have anticipated the scene which was approaching in 1641, in the
destruction of our ancient monuments in cathedral churches. He hurried
on his itinerant labours of taking draughts and transcribing
inscriptions, as he says, “to preserve them for future and better
times.” It is to the prescient spirit of Dugdale that posterity is
indebted for the ancient monuments of England, which bear the marks of
the haste, as well as the zeal, which have perpetuated them. Sir Thomas
More was no less prescient in his views; for when his son Roper was
observing to him that the Catholic religion, under the “Defender of the
Faith,” was in a most flourishing state, the answer of More was an
evidence of political foresight:—“True it is, son Roper! and yet I pray
God that we may not live to see the day that we would gladly be at
league and competition with heretics, to let them have their churches
quietly to themselves, so that they would be contented to let us have
ours quietly to ourselves.” The minds of men of great political sagacity
were at that moment, unquestionably, full of obscure indications of the
approaching change. Erasmus, when before the tomb of Becket, at
Canterbury, observing it loaded with a vast profusion of jewels, wished
that those had been distributed among the poor, and that the shrine had
only been adorned with boughs and flowers:—“For,” said he, “those who
have heaped up all this mass of treasure, will one day be plundered, and
fall a prey to those who are in power.” A prediction literally fulfilled
about twenty years after it was made. _The fall of the religious houses_
was predicted by an unknown author, (see Visions of Pier’s Ploughman,)
who wrote in the reign of Edward the Third. The event, in fact, with
which we are all well acquainted, was realized two hundred years
afterwards, by our Henry VIII. Sir Walter Raleigh foresaw the
consequences of the separatists and the sectaries in the National
Church, which occurred about the year 1530. His memorable words are,
“Time will even bring it to pass, if it were not resisted, that God
would be _turned out of churches into barns_, and from thence again into
the _fields_ and _mountains_, and under _hedges_. All order of
discipline and church government, left to _newness of opinion_, and
men’s fancies, and as _many kinds of religion_ spring up as there are
parish churches within England.” Tacitus also foresaw the calamities
which so long desolated Europe on the fall of the Roman empire, in a
work written five hundred years before the event! In that sublime
anticipation of the future, he observed, “When the Romans shall be
hunted out from those countries which they have conquered, what will
then happen? The revolted people, freed from their master-oppressor,
will not be able to subsist without destroying their neighbours, and the
most cruel wars will exist among all these nations.” Solon, at Athens,
contemplating on the port and citadel of Munychia, suddenly exclaimed,
“how blind is man to futurity! could the Athenians foresee what mischief
this will do, they would even eat it with their own teeth, to get rid of
it.” A prediction verified more than two hundred years afterwards!
Thales desired to be buried in an obscure quarter of Milesia, observing
that that very spot would in time be the forum. Charlemagne, in his old
age, observing from the window of a castle a Norman descent on his
coast, tears started in the eyes of the aged monarch. He predicted, that
since they dared to threaten his dominions while he was yet living, what
would they do when he should be no more! A melancholy prediction of
their subsequent incursions, and of the protracted calamities of the
French nation during a whole century.
In a curious treatise on “Divination,” or the knowledge of future
events, Cicero has preserved a complete account of the state
contrivances practised by the Roman government, to instil among the
people those hopes and fears by which they regulated public opinion. The
Pagan creed, now become obsolete and ridiculous, has occasioned this
treatise to be rarely consulted; it remains, however, as a chapter in
the history of man!
There appears to be something in minds which take in extensive views of
human nature, which serves them as a kind of Divination, and the
consciousness of this faculty has been asserted by some. Cicero appeals
to Atticus how he had always judged of the affairs of the republic as a
good diviner; and that its overthrow had happened, as he had foreseen,
fourteen years before. (_Ep. ad Att._ lib. 10, ep. 4.)
Cicero had not only predicted what had happened in his own times, but
also what occurred long after, according to Cornelius Nepos. The
philosopher, indeed, affects no secret revelation, nor visionary
second-sight;—he honestly tells us, that that art had been acquired
merely by study, and the administration of public affairs, while he
reminds his friend of several remarkable instances of his successful
predictions. “I do not,” says Cicero, “divine human events by the arts
practised by the augurs; but I use other signs.” Cicero then expresses
himself with the guarded obscurity of a philosopher who could not openly
ridicule the prevailing superstitions, although the nature of his
“signs” are perfectly comprehensible, when in the great pending events
of the rival conflicts of Pompey and Cæsar, he shewed the means he used
for his purpose: “On one side I consider the humour and genius of Cæsar,
and on the other, the condition and manner of civil wars.” (_Ep. ad.
Att._ lib. 6, ep. 6.) In a word, the political diviner, by his
experience of the personal character, anticipated the actions of the
individual. Others, too, have asserted the possession of this faculty.
Du Vard, an eminent chancellor of France, imagined the faculty to be
intuitive with him; from observations made by his own experience.
“Born,” says he, “with constitutional infirmity, a mind and body but ill
adapted to be laborious, with a most treacherous memory, enjoying no
gift of nature, yet able at all times to exercise a sagacity so great
that I do not know, since I have reached manhood, that any thing of
importance has happened to the state, to the public, or to myself in
particular, which I had not foreseen[32].” The same faculty appears to
be described by a remarkable expression employed by Thucidides, in his
character of Themistocles, of which the following is a close
translation. “By a species of sagacity peculiarly his own, for which he
was in no degree indebted either to early education or after study, he
was supereminently happy in forming a prompt judgment in matters that
admitted but little time for deliberation; at the same time that he far
surpassed all his _deductions of the future from the_ PAST; or was the
best guesser of the future from the past.”
Should this faculty of moral and political prediction be ever considered
as a science, it may be furnished with a denomination, for the writer of
the life of Thomas Brown, prefixed to his works, in claiming the honour
for that philosopher, calls it the “Stochastic,” a term derived from the
Greek and from Archery, meaning to “shoot at the mark.”
Aristotle, who collected all the curious knowledge of his times, has
preserved some remarkable opinions on the art of _divination_. In
detailing the various subterfuges practised by the pretended diviners of
the present day, he reveals the _secret principle_ by which one of them
regulated his predictions. He frankly declared that the FUTURE being
always very obscure, while the PAST was easy to know, _his predictions
had never the future view_; for he decided from the PAST, as it appeared
in human affairs, which, however, he concealed from the multitude.
(Arist. Rhetoric, lib. vii. c. 5.)
With regard to moral predictions on individuals, many have discovered
the future character. The revolutionary predisposition of Cardinal Retz,
even in his youth, was detected by the sagacity of Cardinal Mazarine. He
then wrote a history of the conspiracy of Fresco, with such vehement
admiration of his hero, that the Italian politician, after its perusal,
predicted that the young author would be one of the most turbulent
spirits of the age! The father of Marshal Biron, even amid the glory of
his son, discovered the cloud which, invisible to others, was to obscure
it. The father, indeed, well knew the fiery passions of his son.
“Biron,” said the domestic Seer, “I advise thee, when peace takes place,
to go and plant cabbages in thy garden, otherwise I warn thee thou wilt
lose thy head upon the scaffold!”
Lorenzo de Medici had studied the temper of his son Piero; for we are
informed by Guicciardini that he had often complained to his most
intimate friends that “he foresaw the imprudence and arrogance of his
son would occasion the ruin of his family.”
There is a singular prediction of James the first, of the evils likely
to ensue from Laud’s violence, in a conversation given by Hacket, which
the King held with Archbishop Williams. When the King was hard pressed
to promote Laud, he gave his reasons why he intended to “keep Laud back
from all place of rule and authority, because I find he hath a restless
spirit, and cannot see when matters are well, but loves to toss and
change, and to bring things to a pitch of reformation floating in his
own brain, which endangers the stedfastness of that which is in a good
pass. I speak not at random; he hath made himself known to me to be such
a one.” James then relates the circumstances to which he alludes; and at
length, when still pursued by the Archbishop, then the organ of
Buckingham, as usual, this King’s good nature too easily yielded; he did
not, however, without closing with this prediction: “Then take him to
you! but on my soul you will repent it!”
The future character of Cromwell was apparent to two of our great
politicians. “This coarse, unpromising man,” observed Lord Falkland,
pointing to Cromwell, “will be the first person in the kingdom if the
nation comes to blows!” And Archbishop Williams told Charles the First
confidentially, that “There was _that_ in Cromwell which foreboded
something dangerous, and wished his Majesty would either win him over to
him, or get him taken off!”
The incomparable character of Buonaparte, given by the Marquis of
Wellesley, predicted his fall when highest in his power. “His eagerness
of power,” says this great Statesman, “is so inordinate; his jealousy of
independence so fierce; his keenness of appetite so feverish, in all
that touches his ambition, even in the most trifling things, that he
must plunge into dreadful difficulties. He is one of an order of minds
that by nature make for themselves great reverses.”
After the commencement of the French Revolution, Lord Mansfield was once
asked when it would end? His Lordship replied, “It is an event _without
precedent_, and therefore _without prognostic_.” The fact is, however,
that it had both; as our own history, in the reign of Charles the First,
had furnished us with a precedent; and the prognostics were so
plentiful, that a volume of passages might be collected from various
writers who had foretold it.
There is a production, which does honour to the political sagacity, as
well as to his knowledge of human nature, thrown out by Bishop Butler in
a Sermon before the House of Lords, in 1741; he calculated that the
unreligious spirit would produce, some time or other, political
disorders, similar to those which, in the 17th century, had arisen from
religious fanaticism. “Is there no danger,” he observed, “that all this
may raise somewhat like _that levelling spirit_, upon Atheistical
principles, which in the last age prevailed upon enthusiastic ones? Not
to speak of the possibility that _different sorts of people_ may _unite_
in it upon these _contrary principles_!” All this has literally been
accomplished!
If a prediction be raised on facts which our own prejudice induce us to
infer will exist, it must be chimerical. The Monk Carron announces in
his Chronicle, printed in 1532, that the world was about ending, as well
as his Chronicle of it; that the Turkish Empire would not last many
years; that after the death of Charles V. the Empire of Germany would be
torn to pieces by the Germans themselves. This Monk will no longer pass
for a prophet; he belongs to that class of Chroniclers who write to
humour their own prejudices, like a certain Lady-prophetess who, in
1811, predicted that grass was to grow in Cheapside about this time!
Even when the event does not always justify the prediction, the
predictor may not have been the less correct in his principles of
divination. The catastrophe of human life, and the turn of great events,
often turn out accidental. Marshal Biron, whom we have noticed, might
have ascended the throne instead of the scaffold; Cromwell and De Retz
might have become only the favourite generals, or the ministers of their
Sovereigns. Fortuitous events are not included within the reach of human
prescience; such must be consigned to those vulgar superstitions which
presume to discover the issue of human events, without pretending to any
human knowledge. In the science of the Philosopher there is nothing
supernatural.
Predictions have sometimes been condemned as false ones, which, when
scrutinize may scarcely be deemed to have failed: they may have been
accomplished, and they may again revolve on us. In 1749, Dr. Hartley
published his “Observations on Man;” and predicted the fall of the
existing governments and hierarchies, in two simple propositions; among
others—
Prop. 81. _It is probable that all the civil governments will be
overturned._
Prop. 82. _It is probable that the present forms of Church government
will be dissolved._
Many indeed were terribly alarmed at these predicted falls of Church and
State. Lady Charlotte Wentworth asked Hartley when these terrible things
would happen? The answer of the predictor was not less awful: “I am an
old man, and shall not live to see them.” In the subsequent revolutions
of America and France, and perhaps latterly that of Spain, it can hardly
be denied that these predictions have failed.
The philosophical predictor, in foretelling some important crisis, from
the appearances of things, will not rashly assign the period of time;
for the crisis he anticipates is calculated on by that inevitable march
of events which generate each other in human affairs; but the period is
always dubious, being either retarded or accelerated by circumstances of
a nature incapable of entering into his moral arithmetic. There is,
however, a spirit of political vaccination which presumes to pass beyond
the boundaries of human prescience, which, by enthusiasts, has often
been ascribed to the highest source of inspiration; but since “the
language of prophecy” has ceased, such pretensions are not less impious
than they are unphilosophical. No one possessed a more extraordinary
portion of this awful prophetic confidence than Knox the reformer: he
appears to have predicted several remarkable events, and the fates of
some persons. We are informed that when condemned to a galley in
Rochelle, he predicted that “within two or three years, he should preach
the Gospel at St. Giles’s, in Edinburgh,” an improbable event, which
nevertheless happened as he had foretold. Of Mary and Darnley, he
pronounced that, “as the King, for the Queen’s pleasure, had gone to
mass, the Lord, in his justice, would make her the instrument of his
overthrow.” Other striking predictions of the deaths of Thomas Maitland,
and of Kirkaldly of Grange, and the warning he solemnly gave to the
Regent Murray, not to go to Linlithgow, where he was assassinated,
occasioned a barbarous people to imagine that the prophet Knox had
received an immediate communication from heaven.
An Almanack-maker, a Spanish friar, predicted, in clear and precise
words, the death of Henry the Fourth of France; and Pierese, though he
had no faith in the vain science of Astrology, yet, alarmed at whatever
menaced the life of a beloved Sovereign, consulted with some of the
King’s friends, and had the Spanish almanack before his Majesty, who
courteously thanked them for their solicitude, but utterly slighted the
prediction: the event occurred, and in the following year the Spanish
friar spread his own fame in a new almanack. This prediction of the
Spanish friar was the result either of his being acquainted with the
plot, or from his being made an instrument for the purposes of those who
were. It appears that Henry’s assassination was rife in Spain and Italy
before the event occurred.
Separating human prediction from inspired prophecy, we can only ascribe
to the faculties of man that acquired prescience which we have
demonstrated, that some great minds have unquestionably exercised. Its
principles have been discovered in the necessary dependance of effects
on general causes, and we have shewn that, impelled by the same motives,
and circumscribed by the same passions, all human affairs revolve in a
circle; and we have opened the true source of this yet imperfect science
of moral and political prediction, in an intimate, but a discriminative,
knowledge of the past. Authority is sacred when experience affords
parallels and analogies. If much which may overwhelm, when it shall
happen, can be foreseen, the prescient Statesman and Moralist may
provide defensive measures to break the waters, whose streams they
cannot always direct; and the venerable Hooker has profoundly observed,
that “the best things have been overthrown, not so much by puissance and
might of adversaries, as through defect of council in those that should
have upheld and defended the same[33].”
“The philosophy of history,” observes a late writer and excellent
observer, “blends the past with the present, and combines the present
with the future; each is but a portion of the other. The actual state of
a thing is necessarily determined by its antecedent, and thus
progressively through the chain of human existence, while, as Leibnitz
has happily expressed the idea, the present is always full of the
future. A new and beautiful light is thus thrown over the annals of
mankind, by the analogies and the parallels of different ages in
succession. How the seventeenth century has influenced the eighteenth,
and the results of the nineteenth, as they shall appear in the
twentieth, might open a source of PREDICTIONS, to which, however
difficult it might be to affix their dates, there would be none in
exploring into causes, and tracing their inevitable effects. The
multitude live only among the shadows of things in the appearance of the
PRESENT; the learned, busied with the PAST, can only trace whence, and
how, all comes; but he who is one of the people and one of the learned,
the true philosopher, views the natural tendency and terminations which
are preparing for the FUTURE.”
FATALISM, OR PREDESTINATION.
Under the name of materialism things very different from those generally
understood are designated: it is the same with respect to fatalism. If
it be maintained that every thing in the world, and the world itself,
are necessary; that all that takes place is the effect of chance or of
blind necessity, and that no supreme intelligence is mixed with, nor in
fact mixes with existing objects; this doctrine is a kind of fatalism,
differing very little from atheism. But this fatalism has nothing in
common with the doctrine which establishes the innateness of the
faculties of the soul and mind, and their independence upon
organization. We cannot, then, under the first consideration, be accused
of fatalism.
Another species of fatalism is that which teaches that in truth there
exists a Supreme Being, creator of the universe, as well as of all the
laws and properties connected with it; but that he has fixed those laws
in so immutable a manner, that every thing that happens could not happen
otherwise. In this system, man is necessarily carried away by the causes
that compel him to act, without any participation whatever of the will.
His actions are always a necessary result, without voluntary choice or
moral liberty; they are neither punishable or meritorious, and the hope
of future rewards vanishes, as well as the fear of future punishment.
This is the fatalism with which superstitious ignorance accuse the
physiology of the brain[34], that is the doctrine relative to the
functions of the most noble organization in the world. “I have
effectually proved,” says Dr. Gall, “that all our moral and intellectual
dispositions are innate; that none of our propensities or talents, not
even the understanding and will, can manifest themselves independent of
this organization. To which also may be added, that it does not depend
upon man to be gifted with organs peculiar to his species, consequently
with such or such propensities or faculties. Must it now be inferred
that man is not the master of his _actions_, that there exists no free
will, consequently neither a meritorious nor an unworthy act?”
Before this conclusion is refuted, let us examine with the frankness
worthy of true philosophy, how far man is submitted to the immutable
laws of his Creator, how far we ought to acknowledge an inevitable
necessity, a destiny, or fatalism. To unravel confused ideas, is the
best method of placing truth in its clearest point of view.
Man is obliged to acknowledge the most powerful and determined influence
of a multitude of things relative to his happiness or misery, and even
over his whole conduct, without of himself being able either to add to,
or subtract from that influence. No one can call himself to life; no one
can choose the time, the climate, or the nation in which he shall be
born; no one can fix the manners, laws, customs, form of government,
religious prejudices, or the superstitions with which he shall be
surrounded from the moment of his birth; no one can say, I will be
master or servant, the eldest son or the youngest son; I will have a
robust or a debilitated state of health; I will be a man or a woman; I
will have such or such a constitution: I will be a fool, an idiot, a
simpleton, a man of understanding, or a man of genius, passionate or
calm, of a mild or cross nature, modest or proud, stupid or circumspect,
cowardly or prone to voluptuousness, humble or independent: no one can
determine the degree of prudence or the foolishness of his superiors,
the noxious or useful example he shall meet with, the result of his
connexions, the fortuitous events, the influence of external things over
him, the condition of his father and mother, or his own, or the source
of irritation that his desires or passions will experience. The
relations of the five senses with external things, and the number and
functions of the viscera and members, have been fixed in the same
invariable manner; so nature is the source of our propensities,
sentiments, and faculties. Their reciprocal influence, and their
relations with external objects, have been irrevocably determined by the
laws of our organization.
As it does not depend upon ourselves to have or see when objects strikes
our ears or our eyes, in the same manner our judgments are necessarily
the results of the laws of thought. “Judgment, very rightly,” says Mr.
Tracy, “in this sense is independent of the will; it is not under our
controul, when we perceive a real relation betwixt two of our
perceptions, not to feel it as it actually is, that is, such as should
appear to every being organized as ourselves, if they were precisely in
the same situation. It is this necessity which constitutes the certainty
and reality of every thing we are acquainted with. For if it only
depended upon our fancy to be affected with a great thing as if it were
a small one, with a good as if it were a bad one, with one that is true
as if it were false, there would no longer exist any thing real in the
world, at least for us. There would neither be greatness nor smallness,
good nor evil, falsehood nor truth; our fancy alone would be every
thing. Such an order of things cannot even be conceived; it implies
contradiction.
Since primitive organization, sex, age, constitution, education,
climate, form of government, religion, prejudices, superstitions, &c.
exercise the most decided influence over our sensations and ideas, our
judgments and the determination of our will, the nature and force of our
propensities and talents, consequently over the first motives of our
actions, it must be confessed that man, in several of the most important
moments of his life, is under the empire of a destiny, which sometimes
fixes him like the inert shell against a rock; at others, it carries him
away in a whirlwind, like the dust.
It is not then surprising that the sages of Greece, of the Indies, China
and Japan, the Christians of the east and west, and the Mahomedans, have
worked up this species of fatalism with their different doctrines. In
all times our moral and intellectual faculties have been made to take
their origin from God; and in all times it has been taught that all the
gifts of men came from heaven; that God has, from all eternity, chosen
the elect; that man of himself is incapable of any good thought; that
every difference between men, relative to their faculties, comes from
God; that there are only those to whom it has been given by a superior
power who are capable of certain actions; that every one acts after his
own innate character, the same as the fig tree does not bear grapes, nor
the vine figs, and the same that a salt spring does not run in fresh
water; lastly, that all cannot dive into the mysteries of nature, nor
the decrees of Providence.
It is this same kind of fatalism, this same inevitable influence of
superior powers, that has been taught by the fathers of the church. St.
Augustine wished this very same doctrine to be preached, to profess
loudly in the belief of the infallibility of Providence, and our entire
dependence upon God. “In the same manner, he says, no one can give
himself life, no one can give himself understanding.” If some are
unacquainted with the truth, it is, according to his doctrine, because
they have not received the necessary capacity to know it. He refutes the
objections that might be urged against the justice of God: he remarks
that neither has the grace of God distributed equally to every one the
temporal goods, such as address, strength, health, beauty, wit, and the
disposition for the arts and sciences, riches, honors, &c. St. Cyprian
at that time had already said, that we ought not to be proud of our
qualities, for we possess nothing from ourselves.
If people had not always been convinced of the influence of external and
internal conditions relative to the determination of our will, upon our
actions, why, in all times and among every people, have civil and
religious laws been made to subdue and direct the desires of men? There
is no religion that has not ordained abstinence from certain meats and
drinks, fasting and mortification of the body. From the time of Solomon
the wise down to our own time, we know of no observer of human nature
that has not acknowledged that the physical and moral man is entirely
dependant on the laws of the creation.
DIVINATION,
Is the art or act of foretelling future events, and is divided by the
ancients into artificial and natural.
ARTIFICIAL DIVINATION,