Seeing several respectable houses facing the meadow which led to the Thames, I inquired of a passing female the names of their owners, and learnt that they were chiefly occupied by widow ladies, to whom she gave the emphatic title of Madam—though she called one of them Mistress. It appeared that those who were denominated Madams were widows of gentlemen who, in their lives, bore the title of Esquires; but that the Mistress was an old maid, whom her neighbours were ashamed longer to call by the juvenile appellation of Miss. Madam ——, whose name I ought not to have forgotten, has devoted a paddock of four or five acres to the comfortable provision of two super-annuated coach-horses. One of them, I was assured, was thirty-five years old, and the other nearly thirty; and their venerable appearance and pleasant pasture excited a strong interest in favour of their kind-hearted mistress. Such is the influence of good example, that I found her paddock was opposite the residence of the equally amiable Valentine Morris, who so liberally provided for all his live-stock about thirty years ago, and whose oldest horse died lately, after enjoying his master’s legacy above twenty-four years.
I now descended towards a rude space near the Thames, which appeared to be in the state in which the occasional overflowings and gradual retrocession of the river had left it. It was one of those wastes which the lord of the manor had not yet enabled some industrious cultivator to disguise; and in large tracts of which Great Britain still exhibits the surface of the earth in the pristine state in which it was left by the secondary causes that have given it form. The Thames, doubtless, in a remote age, covered the entire site; but it is the tendency of rivers to narrow themselves, by promoting prolific vegetable creations on their consequently increasing and encroaching banks, though the various degrees of fall produce every variety of currents, and consequently every variety of banks, in their devious course. In due time, the course of the river becomes choaked where a flat succeeds a rapid, and the detained waters then form lakes in the interior. These lakes likewise generate encroaching banks, which finally fill up their basins, when new rivers are formed on higher levels. These, in their turn, become interrupted, and repetitions of the former circle of causes produce one class of those elevations of land above the level of the sea, which have so much puzzled geologists. The only condition which a surface of dry land requires to increase and raise itself, is the absence of salt water, consequent on which is an accumulation of vegetable and animal remains. The Thames has not latterly been allowed to produce its natural effects, because for two thousand years the banks have been inhabited by man, who, unable to appreciate the general laws by which the phenomena of the earth are produced, has sedulously kept open the course of the river, and prevented the formation of interior lakes. The Caspian Sea, and all similar inland seas and lakes, were, for the most part, formed from the choaking up of rivers, which once constituted their outlets. If the course of nature be not interrupted by the misdirected industry of man, the gradual desiccation of all such collections of water will, in due time, produce land of higher levels on their sites. In like manner, the great lakes of North America, if the St. Lawrence be not sedulously kept open, will, in the course of ages, be filled up by the gradual encroachment of their banks, and the raising of their bottoms with strata of vegetable and animal remains. New rivers would then flow over these increased elevations, and the ultimate effect would be to raise that part of the continent of North America several hundred feet above its present level. Even the very place on which I stand was, according to Webster, once a vast basin, extending from the Nore to near Reading, but now filled up with vegetable and animal remains; and the illustrious Cuvier has discovered a similar basin round the site of Paris. These once were Caspians, created by the choaking and final disappearance of some mighty rivers—they have been filled up by gradual encroachments, and now the Thames and the Seine flow over them;—but these, if left to themselves, will, in their turn, generate new lakes or basins—and the successive recurrence of a similar series of causes will continue to produce similar effects, till interrupted by superior causes.
This situation was so sequestered, and therefore so favourable to contemplation, that I could not avoid indulging myself. What then are those superior causes, I exclaimed, which will interrupt this series of natural operations to which man is indebted for the enchanting visions of hill and dale, and for the elysium of beauty and plenty in which he finds himself? Alas! facts prove, however, that all things are transitory, and that change of condition is the constant and necessary result of that motion which is the chief instrument of eternal causation, but which, in causing all phenomena, wears out existing organizations while it is generating new ones. In the motions of the earth as a planet, doubtless are to be discovered the superior causes which convert seas into continents, and continents into seas. These sublime changes are occasioned by the progress of the perihelion point of the earth’s orbit through the ecliptic, which passes from extreme northern to extreme southern declination, and vice versa, every 10,450 years; and the maxima of the central forces in the perihelion occasion the waters to accumulate alternatively upon either hemisphere. During 10,450 years, the sea is therefore gradually retiring and encroaching in both hemispheres:—hence all the varieties of marine appearances and accumulations of marine remains in particular situations; and hence the succession of layers or strata, one upon another, of marine and earthy remains. It is evident, from observation of those strata, that the periodical changes have occurred at least three times; or, in other words, it appears that the site on which I now stand has been three times covered by the ocean, and three times has afforded an asylum for vegetables and animals! How sublime—how interesting—how affecting is such a contemplation! How transitory, therefore, must be the local arrangements of man, and how puerile the study of the science miscalled Antiquities! How foolish the pride which vaunts itself on splendid buildings and costly mausoleums! How vain the ostentation of large estates, of extensive boundaries, and of great empires!—All—all—will, in due time, be swept away and effaced by the unsparing ocean; and, if recorded in the frail memorials of human science, will be spoken of like the lost Atalantis, and remembered only as a philosophical dream!
Yet, how different, thought I, is the rich scene of organized existence within my view, from that which presented itself on this spot when our planet first took its station in the solar system. The surface, judging from its present materials, was then probably of the same inorganic form and structure as the primitive rocks which still compose the Alps and Andes; or like those indurated coral islands, which are daily raising their sterile heads above the level of the great ocean, and teaching by analogy the process of fertilization. At that period, so remote and so obscure, all must have been silent, barren, and relatively motionless! But, the atmosphere and the rains having, by decomposition and solution, pulverized the rocks, and reduced them into the various earths which now fertilize the surface, from the inorganic soon sprung the vegetable, and from the vegetable, in due time, sprung the animal; till the whole was resolved into the interesting assemblage of organized existences, which now present themselves to our endless wonder and gratification.
I looked around me on this book of nature, which so eloquently speaks all languages, and which, for every useful purpose, may be read without translation or commentary, by the learned and unlearned in every age and clime. But my imagination was humbled on considering my relative and limited powers, when I desired to proceed from phenomena to causes, and to penetrate the secrets of nature below the surfaces of things. I desire, said I, to know more than my intellectual vision enables me to see in this volume of unerring truth. I can discover but the mere surfaces of things by the accidents of light. I can feel but the same surfaces in the contact of my body, and my conclusions are governed by their reciprocal relations. In like manner, I can hear, taste, and smell, only through the accidents of other media, all distinct from the nature of the substances which produce those accidents. In truth, I am the mere patient of certain illusions of my senses, and I can know nothing beyond what I derive from my capacity of receiving impressions from those illusions! Alas! thought I, I am sensible how little I know; yet how much is there which I do not, and can never, know? How much more am I incapable of knowing, with my limited organs of sense, than I might know if their capacity or their number were enlarged? How can a being, then, of such limited powers presume to examine nature beyond the mere surface? How can he measure unseen powers, of which he has no perception, but in the phenomena visible to his senses? How can he reason on the causes of effects by means of implements which reach no deeper than the accidents produced by the surfaces of things on the media which affect his senses, and which come not into contact with the powers that produce the phenomena? Ultimate causation is, therefore, hidden for ever from man; and his knowledge can reach no deeper or higher than to register mechanical phenomena, and determine their mutual relations. But there is yet enough for man to learn, and to gratify the researches of his curiosity; for, bounded as are his powers, he has always found that art is too long and life too short. He may nevertheless feel that his mind, in a certain sense, is within a species of intellectual prison; but, like the terrestrial prison which confines his body to one planet, no man ever lived long enough to exhaust the variety of subjects presented to his contemplation and curiosity by the intellectual and natural world.
We seem, however, said I, to be better qualified to investigate the external laws which govern INORGANIC MATTER, than the subtle and local powers which govern organized bodies. We appear (so to speak) to be capable of looking down upon mere matter as matter; but incapable, like the eye in viewing itself, of retiring to such a focal distance as to be able accurately to examine ourselves. It is not difficult to conceive that planetary bodies, and other masses of inorganic matter, may appear to act on each other by mutually intercepting the pressure of the elastic medium which fills space; and the pressure intercepted by each on the inner surface of the other, may, by the un-intercepted external pressure on each, produce the phenomena of mutual gravitation: nor is it improbable that the curvilinear and rotatory motions of such masses may be governed by the arrangement and mutual action of their fixed and their fluid parts; nor impracticable for the geometrician, when the phenomena are determined, to measure the mechanical relations of the powers that produce those phenomena; nor wonderful that a system of bodies so governed by general laws, should move and act in a dependent, consequent, and necessary harmony.
Thus far the intellect of an organized being may reason safely on the mechanical relations of inorganic masses, because an unequal balance of forces produces their motions, and from combined motions result the phenomena; but, in the principle of organic life, and in the duration and final purpose of the powers of vegetables and animals, there are mysteries which baffle the penetration of limited observation and reason. I behold VEGETABLES with roots fixed in the ground, and through them raising fluids mechanically; but my understanding is overpowered with unsatisfied wonder, when I consider the animating principle of the meanest vegetable, which constitutes a selfish individuality, and enables it to give new qualities to those fluids by peculiar secretions, and to appropriate them to its own nourishment and growth. My ambition after wisdom is humbled in the dust, whenever I inquire how the first germ of every species came into existence; whenever I consider the details of the varied powers in the energizing agency which originates each successive germ; and the independent, but coincident, passive receptacle which nurtures those germs, and, correcting aberrations, secures the continuity of every species—both acting as joint secondary causes; and whenever I reflect on the growth, maturity, beauty, and variety, of the vegetable kingdom! On these several subjects, my mind renders the profoundest homage to the MYSTERIOUS POWER which created and continues such miracles; and, being unable to reason upon them from the analogy of other experience, I am forced to refer such sublime results to agency not mechanical; or, if in any sense mechanical, so arranged and so moved as to exceed my means of conception.
Looking once more upon the volume of nature which lay before me, I behold a superior class of organized beings, each individual of which, constituting an independent microcosm, is qualified to move from place to place, by bodily adaptation and nervous sensibility. This kingdom of LOCO-MOTIVE BEINGS ascends, in gradations of power and intellect, from the hydatid to the sympathetic and benevolent philosopher; and rises in the scale of being as much above the organization of vegetables, as vegetables themselves are superior to the inorganic particles in which they flourish. That they may subsist while they move, their roots, instead of being fixed in the soil, are turned within a cavity, or receptacle, called the stomach, into which, appropriate soil, or aliment, is introduced by the industry of the creature; and, that their powers of loco-motion may be exerted with safety and advantage, they are provided with senses for smelling, tasting, feeling, and seeing their food; and with a power of hearing dangers which they cannot see. They are, for the same purpose, enabled to profit by experience in powers of association, of reasoning by analogy, and of willing according to their judgments; and they are governed by an habitual desire to associate in species, accompanied by moral feelings, resulting from obligations of mutual deference and convenience. Here again, humanly speaking, we have a series of natural miracles—a permanent connexion between external objects and the sensations, reasoning, and conduct of the organized being. We trace the animal frame to two constituent parts—the one mechanical, the other sensitive; the mechanical consisting of bones, skin, stomach, blood-vessels, glands, and intestines, provided with muscles and sinews for voluntary motion; and the sensitive, consisting of nerves and brain, which direct the motions by the feelings of the organs of sense—the results of the union constituting creatures whose essence is perception, springing from a system of brain and nerves, which, being nourished by the energies of circulating fluids, moved by a contrivance of muscles, and strengthened by an apparatus of bones, produce all those varieties of feeling, durable, moving, and powerful beings, whose functions continue as long as the original expansive powers balance the unceasing inertia of their materials. But, of that SUBTLE PRINCIPLE which distinguishes organic life from inert matter—of that principle of individuality which generates the passion of self-love, and leads each individual to preserve and sustain its own existence—of that principle which gives peculiar powers of growth, and maturity, to germs of vegetables and animals—and of that principle which, being stopped, suspended, or destroyed, in the meanest or greatest of them, produces the awful difference between the living and the dead—we have no knowledge, and we seem incapable of acquiring any, by the limited powers of our senses. Whether this principle of vitality is a principle of its own kind, imparted from parent plants and animals to their germs; or whether it is the result of the totality of the being, like the centre of a sphere,—are questions which must perhaps for ever remain undetermined by the reasoning powers of man.
The creature of an hour, whose chief care it is to live and indulge his self-love, who cannot see without light, nor distinctly above a few inches from the eye, is wholly incompetent to determine those questions which have so long agitated philosophy; as, Whether the phenomena of the creation could be made to exist without action and re-action, and without space?—Whether, consequently, there are THREE Eternals, or ONE Eternal?—Whether the SUPREME INTELLIGENCE, MATTER void of form, and SPACE containing it, were all eternal—or whether the supreme intelligence alone was eternal, and matter and space created?—Whether the supreme intelligence has only been exerted proximately or remotely on inorganic matter; space being the necessary medium of creation, and organization being the result?—Whether the globe of the earth, in form, is eternal, or, according to Herschel, the effect of “a clustering power” in the matter of space, beginning and ending, according to the general analogy of organized beings?—Whether the earth was a comet, the ellipticality of whose orbit has been reduced; and, if so, what was the origin of the comet?—How the secondary mountains were liquefied—whether by fire or by water—and what were the then relations of the earth to the sun?—How and when that liquefaction ceased; and how, and when, and in what order of time, the several organizations arose upon them?—How those organizations, at least those now existing, received the powers of secondary causes for continuing their kind?—How every species now lives, and grows, and maintains an eternal succession of personal identities?—How these things were before we were, and how they now are on every side of us—are topics which have made so much learning ridiculous, that, if I were to discuss them, in the best forms prescribed by the schools, I might but imitate in folly the crawling myriads, who luxuriate for an hour on a ripening peach; and who, like ourselves, may be led by their vanity to discuss questions in regard to the eternity, and other attributes, of the prodigious globe, which they have inherited from their remote ancestry, and of which the early history is lost in the obscure traditions of their countless generations!
Without presuming, however, to argue on premises which finite creatures cannot justly estimate, we may safely infer, in regard to the world in which we are placed, that all things which DO EXIST, owe their existence to their COMPATIBILITY with other existences; to the necessary FITNESS of all existing things; and to the HARMONY which is essential to the existence of any thing in the form and mode in which it does exist: for, without reciprocal COMPATIBILITY, without individual FITNESS, and without universal HARMONY, nothing could CONTINUE TO EXIST which DOES EXIST; and, therefore, what does exist, is for the time NECESSARILY COMPATIBLE with other existences, FIT or NOT INCOMPATIBLE, and in HARMONY with the whole of CO-EXISTENT BEING. Every organized EXISTENCE affords, therefore, indubitable evidence of FINAL CAUSES or PURPOSES, competent to produce and sustain it; of certain relations of FITNESS to other beings; of COMPATIBILITY with other existences; and of HARMONY in regard to the whole. And every case of DESTRUCTION affords evidence, that certain FINAL CAUSES have become unequal to their usual office; that the being is UNFIT to exist simultaneously with some other beings; that its existence is INCOMPATIBLE with certain circumstances, or that it is contrary to the general HARMONY of co-existent being. May not the fifty thousand species of beings now discoverable, be all the species whose existences have continued to be fit, compatible, and harmonious? May not the known extinction of many species be received as evidence, therefore, of the gradual decay of the powers which sustain organized being on our planet? May not the extinction of one species render the existence of others more unfit, by diminishing the number of final causes? And, may not the successive breaking or wearing out of these links of final causes ultimately lead to the end of all organized being, or to what is commonly called, THE END OF OUR WORLD?