THE DOCTOR'S THEORY OF PROGRESSIVE EXISTENCE.
_Quam multæ pecudes humano in corpore vivunt!_
PALINGENIUS.
Like Mason, Dr. Dove looked to the future in that sure and certain
hope without which the present would be intolerable to a thinking mind
and feeling heart. But in his speculations he looked to the past also.
Watson Bishop of Llandaff amused himself with asking from whom his
mind descended? where it existed before he was born? and who he should
have been if he had not been Richard Watson? “The Bishop was a
philosopher,” says Dr. Jarrold, “and ought not to have asked such idle
questions.”
My Doctor would not have agreed with Dr. Jarrold in this opinion. Who
the Bishop might have been if he had not been the discontented hero of
his own auto-biography, he could not indeed have pretended to divine;
but what he was before he was Richard Watson, where his mind had
existed before he was born, and from whom, or rather from what, it had
been transmitted, were questions which according to his notions, might
admit of a probable solution.
It will not surprise the judicious reader to be told that the Doctor
was a professed physiognomist, though Lavater had not in those days
made it fashionable to talk of physiognomy as a science. Baptista
Porta led him to consider the subject; and the coarse wood-cuts of a
bungling Italian elucidated the system as effectually as has since
been done by Mr. Holloway's graver. But Dr. Dove carried it farther
than the Swiss enthusiast after, or the Neapolitan physician before
him. Conceiving in a deeper sense than Lebrun, _que chacun avait sa
bête dans la figure_, he insisted that the strong animal likenesses
which are often so distinctly to be traced in men, and the
correspondent propensities wherewith they are frequently accompanied,
are evidence of our having pre-existed in an inferior state of being.
And he deduced from it a theory, or notion as he modestly called it,
which he would have firmly believed to be a part of the patriarchal
faith, if he had known how much it resembled the doctrine of the
Druids.
His notion was that the Archeus, or living principle, acquires that
perfect wisdom with which it acts, by passing through a long
progression in the lower world, before it becomes capable of being
united to a rational and immortal soul in the human body. He even
persuaded himself that he could discover in particular individuals
indications of the line by which their Archeus had travelled through
the vegetable and animal kingdoms.
There was a little pragmatical exciseman, with a hungry face, sharp
nose, red eyes, and thin, coarse, straggling hair of a yellow cast,
(what was formerly called Judas-colour,) whom he pronounced to have
been a ferret in his last stage. “Depend upon it,” he said, “no rat
will come under the roof where he resides!” And he was particularly
careful when they met in the open air always to take the wind of him.
One lawyer, a man of ability and fair character, but ready to avail
himself of every advantage which his profession afforded, he traced
from a bramble into a wasp, thence into a butcher-bird, and lastly
into a fox, the vulpine character being manifestly retained in his
countenance. There was another, who from sweeping his master's office
and blacking his shoes, had risen to be the most noted pettifogger in
those parts. This fellow was his peculiar abhorrence; his living
principle, he affirmed, could never have existed in any other form
than that of a nuisance; and accordingly he made out his genealogy
thus:—a stinker (which is the trivial name of the _phallus
impudicus_,) a London bug, an ear-wig, a pole-cat,—and, still
worsening as he went on, a knavish attorney.
He convicted an old Major in the West York Militia of having been a
turkey cock; and all who knew the Major were satisfied of the
likeness, whatever they might be of the theory.
One of the neighbouring justices was a large, square-built, heavy
person, with a huge head, a wide mouth, little eyes, and a slender
proportion of intellect. Him he set down for a hippopotamus.
A brother magistrate of the Major's had been a goose, beyond all
dispute. There was even proof of the fact; for it was perfectly well
remembered that he had been born web-fingered.
All those persons who habitually sit up till night is far spent, and
as regularly pass the best hours of the morning in bed, he supposed to
have been bats, night-birds, night-prowling beasts, and insects whose
portion of active life has been assigned to them during the hours of
darkness. One indication of this was, that candle-light could not have
such attractions for them unless they had been moths.
The dog was frequently detected in all its varieties, from the
lap-dog, who had passed into the whipper-snapper _petit-maître_, and
the turnspit, who was now the bandy-legged baker's boy,—to the
Squire's eldest son, who had been a lurcher,—the Butcher, who had been
a bulldog, and so continued still in the same line of life;—Lord A——'s
domestic chaplain, harmless, good-natured, sleek, obsequious, and as
fond of ease, indulgence and the fire-side, as when he had been a
parlour spaniel; Sir William B——'s huntsman, who exercised now the
whip which he had felt when last upon four legs, and who was still an
ugly hound, though staunch; and the Doctor's own man, Barnaby, whom,
for steadiness, fidelity and courage, he pronounced to have been a
true old English mastiff, and one of the best of his kind.
Chloris had been a lily. You saw it in the sickly delicacy of her
complexion. Moreover she toiled not, neither did she spin.
A young lady, in whose family he was perfectly familiar, had the
singular habit of sitting always upon one or other foot, which as she
sat down she conveyed so dexterously into the seat of her chair, that
no one who was not previously acquainted with her ways, could possibly
perceive the movement. Upon her mother's observing one day that this
was a most unaccountable peculiarity, the Doctor replied, “No, madam!
I can account for it to my own entire satisfaction. Your daughter was
a bird of some gentle and beautiful species, in her last stage of
existence; in that state she used always to draw up one leg when at
rest. The habits that we acquire in our pre-existent state, continue
with us through many stages of our progress; your daughter will be an
Angel in her next promotion, and then, if Angels close their eyes in
slumber, she will sleep with her head under her wing.”
The landlady of the White Lion had been a cabbage, a blue-bottle fly,
a tame duck, and a bacon pig.
Who could doubt that Vauban had been an earthworm, a mole and a
rabbit? that Euclid acquired the practical knowledge of geometry when
he was a spider; and that the first builder of a pyramid imitated
unconsciously the proportionately far greater edifices which he had
been employed in raising when he was one of a nation of white ants?
Mrs. Dove had been a cowslip, a humble bee, and, lastly, a cushat.
He himself had been a Dove and a Serpent—for “Dan was a Serpent by the
way;” and moreover he flattered himself that he had the wisdom of the
one, and the simplicity of the other. Of his other stages he was not
so certain,—except that he had probably once been an inhabitant of the
waters, in the shape of some queer fish.