The impression made upon my mind by the stranger with whom we became
acquainted at Paestum was of the strongest and most extraordinary kind.
The memory of his person, his dress, his manners, the accents of his
voice, and the tone of his philosophy, for a long while haunted my
imagination in a most unaccountable manner, and even formed a part of my
dreams. It often occurred to me that this was not the first time that I
had seen him; and I endeavoured, but in vain, to find some type or image
of him in former scenes of my life. I continually made inquiries
respecting him amongst my acquaintance, but I could never be sure that
any of them knew him, or even had seen him. So great were his
peculiarities, that he must have escaped observation altogether; for, had
he entered the world at all, he must have made some noise in it. I
expressed so much interest on this subject, that at last it became a
source of ridicule amongst my acquaintance, who often asked me if I had
not yet obtained news of my spirit-friend or ghost-seer.
After my return from Naples to Rome, I was almost immediately recalled to
England by a melancholy event--the death of a very near and dear
relation--and I left my two friends, Ambrosio and Onuphrio, to pursue
their travels, which were intended to be of some extent and duration.
In my youth, and through the prime of manhood, I never entered London
without feelings of pleasure and hope. It was to me as the grand theatre
of intellectual activity, the field of every species of enterprise and
exertion, the metropolis of the world of business, thought, and action.
There I was sure to find the friends and companions of my youth, to hear
the voice of encouragement and praise. There, society of the most
refined kind offered daily its banquets to the mind with such variety
that satiety had no place in them, and new objects of interest and
ambition were constantly exciting attention either in politics,
literature, or science.
I now entered this great city in a very different tone of mind--one of
settled melancholy; not merely produced by the mournful event which
recalled me to my country, but owing, likewise, to an entire change in
the condition of my physical, moral, and intellectual being. My health
was gone, my ambition was satisfied, I was no longer excited by the
desire of distinction; what I regarded most tenderly was in the grave,
and, to take a metaphor derived from the change produced by time in the
juice of the grape, my cup of life was no longer sparkling, sweet, and
effervescent;--it had lost its sweetness without losing its power, and it
had become bitter.
After passing a few months in England and enjoying (as much as I could
enjoy anything) the society of the few friends who still remained alive,
the desire of travel again seized me. I had preserved amidst the wreck
of time one feeling strong and unbroken: the love of natural scenery; and
this, in advanced life, formed a principal motive for my plans of conduct
and action. Of all the climates of Europe, England seems to me most
fitted for the activity of the mind, and the least suited to repose. The
alterations of a climate so various and rapid continually awake new
sensations; and the changes in the sky from dryness to moisture, from the
blue ethereal to cloudiness and fogs, seem to keep the nervous system in
a constant state of disturbance. In the mild climate of Nice, Naples, or
Sicily, where even in winter it is possible to enjoy the warmth of the
sunshine in the open air, beneath palm trees or amidst evergreen groves
of orange trees covered with odorous fruit and sweet-scented leaves, mere
existence is a pleasure, and even the pains of disease are sometimes
forgotten amidst the balmy influence of nature, and a series of agreeable
and uninterrupted sensations invite to repose and oblivion. But in the
changeful and tumultuous atmosphere of England, to be tranquil is a
labour, and employment is necessary to ward off the attacks of ennui. The
English as a nation is pre-eminently active, and the natives of no other
country follow their objects with so much force, fire, and constancy.
And, as human powers are limited, there are few examples of very
distinguished men living in this country to old age: they usually fail,
droop, and die before they have attained the period naturally marked for
the end of human existence. The lives of our statesmen, warriors, poets,
and even philosophers offer abundant proofs of the truth of this opinion;
whatever burns, consumes--ashes remain. Before the period of youth is
passed, grey hairs usually cover those brows which are adorned with the
civic oak or the laurel; and in the luxurious and exciting life of the
man of pleasure, their tints are not even preserved by the myrtle wreath
or the garland of roses from the premature winter of time.
In selecting the scenes for my new journey I was guided by my former
experience. I know no country more beautiful than that which may be
called the Alpine country of Austria, including the Alps of the southern
Tyrol, those of Illyria, the Noric and the Julian Alps, and the Alps of
Styria and Salzburg. The variety of the scenery, the verdure of the
meadows and trees, the depths of the valleys, the altitude of the
mountains, the clearness and grandeur of the rivers and lakes give it, I
think, a decided superiority over Switzerland; and the people are far
more agreeable. Various in their costumes and manners, Illyrians,
Italians, or Germans, they have all the same simplicity of character, and
are all distinguished by their love of their country, their devotion to
their sovereign, the warmth and purity of their faith, their honesty, and
(with very few exceptions) I may say their great civility and courtesy to
strangers.
In the prime of life I had visited this region in a society which
afforded me the pleasures of intellectual friendship and the delights of
refined affection; later I had left the burning summer of Italy and the
violence of an unhealthy passion, and had found coolness, shade, repose,
and tranquillity there; in a still more advanced period I had sought for
and found consolation, and partly recovered my health after a dangerous
illness, the consequence of labour and mental agitation; there I had
found the spirit of my early vision. I was desirous, therefore, of again
passing some time in these scenes in the hope of re-establishing a broken
constitution; and though this hope was a feeble one, yet at least I
expected to spend a few of the last days of life more tranquilly and more
agreeably than in the metropolis of my own country. Nature never
deceives us. The rocks, the mountains, the streams always speak the same
language. A shower of snow may hide the verdant woods in spring, a
thunderstorm may render the blue limpid streams foul and turbulent; but
these effects are rare and transient: in a few hours or at least days all
the sources of beauty are renovated. And Nature affords no continued
trains of misfortunes and miseries, such as depend upon the constitution
of humanity; no hopes for ever blighted in the bud; no beings full of
life, beauty, and promise taken from us in the prime of youth. Her
fruits are all balmy, bright, and sweet; she affords none of those
blighted ones so common in the life of man and so like the fabled apples
of the Dead Sea--fresh and beautiful to the sight, but when tasted full
of bitterness and ashes. I have already mentioned the strong effect
produced on my mind by the stranger whom I had met so accidentally at
Paestum; the hope of seeing him again was another of my motives for
wishing to leave England, and (why, I know not) I had a decided
presentiment that I was more likely to meet him in the Austrian states
than in England, his own country.
For this journey I had one companion, an early friend and medical
adviser. He had lived much in the world, had acquired a considerable
fortune, had given up his profession, was now retired, and sought, like
myself, in this journey repose of mind and the pleasures derived from
natural scenery. He was a man of a very powerful and acute
understanding, but had less of the poetical temperament than any person
whom I had ever known with similar vivacity of mind. He was a severe
thinker, with great variety of information, an excellent physiologist,
and an accomplished naturalist. In his reasonings he adopted the
precision of a geometer, and was always upon his guard against the
influence of imagination. He had passed the meridian of life, and his
health was weak, like my own, so that we were well suited as travelling
companions, moving always slowly from place to place without hurry or
fatigue. I shall call this friend Eubathes. I will say nothing of the
progress of our journey through France and Germany; I shall dwell only
upon that part of it which has still a strong interest for me, and where
events occurred that I shall never forget. We passed into the Alpine
country of Austria by Lintz, on the Danube, and followed the course of
the Traun to Gmunden, on the Traun See or lake of the Traun, where we
halted for some days. If I were disposed to indulge in minute
picturesque descriptions I might occupy hours with details of the various
characters of the enchanting scenery in this neighbourhood. The vales
have that pastoral beauty and constant verdure which is so familiar to us
in England, with similar enclosures and hedge-rows and fruit and forest
trees. Above are noble hills planted with beeches and oaks. Mountains
bound the view, here covered with pines and larches, there raising their
marble crests capped with eternal snows above the clouds. The lower part
of the Traun See is always, even in the most rainy season, perfectly
pellucid; and the Traun pours out of it over ledges of rocks a large and
magnificent river, beautifully clear and of the purest tint of the beryl.
The fall of the Traun, about ten miles below Gmunden, was one of our
favourite haunts. It is a cataract which, when the river is full, may be
almost compared to that of Schaffhausen for magnitude, and possesses the
same peculiar characters of grandeur in the precipitous rush of its awful
and overpowering waters, and of beauty in the tints of its streams and
foam, and in the forms of the rocks over which it falls, and the cliffs
and woods by which it is overhung. In this spot an accident, which had
nearly been fatal to me, occasioned the renewal of my acquaintance in an
extraordinary manner with the mysterious unknown stranger. Eubathes, who
was very fond of fly-fishing, was amusing himself by catching graylings
for our dinner in the stream above the fall. I took one of the boats
which are used for descending the canal or lock artificially cut in the
rock by the side of the fall, on which salt and wood are usually
transported from Upper Austria to the Danube; and I desired two of the
peasants to assist my servant in permitting the boat to descend by a rope
to the level of the river below. My intention was to amuse myself by
this rapid species of locomotion along the descending sluice. For some
moments the boat glided gently along the smooth current, and I enjoyed
the beauty of the moving scene around me, and had my eye fixed upon the
bright rainbow seen upon the spray of the cataract above my head; when I
was suddenly roused by a shout of alarm from my servant, and, looking
round, I saw that the piece of wood to which the rope had been attached
had given way, and the boat was floating down the river at the mercy of
the stream. I was not at first alarmed, for I saw that my assistants
were procuring long poles with which it appeared easy to arrest the boat
before it entered the rapidly descending water of the sluice, and I
called out to them to use their united force to reach the longest pole
across the water that I might be able to catch the end of it in my hand.
And at this moment I felt perfect security; but a breeze of wind suddenly
came down the valley and blew from the nearest bank, the boat was turned
by it out of the side current and thrown nearer to the middle of the
river, and I soon saw that I was likely to be precipitated over the
cataract. My servant and the boatmen rushed into the water, but it was
too deep to enable them to reach the boat; I was soon in the white water
of the descending stream, and my danger was inevitable. I had presence
of mind enough to consider whether my chance of safety would be greater
by throwing myself out of the boat or by remaining in it, and I preferred
the latter expedient. I looked from the rainbow upon the bright sun
above my head, as if taking leave for ever of that glorious luminary; I
raised one pious aspiration to the divine source of light and life; I was
immediately stunned by the thunder of the fall, and my eyes were closed
in darkness. How long I remained insensible I know not. My first
recollections after this accident were of a bright light shining above
me, of warmth and pressure in different parts of my body, and of the
noise of the rushing cataract sounding in my ears. I seemed awakened by
the light from a sound sleep, and endeavoured to recall my scattered
thoughts, but in vain; I soon fell again into slumber. From this second
sleep I was awakened by a voice which seemed not altogether unknown to
me, and looking upwards I saw the bright eye and noble countenance of the
Unknown Stranger whom I had met at Paestum. I faintly articulated: "I am
in another world." "No," said the stranger, "you are safe in this; you
are a little bruised by your fall, but you will soon be well; be tranquil
and compose yourself. Your friend is here, and you will want no other
assistance than he can easily give you." He then took one of my hands,
and I recognised the same strong and warm pressure which I had felt from
his parting salute at Paestum. Eubathes, whom I now saw with an
expression of joy and of warmth unusual to him, gave a hearty shake to
the other hand, and they both said, "You must repose a few hours longer."
After a sound sleep till the evening, I was able to take some
refreshment, and found little inconvenience from the accident except some
bruises on the lower part of the body and a slight swimming in the head.
The next day I was able to return to Gmunden, where I learnt from the
Unknown the history of my escape, which seemed almost miraculous to me.
He said that he was often in the habit of combining pursuits of natural
history with the amusements derived from rural sports and was fishing the
day that my accident happened below the fall of the Traun for that
peculiar species of the large _salmo_ of the Danube which, fortunately
for me, is only to be caught by very strong tackle. He saw, to his very
great astonishment and alarm, the boat and my body precipitated by the
fall, and was so fortunate as to entangle his hooks in a part of my dress
when I had been scarcely more than a minute under water, and by the
assistance of his servant, who was armed with the gaff or curved hook for
landing large fish, I was safely conveyed to the shore, undressed, put
into a warm bed, and by the modes of restoring suspended animation, which
were familiar to him, I soon recovered my sensibility and consciousness.
I was desirous of reasoning with him and Eubathes upon the state of
annihilation of power and transient death which I had suffered when in
the water; but they both requested me to defer those inquiries, which
required too profound an exertion of thought, till the effects of the
shock on my weak constitution were over and my strength was somewhat re-
established: and I was the more contented to comply with their request as
the Unknown said it was his intention to be our companion for at least
some days longer, and that his objects of pursuit lay in the very country
in which we were making our summer tour. It was some weeks before I was
sufficiently strong to proceed on our journey, for my frame was little
fitted to bear such a trial as that which it had experienced; and,
considering the weak state of my body when I was immerged in the water, I
could hardly avoid regarding my recovery as providential, and the
presence and assistance of the Stranger as in some way connected with the
future destiny and utility of my life. In the middle of August we
pursued our plans of travel. We first visited those romantic lakes,
Hallsstadt, Aussee, and Toplitz See, which collect the melted snows of
the higher mountains of Styria to supply the unfailing sources of the
Traun. We visited that elevated region of the Tyrol which forms the
crest of the Pusterthal, and where the same chains of glaciers send down
streams to the Drave and the Adige, to the Black Sea and to the Adriatic.
We remained for many days in those two magnificent valleys which afford
the sources of the Save, where that glorious and abundant river rises, as
it were, in the very bosom of beauty, leaping from its subterraneous
reservoirs in the snowy mountains of Terglou and Manhardt in thundering
cataracts amongst cliffs and woods into the pure and deep cerulean lakes
of Wochain and Wurzen, and pursuing its course amidst pastoral meadows so
ornamented with plants and trees as to look the garden of Nature. The
subsoil or strata of this part of Illyria are entirely calcareous and
full of subterranean caverns, so that in every declivity large funnel-
shaped cavities, like the craters of volcanoes, may be seen, in which the
waters that fall from the atmosphere are lost: and almost every lake or
rives has a subterraneous source, and often a subterraneous exit. The
Laibach river rises twice from the limestone rock, and is twice again
swallowed up by the earth before it makes its final appearance and is
lost in the Save. The Zirknitz See or Lake is a mass of water entirely
filled and emptied by subterraneous sources, and its natural history,
though singular, has in it nothing of either prodigy, mystery, or wonder.
The Grotto of the Maddalena at Adelsberg occupied more of our attention
than the Zirknitz See. I shall give the conversation that took place in
that extraordinary cavern entire, as well as I can remember it, in the
words used by my companions.
_Eub_.--We must be many hundred feet below the surface, yet the
temperature of this cavern is fresh and agreeable.
_The Unknown_.--This cavern has the mean temperature of the atmosphere,
which is the case with all subterraneous cavities removed from the
influence of the solar light and heat; and, in so hot a day in August as
this, I know no more agreeable or salutary manner of taking a cold bath
than in descending to a part of the atmosphere out of the influence of
those causes which occasion its elevated temperature.
_Eub_.--Have you, sir, been in this country before?
_The Unknown_.--This is the third summer that I have made it the scene of
an annual visit. Independently of the natural beauties found in Illyria,
and the various sources of amusement which a traveller fond of natural
history may find in this region, it has had a peculiar object of interest
for me in the extraordinary animals which are found in the bottom of its
subterraneous cavities: I allude to the Proteus anguinus, a far greater
wonder of nature than any of those which the Baron Valvasa detailed to
the Royal Society a century and half ago as belonging to Carniola, with
far too romantic an air for a philosopher.
_Phil_.--I have seen these animals in passing through this country
before; but I should be very glad to be better acquainted with their
natural history.
_The Unknown_.--We shall soon be in that part of the grotto where they
are found, and I shall willingly communicate the little that I have been
able to learn respecting their natural characters and habits.
_Eub_.--The grotto now becomes really magnificent; I have seen no
subterraneous cavity with so many traits of beauty and of grandeur. The
irregularity of its surface, the magnitude of the masses broken in pieces
which compose its sides, and which seem torn from the bosom of the
mountain by some great convulsion of nature, their dark colours and deep
shades form a singular contrast with the beauty, uniformity, I may say,
order and grace of the white stalactical concretions which hang from the
canopy above, and where the light of our torches reflected from the
brilliant or transparent calcareous gems create a scene which almost
looks like one produced by enchantment.
_Phil_.--If the awful chasms of dark masses of rock surrounding us appear
like the work of demons who might be imagined to have risen from the
centre of the earth, the beautiful works of Nature above our heads may be
compared to a scenic representation of a temple or banquet hall for
fairies or genii, such as those fabled in the Arabian romances.
_The Unknown_.--A poet might certainly place here the palace of the King
of the Gnomes, and might find marks of his creative power in the small
lake close by on which the flame of the torch is now falling, for there
it is that I expect to find the extraordinary animals which have been so
long the objects of my attention.
_Eub_.--I see three or four creatures, like slender fish, moving on the
mud below the water.
_The Unknown_.--I see them; they are the Protei. Now I have them in my
fishing-net, and now they are safe in the pitcher of water. At first
view you might suppose this animal to be a lizard, but it has the motions
of a fish. Its head and the lower part of its body and its tail bear a
strong resemblance to those of the eel; but it has no fins, and its
curious bronchial organs are not like the gills of fishes: they form a
singular vascular structure, as you see, almost like a crest, round the
throat, which may be removed without occasioning the death of the animal,
which is likewise furnished with lungs. With this double apparatus for
supplying air to the blood, it can live either below or above the surface
of the water. Its fore-feet resemble hands, but they have only three
claws or fingers, and are too feeble to be of use in grasping or
supporting the weight of the animal; the hinder feet have only two claws
or toes, and in the larger specimens are found so imperfect as to be
almost obliterated. It has small points in place of eyes, as if to
preserve the analogy of Nature. It is of a fleshy whiteness and
transparency in its natural state; but when exposed to light, its skin
gradually becomes darker, and at last gains an olive tint. Its nasal
organs appear large, and it is abundantly furnished with teeth: from
which it may be concluded that it is an animal of prey; yet in its
confined state it has never been known to eat, and it has been kept alive
for many years by occasionally changing the water in which it was placed.
_Eub_.--Is this the only place in Carniola where these animals are found?
_The Unknown_.--They were first discovered here by the late Baron Zois;
but they have since been found, though rarely, at Sittich, about thirty
miles distant, thrown up by water from a subterraneous cavity; and I have
lately heard it reported that some individuals of the same species have
been recognised in the calcareous strata in Sicily.
_Eub_.--This lake in which we have seen these animals is a very small
one. Do you suppose they are bred here?
_The Unknown_.--Certainly not. In dry seasons they are seldom found
here, but after great rains they are often abundant. I think it cannot
be doubted that their natural residence is in an extensile deep
subterranean lake, from which in great floods they sometimes are forced
through the crevices of the rocks into this place where they are found;
and it does not appear to me impossible, when the peculiar nature of the
country in which we are is considered, that the same great cavity may
furnish the individuals which have been found at Adelsberg and at
Sittich.
_Eub_.--This is a very extraordinary view of the subject. Is it not
possible that it may be the larva of some large unknown animal inhabiting
these limestone cavities? Its feet are not in harmony with the rest of
its organisation; and were they removed, it would have all the characters
of a fish.
_The Unknown_.--I cannot suppose that they are larvae. There is, I
believe, in Nature no instance of a transition by this species of
metamorphosis from a more perfect to a less perfect animal. The tadpole
has a resemblance to a fish before it becomes a frog; the caterpillar and
the maggot gain not only more perfect powers of motion on the earth in
their new state, but acquire organs by which they inhabit a new element.
This animal, I dare say, is much larger than we now see it when mature in
its native place; but its comparative anatomy is exceedingly hostile to
the idea that it is an animal in a state of transition. It has been
found of various sizes, from that of the thickness of a quill to that of
the thumb, but its form of organs has been always the same. It is surely
a perfect animal of a peculiar species. And it adds one instance more to
the number already known of the wonderful manner in which life is
produced and perpetuated in every part of our globe, even in places which
seem the least suited to organised existences. And the same infinite
power and wisdom which has fitted the camel and the ostrich for the
deserts of Africa, the swallow that secretes its own nest for the caves
of Java, the whale for the Polar seas, and the morse and white bear for
the Arctic ice, has given the proteus to the deep and dark subterraneous
lakes of Illyria--an animal to whom the presence of light is not
essential, and who can live indifferently in air and in water, on the
surface of the rock, or in the depths of the mud.
_Phil_.--It is now ten years since I first visited this spot. I was
exceedingly anxious to see the proteus, and came here with the guide in
the evening of the day I arrived at Adelsberg; but though we examined the
bottom of the cave with the greatest care, we could find no specimens. We
returned the next morning and were more fortunate, for we discovered five
close to the bank on the mud covering the bottom of the lake; the mud was
smooth and perfectly undisturbed, and the water quite clear. This fact
of their appearance during the night seemed to me so extraordinary, that
I could hardly avoid the fancy that they were new creations. I saw no
cavities through which they could have entered, and the undisturbed state
of the lake seemed to give weight to my notion. My reveries became
discursive; I was carried in imagination back to the primitive state of
the globe, when the great animals of the sauri kind were created under
the pressure of a heavy atmosphere; and my notion on this subject was not
destroyed when I heard from a celebrated anatomist, to whom I sent the
specimens I had collected, that the organisation of the spine of the
proteus was analogous to that of one of the sauri, the remains of which
are found in the older secondary strata. It was said at this time that
no organs of reproduction had been discovered in any of the specimens
examined by physiologists, and this lent a weight to my opinion of the
possibility of their being actually new creations, which I suppose you
will condemn as wholly visionary and unphilosophical.
_Eub_.--From the tone in which you make your statements, I think you
yourself consider them as unworthy of discussion. On such ground eels
might be considered new creations, for their mature ovaria have not yet
been discovered, and they come from the sea into rivers under
circumstances when it is difficult to trace their course.
_The Unknown_.--The problem of the reproduction of the proteus, like that
of the common eel, is not yet solved; but ovaria have been discovered in
animals of both species, and in this instance, as in all others belonging
to the existing order of things, Harvey's maxim of "omne vivum ab ovo"
will apply.
_Eub_.--You just now said that this animal has been long an object of
attention to you; have you studied it as a comparative anatomist, in
search of the solution of the problem of its reproduction?
_The Unknown_.--No; this inquiry has been pursued by much abler
investigators: by Schreiber and Configliachi; my researches were made
upon its respiration and the changes occasioned in water by its bronchia.
_Eub_.--I hope they have been satisfactory.
_The Unknown_.--They proved to me, at least, that not merely the oxygen
dissolved in water, but likewise a part of the azote, was absorbed in the
respiration of this animal.
_Eub_.--So that your researches confirm those of the French savants and
Alexander von Humboldt, that in the respiration of animals which separate
air from water, both principles of the atmosphere are absorbed.
_Phil_.--I have heard so many and such various opinions on the nature of
the function of respiration during my education and since, that I should
like to know what is the modern doctrine on this subject. I can hardly
refer to better authority than yourself, and I have an additional reason
for wishing for some accurate knowledge on this matter, having, as you
well know, been the subject of an experiment in relation to it which, but
for your kind and active assistance, must have terminated fatally.
_The Unknown_.--I shall gladly state what I know, which is very little.
In physics and in chemistry, the science of dead matter, we possess many
facts and a few principles or laws; but whenever the functions of life
are considered, though the facts are numerous, yet there is, as yet,
scarcely any approach to general laws, and we must usually end where we
begin by confessing our entire ignorance.
_Eub_.--I will not allow this ignorance to be entire. Something,
undoubtedly, has been gained by the knowledge of the circulation of the
blood and its aeration in the lungs--these, if not laws, are at least
fundamental principles.
_The Unknown_.--I speak only of the functions in their connection with
life. We are still ignorant of the source of animal heat, though half a
century ago the chemists thought they had proved it was owing to a sort
of combustion of the carbon of the blood.
_Phil_.--As we return to our inn I hope you will both be so good as give
me your views of the nature of this function, so important to all living
things; tell me what you _know_, or what you _believe_, or what others
_imagine they know_.
_The Unknown_.--The powers of the organic system depend upon a continued
state of change. The waste of the body produced in muscular action,
perspiration, and various secretions, is made up for by the constant
supply of nutritive matter to the blood by the absorbents, and by the
action of the heart the blood is preserved in perpetual motion through
every part of the body. In the lungs, or bronchia, the venous blood is
exposed to the influence of air and undergoes a remarkable change, being
converted into arterial blood. The obvious chemical alteration of the
air is sufficiently simple in this process: a certain quantity of carbon
only is added to it, and it receives an addition of heat or vapour; the
volumes of elastic fluid inspired and expired (making allowance for
change of temperature) are the same, and if ponderable agents only were
to be regarded it would appear as if the only use of respiration were to
free the blood from a certain quantity of carbonaceous matter. But it is
probable that this is only a secondary object, and that the change
produced by respiration upon the blood is of a much more important kind.
Oxygen, in its elastic state, has properties which are very
characteristic: it gives out light by compression, which is not certainly
known to be the case with any other elastic fluid except those with which
oxygen has entered without undergoing combustion; and from the fire it
produces in certain processes, and from the manner in which it is
separated by positive electricity in the gaseous state from its
combinations, it is not easy to avoid the supposition that it contains,
besides its ponderable elements, some very subtle matter which is capable
of assuming the form of heat and light. My idea is that the common air
inspired enters into the venous blood entire, in a state of dissolution,
carrying with it its subtle or ethereal part, which in ordinary cases of
chemical change is given off; that it expels from the blood carbonic acid
gas and azote; and that in the course of the circulation its ethereal
part and its ponderable part undergo changes which belong to laws that
cannot be considered as chemical--the ethereal part probably producing
animal heat and other effects, and the ponderable part contributing to
form carbonic acid and other products. The arterial blood is necessary
to all the functions of life, and it is no less connected with the
irritability of the muscles and the sensibility of the nerves than with
the performance of all the secretions.
_Eub_.--No one can be more convinced than I am of the very limited extent
of our knowledge in chemical physiology, and when I say that, having been
a disciple and friend of Dr. Black, I am still disposed to prefer his
ancient view to your new one, I wish merely to induce you to pause and to
hear my reasons; they may appear insufficient to you, but I am anxious to
explain them. First, then, in all known chemical changes in which oxygen
gas is absorbed and carbonic acid gas formed, heat is produced. I could
mention a thousand instances, from the combustion of wood or spirits of
wine to the fermentation of fruit or the putrefaction of animal matter.
This general fact, which may be almost called a law, is in favour of the
view of Dr. Black. Another circumstance in favour of it is, that those
animals which possess the highest temperature consume the greatest
quantity of air, and, under different circumstances of action and repose,
the heat is in great measure proportional to the quantity of oxygen
consumed. Then those animals which absorb the smallest quantity of air
are cold-blooded. Another argument in favour of Dr. Black's opinion is
the change of colour of blood from black to red, which seems to show that
it loses carbon.
_The Unknown_.--With the highest respect for the memory of Dr. Black, and
for the opinion of his disciple, I shall answer the arguments I have just
heard. I will not allow any facts or laws from the action of dead matter
to apply to living structures; the blood is a living fluid, and of this
we are sure that it does not burn in respiration. The terms warmth and
cold, as applied to the blood of animals, are improper in the sense in
which they have been just used; all animals are, in fact, warm-blooded,
and the degrees of their temperature are fitted to the circumstances
under which they live, and those animals, the life of which is most
active, possess most heat, which may be the result of general actions,
and not a particular effect of respiration. Besides, a distinguished
physiologist has rendered it probable that the animal heat depends more
upon the functions of the nerves than upon any result of respiration. The
argument derived from change of colour is perfectly delusive; it would
not follow if carbon were liberated from the blood that it must
necessarily become brighter; sulphur combining with charcoal becomes a
clear fluid, and a black oxide of copper becomes red in uniting with a
substance which abounds in carbon. No change in sensible qualities can
ever indicate with precision the nature of chemical change. I shall
resume my view, which I cannot be said to have fully developed. When I
stated that carbonic acid was formed in the venous blood in the processes
of life, I meant merely to say that this blood, in consequence of certain
changes, became capable of giving off carbon and oxygen in union with
each other, for the moment inorganic matter enters into the composition
of living organs it obeys new laws. The action of the gastric juice is
chemical, and it will only dissolve dead matters, and it dissolves them
when they are in tubes of metal as well as in the stomach, but it has no
action upon living matter. Respiration is no more a chemical process
than the absorption of chyle; and the changes that take place in the
lungs, though they appear so simple, may be very complicated; it is as
little philosophical to consider them as a mere combustion of carbon as
to consider the formation of muscle from the arterial blood as
crystallisation. There can be no doubt that all the powers and agencies
of matter are employed in the purposes of organisation, but the phenomena
of organisation can no more be referred to chemistry than those of
chemistry to mechanics. As oxygen stands in that electrical relation to
the other elements of animal matter which has been called
electropositive, it may be supposed that some electrical function is
exercised by oxygen in the blood; but this is a mere hypothesis. An
attempt has been made founded on experiments on the decomposition of
bodies by electricity to explain secretion by weak electrical powers, and
to suppose the glands electrical organs, and even to imagine the action
of the nerves dependent upon electricity; these, like all other notions
of the same kind, appear to me very little refined. If electrical
effects be the exhibition of certain powers belonging to matter, which is
a fair supposition, then no change can take place without their being
more or less concerned; but to imagine the presence of electricity to
solve phenomena the cause of which is unknown is merely to substitute one
undefined word for another. In some animals electrical organs are found,
but then they furnish the artillery of the animal and means of seizing
its prey and of its defence. And speculations of this kind must be
ranked with those belonging to some of the more superficial followers of
the Newtonian philosophy, who explained the properties of animated nature
by mechanical powers, and muscular action by the expansion and
contraction of elastic bladders; man, in this state of vague
philosophical inquiry, was supposed a species of hydraulic machine. And
when the pneumatic chemistry was invented, organic structures were soon
imagined to be laboratories in which combinations and decompositions
produced all the effects of living actions; then muscular contractions
were supposed to depend upon explosions like those of the detonating
compounds, and the formation of blood from chyle was considered as a pure
chemical solution. And, now that the progress of science has opened new
and extraordinary views in electricity, these views are not unnaturally
applied by speculative reasoners to solve some of the mysterious and
recondite phenomena of organised beings. But the analogy is too remote
and incorrect; the sources of life cannot be grasped by such machinery;
to look for them in the powers of electro-chemistry is seeking the living
among the dead: that which touches will not be felt, that which sees will
not be visible, that which commands sensations will not be their subject.
_Phil_.--I conclude, from what you last said, that though you are
inclined to believe that some unknown subtle matter is added to the
organised system by respiration, yet you would not have us believe that
this is electricity, or that there is any reason to suppose that
electricity has a peculiar and special share in producing the functions
of life.
_The Unknown_.--I wish to guard you against the adoption of any
hypothesis on this recondite and abstruse subject. But however difficult
it may be to define the exact nature of respiration, yet the effect of it
and its connexions with the functions of the body are sufficiently
striking. By the action of air on the blood it is fitted for the
purposes of life, and from the moment that animation is marked by
sensation or volition, this function is performed, the punctum saliens in
the ovum seems to receive as it were the breath of life in the influence
of air. In the economy of the reproduction of the species of animals,
one of the most important circumstances is the aeration of the ovum, and
when this is not performed, from the blood of the mother as in the
mammalia by the placenta, there is a system for aerating as in the
oviparous reptiles or fishes, which enables the air freely to pass
through the receptacles in which the eggs are deposited, or the egg
itself is aerated out of the body through its coats or shell, and when
air is excluded, incubation or artificial heat has no effect. Fishes
which deposit their eggs in water that contains only a limited portion of
air, make combinations which would seem almost the result of scientific
knowledge or reason, though depending upon a more unerring principle,
their instinct for preserving their offspring. Those fishes that spawn
in spring or the beginning of summer and winch inhabit deep and still
waters, as the carp, bream, pike, tench, &c., deposit their eggs upon
aquatic vegetables, which by the influence of the solar light constantly
preserve the water in a state of aeration. The trout, salmon, hucho, and
others of the Salmo genus, which spawn in the beginning or end of winter,
and which inhabit rivers fed by cold and rapid streams which descend from
the mountains, deposit their eggs in shallows on heaps of gravel, as near
as possible to the source of the stream where the water is fully combined
with air; and to accomplish this purpose they travel for hundreds of
miles against the current, and leap over cataracts and dams: thus the
Salmo salar ascends by the Rhone and the Aar to the glaciers of
Switzerland, the hucho by the Danube, the Isar, and the Save, passing
through the lakes of the Tyrol and Styria to the highest torrents of the
Noric and Julian Alps.
_Phil_.--My own experience proves in the strongest manner the immediate
connection of sensibility with respiration; all that I can remember in my
accident was a certain violent and painful sensation of oppression in the
chest, which must have been immediately succeeded by loss of sense.
_Eub_.--I have no doubt that all your suffering was over at the moment
you describe; as far as sensibility is concerned, you were inanimate when
your friend raised you from the bottom. This distinct connection of
sensibility with the absorption of air by the blood is, I think, in
favour of the idea advanced by our friend, that some subtle and ethereal
matter is supplied to the system in the elastic air which may be the
cause of vitality.
_The Unknown_.--Softly, if you please; I must not allow you to mistake my
view. I think it probable that some subtle matter is derived from the
atmosphere connected with the functions of life; but nothing can be more
remote from my opinion than to suppose it the cause of vitality.
_Phil_.--This might have been fully inferred from the whole tenor of your
conversation, and particularly from that expression, "that which commands
sensation will not be their subject." I think I shall not mistake your
views when I say that you do not consider vitality dependent upon any
material cause or principle.
_The Unknown_.--You do not. We are entirely ignorant on this subject,
and I confess in the utmost humility my ignorance. I know there have
been distinguished physiologists who have imagined that by organisation
powers not naturally possessed by matter were developed, and that
sensibility was a property belonging to some unknown combination of
unknown ethereal elements. But such notions appear to me
unphilosophical, and the mere substitution of unknown words for unknown
things. I can never believe that any division, or refinement, or
subtilisation, or juxtaposition, or arrangement of the particles of
matter, can give to them sensibility; or that intelligence can result
from combinations of insensate and brute atoms. I can as easily imagine
that the planets are moving by their will or design round the sun, or
that a cannon ball is reasoning in making its parabolic curve. The
materialists have quoted a passage of Locke in favour of their doctrine,
who seemed to doubt "whether it might not have pleased God to bestow a
power of thinking on matter." But with the highest veneration for this
great reasoner, the founder of modern philosophical logic, I think there
is little of his usual strength of mind in this doubt. It appears to me
that he might as well have asked whether it might not have pleased God to
make a house its own tenant.
_Eub_.--I am not a professed materialist; but I think you treat rather
too lightly the modest doubts of Locke on this subject. And without
considering me as a partisan, you will, I hope, allow me to state some of
the reasons which I have heard good physiologists advance in favour of
that opinion to which you are so hostile. In the first accretion of the
parts of animated beings they appear almost like the crystallised matter,
with the simplest kind of life, scarcely sensitive. The gradual
operations by which they acquire new organs and new powers, corresponding
to these organs, till they arrive at full maturity, forcibly strikes the
mind with the idea that the powers of life reside in the arrangement by
which the organs are produced. Then, as there is a gradual increase of
power corresponding to the increase of perfection of the organisation, so
there is a gradual diminution of it connected with the decay of the body.
As the imbecility of infancy corresponds to the weakness of organisation,
so the energy of youth and the power of manhood are marked by its
strength; and the feebleness and dotage of old age are in the direct
ratio of the decline of the perfection of the organisation, and the
mental powers in extreme old age seem destroyed at the same time with the
corporeal ones, till the ultimate dissolution of the frame, when the
elements are again restored to that dead nature from which they were
originally derived. Then, there was a period when the greatest
philosopher, statesman, or hero, that ever existed was a mere living
atom, an organised form with the sole power of perception; and the
combinations that a Newton formed before birth or immediately after
cannot be imagined to have possessed the slightest intellectual
character. If a peculiar principle be supposed necessary to
intelligence, it must exist throughout animated nature. The elephant
approaches nearer to man in intellectual power than the oyster does to
the elephant; and a link of sensitive nature may be traced from the
polypus to the philosopher. Now, in the polypus the sentient principle
is divisible, and from one polypus or one earthworm may be formed two or
three, all of which become perfect animals, and have perception and
volition; therefore, at least, the sentient principle has this property
in common with matter, that it is divisible. Then to these difficulties
add the dependence of all the higher faculties of the mind upon the state
of the brain; remember that not only all the intellectual powers, but
even sensibility is destroyed by the pressure of a little blood upon the
cerebellum, and the difficulties increase. Call to mind likewise the
suspension of animation in cases similar to that of our friend, when
there are no signs of life and when animation returns only with the
return of organic action. Surely in all these instances everything which
you consider as belonging to spirit appears in intimate dependence upon
the arrangements and properties of matter.
_The Unknown_.--The arguments you have used are those which are generally
employed by physiologists. They have weight in appearance, but not in
reality. They prove that a certain perfection of the machinery of the
body is essential to the exercise of the powers of the mind, but they do
not prove that the machine is the mind. Without the eye there can be no
sensations of vision, and without the brain there could be no recollected
visible ideas; but neither the optic nerve nor the brain can be
considered as the percipient principle--they are but the instruments of a
power which has nothing in common with them. What may be said of the
nervous system may be applied to a different part of the frame; stop the
motion of the heart, and sensibility and life cease, yet the living
principle is not in the heart, nor in the arterial blood which it sends
to every part of the system. A savage who saw the operation of a number
of power-looms weaving stockings cease at once on the stopping of the
motion of a wheel, might well imagine that the motive force was in the
wheel; he could not divine that it more immediately depended upon the
steam, and ultimately upon a fire below a concealed boiler. The
philosopher sees the fire which is the cause of the motion of this
complicated machinery, so unintelligible to the savage; but both are
equally ignorant of the divine fire which is the cause of the mechanism
of organised structures. Profoundly ignorant on this subject, all that
we can do is to give a history of our own minds. The external world or
matter is to us in fact nothing but a heap or cluster of sensations; and,
in looking back to the memory of our own being, we find one principle,
which may be called the _monad_, or _self_, constantly present,
intimately associated with a particular class of sensations, which we
call our own body or organs. These organs are connected with other
sensations, and move, as it were, with them in circles of existence,
quitting for a time some trains of sensation to return to others; but the
monad is always present. We can fix no beginning to its operations; we
can place no limit to them. We sometimes, in sleep, lose the beginning
and end of a dream, and recollect the middle of it, and one dream has no
connection with another; and yet we are conscious of an infinite variety
of dreams, and there is a strong analogy for believing in an infinity of
past existences, which must have had connection; and human life may be
regarded as a type of infinite and immortal life, and its succession of
sleep and dreams as a type of the changes of death and birth to which
from its nature it is liable. That the ideas belonging to the mind were
originally gained from those classes of sensations called organs it is
impossible to deny, as it is impossible to deny that mathematical truths
depend upon the signs which express them; but these signs are not
themselves the truths, nor are the organs the mind. The whole history of
intellect is a history of change according to a certain law; and we
retain the memory only of those changes which may be useful to us--the
child forgets what happened to it in the womb; the recollections of the
infant likewise before two years are soon lost, yet many of the habits
acquired in that age are retained through life. The sentient principle
gains thoughts by material instruments, and its sensations change as
those instruments change; and, in old age, the mind, as it were, falls
asleep to awake to a new existence. With its present organisation, the
intellect of man is naturally limited and imperfect, but this depends
upon its material machinery; and in a higher organised form, it may be
imagined to possess infinitely higher powers. Were man to be immortal
with his present corporeal frame, this immortality would only belong to
the machinery; and with respect to acquisitions of mind, he would
virtually die every two or three hundred years--that is to say, a certain
quantity of ideas only could be remembered, and the supposed immortal
being would be, with respect to what had happened a thousand years ago,
as the adult now is with respect to what happened in the first year of
his life. To attempt to reason upon the manner in which the organs are
connected with sensation would be useless; the nerves and brain have some
immediate relation to these vital functions, but how they act it is
impossible to say. From the rapidity and infinite variety of the
phenomena of perception, it seems extremely probable that there must be
in the brain and nerves matter of a nature far more subtle and refined
than anything discovered in them by observation and experiment, and that
the immediate connection between the sentient principle and the body may
be established by kinds of ethereal matter, which can never be evident to
the senses, and which may bear the same relations to heat, light, and
electricity that these refined forms or modes of existence of matter bear
to the gases. Motion is most easily produced by the lighter species of
matter; and yet imponderable agents, such as electricity, possess force
sufficient to overturn the weightiest structures. Nothing can be farther
from my meaning than to attempt any definition on this subject, nor would
I ever embrace or give authority to that idea of Newton, who supposes
that the immediate cause of sensation may be in undulations of an
ethereal medium. It does not, however, appear improbable to me that some
of the more refined machinery of thought may adhere, even in another
state, to the sentient principle; for, though the organs of gross
sensation--the nerves and brain--are destroyed by death, yet something of
the more ethereal nature, which I have supposed, may be less
destructible. And I sometimes imagine that many of those powers, which
have been called instinctive, belong to the more refined clothing of the
spirit; conscience, indeed, seems to have some undefined source, and may
bear relation to a former state of being.
_Eub_.--All your notions are merely ingenious speculations. Revelation
gives no authority to your ideas of spiritual nature; the Christian
immortality is founded upon the resurrection of the body.
_The Unknown_.--This I will not allow. Even in the Mosaic history of the
creation of man his frame is made in the image of God--that is, capable
of intelligence; and the Creator breathes into it the breath of life, His
own essence. Then our Saviour has said, "of the God of Abraham, of
Isaac, and of Jacob." "He is not the God of the dead, but of the
living." St. Paul has described the clothing of the spirit in a new and
glorious body, taking the analogy from the living germ in the seed of the
plant, which is not quickened till after apparent death; and the
catastrophe of our planet, which, it is revealed, is to be destroyed and
purified by fire before it is fitted for the habitation of the blest, is
in perfect harmony with the view I have ventured to suggest.
_Eub_.--I cannot make your notions coincide with what I have been
accustomed to consider the meaning of Holy Writ. You allow everything
belonging to the material life to be dependent upon the organisation of
the body, and yet you imagine the spirit after death clothed with a new
body; and, in the system of rewards and punishments, this body is
rendered happy or miserable for actions committed by another and extinct
frame. A particular organisation may impel to improper and immoral
gratification; it does not appear to me, according to the principles of
eternal justice, that the body of the resurrection should be punished for
crimes dependent upon a conformation now dissolved and destroyed.
_The Unknown_.--Nothing is more absurd, I may say more impious, than for
man, with a ken surrounded by the dense mists of sense, to reason
respecting the decrees of eternal justice. You adopt here the same
limited view that you embraced in reasoning against the indestructibility
of the sentient principle in man from the apparent division of the living
principle in the polypus, not recollecting that to prove a quality can be
increased or exalted does not prove that it can be annihilated. If there
be, which I think cannot be doubted, a consciousness of good and evil
constantly belonging to the sentient principle in man, then rewards and
punishments naturally belong to acts of this consciousness, to obedience,
or disobedience; and the indestructibility of the sentient being is
necessary to the decrees of eternal justice. On your view, even in this
life, just punishments for crimes would be almost impossible; for the
materials of which human beings are composed change rapidly, and in a few
years probably not an atom of the primitive structure remains yet even
the materialist is obliged in old age to do penance for the sins of his
youth, and does not complain of the injustice of his decrepit body,
entirely changed and made stiff by time, suffering for the intemperance
of his youthful flexible frame. On my idea, conscience is the frame of
the mind, fitted for its probation in mortality. And this is in exact
accordance with the foundations of our religion, the Divine origin of
which is marked no less by its history than its harmony with the
principles of our nature. Obedience to its precepts not only prepares
for a better state of existence in another world, but is likewise
calculated to make us happy here. We are constantly taught to renounce
sensual pleasure and selfish gratifications, to forget our body and
sensible organs, to associate our pleasures with mind, to fix our
affections upon the great ideal generalisation of intelligence in the one
Supreme Being. And that we are capable of forming to ourselves an
imperfect idea even of the infinite mind is, I think, a strong
presumption of our own immortality, and of the distinct relation which
our finite knowledge bears to eternal wisdom.
_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
Colosaeum, 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.