It is with a very real and masterly genius that Maury has demonstrated the harmony that exists between air and water. As is the maritime ocean, so is the aërial ocean. Their alternating movements and the exchange of their elements are precisely analogous. The aërial ocean distributes heat over the world and making dryness or humidity. The latter, the air draws from the seas, from the infinity of the central ocean, and especially at the tropics, the great boilers of the universal cauldron. Dryness, on the contrary, the air acquires as it sweeps over the arid deserts, the great continents, and the glaciers (those true intermediate poles of the globe), which draw out its last drop of moisture from it. The heating at the equator and the cooling again at the pole, alternating the weight and lightness of the vapors, cause them to cross each other in horizontal currents and counter currents; while under the line the heat which lightens the vapors creates perpendicular currents, ascending from sea to sky. Previous to dispersing they hover in this misty region, forming, as it were, a ring of clouds around the globe.
Here, then, we have pulsations both maritime and aërial, different from the pulse of the tide. This latter was external, impressed by other planets upon ours, but this pulse of various currents is inherent in the earth, it is her own veritable life.
To my taste, one of the finest things in Maury's book, is what he says of salt: "The most obvious agent in producing maritime circulation, heat, would not alone suffice; there is another and a no less important agent, nay, an even more important—it is salt."
So abundant is salt in the sea that if it could be cast on shore it would form a mountain 4,500 feet thick.
Though the saltness of the sea does not vary very greatly, it yet, is augmented or diminished somewhat, according to locality, currents and proximity to the equator or to the poles. As it is more or less salted, the sea is lighter or heavier, and more or less mobile. This continued, with its variations, causes the water to run more or less swiftly, that is to say, causes currents, so like the horizontal currents in the bosom of the sea and the vertical currents from the sea of water upward to the sea of air.
A French writer, M. Lartique, has ingeniously corrected some deficiences and inexactitudes in M. Maury's great work "Maritime Annals." But the American author had anticipated criticism by frankly pointing out where and why he thought his work and his science incomplete. On some points distinctly confining himself to hypothesis, at times he shows himself uncertain, and anxious. His frank and candid book quite plainly reveals the mental struggle which the author undergoes between biblical literalism and the modern sentiment the sympathy of nature. The former makes the sea a thing, created by God at once, a machine turning under his hand, while the latter sees in the sea a living force, almost a person, in which the Loving Soul of the World, is creating still, and ever will create.
It is curious to observe, how, by degrees, as it were by irresistible proclivity, Maury approaches this latter view. As far as possible he explains himself mechanically, by weight, heat, density, &c. But this does not suffice, and for certain cases he adds a certain molecular attraction or a certain magnetic action. But even this does not suffice, and then he has recourse to the physiological laws which govern life. He attributes to the sea a pulse, veins, arteries, and even a heart. Are these mere forms of style, simple comparisons? Not so; he has in him—and it is one source of his strength—an imperious, an irresistible feeling of the personality of the sea. Before him the sea was to most seamen a thing; to him it is a person, a violent and terrible mistress whom we must adore, but must also subdue.
He loves, he deeply loves the sea; but on the other hand, he every moment thinks it necessary to restrain his enthusiasm and to keep within bounds. Like Levammerdam, Baunet and many other illustrious men at once philosophical and religious, he seems to fear that in explaining nature too completely by her own phenomena we show disrespect to Nature's God. Surely, a very ill founded timidity. The more we exhibit the universality of life,—the more we confess our adoration of the great soul of the universe. Where would be the danger were it proven that the sea in her constant aspiration towards organized existence is the most energetic form of the Eternal Desire which formerly evoked this globe and still creates in it?
This salt sea, like blood, which has its circulation, its pulse, and its heart (for so Maury terms the equator) in which its two bloods are exchanged, is it quite sure that an entity that has all these is a mere thing, an inorganic element?
Look at a great clock, or a steam engine which imitates almost exactly the movement of the vital forces. Is that a freak of nature? Should we not far rather imagine that in these masses there is a mixture of animality?