The Philosophy of Mystery

by Walter Cooper Dendy

Is there not poetry in the delicate nautilus, with its arms dropped for oars; in the velella and purple physalia expanding their membranous sails; and the beautiful fish-lizard, the Proteus of transparent alabaster, found in the wondrous cavern of Maddalena, among the Styrian mountains; and even in the Stalactytes of Antiparos, as glittering as the gems and crystal pillars of Aladdin’s palace? Are not these more beautiful because they are true, and better to be read than all the impersonations of mythology, or that voluptuous romance which would endow a flower with the fervour of sense and passion?

Ida. I have ever wondered that a scholar, like Darwin, should have so wasted time with his “Loves of the Plants.” For the study of nature and the discoveries of science are ever vain, if they lift not the heart in adoration. The insect, that fans the sunbeam with its golden wing, or even the flower that opes its dewy eyes to the light, are unconscious worshippers of the Divine Being.

The Epicurean, who weeps for a decaying body, but mourns not for a lost soul, will enjoy these beauties of nature with a heart faithful to his creed, that pleasure is the only good; but the Christian feels that, when he chips a stone, or culls a flower, he touches that which comes fresh from the hand of its Creator.

How full is nature, too, of mute instruction! the simplest incident is a lesson, if we will but learn it. You see that fading blossom floating on the surface of the stream. That inanimate type of decaying beauty shows, to the reflective mind, that even in the summer of life the flower of existence will lose its youthful lustre, and float down the stream of time into the depths of eternity.

But tell me, Evelyn, may not the influence of that science that magnifies the lights of heaven (created to rule day and night) into habitable worlds, weaken the influence of faith in holy writ?

May we not fear that, like the Promethean Preadamites of Shelley, the Cain of Byron, the fabled beings of Ovid, and the mythology of Milton, will be the vaunted discoveries of the geologist, in controversion of the Mosaic records, of the creation and the deluge; proving the wisdom of Bacon, that to associate natural philosophy with sacred cosmogony, will lead to heretical opinions? Indeed, I remember in the Zendavesta of Zoroaster, the chronicle of the Magian religion (supposed to be a piracy from the book of Genesis), the sun IS created before light.

Ev. Fear not this, fair Ida. Rather believe with Bouget, that philosophy and natural theology mutually confirm each other. The latter teaches us that which it is our duty to believe; the former to believe more firmly. And Lord Bacon himself, in his “Cogitata et Visa,” deems natural philosophy “the surest antidote of superstition, and the food of religious faith.”

The belief in existence of a preadamite world, presumes not to controvert the Mosaic record of the development of the globe, the creation of Adam, or the fall of man. Modern geology has peopled this preadamite world with saurians, or lizards, a race of beings not concerned in the punishment of that delinquency. Of the existence of these creatures there is no doubt; the discovery of their fossil remains, without a vestige of the human skeleton, marks the period of their destruction, and that the crust of the globe enveloping these relics, might have been reduced to that chaos when “the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep;” and from which our beautiful world was fashioned by a fiat.

The truth of holy Scripture is too clear even to be disturbed by a sophist. You may recollect that Julian, the apostate, contemplated the reconstruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, in order to confute the prophecies; but Julian failed, and misfortune was the lot of all who were leagued in the impiety.

As to natural laws, think me not so profane as to cite such as the superstitious alchemyst, Paracelsus, in proof of their use in the working of a miracle; who says that “devils and witches raise storms by throwing up alum and saltpetre into the air, which comes down as rain-drops!”