Consolations in Travel; or, the Last Days of a Philosopher

by Sir Humphry Davy

spoiled child; where she is severe, and a stepmother, his powers are usually withered and destroyed. The people of the south and the north and those between the tropics offer, even at this day, proof of the truth of this principle; and it is even possible now to find on the surface of the earth, all the different gradations of the states of society, from that in which man is scarcely removed above the brute, to that in which he appears approaching in his nature to a divine intelligence. Besides, reason being the noblest gift of God to man, I can hardly suppose that an infinitely powerful and all-wise Creator would bestow upon the early inhabitants of the globe a greater proportion of instinct than was at first necessary to preserve their existence, and that he would not leave the great progress of their improvement to the development and exaltation of their reasoning powers.

Amb.—You appear to me in your argument to have forgotten the influence that any civilised race must possess over savages; and many of the nations which you consider as in their original state, may have descended from nations formerly civilised; and, it is quite as easy to trace the retrograde steps of a people as their advances; the savage hordes who now inhabit the northern coast of Africa are probably descended from the opulent, commercial, and ingenious Carthaginians who once contended with Rome for the empire of the world; and even nearer home, we might find in Southern Italy and her islands, proofs of a degradation not much inferior. What I contend for is the civilisation of the first patriarchal races who peopled the East, and who passed into Europe from Armenia, in which paradise is supposed to have been placed. The early

civilisation of this race could only have been in consequence of their powers and instincts having been of a higher character than those of savages. They appear to have been small families—a state not at all fitted for the discovery of arts by the exercise of the mind; and they professed the most sublime form of religion, the worship of one Supreme Intelligence—a truth which, after a thousand years of civilisation, was with difficulty attained by the most powerful efforts of reasoning by the Greek sages. It appears to me, that in the history of the Jews, nothing can be more in conformity to our ideas of just analogy than this series of events. Our first parents were created with everything necessary for their wants and their happiness; they had only one duty to perform, by their obedience to prove their love and devotion to their Creator. In this they failed, and death—or the fear of death—became a curse upon their race; but the father of mankind repented, and his instinctive or intellectual powers given by revelation were transmitted to his offspring more or less modified by their reason, which they had gained as the fruit of their disobedience. One branch of his offspring, however, in whom faith shone forth above reason, retained their peculiar powers and institutions and preserved the worship of Jehovah pure, whilst many of the races sprung from their brethren became idolatrous, and the clear light of heaven was lost through the mist of the senses; and that Being, worshipped by the Israelites only as a mysterious word, was forgotten by many of the nations who lived in the neighbouring countries, and men, beasts, the parts of the visible universe, and even stocks and stones, were set up as objects of adoration.

The difficulty which the divine legislators of the Jewish people had to preserve the purity of their religion amongst the idolatrous nations by whom they were surrounded, proves the natural evil tendency of the human mind after the fall of man. And, whoever will consider the nature of the Mosaical or ceremonial law and the manner in which it was suspended before the end of the Roman Empire, the expiatory sacrifice of the Messiah, the fear of death destroyed by the blessed hopes of immortality established by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and the triumphs of Christianity over paganism in the time of Constantine, can I think, hardly fail to acknowledge the reasonableness of the truth of revealed religion as founded upon the early history of man; and whoever acknowledges this reasonableness and this truth, must I think be dissatisfied with the view which Philalethes or his genius has given of the progress of society, and will find in it one instance, amongst many others that might be discovered, of the vague and erring results of his so much boasted human reason.

Onu.—I fear I shall shock Ambrosio, but I cannot help vindicating a little the philosophical results of human reason, which it must be allowed are entirely hostile to his ideas. I agree with Philalethes that it is the noblest gift of God to man; and I cannot think that Ambrosio’s view of the paradisaical condition and the fall of man and the progress of society is at all in conformity with the ideas we ought to form of the institutions of an infinitely wise and powerful Being. Besides, Ambrosio speaks of the reasonableness of his own opinions; of course his notions of reason must be different from mine, or we have adopted different forms

of logic. I do not find in the biblical history any idea of the supreme Intelligence conformable to those of the Greek philosophers; on the contrary, I find Jehovah everywhere described as a powerful material being, endowed with organs, feelings, and passions similar to those of a great and exalted human agent. He is described as making man in His own image, as walking in the garden in the cool of the evening, as being pleased with sacrificial offerings, as angry with Adam and Eve, as personally cursing Cain for his crime of fratricide, and even as providing our first parents with garments to hide their nakedness; then He appears a material form in the midst of flames, thunder and lightning, and was regarded by the Levites as having a fixed residence in the Ark. He is contrasted throughout the whole of the Old Testament with the gods of the heathens, only as being more powerful; and in the strange scene which took place in Pharaoh’s court He seemed to have measured His abilities with those of certain seers or magicians, and to have proved His superiority only by producing greater and more tremendous plagues. In all the early history of the Jewish nation there is no conception approaching to the sublimity of that of Anaxagoras, who called God the Intelligence or νους. He appears always, on the contrary, like the genii of Arabian romance, living in clouds, descending on mountains, urging His chosen people to commit the most atrocious crimes, to destroy all the races not professing the same worship, and to exterminate even the child and the unborn infant. Then, I find in the Old Testament no promise of a spiritual Messiah, but only of a temporal king, who, as the Jews believe, is yet to come. The serpent in Genesis

has no connection with the spirit of evil, but is described only as the most subtle beast of the field, and, having injured man, there was to be a perpetual enmity between their races—the serpent when able was to bite the heel of the man, and the man when an opportunity occurred was to bruise the head of the serpent. I will allow, if you please, that an instinct of religion or superstition belongs to the human mind, and that the different forms which this instinct assumes depend upon various circumstances and accidents of history and climate; but I am not sure that the religion of the Jews was superior to that of the Sabæans who worshipped the stars, or the ancient Persians who adored the sun as the visible symbol of divine power, or the eastern nations who in the various forms of the visible universe worshipped the powers and energies of the Divinity. I feel like the ancient Romans with respect to toleration; I would give a place to all the gods in my Pantheon, but I would not allow the followers of Brahmah or of Christ to quarrel about the modes of incarnation or the superiority of the attributes of their trien God.

Amb.—You have mistaken me, Onuphrio, if you think I am shocked by your opinions; I have seen too much of the wanderings of human reason ever to be surprised by them, and the views you have adopted are not uncommon amongst young men of very superior talents, who have only slightly examined the evidences of revealed religion. But I am glad to find that you have not adopted the code of infidelity of many of the French revolutionists and of an English school of sceptics, who find in the ancient astronomy all the germs of the worship of the Hebrews, who identify the

labours of Hercules with those of the Jewish heroes, and who find the life, death and resurrection of the Messiah in the history of the solar day. You, at least, allow the existence of a peculiar religious instinct, or, as you are pleased to call it, superstition, belonging to the human mind, and I have hopes that upon this foundation you will ultimately build up a system of faith not unworthy a philosopher and a Christian. Man, with whatever religious instincts he was created, was intended to communicate with the visible universe by sensations and act upon it by his organs, and in the earliest state of society he was more particularly influenced by his gross senses. Allowing the existence of a supreme Intelligence and His beneficent intentions towards man, the ideas of His presence which He might think fit to impress upon the mind, either for the purpose of veneration, or of love, of hope or fear, must have been in harmony with the general train of His sensations—I am not sure that I make myself intelligible. The same infinite power which in an instant could create a universe, could of course so modify the ideas of an intellectual being as to give them that form and character most fitted for his existence; and I suppose in the early state of created man he imagined that he enjoyed the actual presence of the Divinity and heard His voice. I take this to be the first and simplest result of religious instinct. In early times amongst the patriarchs I suppose these ideas were so vivid as to be confounded with impressions; but as religious instinct probably became feebler in their posterity, the vividness of the impressions diminished, and they then became visions or dreams, which with the prophets seem to have constituted inspiration. I do not suppose

that the Supreme Being ever made Himself known to man by a real change in the order of Nature, but that the sensations of men were so modified by their instincts as to induce the belief in His presence. That there was a divine intelligence continually acting upon the race of Seth as his chosen people, is, I think, clearly proved by the events of their history, and also that the early opinions of a small tribe in Judæa were designed for the foundation of the religion of the most active and civilised and powerful nations of the world, and that after a lapse of three thousand years. The manner in which Christianity spread over the world with a few obscure mechanics or fishermen for its promulgators; the mode in which it triumphed over paganism even when professed and supported by the power and philosophy of a Julian; the martyrs who subscribed to the truth of Christianity by shedding their blood for the faith; the exalted nature of those intellectual men by whom it has been professed who had examined all the depths of nature and exercised the profoundest faculties of thought, such as Newton, Locke, and Hartley, all appear to me strong arguments in favour of revealed religion. I prefer rather founding my creed upon the fitness of its doctrines than upon historical evidences or the nature of its miracles. The Divine Intelligence chooses that men should be convinced according to the ordinary train of their sensations, and on all occasions it appears to me more natural that a change should take place in the human mind than in the order of nature. The popular opinion of the people of Judæa was that certain diseases were occasioned by devils taking possession of a human being; the disease was cured by our Saviour, and this