with remonstrance and derision. If it is thus with the individual, so it is likewise with humanity. For centuries nations may live under forms that meet their requirements, forms suitable to a feeble state; but it is altogether illusory to suppose that such an adaptedness can continue forever. A critical eye discerns that the mental features of a given generation have become different from those of its ancestors. New ideas and a new manner of action are the tokens that a modification has silently taken place. Though after a short interval the change might not amount to much, in the course of time there must inevitably be exhibited the spectacle of a society that had outgrown its forms, its rules of life. Wherever, then, such a want of harmony becomes perceptible, where the social system is incompatible with the social state, and is, in effect, an obsolete anachronism, it is plainly unphilosophical and unwise to resort to means of compulsion. No matter what the power of governments or of human authorities may be, it is impossible for them to stop the intellectual advancement, for it forces its way by an organic law over which they have no kind of control. Astronomers sometimes affirm that the sun is the cause, directly or indirectly, of all the mechanical movements that take place upon the earth. Physiologists say that he is the generator of the countless living forms with which her surface is adorned. If the light, the warmth, and other physical influences of the sun could be excluded, there would be a stagnant and icy sea encircling silent and solitary shores. But the veil once withdrawn, or the influences permitted to take effect, this night and stillness would give place to activity and change: In the morning beams of the day, the tropical waters, expanding, would follow from east to west the course of the sun, each renewed dawn renewing the impulse, and adding force to the gentle but resistless current. At one place the flowing mass would move compactly; at another, caught by accidentally projecting rocks, it would give off little eddies, expending their share of its force; or, compressed in narrow passages, it would rush impetuously along. Upon its surface myriads of momentary ripples would play, or opposing winds, called into existence by similar disturbances in the air, would force it into waves, making the shores re

Page 593

THE RELATIONS OF ORGANIZED FORMS. 593

sound with their breaking surge. Twice every day, under the conjoint influences of the sun and the moon, as if the inanimate globe itself were breathing, the tide would rise and fall again upon the bosom of the deep. The eddy, the ripple, the wave, the current, are accidental forms through which the originally imparted force is displayed. They are all expending power. Their life, if such a term can be used, is not the property of themselves, but of the ocean to which they belong. Influences which thus metaphorically give life to the sea, in reality give life to the land. Under their genial operation a wave of verdure spreads over the earth, and countless myriads of animated things attend it, each like the eddies and ripples of the sea, expending its share of the imparted force. The life of these accidental forms, through which power is being transposed, belongs, not to itself, but to the universe of which it is a part. Of the waves upon the ocean there may not be two alike. The winds, the shores, their mutual interferences, a hundred extraneous influences, mould them into their ephemeral shapes. So those collections of matter of which animated things consist offer a plastic substance to be modified.' The number of individuals counts like the ripples of the sea. As external circumstances change, animated forms change with them, and thus arises a series of which the members stand in a connected relation. The affiliated sequence of the external circumstances is represented in the affiliated succession of living types. From parts, or from things already existing, new parts and new things emerge, the new not being added or juxtaposed to the old, but evolved or developed from it. From the homogeneous or general, the heterogeneous or special is brought forth. A new member, fashioned in secrecy and apart, is never abruptly ingrafted on any living thing. New animal types have never been suddenly located among old ones, but have emerged from them by process of transmutation. As certainly as that every living thing must die, so must it reach perfection by passing through a succession of subordinate forms. An individual, or even a species, is only a zoological phase in a passage to something beyond. An instantaneous adult, like an immortal animal, is a physiological impossibility. This bringing forth of structure from structure, of function from function, incidentally presents, upon the whole, an appearance of progressive improvement, and for such it has been not unfrequently mistaken. Thus, if the lowest animals, which move by reflex action, instantly but unconsciously, when an impression is made upon them, be compared with the higher ones, whose motions are executed under the influence of antecedent impressions, and are therefore controlled by ideas, there seems to have been such an improvement.

Page 594

594 DISTINCTIONS OF ANIMALS AND MAN.

Still, however, it is altogether of a physical kind. Every impression of which the dog or elephant is conscious implies change in the nerve centres, and these changes are at the basis of the memory displayed by those animals. Our own experience furnishes many illustrations. When we gaze steadfastly on some brightly-illuminated object, and then close or turn aside our eyes, a fading impression of the object at which we -have been looking still remains; or, when a spark is made to revolve rapidly, we think we see a circle of fire, the impression upon the retina lasting until the spark has completed its revolution. In like manner, though far more perfectly, are impressions registered or stored up in the sensory ganglia, the phantoms of realities that have once been seen. In those organs countless images may thus be superposed. Man agrees with animals thus approaching him in anatomical construction in many important respects. He, too, represents a continuous succession of matter, a continuous expenditure of power. Impressions of external things are concealed in his sensory ganglia, to be presented for inspection in subsequent times, and to constitute motives of action. But he differs from them in this, that what was preparatory and rudimentary in them is complete and perfect in him. From the instrument of instinct there has been developed an instrument of intellection. In the most perfect quadrupeds, an external stimulus is required to start a train of thought, which then moves on in a determinate way, their actions indicating that, under the circumstances, they reason according to the same rules as man, drawing conclusions more or less correct from the facts offered to their -notice. But, the instrument of intellection completed, it is quickly brought into use, and now results of the highest order appear. The succession of ideas is under control; new trains can be originated not only by external causes, but also by an interior, a spontaneous influence. The passive has become active. Animals remember, man alone recollects. Every thing demonstrates that the development and completion of this instrument of intellection has been followed by the superaddition of an agent or principle that can use it. There is, then, a difference between the brutes and man, not only as respects constitution, but also as respects destiny. Their active force merges into other mundane forces and disappears, but the special principle given to him endures. We willingly persuade ourselves that this principle is actually personified, and that the shades of the dead resemble their living forms. To Eastern Asia, where philosophy has been accustomed to the abstract idea of force, the pleasures we derive from this contemplation are denied, the cheerless doctrine of Buddhism likening the life of man to the burning of a lamp, and death to its extinction. Perceiving in the mutation of things, as seen in the narrow range of human vision, a suggestion of the variations and distri-

Page 595

THE EUROPEAN AGE OF REASON. 595

bution of power throughout nature, it rises to a grand, and, it must be added, an awful conception of the universe. But Europe, and also the Mohammedan nations of Asia, have not received with approbation that view. To them there is an individualized impersonation of the soul, and an expectation of its life here after. The animal fabric is only an instrument for its use. The eye is the window through which that mysterious principle perceives, through the ear are brought to its attention articulate sounds and harmonies; by the other organs the sensible qualities of bodies are made known. From the silent chambers and winding labyrinths of the brain the veiled enchantress looks forth on the outer world, and holds the subservient body in an irresistible spell. This difference between the Oriental and European ideas respecting the nature of man reappears in their ideas respecting the nature of the world. The one sees in it only a gigantic engine, in which stars and orbs are diffusing power and running through predestined mutations. The other, with better philosophy and a higher science, asserts a personal God, who considers and orders events in a vast panorama before him.

CHAPTER XXV. THE EUROPEAN AGE OF REASON-(Continued). THE UNION OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY.

European Progress in the Acquisition of exact Knowledge.-Its Resemblance to that of Greece. Discoveries respecting the Air.-Its mechanical and chemical Properties.-Its Relation to Animals and Plants.-The Winds.-Meteorology.-Sounds.-Acoustic Phenomena. Discoveries respecting the Ocean.-Physical and chemical Phenomena.-Tides and Currents.Clouds.-Decomposition of Water. Discoveries respecting other material Substances.-Progress of Chemistry. Discoveries respecting Electricity, Magnetism, Light, Heat. Mechanical Philosophy and Inventions.-Physical Instruments.-The Result illustrated by the Cotton Manufacture-Steam-engine-.Bleaching-Canals-Railways.-Improvements in the Construction of Machinery.-Social Changes produced.-Its Effect on intellectual Activity. The scientific Contributions of various Nations, and especially of Italy.

THE Age of Reason in Europe presents all the peculiarities of the Age of Reason in Greece. There are modern representatives of King Ptolemy Philadelphus among his furnaces and crucibles; of Hipparchus cataloguing the stars; of Aristyllus and Timochares, with their stote quadrants and armyls, ascertaining the planetary motions; of Eratosthenes measuring the size of the earth; of Herophilus dissecting the human body; of Archimedes settling the laws of mechanics and hydrostatics; of Manetho collating the annals of the old dynasties of Egypt; of Euclid and Apollonius improving mathematics. There are botanical

Page 596

596 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS IN THE AGE OF REASON.

gardens and zoological menageries like those of Alexandria, and expeditions to the sources of the Nile. The direction thought is the same; but the progress is on a greater scale, and illustrated by more imposing results. The exploring voyages to Madagascar are replaced by circumnavigations of the world; the revolving steam-engine of Hero by the double-acting engine of Watt; the great galley of Ptolemy, with its many banks of rowers, by the ocean steamship; the solitary watch-fire on the Pharos by a thousand light-houses, with their fixed and revolving lights; the courier on his Arab horse by the locomotive and electric telegraph; the scriptorium in the Serapion, with its shelves of papyrus, by countless printing-presses; the Almagest of Ptolemy by the Principia of Newton; and the Museum itself by English, French, Italian, German, Dutch, and Russian philosophical societies, universities, colleges, and other institutions of learning. So grand is the scale on which this cultivation of science has been resumed, so many are those engaged in it, so rapid is the advance, and so great are the material advantages, that there is no difficulty in appreciating the age of which it is the characteristic. The most superficial outline enables us to recognize at once its resemblance to that period of Greek life to which I have referred. To bring its features into relief, I shall devote a few pages to a cursory review of the progress of some of the departments of science, selecting for the purpose topics of general interest. First, then, as respects the atmosphere, and the phenomena connected with it. From observations on the twilight, the elasticity of aerial bodies, and the condensing action of cold, the conclusion previously arrived at by Alhazen was established, that the atmosphere does not extend unlimitedly into space. Its height is considered to be about forty-five miles. From its compressibility, the greater part of it is within a much smaller limit; were it of uniform density, it would not extend more than 29,000 feet. Hence, comparing it with the dimensions of the earth, it is an insignificant aerial shell, in thickness not the eightieth part of the distance to the earth's centre, and its immensity altogether an illusion. It bears about the same proportion to the earth that the down upon a peach bears to the peach itself. A foundation for the mechanical theory of the atmosphere was laid as soon as just ideas respecting liquid pressures, as formerly taught by Archimedes, were restored, the conditions of vertical and oblique pressures investigated, the demonstration of equality of pressures in all directions given, and the proof furnished that the force of a liquid on the bottom of a vessel may be very much greater than its weight. Such of these conclusions as were applicable were soon transferred to the case of aerial bodies. The weight of the atmosphere was demonstra-

Page 597

DISCOVERIES RESPECTING THE ATMOSPHERE. 597

ted, its pressure illustrated and measured; then came the dispute about the action of pumps, and the overthrow of the Aristotelian doctrine of the horror of a vacuum. Coincidently occurred the invention of the barometer, and the proof of its true theory, both on a steeple in Paris and on a mountain in Auvergne. The invention of the air-pump, and its beautiful illustrations of the properties of the atmosphere, extended in a singular manner the taste for natural philosophy. The mechanics of the air was soon followed by its chemistry. From remote ages it had been numbered among the elements, though considered liable to vitiation or foulness. The great discovery of oxygen gas placed its chemical relations in their proper position. One after another, other gases, both simple and compound, were discovered. Then it was recognized that the atmosphere is the common receptacle for all gases and vapors, and the problem whether, in the course of ages, it has ever undergone change in its constitution arose for solution. The negative determination of that problem, so far as a few thousand years were concerned, was necessarily followed by a recognition of the antagonism of animals and plants, and their mutually balancing each other, the latter accomplishing their duty under the influence of the sun, though he is a hundred millions of miles distant. From this it appeared that it is not by incessant interventions that the sum total of animal life is adjusted to that of vegetable, but that, in this respect, the system of government of the world is by the operation of natural causes and law, a conclusion the more imposing since it contemplates all living things, and includes even man himself. The detail of these investigations proved that the organic substance of plants is condensed from the inorganic air to which that of all animals returns, the particles running in ever-repeating cycles, now in the air, now in plants, now in animals, now in the air again, the impulse of movement being in the sun, from whom has come the force incorporated in plant tissues, and eventually disengaged in our fires, shining in our flames, oppressing us in fevers, and surprising us in blushes. Organic disturbances by respiration and the growth of plants being in the lowest stratum of the air, its uniformity of composition would be impossible were it not for the agency of the winds and the diffusion of gases, which it was-found would take place under any pressure. The winds were at length properly referred to the influence of the sun, whose heat warms the air, causing it to ascend, while other portions flow in below. The explanation of land and sea breezes was given, and in the trade-wind was found a proof of the rotation of the earth. At a later period followed the explanation of monsoons in the alternate heating and cooling of Asia and Africa on opposite sides of the line, and of tornadoes, which are disks of air rotating round a trans

Page 598

598 SOUNDS AND ACOUSTIC PHENOMENA.

lated axis with a diameter of one hundred or one hundred and fifty miles, the axis moving in a curvilinear track with a progressive advance of twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, and the motions being in opposite directions on opposite hemispheres of the globe. The equatorial calms and trade-winds accounted for on physical/principles, it was admitted that the winds of high latitudes, proverbially uncertain as they are, depend in like manner on definite causes. With these palpable movements there are others of a less obvious kind. Through the air, and by reason of motions in it, sounds are transmitted to us. The Alexandrian mathematicians made sound a favorite study. Modern acoustics arose from the recognition that there is nothing issuing from the sounding body, but that its parts are vibrating and affecting the medium between it and the ear. Not only by the air-pump, but also by observations in the rare atmosphere of the upper regions, it was shown that the intensity of sound depends upon the density. On the top of a mountain the report of a pistol is no louder than that of a cracker in the valley. As to the gradual propagation of sounds, it was impossible to observe fire-arms discharged at a distance without noticing that the flash appears longer before the report in proportion as the distance is greater. The Florentine academicians attempted a determination of the velocity, and found it to be 1148 feet in a second. More accurate and recent experiments made it 1089.42 feet at the freezing-point of water; but the velocity, though independent of the density, increases with the temperature at the rate of 1.14 foot for each degree. For other media the rate is different; for water, about 4687 feet in a second, and in cast iron about 10y times greater than in air. All sounds, irrespective of their note or intensity, move at the same velocity, the medium itself being motionless in the mass. No sound can pass through a vacuum. The sudden aerial condensation attending the propagation of a sound gives rise to a momentary evolution of heat, which increases the elasticity of the air, and hence the velocity is higher than 916 feet in a second, otherwise the theoretical rate. Turning from soniferous media to sounding bodies, it was shown that the difference between acute and grave sounds depends on the frequency of vibration. The ear can not perceive a sound originating in less than thirty-two vibrations in a second, nor one of more than 24,000. The actual number of vibrations in a given note was counted by means of revolving wheels and other contrivances. I have not space to relate the investigation of many other acoustic facts, the reference of sounds to phases of condensation, and rarefaction in the elastic medium taking place in a normal direction; the affections of note, intensity, quality; the passage in curved lines and around obstacles; the production of sympathetic sounds; nodal points; the effect of

Page 599

THE OCEAN TIDES AND CURRENTS. 599

reeds; the phenomena of pipes and flutes, and other wind instruments; the various vibrations of solids, as bells; or of membranes, as drums; visible acoustic lines; the reflection of undulations by surfaces of various forms; their interferences, so that, no matter how intense they may be individually, they can be caused to produce silence; nor of whispering galleries, echoes, the nature of articulate sounds, the physiology of the vocal and auditory organs of man, and the construction of speaking machines. Like the air, the ocean, which covers three fourths of the earth's surface, when reduced to a proper standard of measure, loses very much of its imposing aspect. The varnish that covers a twelve-inch globe represents its relative dimension not inadequately. On the theory of gravitation, the tides of the ocean were explained as depending on the attractive force of the sun and moon. Its currents, in a general manner, are analogous to those of the air. They originate in the disturbing action of solar heat, the temperature of the sea varying from 85~ in the torrid zone to the freezing-point as the poles are approached. Its specific gravity at the equator is estimated at 1.028; but this density necessarily varies with the rate at which superficial evaporation takes place; the pure vapor rising, leaves a more concentrated salt solution. The effect is therefore, in some degree, to counteract the expansion of the water by warmth, for the sun-rays, being able to penetrate several feet below the surface, correspondingly raise the temperature of that portion, which expands and becomes lighter; but, simultaneously, surface evaporation tends to make the water heavier. Notwithstanding this, currents are established through the preponderance of the dilatation, and of them the Gulf Stream is to us the most striking example. The physical action of the sun-rays in occasioning currents operates through the expansion of water, of which warm portions ascend to the surface, colder portions from beneath setting to supply their place. These currents, both hot and cold, are affected by the diurnal rotation of the earth, the action being essentially the same as that for the winds. They exert so great an influence as conveyers of heat as to disturb the ordinary climate relation depending on the sun's position. In this way the Gulf Stream, a river of hot water in a sea of cold, as soon as it spreads out on the surface of the Atlantic in.higher latitudes, liberates into the air the heat it has brought from the torrid zone; and this, being borne by the southwest wind, which blows in those localities for the greater part of the year, to the westerly part of the European continent, raises by many degrees the mean annual temperature, thus not only regulating the distribution of animals and plants, but also influencing human life and its pursuits, making places congenial that would otherwise be inclement, and even facilitating the

Page 600

600 WATER, STEAM, AND CLOUD.

progress of civilization. Whatever, therefore, can affect the heat, the volume, the velocity, the direction of such a stream, at once produces important consequences in the organic world. The Alexandrian school had attained correct ideas respecting the mechanical properties of water as the type of liquids. This knowledge was, however, altogether lost in Europe for many ages, was, and not regained until the time of Stevinus and Galileo, who recovered correct views of the nature of pressure, both vertical and oblique, and placed the sciences of hydrostatics and hydrodynamics on proper foundations. The Florentine academicians, from their experiments on water inclosed in a globe of gold, concluded that it is incompressible, an error subsequently corrected, and its compressibility measured.' The different states in which it occurs, as ice, water, steam, were shown to depend altogether on the amount of latent heat it contains. Out of these investigations originated the invention of the steam-engine, of which it may be said that it has revolutionized the industry of the world. Soon after the explanation of the cause of its three states followed the great discovery that the opinion of past ages respecting its elementary nature is altogether erroneous. It is not a simple element, but is composed of two ingredients, oxygen and hydrogen, as was rigorously proved by decomposing and forming it. By degrees, more correct views of the nature of evaporation were introduced; gases and vapors were found to coexist in the same space, not because of their mutual solvent power, but because of their individual and independent elasticity. The instantaneous formation of vapors in a vacuum showed that the determining condition is heat, the weight of vapor capable of existing in a given space being proportional to the temperature. More scientific views of the nature of maximum density were obtained, and on these principles was effected the essential improvement of the lowpressure steam-engine-the apparent paradox of condensing the steam without cooling the cylinder. In like manner much light was cast on the meteorological functions of water. It was seen that the diurnal vaporization from the earth depends on the amount of heat received, the vapor rising invisibly in the air till it reaches a region where the temperature is sufficiently low. There condensation into vesicles of perhaps 1/50000of an inch in diameter ensues, and of myriads of such globules a cloud is composed. Of clouds, notwithstanding their many forms and aspects, a classification was given-cirrus, cumulus, stratus, etc. It was obvious why some dissolve away and disappear when they encounter warmer or drier spaces, and why others descend as rain. It was shown that the drops can not be pure, since they come in contact with dust, soluble gases, and organic matter in the air. Sinking into the ground, the water issues forth as springs, contaminated with whatever is in the

Page 601

PROGRESS OF CHEMISTRY. 601

soil, and finds its way, through streamlets and rivers, back to the sea, and thus the drainage of countries is accomplished. Through such a returning path it comes to' the receptacle from which it set out; the heat of the sun raised it from the ocean, the attraction of the earth returns it thereto; and, since the heat-supply is invariable from year to year, the quantity set in motion must be the same. Collateral results of no little importance attend these movements. Every drop of rain falling on the earth disintegrates and disturbs portions of the soil; every stream carries solid matter into the sea. It is the province of geology to estimate the enormous aggregate of detritus, continents washed away and new continents formed, and the face of the earth remodeled and renewed. The artificial decomposition of water constitutes an epoch in chemistry. The European form of this science, in contradistinction to the Arabian, arose from the doctrine of acids and alkalies, and their neutralization. This was about A.D. 1614. It was perceived that the union of bodies is connected with the possession of opposite qualities, and hence was introduced the idea of an attraction of affinity. On this the discovery of elective attraction followed. Then came the recognition that this, attraction is connected with opposite electrical states, chemistry and electricity approaching each other. A train of splendid discoveries followed; metals were obtained light enough to float in water, and even apparently to accomplish the proverbial impossibility of setting it on fire. In the end it was shown that the chemical force of electricity is directly proportional to its absolute quantity. Better views of the nature of chemical attraction were attained, better views of the intrinsic nature of bodies. The old idea of four elements was discarded, as also the Saracenic doctrine of salt, sulphur, and mercury. The elements were multiplied until at last they numbered more than sixty. Alchemy merged into chemistry through the theory of phlogiston, which accounted for the change that metals undergo when exposed to the fire on the principle that something was driven off from them-a something that might be restored again by the action of combustible bodies. It is remarkable how adaptive this theory was. It was found to include the cases of combustive operations, the production of acids, the breathing of animals. It maintained its ground even long after the discovery of oxygen gas, of which one of the first names was dephlogisticated air. But a false theory always contains within itself the germ of its own destruction. The weak point of this was, that when a metal is burnt the product ought to be lighter than the metal, whereas it proves heavier. At length it was detected that what the metal had gained the surrounding air had lost. This discovery implied that had been resorted to for the determination of try

Page 602

602 CHEMICAL THEORIES.

weights and for the decision of physical questions. The reintroduction of that instrument-for, as we have seen, it had ages before been employed by the Saracen philosophers, who used several different forms of it-marked the epoch when chemistry ceased to be exclusively a science of quality and became one of quantity. On the ruins of the phlogistic theory arose the theory of oxygen, which was sustained with singular ability. Its progress was greatly facilitated by the promulgation of a new nomenclature in conformity to its principles, and of remarkable elegance and power. In the course of time it became necessary, however, to modify the theory, especially by deposing oxygen from the attitude of sovereignty to which it had been elevated, and assigning to it several colleagues, such as chlorine, iodine, etc. The introduction of the balance was also followed by important consequences in theoretical chemistry, among which pre-eminently was the establishment of the laws of combinations of bodies. Extensive and imposing as is the structure of chemistry, it is very far from its completion. It is so surrounded by the scaffolding its builders are using, it is so deformed with the materials of their work, that its true plan can not yet be made out. In this respect it is far more backward than astronomy. It has, however, disposed of the idea of the destruction and creation of matter. It accepts without hesitation the doctrine of the imperishability of substance; for, though the aspect of a thing may change through decompositions and recombinations, in which its constituent parts are concerned, every atom continues to exist, and may be recovered by suitable processes, though the entire thing may have seemingly disappeared. A particle of water raised from the sea may ascend invisibly through the air, it may float above us in the cloud, it may fall in the rain-drop, sink into the earth, gush forth again in the fountain, enter the rootlets of a plant, rise up with the sap to the leaves, be there decomposed by the sunlight into its constituent elements, its oxygen and hydrogen; of these and other elements, oils, and acids, and various organic compounds may be made; in these or in its undecomposed state it may be received in the food of animals, circulate in their blood, be essentially concerned in acts of intellection executed by the brain, it may be expired in the breath. Though shed in the tear in moments of despair, it may give birth to the rainbow, the emblem of hope. Whatever the course through which it has passed, whatever mutations it has undergone, whatever the force it has submitted to, its elementary constituents endure. Not only have they not been annihilated, they have not even been changed; and in a period of time, long or short, they find their way as water back again to the sea from which they came. Discoveries in electricity not only made a profound impression on

Page 603

STATICAL AND VOLTAIC ELECTRICITY. 603

chemistry, they have taken no insignificant share in modifying human opinion on other very interesting subjects. In all ages the lightning had been looked upon with superstitious dread. The thunderbolt had long been feigned to be the especial weapon of Divinity. A like superstitious sentiment had prevailed respecting the northern lights, universally regarded in those countries in which they display themselves as glimpses of the movements of the angelic hosts, the banners and weapons of the armies of heaven. A great blow against superstition was struck when the physical nature of these phenomena was determined. As to the connection of electrical science with the progress of civilization, what more needs to be said than to allude to the telegraph. It is an illustration of the excellence and fertility of modern methods that the phenomena of the attraction displayed by amber, which had been known and neglected for two thousand years, in one tenth of that time led to surprising results. First it was shown that there are many other bodies which will act in like manner. Then came the invention of the electrical machine, the discovery of electrical repulsion, and the spark; the differences of conductibility in bodies; the two apparent species of electricity, vitreous and resinous; the general law of attraction and repulsion; the wonderful phenomena of the Leyden phial and the electric shock; the demonstration of the identity of lightning and electricity; the means of protecting buildings and ships by rods; the velocity of electric movement-that immense distances can be passed through in an inappreciable time; the theory of one fluid and that of two; the mathematical discussion of all the phenomena, first on one and then on the other of these doctrines; the invention of the torsion balance; the determination that the attractive and repulsive forces follow the law of the inverse squares; the conditions of distribution on conductors; the elucidation of the phenomena of induction. At length, when discovery seemed to be pausing, the facts of galvanism were announced in Italy. Up to this time it was thought that the most certain sign of the death of an animal was its inability to exhibit muscular contraction; but now it was shown that muscular movements could be excited in those that were dead and even mutilated. Then followed quickly the invention of the Voltaic pile. Who could have foreseen that the twitching of a frog's leg in the Italian experiments would establish beyond all question the compound nature of water, separating its constituents from one another? would lead to the deflagration and dissipation in a vapor of metals that could hardly be melted in a furnace? would show that the solid earth we tread upon is an oxide? yield new metals light enough to swim upon water, and even seem to set it on fire? produce the most brilliant of all artificial lights, rivaling, if not

Page 604

604 MAGNETISM.-ELECTRO-MAGNETISM.

excelling, in its intolerable splendor, the noontide sun? would occasion a complete revolution in chemistry, compelling that science to accept new ideas, and even a new nomenclature? that it would give us the power of making magnets capable of lifting more than a ton, and cast a light on that riddle of ages, the pointing of the mariner's compass north and south, and explain the mutual attraction or repulsion of magnetic needles? that it would enable us to form exquisitely in metal casts of all kinds of objects of art, and give workmen a means of gilding and silvering without risk to their health? that it would suggest to the evil-disposed the forging of bank-notes, the sophisticating of jewelry, and be invaluable in the uttering of false coinage? that it would carry the messages of commerce and friendship instantaneously across continents or under oceans, and "waft a sigh from Indus to the pole?" Yet this is only a part of what the Italian experiment, carried out by modern methods, has actually done. Could there be a more brilliant exhibition of their power, a brighter earnest of the future of material philosophy? As it had been with amber, so with the magnet. Its properties had lain uninvestigated for two thousand years, except in China, where the observation had been made that its qualities may be imparted to steel, and that a little bar or needle so prepared, if floated on the surface of water or otherwise suspended, will point north and south. In that manner the magnet had been applied to the navigation of ships, and in journeys across the trackless deserts. The first European magnetical discovery was that of Columbus, who observed a line of no variation west of the Azores. Then followed the detection of the dip, the demonstration of poles in the needle, and of the law of attraction and repulsion;' the magnetic voyage undertaken by the English government; the construction of general variation charts; the observation of diurnal variation; local perturbations; the influence of the Aurora, which affects all the three expressions of magnetical power; the disturbance of the horary motion simultaneously over thousands of miles, as from Kasan to Paris. In the mean time, the theory of magnetism improved as the facts came out. Its germ was the Cartesian vor tices, suggested by the curvilinear forms of iron filings in the vicinity of magnetic poles. The subsequent mathematical discussion was conducted upon the same principles as in the case of electricity. Then came the Danish discovery of the relations of electricity and magnetism, illustrated in England by rotatory motions, and in France adorned by the electrodynamic theory, embracing the action of currents and magnets, magnets and magnets, currents and currents. The generation of magnetism by eletricity was after a little delay followed by its converse, the production of electricity by magnetism; and thermoelectric currents, arising from the unequal application

Page 605

LIGHT AND OPTICS. 605

or propagation of heat, were rendered serviceable in producing the most sensitive of all thermometers. The investigation of the nature and properties of light rivals in interest and value that of electricity. What is this agent, light, which clothes the earth with verdure, making animal life possible, extending man's intellectual sphere, bringing to his knowledge the forms and colors of things, and giving him information of the existence of countless myriads of worlds? What is this light which, in the midst of so many realities, presents him with so many delusive fictions, which rests the colored bow against the cloud -the bow once said, when men transferred their own motives and actions to the Divinity, to be the weapon of God? The.first ascertained optical fact was probably the propagation of light in straight lines. The theory of perspective, on which the Alexandrian mathematicians voluminously wrote, implies as much; but, agreeably to the early methods of philosophy, which were inclined to make man the centre of all things, it was supposed that rays are emitted from the eye and proceed outwardly, not that they come from exterior objects and pass through the organ of vision interiorly. Even the great geometer Euclid treated the subject on that erroneous principle, an error corrected by the Arabians. In the mean time the law of reflection had been discovered; that for refraction foiled Alhazen, and was reserved for a European. Among natural optical phenomena the form of the rainbow was accounted for, notwithstanding a general belief in its supernatural origin. Its colors, however, could not be explained until exact ideas of refrangibility, dispersion, and the composition of white light were attained. The reflecting telescope was invented; the recognized possibility of achromatism led to an improvement in the refractor. A little previously the progressive motion of light had been proved, first for reflected light by the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, then for the direct light of the stars. A true theory of colors originated with the formation of the solar spectrum; that beautiful experiment led to the discovery of irrationality of dispersion and the fixed lines. The phenomena of refraction in the case of Iceland spar were examined, and the law for the ordinary and extraordinary rays, given. At the same time the polarization of light by double refraction was discovered. A century later it was followed by polarization by reflection and single refraction, depolarization, irised rings, bright and black crosses in crystals, and unannealed or compressed glass, the connection between optical phenomena and crystalline form, uniaxial crystals giving circular rings and biaxial oval ones, and circular and elliptical polarization. The beautiful colors of soap-bubbles, at first mixed up with those of striated and dotted surfaces, were traced to their true condition-thick-

Page 606

606 VISION.- THE UNDULATORY THEORY.

ness. The determination of thickness of a film necessary to give a certain color was the first instance of exceedingly minute measures beautifully executed. These soon became connected with fringes in shadows, and led to ascertaining the length of waves of light. Meantime more correct ideas respecting vision were obtained. Alhazen's explanation of the use of the retina and lens was adopted. This had been the first truly scientific investigation in physiology. The action of the eye was reduced to that of the cameraobscura described by Da Vinci, and the old notion of rays issuing there from finally abandoned. It had held its ground through the deceptive illustration of the magic-lantern. Of this instrument the name indicates the popular opinion of its nature. In the stories of necromancers and magicians of the time are to be found traces of applications to which it was insidiously devoted-the raising of the dead, spectres skipping along the ground or dancing on the walls and chimneys, pendulous images, apparitions in volumes of smoke. These early instruments were the forerunners of many beautiful inventions of later times-the kaleidoscope, producing its forms of marvelous symmetry; the stereoscope, aided by photography, offering the very embodiment of external scenery; the achromatic and reflecting telescope, to which physical astronomy is so greatly indebted; and the achromatic microscope, now working a revolution in anatomy and physiology. In its theory optics has presented a striking contrast to acoustics. Almost from the very beginning it was recognized that sound is not a material substance emitted from the sounding body, but only undulations occurring in the air. For long, optics failed to reach an analogous conclusion. The advancement of the former science has been from the general principle down to the details, that of the latter from the details up to the general principle. That light consists of undulations in an elastic medium was first inferred in 1664. Soon after, reflection, refraction, and double refraction were accounted for on that principle. The slow progress of this theory was doubtless owing to Newton's supremacy. He gave a demonstration in the second book of the Principia (Prop. 42) that such motions must diverge into the unmoved spaces, and carried popular comprehension with him by such illustrations as that we hear sounds though a mountain interpose. It was thought that the undulatory theory was disposed of by such facts as the impossibility of seeing through a crooked pipe, though we can hear through it; or that we can not look round a corner, though we can listen round one. The present century finally established it through the discovery of interference, the destruction of the emission theory being inevitable when it was shown that light, interfering under certain circumstances with light, may produce darkness, as sound added to sound may pro-

Page 607

NATURE OF LIGHT. 607

duce silence-results arising from the action of undulating motion. The difficulties presented by polarization were not only removed, but that class of phenomena were actually made a strong support of the theory. The discovery that two pencils of oppositely polarized light would not interfere, led at once to the theory of transverse vibrations. Great mathematical ability was now required for the treatment of the subject, and the special consideration of many optical problems from this new point of view, as, for example, determining the result of transverse vibrations coming into a medium of different density in different directions. As the theory of universal gravitation had formerly done, so now the undulatory theory began to display its power as a physical truth, enabling geometers to foresee results, and to precede the experimenter in conclusions. Among earlier results of the kind was the prediction that both the rays in the biaxial crystal topaz are extraordinary, and that circular polarization might be produced by reflection in a rhomb of glass. The phenomena of depolarization offered no special difficulty; and many new facts, as those of elliptic polarization and conical refraction, have since illustrated the power of the theory. Light, then, is the result of ethereal undulations impinging on the eye. There exists throughout the universe and among the particles of all bodies an elastic medium, the ether. By reason of the repulsion of its own parts it is uniformly diffused in a vacuum. In the interior of refracting media it exists in a state of less elasticity compared with its density than in vacuo. Vibrations communicated to it in free space are propagated through such media by the ether in their interior. The parts of shining bodies vibrate as those of sounding ones, communicating their movement to the ether, and giving rise to waves in it. They produce in us the sensation of light. The slower the vibration, the longer the wave; the more frequent, the shorter. On wavelength color depends. In all cases the vibrations are transverse. The undulatory movement passes onward at the rate of 192,000 miles in a second. The mean length of a wave of light is 0.0000219 of an inch; an extreme red wave is twice as long as an extreme violet one. The yellow is intermediate. The vibrations which thus occasion light are, at a mean, 555 in the billionth of a second. As with the air, which is motionless when a sound passes through it, the ether is motionless, though traversed by waves of light. That which moves forward is no material substance, but only a form, as the waves seen running along a shaken cord, or the circles that rise and fall, and spread outwardly when a stone is thrown into water. The wave-like form passes onward to the outlying spaces, but the water does not rush forward. And as we may have on the surface of that liquid waves the height of which is insignificant, or those which, as sailors say, are mountains high in storms at sea, their amplitude thus differing, so in the midst of the ether differ-

Page 608

608 PHOTOGRAPHY.-THE PHENOMENA OF HEAT.

ence of amplitude is manifested to us by difference in the intensity or brilliancy of light. The human eye, exquisitely constructed as it is, is nevertheless an imperfect mechanism, being limited in its action. It can only perceive waves of a definite length, as its fellow organ, the ear, can only distinguish a limited range of sounds. It can only take note of vibrations that are transverse, as the ear can only take note of those that are normal. In optics there are two distinct orders of facts: the actual relations of light itself, and the physiological relations of our organ of vision, with all its limitations and imperfections. Light is altogether the creation of the mind. The ether is one thing, light is an. other, just as the air is one thing and sound another. The ether is not composed of the colors of light any more than the atmospheric air consists of musical notes. To the chemical agency of light much attention has in recent times been devoted. Already, in photography, it has furnished us an art which, though yet in its infancy, presents exquisite representations of scenery, past events, the countenances of our friends. In an almost magical way it evokes invisible impressions, and gives duration to fleeting shadows. Moreover, these chemical influences of light give birth to the whole vegetable world, with all its varied charms of color, form, and property, and, as we have seen in the last chapter, on them animal life itself depends. The conclusions arrived at in optics necessarily entered as fundamental ideas in thermotics, or the science of heat; for radiant heat moves also in straight lines, undergoes reflection, refraction, double refraction, polarization, and hence the theory of transverse vibrations applies to it. Heat is invisible light, as light is visible heat. Correct notions of radiation originated with the Florentine academicians, who used concave mirrors; and, in the cold-ray experiment, masses of ice of five hundred pounds' weight. The refraction of invisible heat was ascertained in consequence of the invention of the thermoelectric pile. Its polarization and depolarization soon followed. Already had been demonstrated the influence of the physical state of radiant surfaces, and that the heat comes also from a little depth beneath them. The felicitous doctrine of exchanges of heat imparted true ideas of the nature of calorific equilibrium and the heating and cooling of bodies, and offered an explanation of many phenomena, as, for instance, the formation of dew. This deposit of moisture occurs after sunset, the more copiously the clearer the sky; it never appears on a cloudy night; it neither ascends from the ground like an exhalation, nor descends like a rain. It shows preferences in its manner of settling, being found on some objects before it is on others. All these singular peculiarities were satisfactorily explained, and an

Page 609

CONSEQUENCES TO EUROPE OF MECHANICAL INVENTIONS. 609

other of the mysteries, the unaccountable wonders of the Middle Ages, brought into the attitude of a simple physical fact. It is impossible, in a limited space, to relate satisfactorily what has been done respecting ignition, the production of light by incandescence, the accurate measurement of the conductibility of bodies, the determination of the expansions of solids, liquids, gases, under increasing temperature, the variations of the same substance at different degrees, the heat of fluidity and elasticity, and specific heat, or to do justice to'the great improvements made in all kinds of instruments-balances, thermometers, contrivances for linear and angular measures, telescopes, microscopes, chronometers, aerostats, telegraphs, and machinery generally. The tendency in every indirection has been to practical applications. More accurate knowledge implies increasing power, greater wealth, higher virtue. The morality of man is enhanced by the improvement of his intellect and by personal independence. Our age has become rational, industrial, progressive. In its great physical inventions Europe may securely trust. There is nothing more to fear from Arabian invasions or Tartar irruptions. The hordes of Asia could be swept away like chaff before the wind. Let him who would form a correct opinion of the position of man in the present and preceding phases of his progress reflect on the losses of Christendom in Asia and Africa, in spite of all the machinery of an Age of Faith, and the present security of Europe from every barbarian or foreign attack. From almost any of the branches of industry facts might be presented illustrating the benefits arising from the application of physical discoveries. As an example, I may refer to the cotton manufacture. In a very short time after the mechanical arts were applied to the manufacture of textile fabrics, so great was the improvement that a man could do more work in a day than he had previously done in a year. That manufacture was moreover accompanied by such collateral events as actually overturned the social condition throughout Europe. These were such as the invention of the steam-engine, the canal system, the prodigious development of the iron manufacture, the locomotive, and railroads; results not due to the placemen and officers to whom that continent had resigned its annals, whose effigies encumber the streets of its cities, but to men in the lower walks of life. The assertion is true that James Watt, the instrument maker, conferred on his native country more solid benefits than all the treaties she ever made and all the battles she ever won. Arkwright was a barber, Harrison a carpenter, Brindley a millwright's apprentice. By the labors of Paul or of Wyatt, who introduced the operation of spinning by rollers, a principle perfected by Arkwright; by the rotating Q

Page 610

610 THE COTTON MANUFACTURE.

carding-engine, first devised by Paul; by the jenny of Highs or Hargreaves; the water-frame; the mule, invented by Crompton, so greatly was the cotton manufacture developed as to demand an entire change in the life of operatives, and hence arose the factory system. At a critical moment was introduced Watt's invention, the steam-engine. His first patent was taken out in 1769, the same year that Arkwright patented spinning by rollers. Watt's improvement chiefly consisted in the use of a separate condenser, and the replacement of atmospheric pressure by that of steam. Still, it was not until more than twenty years that this engine was introduced into factories, and hence it was not, as is sometimes supposed, the cause of their wonderful increase. It came, however, at a fortunate time, nearly coincident with the invention of the dressing-machine by Radcliffe and the power-loom by Cartwright. If the production of textile fabrics received such advantages from mechanics, equally was it favored by chemistry in the discovery of bleaching by chlorine. To bleach a piece of cotton by the action of the air and the sun required from six to eight months, and a large surface of land must be used as a bleach-field. The value of land in the vicinity of great towns presented an insuperable obstacle to such uses. By chlorine the operation could be completed in the course of a few hours, and in a comparatively small building, the fibre being beautifully and permanently whitened. Nor were the chemical improvements restricted to this. Calico-printing, an art practiced many thousand years ago among the Egyptians, was perfected by the operation of printing from cylinders. It deserves to be remarked that the cotton manufacture was first introduced into Europe by the Arabs. Abderrahman III., A.D. 930, caused it to be commenced in Spain; he also had extensive manufactures of silk and leather, and interested himself much in the culture of the sugar-cane, rice, the mulberry. One of the most valuable Spanish applications of cotton was in the invention of cotton paper. The Arabs were also the authors of the printing of calicoes by wooden blocks, a great improvement on the old Indian operation of painting by hand. We may excuse the enthusiastic literature of the cotton manufacture its boasting, for men had accomplished works that were nearly God-like. Mr. Baines, writing in 1833, states that the length of yarn spun in one year was nearly five thousand millions of miles, sufficient to pass round the earth's circumference more than two hundred thousand times-sufficient to reach fifty-one times from the earth to the sun. It would encircle the earth's orbit eight and a half times. The wrought fabrics of cotton exported in one year would form a girdle for the globe passing eleven times round the equator, more than sufficient to form a continuous sheet from the earth to the moon. And, if

Page 611

CANALS AND RAILWAYS. 611

this was the case thirty years ago, by what illustrations would it be possible to depict it now (1859), when the quantity of cotton imported by England alone is more than twelve hundred millions of pounds? But such a vast development in that particular manufacture necessarily implied other improvements, especially in locomotion and the transmission of intelligence. The peddler's pack, the pack-horse, and the cart became altogether inadequate, and, in succession, were replaced by the canal system of the last century, and by the steam-boats and railroads of this. The engineering triumphs of Brindley, whose canals were carried across valleys, over or through mountains, above rivers, excited unbounded admiration in his own times, and yet they were only the precursors of the railway engineering of ours. As it was, the canal system proved to be inadequate to the want, and oaken railways, which had long been used in quarries and coal-pits, with the locomotive invented by Murdoch in 1784, were destined to supplant them. It does not fall within my present purpose to relate how the locomotion of the whole civilized world was revolutionized, not by the act of some mighty sovereign or soldier, but by George Stephenson, once a steam-engine stoker, who, by the invention of the tubular boiler and the ingenious device of blowing the chimney instead of the fire, converted the locomotive of the last century, which, at its utmost speed, could only travel seven miles an hour, into the locomotive of this, which can accomplish seventy. I need not dwell on the collateral improvements, the introduction of iron for rails, metallic bridges, tubular bridges, viaducts, and all the prodigies of the existing system of railway engineering. It is not only on account of the gigantic nature of the work it has to execute that the machinery employed in the great manufactures, such as those of cotton and iron, is so worthy of our admiration; improvements as respects the correctness, and even the elegance of its own construction, attract our attention. It has been truly said of steam-engines that they were never properly made until they made themselves. In any machine, the excellence of its performance depends on the accuracy of its construction. Its parts must be made perfectly true, and, to work smoothly, must work without error. To accomplish such conditions taxed to its utmost the mechanical ingenuity of the last century; and, indeed, it was not possible to reach perfect success so long as the hand alone was resorted to. Work executed by the most skillful mechanic could be no more than approximately correct. Not until such machines as the sliding rest and planing engine were introduced could any approach to perfection be made. Improvements of this nature reacted at once on the primary construction of machinery, making it more powerful, more accurate, more durable, and also led to the introduction of greater elegance in its planning or conception, as

Page 612

612 MENTAL EFFECT OF MACHINERY.

any one may see who will compare the clumsy half wood, half metal machinery of the last century with the light and tasteful constructions of this. While thus the inventive class of men were gratifying their mental activity, and following that pursuit which has ever engrossed the energetic in all ages of the world-the pursuit of riches; for it was quickly perceived that success in this direction was the high road to wealth, public consideration, and honor-the realization of riches greater than the wildest expectations of the alchemists, there were silently and in an unobserved manner great social and national results arising. The operative was correct enough in his conclusion that machinery was throwing him out of work, and reflecting persons were right enough in their belief that this extensive introduction of machines was in some way accomplishing a disorganization of the social economy. Doubtless, for the time being, the distress and misery were very severe; men were compelled to starve or to turn to new avocations; families were deprived of their long-accustomed means of support; such must necessarily be the incidents of every great social change, even though it be a change of improvement. Nor was it until the new condition of things had passed through a considerable advance that its political tendency began to be plainly discerned. It was relieving the laborer from the burden of his toil, supplanting manual by mechanical action. In the cotton-mill, which may be looked upon as the embodiment of the new system and its tendencies, the steam-engine down below was doing the drudgery, turning the wheels and executing the labor, while the operatives above-men, women, and children-were engaged in those things that the engine could not accomplish-things requiring observation and intelligent action. Under such a state it was not possible but that a social change should ensue, for relief from corporeal labor is always followed by a disposition for mental activity; and it was not without a certain degree of plausibility that the philanthropist, whose attention was directed to this subject, asserted that the lot of the laboring man was no better than it had been before: he had changed the tyrant, but had not got rid of the tyranny; for the demands of the insatiate, inexorable, untiring steam-engine must be without delay satisfied; the broken thread must be instantly pieced; the iron fingers must receive their new supply; the finished work must be forthwith taken away. What was thus going on in the mill was a miniature picture of what was going on in the state. Labor was comparatively diminishing, mental activity increasing. Throughout the last century the intellectual advance is most significantly marked, and surprising is the contrast between the beginning and the close. Ideas that once had a living force altogether died away, the whole community of-

Page 613

CONTRAST OF THE AGES OF FAITH AND REASON. 613

fering an exemplification of the fact that the more opportunity men have for reflection the more they will think. Well, then, might those whose interests lay in the perpetuation of former ideas and the ancient order of things look with intolerable apprehension on what was taking place. They saw plainly that this intellectual activity would at last find a political expression, and that a power, daily increasing in intensity, would not fail to make itself felt in the end. In such things are manifested the essential differences between the Age of Faith and the Age of Reason. In the former, if life was enjoyed in calmness, it was enjoyed in stagnation, in unproductiveness, and in a worthless way. But how different in the latter! Every thing is in movement. So many are the changes we witness, even in the course of a very brief period, that no one, though of the largest intellect, or in the most favorable position, can predict the future of only a few years hence. We see that ideas which yesterday served us as a guide die to-day, and will be replaced by others, we know not what, to-morrow. In this scientific advancement, among the triumphs of which we are living, all the nations of Europe have been engaged. Some, with a venial pride, claim for themselves the glory of having taken the lead. But perhaps each of them, if it might designate the country-alas! not yet a nation-that should occupy the succeeding post of honor, would inscribe Italy on its ballot. It was in Italy that Columbus was born; in Venice, destined one day to be restored to Italy, newspapers were first issued. It was in Italy that the laws of the descent of bodies to the earth and of the equilibrium of fluids were first determined by Galileo. In the Cathedral of Pisa that illustrious philosopher watched the swinging of the chandelier, and, observing that its vibrations, large and small, were made in equal times, left the house of God, his prayers unsaid, but the pendulum clock reinvented. To the Venetian senators he first showed the satellites of Jupiter, the crescent form of Venus, and, in the garden of Cardinal Bandini, the spots upon the sun. It was in Italy that Sanctorio invented the thermometer; that Torricelli constructed the barometer and demonstrated the pressure of the air. It was there that Castelli laid the foundation of hydraulics and discovered the laws of the flowing of water. There, too, the first Christian astronomical observatory was established, and there Stancari counted the number of vibrations of a string emitting musical notes. There Grimaldi discovered the diffraction of light, and the Florentine academicians showed that dark heat may be reflected by mirrors across space. In our own times Melloni furnished the means of proving that it may be polarized. The first philosophical societies were the Italian; the first botanical garden was established at Pisa; the first classification of plants given by Caesalpinus. The first

Page 614

614 SCIENTIFIC POSITION OF ITALY.

geological museum was founded at Verona; the first who cultivated the study of fossil remains were Leonardo da Vinci and Fracaster. The great chemical discoveries of this century were made by instruments which bear the names of Galvani and Volta. Why need I speak of science alone? Who will dispute with that illustrious people the palm of music and painting, of statuary and architecture? The dark cloud which for a thousand years has hung over that beautiful peninsula is fringed with irradiations of light. There is not a department of human knowledge from which Italy has not extracted glory, no art that she has not adorned. Notwithstanding the adverse circumstances in which she has been placed, Italy has thus taken no insignificant part in the advancement of science. I may, at the close of a work of which so large a portion has been devoted to the relation of her influences, political and religious, on the rest of Europe, be perhaps excused the expression of a hope that the day is approaching in which she will, with Rome as her capital, take that place in the modern system to which she is entitled. The course of centuries has proved that her ecclesiastical relation with foreign countries is incompatible with her national life. It is that, and that alone, which has been the cause of all her ills. She has asserted a jurisdiction in every other government; the price she has paid is her own unity. The first, the all-important step in her restitution is the reduction of the papacy to a purely religious element. Her great bishop must no longer be an earthly prince. Rome, in her outcry for the preservation of her temporal possessions, forgets that Christian Europe has made a far greater sacrifice. It has yielded Bethlehem, Gethsemane, Calvary, the Sepulchre, the Mount of the Ascension. That is a sacrifice to which the surrender of the fictitious donations of barbarian kings is not to be compared.

Page 615

THE FUTURE OF EUROPE. 615

CHAPTER XXVI. CONCLUSION.

-THE FUTURE OF EUROPE.

Summary of the Argument presented in this Book respecting the mental Progress of Europe. Intellectual Development is the Object of individual Life.-It is also the Result of social Progress. Nations arriving at Maturity instinctively attempt their own intellectual Organization.-Example of the Manner in which this has been done in China.-Its Imperfection.- What it has accomplished. The Organization of public Intellect is the End to which European Civilization is tending.

A PHILOSOPHICAL principle becomes valuable if it can be used as a guide in the practical purposes of life. The object of this book is to impress upon its reader a conviction that civilization does not proceed in an arbitrary manner or by chance, but that it passes through a determinate succession of stages, and is a development according to law. For this purpose, we considered the relations between individual and social life, and showed that they are physiologically inseparable from one another, and that the course of continuities bears an unmistakable resemblance to the progress of an individual, and that man is the archetype or exemplar of society. We then examined the intellectual history of Greece-a nation offering the best and most complete illustration of the life of humanity. From the beginnings of its mythology in old Indian legends and of its philosophy in lonia, we saw that it passed through phases like those of the individual to its decrepitude and death in Alexandria. Then, addressing ourselves to the history of Europe, we found that, if suitably divided into groups of ages, these groups, compared with each other in chronological succession, present a striking resemblance to the successive phases of Greek life, and therefore to that which Greek life resembles-that is to say, individual life. For the sake of convenience in these descriptions we have assumed arbitrary epochs, answering to the periods from infancy to maturity. History justifies the assumption of such periods. There is a well-marked difference between the aspect of Europe during its savage and mythologic ages; its changing, and growing, and doubting condition during the Roman republic and the Caesars; its submissive contentment under the Byzantine and Italian control; the assertion of its manhood, and right of thought, and freedom of action which char-

Page 616

616 CIVILIZATION AIMS AT INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT.

acterize its present state a state adorned by great discoveries in science, great inventions in art, additions to the comforts of life, improvements in locomotion, and the communication of intelligence. Science, capital, and machinery conjoined are producing industrial miracles. Colossal projects are undertaken and executed, and the whole globe is literally made the theatre of action of every individual. Nations, like individuals, are born, proceed through a predestined growth, and die. One comes to its end at an early period and in an untimely way; another, not until it has gained maturity. One is cut off by feebleness in its infancy, another is destroyed by civil disease, another commits political suicide, another lingers in old age. But for every one there is an orderly way of progress to its final term, whatever that term may be. Now, when we look at the successive phases of individual life, what is it that we find to be their chief characteristic? Intellectual advancement. And we consider maturity to be reached when intellect is at its maximum. The earlier stages are preparatory; they are wholly subordinate to this. If the anatomist is asked how the human form advances to its highest perfection, he at once disregards all the inferior organs of which it is composed, and answers that it is through provisions in its nervous structure for intellectual improvement; that in succession it passes through stages analogous to those observed in other animals in the ascending scale, but in the end it leaves them far behind, reaching a point to which they never attain. The rise in organic development measures intellectual dignity. In like manner, the physiologist, considering the Vast series of animals now inhabiting the earth with us, ranks them in the order of their intelligence. He shows that their nervous mechanism unfolds itself upon the same plan as that of man, and that, as its advancement in this uniform and predetermined direction is greater, so is the position attained to higher. The geologist declares that these conclusions hold good in the history of the earth, and that there has been an orderly improvement in intellectual power of the beings that have inhabited it successively. It is manifested by their nervous systems. He affirms that the cycle of transformation through which every man must pass is a miniature representation of the progress of life on the planet. The intention in both cases is the same. The sciences, therefore, join with history in affirming that the great aim of nature is intellectual improvement. They proclaim that the successive stages of every individual, from its earliest rudiment to maturity-the numberless organic beings now living contemporaneously with us, and constituting the animal series-the

Page 617

EXAMPLE IN CHINA. 617

orderly appearance of that grand succession which, in the slow lapse of time, has emerged-all these three great lines of the manifestation of life furnish not only evidences, but also proofs of the dominion of law. In all those three lines the general principle is to differentiate instinct from automatism, and then to differentiate intelligence from instinct. In man himself the three distinct modes of life occur in an epochal order through childhood to the most perfect state. And this holding good for the individual, since it is physiologically impossible to separate him from the race, what holds good for the one must also hold good for the other. Hence man is truly the archetype of society. His development is the model of social progress. What, then, is the conclusion inculcated by these doctrines as regards the social progress of great communities? It is that all political institutions-imperceptibly or visibly, spontaneously or purposely-should tend to the improvement and organization of national intellect. The expectation of life in a community, as in an individual, increases in proportion as the artificial condition or laws under which it is living agree with the natural tendency. Existence may be maintained under very adverse circumstances for a season; but, for stability, and duration, and prosperity, there must be a correspondence between the artificial conditions and the natural tendency. Europe is now entering on its mature phase of life. Each of its nations will attempt its own intellectual organization, and will accomplish it more or less perfectly, as certainly as that bees build combs and fill them with honey. The excellence of the result will altogether turn on the suitability and perfection of the means. There are historical illustrations which throw light upon the working of these principles. Thus, centuries ago, China entered on her Age of Reason, and instinctively commenced the operation of mental organization. What is it that has given to her wonderful longevity? What is it that insures the well-being, the prosperity of a population of three hundred and sixty millions-more than one third of the human race-on a surface not by any means as large as Europe? Not geographical position; for, though the country may in former ages have been safe on the East by reason of the sea, it has been invaded and conquered from the West. Not a docility, want of spirit, or submissiveness of the people, for there have been bloody insurrections. The Chinese empire extends through twenty degrees of latitude; the mean annual temperature of its northern provinces differs from that of the southern by twenty-five Fahrenheit degrees. Hence, with a wonderful variety in its vegetation, there must be great differences in the types of men inhabiting it. But the principle that lies at the basis of its political system has confronted successfully all these human varieties, and has outlived all revolutions.

Page 618

618 ORGANIZATION OF HER PUBLIC INTELLECT.

The organization of the national intellect is that principle. A broad foundation is laid in universal education. It is intended that every Chinese shall know how to read and write. The special plan then adopted is that of competitive examinations. The way to public advancement is open to all. Merit, real or supposed, is the only passport to office. Its degree determines exclusively social rank. The government is organized on mental qualifications. The imperial constitution is imitated in those of the provinces. Once in three years public examinations are held in each district or county, with a view of ascertaining those who are fit for office. The bachelors, or those who are successful, are triennially sent for renewed examination in the provincial capital before two examiners deputed from the general board of public education. The licentiates thus sifted out now offer themselves for final examination before the imperial board at Pekin. Suitable candidates for vacant posts are thus selected. There is no one who is not liable to such an inquisition. When vacancies occur they are filled from the list of approved men, who are gradually elevated to the highest honors. It is not because the talented, who, when disappointed, constitute in other countries the most dangerous of all classes, are here provided for, that stability of institutions has been attained, but because the political system approaches to an agreement with that physiological condition which guides all social development. The intention is to give a dominating control to intellect. The method through which that result is aimed at is imperfect, and, of consequently, an absolute coincidence between the system and the tendency is not attained, but the stability secured by their approximation -is very striking. The method itself is the issue of political forms through which the nation for ages has been passing. Their insufficiency and imperfections are incorporated with and reappear in it. To the practical eye of Europe a political system thus founded on a literary basis appears to be an absurdity. But we must look with respect on any thing that one third of mankind have concluded it best to do, especially since they have consistently adhered to their determination for several thousand years. Forgetting that herein they satisfy an instinct of humanity which every nation, if it lives long enough, must feel, Europe often asserts that it is the competitive system which has brought the Chinese to their present state, and made them a people without any sense of patriotism or honor, without any faith or vigor. These are the results, not of their system, but of old age. There are octogenarians among us as morose, selfish, and conceited as China. The want of a clear understanding of our relative position vitiates all our dealings with that ancient empire. The Chinese has heard of our

Page 619

CONSEQUENT STABILITY OF HER INSTITUTIONS.

is discordant opinions, of our intolerance toward those who differ in ideas from us, of our worship of wealth, and the honor we pay to birth; he has heard that we sometimes commit political power to men who are so little above the animals that they can neither read nor write; that we hold military success in esteem, and regard the profession of arms as the only suitable occupation for a gentleman. It is so long since his ancestors thought and acted in that manner that he justifies himself in regarding us as having scarcely yet emerged from the barbarian stage. On our side, we cherish the delusion that we shall, by precept or by force, convert him to our modes of thought, religious or political, and that we can infuse into his stagnating veins a portion of our enterprise. A reliable account of the present condition of China would be a valuable gift to philosophy, and also to statesmanship. On a former

Page I have remarked (p. 23) that it demands the highest policy to govern populations living in great differences of latitude. Yet China has not only controlled her climatic strands of people, she has even made them, if not homogeneous, yet so fitted to each other that they all think and labor alike. Europe is inevitably hastening to become what China is. In her we may see what we shall be like when we are old. A great community, aiming to govern itself by intellect rather than by coercion, is a spectacle worthy of admiration, even though the mode by which it endeavors to accomplish its object is plainly inadequate. Brute force holds communities together as an iron nail binds pieces of wood by the compression it makes-a compression government by depending on the force with which it has been hammered in. It also holds more tenaciously if a little rusted with age. But intelligence binds like a screw. The things it has to unite must be carefully adjusted to its thread. It must be gently turned, not driven, and so it retains the consenting parts firmly together. Notwithstanding the imperfections of a system founded on such a faulty basis, that great community has accomplished what many consider to be the end of statesmanship. I have already (p. 426) quoted the remark of Machiavelli that, as to governments, their form is of very little moment, though half-educated people think otherwise. The great end of statesmanship should be permanence, which is worth every thing else, being far more valuable than freedom." But permanence is only, in an apparent sense, the object of good statesmanship; progression, in accordance with the natural tendency, is the real one. The successive steps of such a progression follow one another so imperceptibly that there is a delusive appearance of permanence. Man is so constituted that he is never aware of continuous motion. Abrupt variations alone impress his attention.

620 PASSAGE OF EUROPE TO THE SAME END.

is Forms of government, therefore, are of moment, though not in the manner commonly supposed. Their value increases in proportion as they permit or encourage the natural tendency for development to be satisfied. While Asia has thus furnished an example of the effects of a national organization of intellect, Europe, on a smaller scale, has presented an illustration of the same kind. The papal system opened, in its special circumstances, a way for talent. It maintained an intellectual organization for those who were within its pale, irrespective of wealth or birth. It was no objection that the greatest churchman frequently came from the lowest walks of life. And that organization sustained it in spite of the opposition of external circumstances for several centuries after its supernatural and ostensible basis had completely decayed away. Whatever may be the facts under which, in the different countries of Europe, such an organization takes place, or the political forms guiding it, the basis it must rest upon is universal, and, if necessary, compulsory education. In the more enlightened places the movement has already nearly reached that point. Already it is an accepted doctrine that the state has rights in a child as well as its parent, and that it may insist on education; conversely also, that every child has a claim upon the government for good instruction. After providing in the most liberal manner for that, free countries have but one thing more to do for the accomplishment of the rest. That one thing is to secure intellectual freedom as completely as the rights of property and personal liberty have been already secured. Philosophical opinions and scientific discoveries are entitled to be judged of by their truth, not by their relation to existing interests. The motion of the earth round the sun, the antiquity of the globe, the origin of species, are doctrines which have had to force their way in the manner described in this book, not against philosophical opposition, but opposition of a totally different nature. And yet the interests which resisted them so strenuously have received no damage from their establishment beyond that consequent on the discredit of having so resisted them. There is no literary crime greater than that of exciting a social, and especially a theological odium against ideas that are purely scientific, none against which the disapproval of every educated man ought to be more strongly expressed. The republic of letters owes it to its own dignity to tolerate no longer offenses of that kind. To such an organization of their national intellect, and to giving it a political control, the countries of Europe are thus rapidly advancing. They are hastening to satisfy their instinctive tendency. The special form in which they will embody their intentions

Page 621

CONCLUSION. 621

must, of course, depend to a great degree on the political forms under which they have passed their lives, modified by that approach to homogeneousness which arises from increased intercommunication. The canal system, so wonderfully developed in China, exerted no little influence in that respect-an influence, however, not to be compared with that which must be the result of the railway system of Europe. In an all-important particular the prospect of Europe is bright. China is passing through the last stage of civil life in the cheerlessness of Buddhism; Europe approaches it through Christianity. Universal benevolence can not fail to yield a better fruit than unsocial pride. There is a fairer hope for nations animated by a sincere religious sentiment, who, whatever their political history may have been, have always agreed in this, that they were devout, than for a people who dedicate themselves to a selfish pursuit of material advantages, who have lost all belief in a future, and are living without any God. I have now come to the end of a work which has occupied me for many years, and which I submit, with many misgivings as to its execution, to the indulgent consideration of the public. These pages will not have been written in vain if the facts they present impress the reader as they have impressed the author with a conviction that the civilization of Europe has not taken place fortuitously, but in a definite manner, and under the control of natural law; that the procession of nations does not move forward like a dream, without reason or order, but that there is a predetermined, a solemn march, in which all must join, ever moving, ever resistlessly advancing, encountering and enduring an inevitable succession of events; that individual life and its advancement through successive stages is the model of social life and its secular variations. I have asserted the control of natural law in the shaping of human affairs-a control not inconsistent with free-will any more than the unavoidable passage of an individual as he advances to maturity and declines in old age is inconsistent with his voluntary actions; that higher law limits our movements to a certain direction, and guides them in a certain way. As the Stoics of old used to say, an acorn may lie torpid in the ground, unable to exert its living force, until it receives warmth, and moisture, and other things needful for its germination; when it grows, it may put forth one bud here and another bud there; the wind may bend one branch, the frost blight another; the innate vitality of the tree may struggle against adverse conditions or luxuriate in those that are congenial; but, whatever the circumstances may be, there is an overruling power forever constraining and modeling it. The acorn can only produce an oak.

Page 622

622 CONCLUSION.

The application of this principle to human societies is completely established by a scientific study of their history; and the more extensive and profound that study, the better shall we be able to distinguish the invariable law in the midst of the varying events. But that once thoroughly appreciated, we have gained a philosophical guide for the interpretation of the past acts of nations, and a prophetic monitor of their future, so far as prophecy is possible in human affairs.

Page 623

INDEX.

A. Alliaeus, Cardinal, 513. Abderrahman III., 349. Almagest, 151. Abelard, his doctrine, 333. d Alps, upheaval of the, 23. Aboul Wefa, 241. Al-Sirat, bridge of, 256. Absorption, doctrine of, 44. Amber, 71. Acacius, 261. Ambrose of Milan, 232. Academies, Italian, 482; foundation of, 537; Ambrose Pare, 535. fourth' and fifth, 126. America, Church and State in, 430. Academy, middle, 125; new, 154. " discovery of, 445. Acherusian Cave, 26. American aboriginal civilization, 463; its anAchilles' puzzle, 90; spear, 37. tiquity, 464. Acoustics, discoveries in, 598. American clergy, 493. Adriatic, changes of the, 23. " reformation, 492. IEneas Sylvius, 221. Ammonius Saccas, 156. Aerial martyrs, 316. Analogy of Greek and Indian philosophy, 166. }Eschylus, 35. Analysis, higher, commencement of, 99. Africa, circumnavigation of, 57. " " dangers of, 102. " conquered by Arabs, 247. Anaxagoras, 36. Age of the Earth, 542. " of Clazomene, 79. " "Faith, European, 228. " " " persecution of, 81. " " Greek, 106. Anaximander, 78. " " in the East, 241. Anaximenes, 72.'" L " in the West, 258, 326,345, 382, Animals, 44; automatic, 583; instinctive, 402. 584; hot-blooded, 562; merely forms, 593; Age of Faith, its literary condition, 419. nature of, 575. " " "' its problems, 163. Anthropocentric philosophy, 537. " ~" result of, in England, 494. " stage, 27. " " Greek decrepitude, 153. Antimony, its use, 440. Inquiry, European, 177, 197. Antiochus, 182. " " its solutions, 161. " of Ascalon, 126. " Reason, European, 511, 542. Antisthenes, 110.'" "' " approach of, 436, 465. Antoninus, 191. ^" " its problems, 164. Apennines upheaved, 23. " " "C Greek, 127. Apocalypse, comment on the, 383. Ages, Greek, their duration, 165. Apollonius Pergneus, 150.' of man, 364. " of Tyana, 155, 409. " the five European, 15. Aquinas, Thomas, 335. Air the first principle, 72. Arabian astronomy, 355; commerce, 357; inAix la Chapelle, 277. fluence, 284; medicine, 354; numerals, Alaric, capture of Rome by, 223. 361; practical art, 356; practical science, Albategnius, 241. 353; school system, 351; sorcery, 289. Albertus Magnus, 437. Arabs cultivate learning, 248; their developAlbigensian revolt, 433. ment, 249, 251; in Spain, 347, 348, 349. Alchemists, 439. Arcesilaus, 125. Alchemy, 301. Archimedes, 144. Alexander the Great, 127, 128. Arctinus, poems of, 38. Alexander of Aphrodisias, 192. Arddha Chiddi, 48. Alexandria, city of, 239; foundation of, 128; Argonautic voyage, 30, 33. political state, 149; capture, 247; decline, Ariminium, Council of, 214. 153. Aristarchus finds the sun's distance, 148. Algazzali, works of, 362. Aristippus, 110. Alhazen, 358, 596. Aristotle, 95, 130, 294. Ali, 257. " influence of, 128. Alineations used by Hipparchus, 150. Aristotelism compared with Platonism, 131.

Page 624

624 INDEX. Arithmetic, Indian, 355. Brutes, their nature, 75. Arius, his heresy, 211; his death, 214. Buddhism, 48, 50, 51, 53, 54. Arnold de Villa Nova, 421. Bunsen on Chronology, 147. Arnold of Brescia, 344. Bunyan, John, 226, 504. Art, black, 300. Burnet's Sacred Theory, 536. Artesian wells, 547. Articulata, anatomy of, 583. C. Asclepions, 286, 291. Cabot, Sebastian, 453. Asoka patronizes Buddhism, 49. Cabral discovers Brazil, 453. Aspasia, 97. Caesar, 183. Astronomical refraction, 359. Calico printing, 610. Astronomy and fetichism, 74. Callimachus, 149. " of Eratosthenes, 148. Callisthenes, 128, 129, 143. Athanasius, 214. Calydonian boar, 38. Athene, statues of, 38. Canrbyses, 58, 138. Athenian philosophy, 99. Canal of Egypt, 57, 58, 69, 241. Athens, her progress in art, 97, 98. Canals, 611. Atlantic, first voyage across, 444. Cannibalism of Europe, 23. Atmosphere, its phenomena, 596. Canonic of Epicurus, 124. effects of light on, 561. Cape of Good Hope doubled, 449.'" height of, 359. Caracalla, 224. Atomic theory, 92. Carneades, 125. Attalus, king of Pergamus, 183. Carthage, 95, 129, 181. Augustine, St., 233; his life, 225. Carthaginian commerce, 96. " on spontaneous generation, 568. Caspian and Dead Seas, date of, 550. Auricular confession, 373. Casuistry, development of, 374. Australian savages, 20. Catalogue of stars, 150. Averrhoes, philosophy of, 468, 578, 589. Catasterism of Eratosthenes, 146. Avicenna, his works, 305. Catastrophes, doctrine of, 558, 564, 565. Avignon, papacy removed to, 389. Cato, 126. " voluptuousness of, 395. Celt, sorcery of, 25. Cerebral sight, 319. B. Cerinthus, 200. Babylonian astronomy, 148. Chadizah, wife of Mohammed, 245. " observations, 143. Chakia Mouni, 49. Babylonish captivity, 395. Charlemagne, 273, 275. Bacon, Lord, 515. Charles Martel, 273, 314. " Roger, his discoveries, 438. Chemistry, its history, 601. Bactrian empire, 33. " fetichism of, 74. Baghavat Gita, 48. " Pythagorean, 85. Basil Valentine, 440. China, her policy, 617, 618. Basle, Council of, 400. Chinese Buddhism, 53, 55. Beatific vision, 394. Christianity allied to art, 266. Benedict, St., his miracles, 323. " antagonizes imperialism, 203. Benedictines, their numbers, 324. " debased in Rome, 196. Berengar of Tours, 332, 339. " first organization of, 199. Berkeley, 172. " Gnostic, 202. Bernard of Clairvaux, 343. " hellenized, 215. Bible, 491. " influence of, 179, 197, 621. Biology, origin of, 78. " its persecutions, 204, 205. Birds, migration of, 5. " three modifications, 200. Bishops, rivalries of, 221. " Judaic, 201. " three, fate of, 227. " paganization of, 228. Black Sea, 21. " Platonic, 202. Bleaching by chlorine, 610. " spreads from Syria, 203. Blood admixture, effect of, 11. Chronology of Eratosthenes, 146. " degeneration, its effect, 431. Church and State separated, 492. Bodin's De Republica, 5. " " " union of, 279. Boethius, 262, 265. " Greek and Latin, 215. Boniface VIII., 384, 389. " services, their influence, 474. " Count, 226. " what she had done, 432. Books, their longevity, 473. Cicero, 191. Boyle, 536. Cimbri, cause of their invasion, 22. Brahman, 46. Circle, quadrature of the, 145. Brain, functions of, 585. Circumnavigation, 129. Bruno, martyrdom of, 515. " of Africa, 57.

Page 625

INDEX.' 25 Circumnavigation of the earth, 452. Cyril, his acts, 237. " " " results of, 453. Clement V., 388. D. Cleomedes, 151. Damasus, riots concerning, 216. Cleopatra, 149. Death, interstitial, 10. Clergy, American, 493. Delos a slave market, 182. " accused by the Commons, 498. Deluges, ancient, 22. " Discipline Act,;00. Delusions of the sense, 171. Clermont, Council of, 341. Demetrius Phalareus, 140. Climates, their production, 559. " Poliorcetes, 123. Clouds, their nomenclature, 600. Democritus, 92. Cnidos, medical school of, 294. Descartes, 171. Coal period, 561. Desert, influences of the, 5. " " its botany, 570. Destiny, 93. Coenobitism, 321. " Stoical doctrine of, 136. Coffee-houses, 509. Deucalian deluge, 38. Coinage, its adulteration, 186. Dew theory, 608. Cold, influence of, 21. Diaphragm of Dicaearchus, 146. Colleges founded by Jews, 298, 414. Dies Ire, 325. Colonial system, origin of, 95. Dioclesian, state of things under, 204. Colonies, Greek, 83, 93, 94. Diogenes, 111. Colossus of Rameses, 64. " of Apollonia, 73. Columbus, 442. Docetes, 200. Commerce, ancient, 34. Dominic, St., 372. " influence of, 94. Donatists, 209. Communities, progress of, 9. Druids, 178.. Condesuya, aqueduct of, 462. Du Molay, 393. Condillac, 172. Conon of Alexandria, 144. E. Constance, Council of, 398. Ear, 4. Constantine the Great, his policy, 205; his in- Earth, age of the, 531. fluence, 206; tendency to paganism, 207; " density of the, 548. removes the metropolis, 206, 208; his " development in the life of the, 587. Church relation, 207, 208; conversion and " motions in the strata of the, 551. death, 210. " its slow cooling, 546. Constantinople, Council of, 310. Earthquakes, 548. "' fall of, 405. Easter, dispute respecting, 216. " its literature, 368. Ebionites, 200. sack of, 367. Ebn Junis, astronomy of, 361. " siege of, by the Turks, 404. Ecclesiasticism, its decline, 430. Copais, tunnel of, 23. " " downfall, 534. Copernican system condemned, 519.. Eclipses predicted, 71.'' theory rectified, 522. Ecliptic, obliquity of.the, 73, 355, 549. Copernicus, 513. Ecstasy, 158. " his doctrine, 514, 517. Egypt, antiquity of civilization in, 59; cause Copronymus the Iconoclast, 310. of civilization in, 62; conquest of, by CamCorinth, its arts, 97. byses, 58; geological age of, 64; hydraulic Cosmas Indicopleustes, 442. works of, 65; influence of, on Europe, 60;. Cosmo de' Medici, 467. originates Greek legends, 60;. prehistoric Cosmogony, 78. life of, 60, 62; Roman annexation of, 183; " Pythagorean, 85. topography of, 64. Cotton manufacture, 609.. Egyptian civilization, 55. Councils, their nature, 175, 221. " ports opened, 56. Criterion of truth, 81, 162, 170, 174. " theology, 67. Criticism, effects of, 34, 490. Elcano, the lieutenant of Magellan, 452. " rise of, 465. Eleatic philosophy, 87. Cross, the true, discovered, 229.. " school, 163. Crotona, 82, 95. Electricity, discoveries in, 603. Crusades, origin of, 340. Electro-magnetism, 604. " effects of, 342, 425. Elixir of life, 302, 305. " in south of France, 370. Elphinstone, quotation from, 47. Cuvier's doctrine, 566. Elysium, 26. Cycle of life, 173. Emanation, theory of, 168. Cyclopean structures, 23. Empedocles, 91. Cynical school, 110. England, condition of, 497. Cyrenaic school, 110. " conversion of, 271. RR

Page 626

626 INDEX. Ephesus, Council of, 219. Geology, 542. Epictetus, 191. Geological movements of Asia, 21. Epicureans, modern, 125. Gerbert the Pope, 328, 329, 330. Epicurus, 122. Gesner, 535. Epicycles and eccentrics, theory of, 150. Gilbert, 535. Epochs of life, 11, 437. Globes used by the Saracens, 355. Eratosthenes, 145. Gobi, changes of, 18, 21. Eremitism, 320. Gold and silver, ancient value of, 186. Erigena, John, a pantheist, 332. " potable, problem of, 304. Essenes, 315. Gotama, 49. Ether, movements of, 607. Gotschalk, his persecution, 331. Ethical philosophy, 106. Gravitation, theory of, 527. " " its secondary analysis, 122. Greece, Roman invasion of, 182. Ethics of Plato, 117. Greek, dislike of Rome to, 469; fire, 303; Ethnical element, 9, 11. learning, revival of, 468; movements reEuclid, 144. peated in Europe, 39; mythology, 28; cause " of Megara, 110. of its destruction, 32; secession from, 34; Eunapius, 157. transformations of, 32; philosophy, its four Euripides, 35. topics, 165; summary of, 104. Europe, barbarism of, 345; condition of, after Gregory VII., his policy, 337. Charlemagne, 279; conversion of, 270; de- " t he Great, 263. scription of, 17; elevation of, above the sea, " of Nazianzen, 221. 17; future of, 615; social changes in, 429; Gulf Stream, 18, 599. physical changes in, 270; vertical displace- Gunpowder, 303. ment of, 21. European old religion, 177; priesthood, 178. H. " modifications by climate, 25. Hades, 29, 68. " slave-trade, 276. Halley's comet, 512. Eusebius, his chronology, 147. Hallucination, cause of, 317. Eutychianism, 220. Haroun al Raschid, 277. Everlasting Gospel, 382. Harpalus, 129. Existence depends on physical conditions, 5. Harvey's circulation of the blood, 535. Extinctions, cause of, 6. Heart, 4.'" and creations, 554, 555. Heat, boundary of animals by, 553; control Eye, 4. of, over life, 6; decline of, in the earth, 560; distribution of, in Europe, 19; interior, 546; F. sources of, 76; theories of, 608. Fabricius ab Aquapendente, 535. Heliocentric theory, 512, 527. Fairies destroyed by tobacco, 418. Henry VIII., 500. Fallopius, 535. Heraclitus, 76. Faustus, his accusation, 229. Hercules, legend of, 27. Fetichism, 3. Heretics, burning of, 380. Fine arts, use of the, 406. Hermits, 315. Fire the first principle, 76. " grazing, 317. Flagellants, 381. Hero, 152. Florence, Medicean gardens of, 468. Herodotus, 36. Food, its nature, 577. Herschels, their discoveries, 529. Formosus, Pope, 271. Hesiod, theogony of, 31. Forms contrasted with law, 16. aHieroglyphics, 61. " permanence of, 76. Hildebrand, 336. Francis, St., 372. Hindu philosophy, 41; polytheism, 25. Fratricelli, their affirmation, 209. Hipparchus, 150. Frederick II., 374. Hippocrates, 93. Free trade, its effects, 188. " review of, 291. Free-will, 15. Hobbes, 171. Holy places, loss of, 424. G. Homer, theogony of, 31. Galen, 192. Homceomerive, 80. Galileo, 518, 519, 520. Homogeneousness, national, 12. " on laws of motion, 524. Homer's observations in Egypt, 64. Geber, the alchemist, 303. Hosius of Cordova, 212. Geminus, 151. Houris of Paradise, 256. Genoa, her commerce, 442. Humboldt, 146. Geocentric theory, 512. Huss, John, the martyr, 399. Geographical discovery, effects of, 32. Hycksos, invasion of, 56. Geography of Ptolemy, 151. Hypatia, 238, 240.

Page 627

INDEX. 627 Hypocrisy, organization of, 40. Kempis, Thomas a, 470. Kepler, 521; his laws, 3, 522. I. Kirk's lambs, 505. lamblicus, 159. Koran, review of, 251, 254. Iconoclasm, 309. Ideal theory, 113, 120. L. Images, bleeding and winking, 308. Labarum, 229. Image worship, 306; in the West, 312; re- Lactantius, 233. sisted by Charlemagne, 276. Languages, modern, their effects, 467. Imitation of Christ, 470. Languedoc, light literature of, 351. Immortality, double, 119. Lapland, inferiority of, 10. Impulses against the Church, 422. Latin a sacred language, 466. " moral and intellectual, 428. Law, dominion of, 15; its control, 590. Incarnations, 67. Leaning towers, 23. Incombustible men, 303. Legends of saints, 322. Indian, American, 20. Legion, how constructed, 185. Indo-Germanic invasion, 23. Leibnitz, 172, 536. Inductive philosophy, 131. Leonardo da Vinci, 145. Indulgences, nature of, 478. Leo the Great, 260. Innocent III., 364. " X., 483. Inquisition, 371, 487. Leontius Pilatus, 468. 4" its sacrifices, 464. Lesches, poems of, 38. Insane, their nature, 75. Levites, their medicine, 297. Institutes of Menu, 46. Lewenhoeck, 536. Intellect, the primal, 80. Liberty not appreciated in India, 46. Intellectual class represents a community, 10. Library, Alexandrian, 140, 235. " development, 591. Licinius, 205. Interstitial creations, 556. Life, individual, its nature, 2. " death, 10. a social, its nature, 2. Ionian philosophy, 78. " variable rapidity of, 14. Irene, the Empress, 311. Light, motion of, 531, 545, 605. Isis, her worship, 139. " proves the age of the world, 545. Isothermal lines, 18, 19. Limestone deposited from the sea, 562. Israfil, the angel, 256. Literature, profligate, 505. Italian Christianity, boundaries of, 326. Locke, 172. " system, its movements, 436. Locomotives, 611. Italy, cause of its degradation, 431; its de- Logic, Aristotle's, 132; medieval, 407. pression, 614; immorality of, 425; rela- Logos, 155, 202. tions of, 94; scientific contributions of, 613. Lorenzo de' Medici, 469. Loretto, miracle of, 384. J. Louis, St., 379. Jason, voyage of, 30. Lucius Apuleius, 156. Jaxartes, its drying up, 22. Lucretius, 190. Jerome of Prague, his martyrdom, 400. Luitprand captures Ravenna, 313. Jerome, St., 217. Luther, 478; excommunication of, 479; ex" " against marriage, 266. perience of, 411; revolt of, 435. Jerusalem, bishops of, 201; capture of, 342; Lyceum, 131. Church of, 215; fall of, 243, 248; position of, 57. Jesuits, 488. Macedonian campaigns, 33, 127, 138. Jewish physicians, their writings, 414. Machiavelli, 426, 431. Jews, conversion of, 201; expulsion of, from Magellan, his great voyage, 450. France, 417; medical studies of, 414; Span- Magic and necromancy, 159. ish, their works, 416; on supernaturalism, Magic lantern, 606. 413. Magna Charta, 365. John of Damascus, 313. Magnetic variations, 445. Judgment, future, 67. Magnetism, discoveries in, 604. Jugurthine war, 183. Maimonides, 416. Julian, 230. Malpighi, 536. Justinian closes philosophical schools, 160. Man controlled by physical agents, 7; his race " conquers Italy, 262. connections, 173; first form of, 79; lateral " his wars, 242, 259. halves of, 588; nature of, 173, 574; variaJustin Martyr, 202. tions of, 8; social archetype, 1. Marco Polo, 453. K. Mariner's compass, 357. Kant, 172. Marriage, compulsion of, 187.

Page 628

628 INDEX. Marsilio, his work, 394. New Academy, 125. Marsilius Ficinus, the Platonist, 467. Newspapers, 475, 509. Matter, its indestructibility, 602. Newton, 89, 150, 526, 536. Maximum of certainty, 175. Niagara, Falls of, 572. Maximus Tyrius, 191. Nicea, Council of, 212. Max Muller on language, 24. Nicene Creed, 213. Medicine, Alexandrian, 296. Nicolas V., 406.' Egyptian, 295. Nicomedia, Church of, destroyed, 205. " suppression of, 286. Niebuhr, 97. Mediterranean, 21, 29; trade of, 441; won- Nile, 63. ders of, 31. Nirwana, or nonentity, 52, 170. Megaric school, 110. Nogaret, William de, 387. Melissus of Samos, 91. Nomades, Asiatic, 22. Mendicant orders, 371. Nominalism and Realism, 334. Menu, Institutes of, 46, 166. Norway, depth of rain in, 19. Metaphysics, Aristotle's, 132. " and Sweden, motion of, 552. " uselessness of, 578. Norwegian, diet of, 20. Meteoric stone, 81.. Novatus, the heretic, 211. Mexico, social condition of, 454. Numa, 83. Middle Ages, their condition, 103. Numbers the first principle, 84. Migration of birds, 5. Numenius, a Trinitarian,'156. Milky Way, 86. Mill life, 612. 0. Milton's Paradise Lost, 506. Oaks, sacred, 187. Miracle cure, 286. Obelisks, 56, 61. " plays, 507. Ocean, its size, 599. Missionaries, Irish and British, 271. Octave, musical, 86. Mceris, Lake, 70. Olympian deities, their nature, 37. Mohammed, 244. Omar takes Jerusalem, 248. " II., 404. Opinion and Reason, 89. Mohammedanism, arrest in Europe of, 347. Optics, discoveries in, 605. effect of, on Christendom, Orchomenos, ruins of, 23. 257. Orders, monastic, their spread, 323. Mohammedanism, literature of, 350; sects of, Organisms, dates of various, 563. 257. Orpheus, legend of, 27. Mohammedanism, popular, 255. Osiris, 66, 67. Monasteries, suppression of, 495. Otto Guericke, 536. Monasticism, amelioration of, 320. Oxus, its drying up, 22. " spread of, 321. Monks, 314. " African and European, 176. Pacific Ocean crossed, 451. " Eastern and Western, 322. Paganism, its attitude, 198. " influence of, 324. Painting and sculpture, 267. Monotheism preceded by imperialism, 190. Paleontology, history of, 557. "' Roman, its boundaries, 193. Pantheism, 89, 105. Montanus, the Paraclete, 216. " Greek, 166; Indian, 43. Moon, volcanic action in, 549. Papacy, origin of, 215, 283. Moral plays, 508. " intellectual end of, 401. Motion, laws of, 524. " political independence of, 269. Muggleton, Lewis, 502. Paper, invention of, 473. Museum, Alexandrian, 139, 140, 295. Pappus, 152. Mycenae, lion gate of, 23. Parliament accuses the clergy, 499. Mythology, Greek, origin of, 26. Parma, John of, 382. Parmenides, 89. N. Pascal, 536. Napier, 535. " his view of humanity, 13. Nations, transitional forms of, 13; death of, Path-zone, 17. 13; progress of, 9; secular variations of, Patristic ethnology, 447. 12. " geography, end of, 446. Nearchus, 129. " learning, its decline, 491. Nebule, existence of, 533. Patristicism, conflict of, with philosophy, 234. Nebular hypothesis, 532.. " decline of, 420. Necromancy, Alexandrian, 299. " doctrines of, 232. Neo-Platonism, 156. " effects of, 491. Nervous system, 580, 586. Paulus ZEmilius, his severity, 184. Nestorianism, 218, 286, 290. Pausanias, 97.

Page 629

INDEX. 629 Pelagianism, 217. Press, liberty of, 509. Penance, 44. Principia, Newton's, 3, 526, 528. Pepin, 274. Printing, invention of, 471. Pergamus, library of, 235. " its effects, 472. Pericles, 97. Problems of Greek philosophy, 161. Perictione, 112. Proclus burns Vitalian's ships, 159. Periodicities, human, cause of, 5. " his theology, 160. Peripatetics, 131. Prosper Alpinus, 535. Persecution, effects of, 491. Protestants, origin of, 481. Persepolis, burning of, 129. Psammetichus, 55. Perses, revolt of, 182. Psammites of Archimedes, 145. Persian wars, 96, 127. Psychology, origin of, 74. Personified forms introduced, 27. Ptolemies, biography of, 149. Perturbations, astronomical, 528. " position of, 138. Peru, its social condition, 457. Ptolemy, his Syntaxis, 151. " rainless district of, 63. Pulpit affected by the press, 474. Peter Morrone, 383. " decline of, influence, 475. Peter the Hermit, 341. Punic wars, 181. Peter the Venerable, 334. Puranas, 47. Philadelphus, Ptolemy, 141. Pyramids, 55, 59, 62. Phile, temple of, 66. Pyrrho, 121. Philip the Fair, 385. Pyrrhus, the Epirot, 181. Philo the Jew, 155, 174. Pythagoras, 82, 83. " of Larissa, 126. his services, 171. Philosophers, persecution of, 231. Philosopher's stone, 302. Q. Philosophical principles, application of, 176. Quintus Sextius, 191. 4' schools, Indian, 48. Philosophy, Greek and Indian, their analogy, R. 175. Rabbis, 415. Philosophy, Greek, end of, 160. Railways, 611. " " summary of, 160. Rain, maximum points of, 19. " its defects, 172. " quantity of, 18. " peripatetic, 133. Rainless countries, 62, 63, 458. " reappearance of, 327. Rainy days, influence of, 20. Phlogiston, theory of, 601. " number of, 19. Phocaeans built Marseilles, 34. Rameses, his policy, 57. Phoenicians, enterprise of, 33. Reductio ad absurdum, 90. Phosphorus discovered by Arabs, 304. Reflection, 92. Photography, 608. Reflex action, 582. Physicians, Jewish, 296. Reformation, 476; arrest of the, 482; attemptPhysics of Zeno, 136. ed in Greece, 37; counter, 487; in SwitPhysiology of Aristotle, 134. zerland, 480; in Italy, 481. " " Plato, 116. Relics, age of, 37. Plagues, ancient, 185. " worship of, 307. Plants, action on air of, 576. Reminiscence, 114. " and animals, relation of, 75, 577. Republic of Plato, 117, 157. Platra, battle of, 96. Revolution, French, 435. Plato, 39, 112. Rhacotis, 143. Platonism, 156. Rhodes raised from the sea, 23. " restored in Europe, 467. Rhodians, maritime code of, 33. Plays, miracle, moral, real, 307. Rig Veda, 43. Pleiades, 149. Robber Synod, 220. Plotinus, writings of, 157. Roman conquest, effects of, 189; depravity, Plutarch, 128, 156. 187; ethnical element disappears, 189; lePole star, 550. gends, 180; philosophy, 189; power, influPolygamy, its effects, 247. ence of, 38; triple form, 180; republic, 180; Polytheism, decline of, 38. women, their dissoluteness, 187. antagonism of, to science, 36. Rome, elevation of, 552; fall and pillage of, Pontifical power sustained, 222. by Vandals, 259; fall of, 222; relations of, Popes, biography of, 280. to Constantinople, 261; permanence of, Porphyry, 158. cause of the, 9; progress of, to supremacy, v " his writings burnt, 159. 260; history of, 179; three pressures upon, Porsenna takes Rome, 181. 327; tyranny of, 198. Posidonius, 172. Royal societies, foundation of, 537. Pre-existence, sentiment of, 118.

Page 630

630 INDEX. S. Stoics, 135. Sahara, Desert of, 18. Stylites, St. Simeon, 316, Salamanca, Council of, 443. Sun-dials, 79.'" University of, 530. Sun, his influence on nature, 592. Sanscrit vocabulary, 24. " the source of force, 575. Saracens, their policy, 250, 287. Supererogation, theory of, 478. Savior, model of the, 267. Supernatural appearances, cause of, 318. Scandinavian discovery of America, 446. Superstitions, disappearance of, 189. " geological motion, 23. Sybaris, 95. Schism, the great, 396. Syphilis, 496. Scholastic philosophy, 333. " theology, 334. T. Schools, philosophical Greek, 82, 110. Tacitus on Roman morality, 188. Science, Alexandrian, suppressed, 240. Tartars, 20. Sea of Azof, 21. Tartarus, 26. Seasons, effect of, 5. Taxation, Roman, 186. Sebastian de Elcano, 452. Telescope, invention of, 517. Secular inequalities, 530. Templars, process against, 392. " movement of Asia, 21. Tertullian, 265. Seneca, 191. " his letter to Scapula, 204. Septuagint Bible, 141. Testimony, human, value of, 412. Serapion, destruction of, 237. Tetractys, 84. Serapis, 139. Thabor, mysterious light of, 369. " statue of, destroyed, 236. Thales, philosophy of, 70. Servetus, 535. Theatre in England, 506. " martyrdom of, 492. Theodora restores images, 312. Shakspeare, 508. Theodoric, 261, 262. Shepherds, 381. Theodosius, the ge ometer, 152. Simon Magus, 409. " the Great, 231. Simony, organization of, 396. Theon, 152. Sirius, the Dog-star, 66. Thucydides, 36. Skeptics, 121. Tides and currents, 599. Slavery under Charlemagne, 276. Time not absolute, 13. Slave system, Roman, 184. " preorganic, 558. Snow, distribution of, in Europe, 19. Tornadoes, 597. Snowy days, number of, 19. Tours, battle of, 273. Social war, 183. Trade-wind, 3. Society, its true representative, 10. Transformation of things, 43. Sociology, comparative, 590. Transitional forms, 9. Socrates, 35, 106. Transmigration, 44, 52, 86, 114. Solar system proves law, 3. Transmission, hereditary, 571. Sopater decapitated, 230. Transmutation, doctrine of, 567. Sophists, 100, 163. " of metals, 301. Sorcery, European, 410. " of organisms, 361. Soul, 115; absorption of, 169; the human, Transubstantiation, 302. 595; Indian ideas of, 44; purification of, " conflict on, 332. 45; nature of, 162; of the world, 73; a Tribonian, 265. part of God, 169. Trinitarian controversy, 210. Sound, nature of, 598. Trinity, Indian, 47. Spain, crimes of, 448; Mohammedan litera- " Egyptian, 67, 142, 156. ture of, 351; conquest of, 346; Roman an- Triumvirate, 183. nexation of, 183. Trojan horse, 37; war, 37. Sparta, 95. Troubadours, 369. Spartacus, the gladiator, 183. Turkish invasion, effect of, 406. Specific gravity, tables of, 360. Turks, their origin, 403. Sphserus, the Stoic, 141. Tycho, 535. Spheres, their music, 86. Types, Platonic, 114. Sphinxes, 56. Tyrians, their enterprise, 33. Spinal cord, its action, 585. Tyre, fall of, 59. Spontaneous generation, 78, 80. U Stars, clusters of, 532. " multiple, 4. Ulphilas invents an alphabet, 272. Star worship, 3, 66. Under world, 29. Stephen, Pope, consecrates Pepin, 274. Undulatory theory, 606. Stevinus, his mechanical works, 524. Uniformity, doctrine of, 564. Stoicism, 137. Unity of mankind, 8.

Page 631

INDEX. 631 Universe unchangeable, 79. War, usages of, 496. " its magnitude, 540. Water, chemical, 302. Unreliability of sense, 90. " its composition, 600. Watt invents the steam-engine, 610. V. Week, origin of the, 299. Vandal attack, 242. Weeping statues, 37. Van Helmont, 535. Westphalia, peace of, 481. Variation of species, 7. Wiclif, 398, 434. Varro, 190. Willis, 536. Vasco de Gama, 448. Wind, nature of, 3, 597. Vedaism, 42. " southwest, effects of, 18. " its changes, 47. Winking pictures, 37. Vedic, minor, doctrines, 45. Witchcraft, 410. Venice, her commerce, 442. Women, condition of, in India, 46. Venus, light of, 549. World, absorption of the, 167. Vesicles, nerve, structure and functions of, 581. " end of the, 279, 544. Vieta, 535. " origin of the, 161. Vinci, Leonardo da, 523. Worlds, succession of, 573. Virgin Mary, model of, 267. " 6 " worship of, 219. X. Visconti, Barnabas, his irreverence, 395. Xantippe, 109. Vocabulary, Indo-Germanic, 23. Xenophanes, 87. Volcanoes, 547. Xerxes, 96. Voyages and travels, minor, 453. Vulgate, 226. Z. Zeno, 135. W. " the Eleatic, 90. War system, Roman, 185. Zuinglius, 480. THE END,


 
 



  • Return to Digital Library

  • Return to Digital Books

  • Return to H-Bahai Home Page

  • Links to pages with similar resources

    H-Net, Humanities OnLine
    Generously Supported by:
    [MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY]
    &
    [The National Endowment for the Humanities]