important consideration which is pressed upon us from many quarters,
namely—that moral conditions have not the least concern in the working of
these simply physical laws. These laws proceed with an entire
independence of all such conditions, and desirably so, for otherwise
there could be no certain dependence placed upon them. Thus it may
happen that two persons ascending a piece of scaffolding, the one a
virtuous, the other a vicious man, the former, being the less cautious of
the two, ventures upon an insecure place, falls, and is killed, while the
other, choosing a better footing, remains uninjured. It is not in what
we can conceive of the nature of things, that there should be a special
exemption from the ordinary laws of matter, to save this virtuous man.
So it might be that, of two physicians, attending fever cases, in a mean
part of a large city, the one, an excellent citizen, may stand in such a
position with respect to the beds of the patients as to catch the
infection, of which he dies in a few days, while the other, a bad husband
and father, and who, unlike the other, only attends such cases with
selfish ends, takes care to be as much as possible out of the stream of
infection, and accordingly escapes. In both of these cases man’s sense
of good and evil—his faculty of conscientiousness—would incline him to
destine the vicious man to destruction and save the virtuous. But the
Great Ruler of Nature does not act on such principles. He has
established laws for the operation of inanimate matter, which are quite
unswerving, so that when we know them, we have only to act in a certain
way with respect to them, in order to obtain all the benefits and avoid
all the evils connected with them. He has likewise established moral
laws in our nature, which are equally unswerving, (allowing for their
wider range of action,) and from obedience to which unfailing good is to
be derived. But the two sets of laws are independent of each other.
Obedience to each gives only its own proper advantage, not the advantage
proper to the other. Hence it is that virtue forms no protection against
the evils connected with the physical laws, while, on the other hand, a
man skilled in and attentive to these, but unrighteous and disregardful
of his neighbour, is in like manner not protected by his attention to
physical circumstances from the proper consequences of neglect or breach
of the moral laws.
Thus it is that the innocence of the party suffering for the faults of a
parent, or of any other person or set of persons, is evidently a
consideration quite apart from that suffering.
It is clear, moreover, from the whole scope of the natural laws, that the
individual, as far as the present sphere of being is concerned, is to the
Author of Nature a consideration of inferior moment. Everywhere we see
the arrangements for the species perfect; the individual is left, as it
were, to take his chance amidst the _mêlée_ of the various laws affecting
him. If he be found inferiorly endowed, or ill befalls him, there was at
least no partiality against him. The system has the fairness of a
lottery, in which every one has the like chance of drawing the prize.
Yet it is also to be observed that few evils are altogether unmixed.
God, contemplating apparently the unbending action of his great laws, has
established others which appear to be designed to have a compensating, a
repairing, and a consoling effect. Suppose, for instance, that, from a
defect in the power of development in a mother, her offspring is ushered
into the world destitute of some of the most useful members, or blind, or
deaf, or of imperfect intellect, there is ever to be found in the parents
and other relatives, and in the surrounding public, a sympathy with the
sufferer, which tends to make up for the deficiency, so that he is in the
long run not much a loser. Indeed, the benevolence implanted in our
nature seems to be an arrangement having for one of its principal objects
to cause us, by sympathy and active aid, to remedy the evils unavoidably
suffered by our fellow-creatures in the course of the operation of the
other natural laws. And even in the sufferer himself, it is often found
that a defect in one point is made up for by an extra power in another.
The blind come to have a sense of touch much more acute than those who
see. Persons born without hands have been known to acquire a power of
using their feet for a number of the principal offices usually served by
that member. I need hardly say how remarkably fatuity is compensated by
the more than usual regard paid to the children born with it by their
parents, and the zeal which others usually feel to protect and succour
such persons. In short, we never see evil of any kind take place where
there is not some remedy or compensating principle ready to interfere for
its alleviation. And there can be no doubt that in this manner suffering
of all kinds is very much relieved.
We may, then, regard the globes of space as theatres designed for the
residence of animated sentient beings, placed there with this as their
first and most obvious purpose—namely, to be sensible of enjoyments from
the exercise of their faculties in relation to external things. The
faculties of the various species are very different, but the happiness of
each depends on the harmony there may be between its particular faculties
and its particular circumstances. For instance, place the small-brained
sheep or ox in a good pasture, and it fully enjoys this harmony of
relation; but man, having many more faculties, cannot be thus contented.
Besides having a sufficiency of food and bodily comfort, he must have
entertainment for his intellect, whatever be its grade, objects for the
domestic and social affections, objects for the sentiments. He is also a
progressive being, and what pleases him to-day may not please him
to-morrow; but, in each case he demands a sphere of appropriate
conditions in order to be happy. By virtue of his superior organization,
his enjoyments are much higher and more varied than those of any of the
lower animals; but the very complexity of circumstances affecting him
renders it at the same time unavoidable, that his nature should be often
inharmoniously placed and disagreeably affected, and that he should
therefore be unhappy. Still unhappiness amongst mankind is the exception
from the rule of their condition, and an exception which is capable of
almost infinite diminution, by virtue of the improving reason of man, and
the experience which he acquires in working out the problems of society.
To secure the immediate means of happiness it would seem to be necessary
for men first to study with all care the constitution of nature, and,
secondly, to accommodate themselves to that constitution, so as to obtain
all the realizable advantages from acting conformably to it, and to avoid
all likely evils from disregarding it. It will be of no use to sit down
and expect that things are to operate of their own accord, or through the
direction of a partial deity, for our benefit; equally so were it to
expose ourselves to palpable dangers, under the notion that we shall, for
some reason, have a dispensation or exemption from them: we must
endeavour so to place ourselves, and so to act, that the arrangements
which Providence has made impartially for all may be in our favour, and
not against us; such are the only means by which we can obtain good and
avoid evil here below. And, in doing this, it is especially necessary
that care be taken to avoid interfering with the like efforts of other
men, beyond what may have been agreed upon by the mass as necessary for
the general good. Such interferences, tending in any way to injure the
body, property, or peace of a neighbour, or to the injury of society in
general, tend very much to reflect evil upon ourselves, through the
re-action which they produce in the feelings of our neighbour and of
society, and also the offence which they give to our own
conscientiousness and benevolence. On the other hand, when we endeavour
to promote the efforts of our fellow-creatures to attain happiness, we
produce a re-action of the contrary kind, the tendency of which is
towards our own benefit. The one course of action tends to the injury,
the other to the benefit of ourselves and others. By the one course the
general design of the Creator towards his creatures is thwarted; by the
other it is favoured. And thus we can readily see the most substantial
grounds for regarding all moral emotions and doings as divine in their
nature, and as a means of rising to and communing with God. Obedience is
not selfishness, which it would otherwise be—it is worship. The merest
barbarians have a glimmering sense of this philosophy, and it continually
shines out more and more clearly in the public mind, as a nation advances
in intelligence. Nor are individuals alone concerned here. The same
rule applies as between one great body or class of men and another, and
also between nations. Thus if one set of men keep others in the
condition of slaves—this being a gross injustice to the subjected party,
the mental manifestations of that party to the masters will be such as to
mar the comfort of their lives; the minds of the masters themselves will
be degraded by the association with beings so degraded; and thus, with
some immediate or apparent benefit from keeping slaves, there will be in
a far greater degree an experience of evil. So also, if one portion of a
nation, engaged in a particular department of industry, grasp at some
advantages injurious to the other sections of the people, the first
effect will be an injury to those other portions of the nation, and the
second a re-active injury to the injurers, making their guilt their
punishment. And so when one nation commits an aggression upon the
property or rights of another, or even pursues towards it a sordid or
ungracious policy, the effects are sure to be redoubled evil from the
offended party. All of these things are under laws which make the
effects, on a large range, absolutely certain; and an individual, a
party, a people, can no more act unjustly with safety, than I could with
safety place my leg in the track of a coming wain, or attempt to fast
thirty days. We have been constituted on the principle of only being
able to realize happiness for ourselves when our fellow-creatures are
also happy; we must therefore both do to others only as we would have
others to do to us, and endeavour to promote their happiness as well as
our own, in order to find ourselves truly comfortable in this field of
existence. These are words which God speaks to us as truly through his
works, as if we heard them uttered in his own voice from heaven.
It will occur to every one, that the system here unfolded does not imply
the most perfect conceivable love or regard on the part of the Deity
towards his creatures. Constituted as we are, feeling how vain our
efforts often are to attain happiness or avoid calamity, and knowing that
much evil does unavoidably befall us from no fault of ours, we are apt to
feel that this is a dreary view of the Divine economy; and before we have
looked farther, we might be tempted to say, Far rather let us cling to
the idea, so long received, that the Deity acts continually for special
occasions, and gives such directions to the fate of each individual as he
thinks meet; so that, when sorrow comes to us, we shall have at least the
consolation of believing that it is imposed by a Father who loves us, and
who seeks by these means to accomplish our ultimate good. Now, in the
first place, if this be an untrue notion of the Deity and his ways, it
can be of no real benefit to us; and, in the second, it is proper to
inquire if there be necessarily in the doctrine of natural law any
peculiarity calculated materially to affect our hitherto supposed
relation to the Deity. It may be that while we are committed to take our
chance in a natural system of undeviating operation, and are left with
apparent ruthlessness to endure the consequences of every collision into
which we knowingly or unknowingly come with each law of the system, there
is a system of Mercy and Grace behind the screen of nature, which is to
make up for all casualties endured here, and the very largeness of which
is what makes these casualties a matter of indifference to God. For the
existence of such a system, the actual constitution of nature is itself
an argument. The reasoning may proceed thus: The system of nature
assures us that benevolence is a leading principle in the divine mind.
But that system is at the same time deficient in a means of making this
benevolence of invariable operation. To reconcile this to the recognised
character of the Deity, it is necessary to suppose that the present
system is but a part of a whole, a stage in a Great Progress, and that
the Redress is in reserve. Another argument here occurs—the economy of
nature, beautifully arranged and vast in its extent as it is, does not
satisfy even man’s idea of what might be; he feels that, if this
multiplicity of theatres for the exemplification of such phenomena as we
see on earth were to go on for ever unchanged, it would not be worthy of
the Being capable of creating it. An endless monotony of human
generations, with their humble thinkings and doings, seems an object
beneath that august Being. But the mundane economy might be very well as
a portion of some greater phenomenon, the rest of which was yet to be
evolved. It therefore appears that our system, though it may at first
appear at issue with other doctrines in esteem amongst mankind, tends to
come into harmony with them, and even to give them support. I would say,
in conclusion, that, even where the two above arguments may fail of
effect, there may yet be a faith derived from this view of nature
sufficient to sustain us under all sense of the imperfect happiness, the
calamities, the woes, and pains of this sphere of being. For let us but
fully and truly consider what a system is here laid open to view, and we
cannot well doubt that we are in the hands of One who is both able and
willing to do us the most entire justice. And in this faith we may well
rest at ease, even though life should have been to us but a protracted
disease, or though every hope we had built on the secular materials
within our reach were felt to be melting from our grasp. Thinking of all
the contingencies of this world as to be in time melted into or lost in
the greater system, to which the present is only subsidiary, let us wait
the end with patience, and be of good cheer.
NOTE CONCLUSORY.
THUS ends a book, composed in solitude, and almost without the cognizance
of a single human being, for the sole purpose (or as nearly so as may be)
of improving the knowledge of mankind, and through that medium their
happiness. For reasons which need not be specified, the author’s name is
retained in its original obscurity, and, in all probability, will never
be generally known. I do not expect that any word of praise which the
work may elicit shall ever be responded to by me; or that any word of
censure shall ever be parried or deprecated. It goes forth to take its
chance of instant oblivion, or of a long and active course of usefulness
in the world. Neither contingency can be of any importance to me, beyond
the regret or the satisfaction which may be imparted by my sense of a
lost or a realized benefit to my fellow-creatures. The book, as far as I
am aware, is the first attempt to connect the natural sciences into a
history of creation. The idea is a bold one, and there are many
circumstances of time and place to render its boldness more than usually
conspicuous. But I believe my doctrines to be in the main true; I
believe all truth to be valuable, and its dissemination a blessing. At
the same time, I hold myself duly sensible of the common liability to
error, but am certain that no error in this line has the least chance of
being allowed to injure the public mind. Therefore I publish. My views,
if correct, will most assuredly stand, and may sooner or later prove
beneficial; if otherwise, they will as surely pass out of notice without
doing any harm.
My sincere desire in the composition of the book was to give the true
view of the history of nature, with as little disturbance as possible to
existing beliefs, whether philosophical or religious. I have made little
reference to any doctrines of the latter kind which may be thought
inconsistent with mine, because to do so would have been to enter upon
questions for the settlement of which our knowledge is not yet ripe. Let
the reconciliation of whatever is true in my views with whatever is true
in other systems come about in the fulness of calm and careful inquiry.
I cannot but here remind the reader of what Dr. Wiseman has shewn so
strikingly in his lectures, how different new philosophic doctrines are
apt to appear after we have become somewhat familiar with them. Geology
at first seems inconsistent with the authority of the Mosaic record. A
storm of unreasoning indignation rises against its teachers. In time,
its truths, being found quite irresistible, are admitted, and mankind
continue to regard the Scriptures with the same respect as before. So
also with several other sciences. Now the only objection that can be
made on such ground to this book, is, that it brings forward some new
hypotheses, at first sight, like geology, not in perfect harmony with
that record, and arranges all the rest into a system which partakes of
the same character. But may not the sacred text, on a liberal
interpretation, or with the benefit of new light reflected from nature,
or derived from learning, be shewn to be as much in harmony with the
novelties of this volume as it has been with geology and natural
philosophy? What is there in the laws of organic creation more startling
to the candid theologian than in the Copernican system or the natural
formation of strata? And if the whole series of facts is true, why
should we shrink from inferences legitimately flowing from it? Is it not
a wiser course, since reconciliation has come in so many instances, still
to hope for it, still to go on with our new truths, trusting that they
also will in time be found harmonious with all others? Thus we avoid the
damage which the very appearance of an opposition to natural truth is
calculated to inflict on any system presumed to require such support.
Thus we give, as is meet, a respectful reception to what is revealed
through the medium of nature, at the same time that we fully reserve our
reverence for all we have been accustomed to hold sacred, not one tittle
of which it may ultimately be found necessary to alter.
FOOTNOTES.
{3} By Mr. Henderson, Professor of Astronomy in the Edinburgh
University, and Lieutenant Meadows.
{5} Made by M. Argelander, late director of the Observatory at Abo.
{6} Professor Mossotti, on the Constitution of the Sidereal System, of
which the Sun forms a part.—_London_, _Edinburgh_, _and Dublin
Philosophical Magazine_, February, 1843.
{9} The orbitual revolutions of the satellites of Uranus have not as yet
been clearly scanned. It has been thought that their path is retrograde
compared with the rest. Perhaps this may be owing to a _bouleversement_
of the primary, for the inclination of its equator to the ecliptic is
admitted to be unusually high; but the subject is altogether so obscure,
that nothing can be founded on it.
{12} Astronomy, Lardner’s Cyclopædia.
{17} M. Compte combined Huygens’s theorems for the measure of
centrifugal force with the law of gravitation, and thus formed a simple
fundamental equation between the duration of the rotation of what he
calls the producing star, and the distance of the star produced. The
constants of this equation were the radius of the central star, and the
intensity of gravity at its surface, which is a direct consequence of its
mass. It leads directly to the third law of Kepler, which thus becomes
susceptible of being conceived _à priori_ in a cosmogonical point of
view. M. Compte first applied it to the moon, and found, to his great
delight, that the periodic time of that satellite agrees within an hour
or two with the duration which the revolution of the earth ought to have
had at the time when the lunar distance formed the limit of the earth’s
atmosphere. He found the coincidence less exact, but still very striking
in every other case. In those of the planets he obtained for the
duration of the corresponding solar rotations a value always a little
less than their actual periodic times. “It is remarkable,” says he,
“that this difference, though increasing as the planet is more distant,
preserves very nearly the same relation to the corresponding periodic
time, of which it commonly forms the forty-fifth part,”—shewing, we may
suppose, that only some small elements of the question had been
overlooked by the calculator. The defect changes to an excess in the
different systems of the satellites, where it is proportionally greater
than in the planets, and unequal in the different systems. “From the
whole of these comparisons,” says he, “I deduced the following general
result:—Supposing the mathematical limit of the solar atmosphere
successively extended to the regions where the different planets are now
found, the duration of the sun’s rotation was, at each of these epochs,
sensibly equal to that of the actual sidereal revolution of the
corresponding planet; and the same is true for each planetary atmosphere
in relation to the different satellites.”—_Cours de Philosophie Positif_.
{42} The researches on this subject were conducted chiefly by the late
Baron Fourier, perpetual secretary to the Academy of Sciences of Paris.
See his _Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur_. 1822.
{52} Delabeche’s Geological Researches.
{60} In the Cumbrian limestone occur “calamoporæ, lithodendra,
cyathophylla, and orbicula.”—_Philips_. The asaphus and trinucleus
(crustacea) have been found respectively in the slate rocks of Wales, and
the limestone beds of the grawacke group in Bohemia. That fragments of
crinoidea, though of no determinate species, occur in this system, we
have the authority of Mr. Murchison.—_Silurian System_, p. 710.
{62} Such as amphioxus and myxene.
{64} Miller’s “New Walks in an Old Field.”
{68} June, 1842.
{84a} The principal families are named sphenopteris, neuropteris, and
pecopteris.
{84b} A specimen from Bengal, in the staircase of the British Museum, is
forty-five feet high.
{93} “Some of the most considerable dislocations of the border of the
coal fields of Coalbrookdale and Dudley happened after the deposition of
a part of the new red sandstone; but it is certain that those of
Somersetshire and Gloucestershire were completed before the date of that
rock.”—_Philips_.
{97} The immediate effects of the slow respiration of the reptilia are,
a low temperature in their bodies, and a slow consumption of food.
Requiring little oxygen, they could have existed in an atmosphere
containing a less proportion of that gas to carbonic acid gas than what
now obtains.
{99} The order to which frogs and toads belong.
{103} Dr. Buckland, quoting an article by Professor Hitchcock, in the
American Journal of Science and Arts, 1836.
{108a} Murchison’s Silurian System, p. 583.
{108b} Buckland.
{110} In some instances, these fossils are found with the contents of
the stomach faithfully preserved, and even with pieces of the external
skin. The pellets ejected by them (_coprolites_) are found in vast
numbers, each generally enclosed in a nodule of ironstone, and sometimes
shewing remains of the fishes which had formed their food.
{114} De la Beche’s Geological Researches, p. 344.
{127} Thick-skinned animals. This term has been given by Cuvier to an
order in which the hog, elephant, horse, and rhinoceros are included.
{149} Intervals in the series were numerous in the department of the
pachydermata; many of these gaps are now filled up from the extinct
genera found in the tertiary formation.
{151} See paper by Professor Edward Forbes, read to the British
Association, 1839.
{159} Macculloch on the Attributes of the Deity, iii. 569.
{166} “A glass tube is to be bent into a syphon, and placed with the
curve downwards, and in the bend is to be placed a small portion of
mercury, not sufficient to close the connexion between the two legs; a
solution of nitrate of silver is then to be introduced until it rises in
both limbs of the tube. The precipitation of the mercury, in the form of
an Arbor Dianæ, will then take place, slowly, only when the syphon is
placed in a plane perpendicular to the magnetic meridian; but if it be
placed in a plane coinciding with the magnetic meridian, the action is
rapid, and the crystallization particularly beautiful, taking place
principally in that branch of the syphon towards the north. If the
syphon be placed in a plane perpendicular to the magnetic meridian, and a
strong magnet brought near it, the precipitation will commence in a short
time, and be most copious in the branch of the syphon nearest to the
south pole of the magnet.”
{169a} Fatty matter has also been formed in the laboratory. The process
consisted in passing a mixture of carbonic acid, pure hydrogen, and
carburetted hydrogen, in the proportion of one measure of the first,
twenty of the second, and ten of the third, through a red-hot tube.
{169b} Supplement to the Atomic Theory.
{170} Carpenter on Life; Todd’s Cyclopædia of Physiology.
{171} Carpenter’s Report on the results obtained by the Microscope in
the Study of Anatomy and Physiology, 1843.
{172} See Dr. Martin Barry on Fissiparous Generation; Jameson’s Journal,
Oct. 1843. Appearances precisely similar have been detected in the germs
of the crustacea.
{175} Mr. Leonard Horner and Sir David Brewster, on a substance
resembling shell.—_Philosophical Transactions_, 1836.
{179a} Dr. Allen Thomson, in the article _Generation_, in Todd’s
Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology.
{179b} The term aboriginal is here suggested, as more correct than
spontaneous, the one hitherto generally used.
{182} Article “Zoophytes,” Encyclopædia Britannica, 7th edition.
{187} See a pamphlet circulated by Mr. Weekes, in 1842.
{195} Daubenton established the rule, that all the viviparous quadrupeds
have seven vertebræ in the neck.
{201} Lord’s Popular Physiology. It is to Tiedemann that we chiefly owe
these curious observations; but ground was first broken in this branch of
physiological science by Dr. John Hunter.