Phil.—I am pleased with your views; they coincide with those I had formed at the time my imagination was employed upon the vision of the Colosæum, which I repeated to you, and are not in opposition with the opinions that the cool judgment and sound and humble faith of Ambrosio have led me since to embrace. The doctrine of the materialists was always, even in my youth, a cold, heavy, dull, and insupportable doctrine to me, and necessarily tending to Atheism. When I had heard, with disgust, in the dissecting-rooms the plan of the physiologist of the gradual accretion of matter, and its becoming endowed with irritability, ripening into sensibility and acquiring such organs as were necessary, by its own inherent forces, and at last
rising into intellectual existence, a walk into the green fields or woods by the banks of rivers brought back my feelings from nature to God; I saw in all the powers of matter the instruments of the Deity; the sunbeams, the breath of the zephyr, awakened animation in forms prepared by Divine intelligence to receive it; the insensate seed, the slumbering egg, which were to be vivified, appeared like the new-born animal, works of a Divine mind; I saw love as the creative principle in the material world, and this love only as a Divine attribute. Then, my own mind, I felt connected with new sensations and indefinite hopes, a thirst for immortality; the great names of other ages and of distant nations appeared to me to be still living around me; and, even in the funeral monuments of the heroic and the great, I saw, as it were, the decree of the indestructibility of mind. These feelings, though generally considered as poetical, yet, I think, offer a sound philosophical argument in favour of the immortality of the soul. In all the habits and instincts of young animals their feelings or movements may be traced in intimate relation to their improved perfect state; their sports have always affinities to their modes of hunting or catching their food, and young birds, even in the nest, show marks of fondness which, when their frames are developed, become signs of actions necessary to the reproduction and preservation of the species. The desire of glory, of honour, of immortal fame, and of constant knowledge, so usual in young persons of well-constituted minds, cannot, I think, be other than symptoms of the infinite and progressive nature of intellect—hopes which, as they cannot be gratified here, belong to a frame of mind suited to a nobler state of existence.
The Unknown.—Religion, whether natural or revealed, has always the same beneficial influence on the mind. In youth, in health, and prosperity, it awakens feelings of gratitude and sublime love, and purifies at the same time that it exalts; but it is in misfortune, in sickness, in age, that its effects are most truly and beneficially felt; when submission in faith and humble trust in the Divine will, from duties become pleasures, undecaying sources of consolation; then it creates powers which were believed to be extinct, and gives a freshness to the mind which was supposed to have passed away for ever, but which is now renovated as an immortal hope; then it is the Pharos, guiding the wave-tost mariner to his home, as the calm and beautiful still basins or fiords, surrounded by tranquil groves and pastoral meadows, to the Norwegian pilot escaping from a heavy storm in the north sea, or as the green and dewy spot gushing with fountains to the exhausted and thirsty traveller in the midst of the desert. Its influence outlives all earthly enjoyments, and becomes stronger as the organs decay and the frame dissolves; it appears as that evening star of light in the horizon of life, which, we are sure, is to become in another season a morning star, and it throws its radiance through the gloom and shadow of death.
DIALOGUE THE FIFTH. THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHER.
I had been made religious by the conversations of Ambrosio in Italy; my faith was strengthened and exalted by the opinions of the Unknown, for whom I
had not merely that veneration awakened by exalted talents, but a strong affection founded upon the essential benefit of the preservation of my life owing to him. I ventured, the evening after our visit to the cave of Adelsberg, to ask him some questions relating to his history and adventures. He said, “To attempt to give you any idea of the formation of my character would lead me into the history of my youth, which almost approaches to a tale of romance. The source of the little information and intelligence I possess I must refer to a restless activity of spirit, a love of glory which ever belonged to my infancy, and a sensibility easily excited and not easily conquered. My parentage was humble, yet I can believe a traditional history of my paternal grandmother, that the origin of our family was from an old Norman stock; I found this belief upon certain feelings which I can only refer to an hereditary source, a pride of decorum, a tact and refinement even in boyhood, and which are contradictory to the idea of an origin from a race of peasants. Accident opened to me in early youth a philosophical career, which I pursued with success. In manhood fortune smiled upon me and made me independent; I then really became a philosopher, and pursued my travels with the object of instructing myself and of benefiting mankind. I have seen most parts of Europe, and conversed, I believe, with all the illustrious men of science belonging to them. My life has not been unlike that of the ancient Greek sages. I have added some little to the quantity of human knowledge, and I have endeavoured to add something to the quantity of human happiness. In my early life I was a sceptic; I have informed you how I became a believer, and I
constantly bless the Supreme Intelligence for the favour of some gleams of Divine light which have been vouchsafed to me in this our state of darkness and doubt.”
Phil.—I am surprised that with your powers you did not enter into a professional career either of law or politics; you would have gained the highest honours and distinctions.
The Unknown.—To me there never has been a higher source of honour or distinction than that connected with advances in science. I have not possessed enough of the eagle in my character to make a direct flight to the loftiest altitudes in the social world, and I certainly never endeavoured to reach those heights by using the creeping powers of the reptile who, in ascending, generally chooses the dirtiest path, because it is the easiest.
Eub.—I have often wondered that men of fortune and of rank do not apply themselves more to philosophical pursuits; they offer a delightful and enviable road to distinction, one founded upon the blessings and benefits conferred on our fellow-creatures; they do not supply the same sources of temporary popularity as successes in the senate or at the bar, but the glory resulting from them is permanent and independent of vulgar taste or caprice. In looking back to the history of the last five reigns in England, we find Boyles, Cavendishes, and Howards, who rendered those great names more illustrious by their scientific honours; but we may in vain search the aristocracy now for philosophers, and there are very few persons who pursue science with true dignity; it is followed more as connected with objects of profit than those of fame, and