Chapter 7

FULLER.

It may have been observed by the attentive reader—(and all my readers will be attentive, except those who are in love) that although the Doctor traced many of his acquaintance to their prior allotments in the vegetable creation, he did not discover such symptoms in any of them as led him to infer that the object of his speculations had existed in the form of a tree;—crabbed tempers, sour plums, cherry-cheeks, and hearts of oak being nothing more than metaphorical expressions of similitude. But it would be a rash and untenable deduction were we to conclude from the apparent omission that the arboreal world was excluded from his system. On the contrary, the analogies between animal and vegetable life led him to believe that the Archeus of the human frame, received no unimportant part of his preparatory education in the woods.

Steele in a playful allegory has observed “that there is a sort of vegetable principle in the mind of every man when he comes into the world. In infants, the seeds lie buried and undiscovered, till after a while they sprout forth in a kind of rational leaves, which are words; and in due season the flowers begin to appear in variety of beautiful colours, and all the gay pictures of youthful fancy and imagination; at last the fruit knits and is formed, which is green perhaps at first, sour and unpleasant to the taste, and not fit to be gathered; till ripened by due care and application, it discovers itself in all the noble productions of philosophy, mathematics, close reasoning and handsome argumentation. I reflected further on the intellectual leaves before mentioned, and found almost as great a variety among them as in the vegetable world.” In this passage, though written only as a sport of fancy, there was more our speculator thought, than was dreamt of in Steele's philosophy.

Empedocles, if the fragment which is ascribed to him be genuine, pretended to remember that he had pre-existed not only in the forms of maiden and youth, fowl and fish, but of a shrub also;

Ἤδη γάρ ποτ᾽ ἐγὼ γενόμην κούρη τε κόρος τε,Θάμνος τ᾽, οἰωνός τε, καὶ εἰν ἅλι ἔλλοπος ἰχθῦς.

But upon such authority the Doctor placed as little reliance as upon the pretended recollections of Pythagoras, whether really asserted by that philosopher or falsely imputed to him by fablers in prose or verse. When man shall have effected his passage from the mortal and terrestrial state into the sphere where there is nothing that is impure, nothing that is evil, nothing that is perishable, then indeed it is a probable supposition that he may look back into the lowest deep from whence he hath ascended, recall to mind his progress step by step, through every stage of the ascent, and understand the process by which it had been appointed for him, (applying to Plato's words a different meaning from that in which they were intended)ἐκ πολλῶν ἕνα γεγονότα εὐδαίμονα ἔσεσθαι, to become of many creatures, one happy one. In that sphere such a retrospect would enlarge the knowledge, and consequently the happiness also of the soul which has there attained the perfection of its nature—the end for which it was created and redeemed. But any such consciousness of pre-existence would in this stage of our mortal being be so incompatible with the condition of humanity, that the opinion itself can be held only as a speculation, of which no certainty can ever have been made known to man, because that alone has been revealed, the knowledge of which is necessary: the philosophers therefore who pretended to it, if they were sincere in the pretension (which may be doubted) are entitled to no more credit, than the poor hypochondriac who fancies himself a bottle or a tea-pot.

Thus our philosopher reasoned, who either in earnest or in jest, or in serious sportiveness,παίζων καὶ σπουδάζων ἄμα, was careful never to lean more upon an argument than it would bear. Sometimes he prest the lame and halt into his service, but it was with a clear perception of their defects, and he placed them always in positions where they were efficient for the service required for them, and where more valid ones would not have been more available. He formed therefore, no system of dendranthropology, nor attempted any classification in it; there were not facts enough whereon to found one. Yet in more than one circumstance which observant writers have recorded, something he thought might be discerned which bore upon this part of the theory,—some traces of

those first affections,Those shadowy recollections,

on which Wordsworth (in whose mystic strains he would have delighted) dwells. Thus he inferred that the soul of Xerxes must once have animated a plane tree, and retained a vivid feeling connected with his arboreal existence, when he read in Evelyn how that great king “stopped his prodigious army of seventeen hundred thousand soldiers to admire the pulchritude and procerity of one of those goodly trees; and became so fond of it, that spoiling both himself, his concubines, and great persons of all their jewels, he covered it with gold, gems, necklaces, scarfs and bracelets, and infinite riches; in sum, was so enamoured of it, that for some days, neither the concernment of his grand expedition, nor interest of honour, nor the necessary motion of his portentous army, could persuade him from it. He stiled it his mistress, his minion, his goddess; and when he was forced to part from it, he caused the figure of it to be stamped on a medal of gold, which he continually wore about him.”

“That prudent Consul Passianus Crispus” must have been influenced by a like feeling, when he “fell in love with a prodigious beech of a wonderful age and stature, used to sleep under it, and would sometimes refresh it with pouring wine at the root.” Certainly as Evelyn has observed, “a goodly tree was a powerful attractive” to this person. The practice of regaling trees with such libations was not uncommon among the wealthy Romans; they seem to have supposed that because wine gladdened their own hearts, it must in like manner comfort the root of a tree: and Pliny assures us that it did so,compertum id maximè prodesse radicibus, he says,docuimusque etiam arbores vina potare.If this were so, the Doctor reasoned that there would be a peculiar fitness in fertilizing the vine with its own generous juice, which it might be expected to return with increase in richer and more abundant clusters: forgetting, ignoring, or disregarding this opinion which John Lily has recorded that the vine watered (as he calls it) with wine is soon withered. He was not wealthy enough to afford such an experiment upon that which clothed the garden-front of his house, for this is not a land flowing with wine and oil; but he indulged a favourite apple-tree (it was a Ribstone pippin) with cider; and when no sensible improvement in the produce could be perceived, he imputed the disappointment rather to the parsimonious allowance of that congenial liquor, than to any error in the theory.

But this has led me astray, and I must return to Xerxes the Great King. The predilection or passion which he discovered for the plane, the sage of Doncaster explained by deriving it from a dim reminiscence of his former existence in a tree of the same kind; or which was not less likely in the wanton ivy which had clasped one, or in the wild vine which had festooned its branches with greener leaves, or even in the agaric which had grown out of its decaying substance. And he would have quoted Wordsworth if the Sage of Rydal had not been of a later generation:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;The soul that rises with us, our life's star,Hath had elsewhere its setting,And cometh from afar.

Other examples of men who have doated upon particular trees he accounted for by the same philosophy. But in the case of the Consul Crispus he was more inclined to hold the first supposition,—to wit, that he had been a beech himself, and that the tree which he loved so dearly had sprung from his own mast, so that the feeling with which he regarded it was a parental one. For that man should thus unconsciously afford proof of his relationship to tree, was rendered more probable by a singular, though peradventure single fact in which a tree so entirely recognized its affinity with man, that a slip accidentally grafted on the human subject, took root in the body, grew there, flourished, blossomed and produced fruit after its kind. “A shepherd of Tarragon had fallen into a sloe tree, and a sharp point thereof having run into his breast, in two years time it took such root, that, after many branches had been cut off, there sprang up some at last which bare both flowers and fruit.” “Peiresc,” as Gassendi the writer of his life assures us, “would never be quiet till Cardinal Barberino procured the Archbishop of that place to testify the truth of the story; and Putean the knight received not only letters testifying the same, but also certain branches thereof, which he sent unto him.”

A SPANISH AUTHORESS.—HOW THE DOCTOR OBTAINED HER WORKS FROM MADRID.—THE PLEASURE AND ADVANTAGES WHICH THE AUTHOR DERIVES FROM HIS LANDMARKS IN THE BOOKS WHICH HE HAD PERUSED.

ALEX.Quel es D. Diego aquel Arbol,que tiene la copa en tierray las raizes arriba?DIEG.El hombre.ELLETRADO DELCIELO.

Man is a Tree that hath no top in cares,No root in comforts.1

This is one of the many poetical passages in which the sound is better than the sense;—yet it is not without its beauty. The same similitude has been presented by Henry More in lines which please the ear less, but satisfy the understanding.

The lower man is nought but a fair plantWhose grosser matter is from the base ground.

“A plant,” says Jones of Nayland, “is a system of life, but insensitive and fixed to a certain spot. An animal hath voluntary motion, sense, or perception, and is capable of pain and pleasure. Yet in the construction of each there are some general principles which very obviously connect them. It is literally as well as metaphorically true, that trees have limbs, and an animal body branches. A vascular system is also common to both, in the channels of which life is maintained and circulated. When the trachea, with its branches in the lungs, or the veins and arteries, or the nerves, are separately represented, we have the figure of a tree. The leaves of trees have a fibrous and fleshy part; their bark is a covering which answers to the skin in animals. An active vapour pervades them both, and perspires from both, which is necessary for the preservation of health and vigour. Thevis vitæ, or involuntary, mechanical force of animal life, is kept up by the same elements which act upon plants for their growth and support.”2

1CHAPMAN.

2The reader of Berkeley will naturally turn to the Siris of that author—called by Southey in his life of Wesley “one of the best, wisest, and greatest men whom Ireland, with all its fertility of genius, has produced.” Vol. ii. 260., 2ndEdit.

“Plants,” says Novalis, “are Children of the Earth; we are Children of the Æther. Our lungs are properly our root; we live when we breathe; we begin our life with breathing.” Plato also compared man to a Tree, but his was a physical similitude, he likened the human vegetable to a tree inverted, with the root above and the branches below. Antonio Perez allegorized the similitude in one of his epistles to Essex, thus,unde credis hominem inversam arborem appellari? Inversam nostris oculis humanis et terrenis; rectam verò verè, viridemque, si radicem defixam habuerit in suo naturali loco, cœlo, unde orta.And Rabelais pursues the resemblance farther, saying that trees differ from beasts in this,qu'elles ont la teste, c'est le tronc, en bas; les cheveulx, ce sont les racines, en terre; et les pieds, ce sont les rameaulx, contremont; comme si un homme faisoit le chesne fourchu.

The thought that man is like a tree arose in the Doctor's mind more naturally when he first saw the representation of the veins and arteries in the old translation of Ambrose Paré's works. And when in course of time he became a curious enquirer into the history of her art, he was less disposed to smile at any of the fancies into which Doña Oliva Sabuco Barrera had been led by this resemblance than to admire the novelty and ingenuity of the theory which she deduced from it.

Bless ye the memory of this Spanish Lady, all ye who bear, or aspire to, the honour of the bloody hand as Knights of Esculapius! For from her, according to Father Feyjoo, the English first, and afterwards the physicians of other countries learnt the theory of nervous diseases;—never therefore did any other individual contribute so largely to the gratification of fee-feeling fingers!

Feyjoo has properly enumerated her among the women who have done honour to their country: and later Spaniards have called her the immortal glory not of Spain alone, but of all Europe: She was born, and dwelt in the city of Alcaraz, and flourished in the reign of Philip II. to whom she dedicated in 1587 her “New Philosophy of the Nature of Man,”3appealing to the ancient law of chivalry, whereby great Lords and high born Knights were bound always to favour women in their adventures. In placing under the eagle wings of his Catholic Majesty this child which she had engendered, she told the King that he was then receiving from a woman greater service than any that men had rendered him, with whatever zeal and success they had exerted themselves to serve him. The work which she laid before him would better the world, she said, in many things, and if he could not attend to it, those who came after him, peradventure would. For though they were already all too-many books in the world, yet this one was wanting.

3It should seem by her name, as suffixed to the Carta Dedicatorie, that she was of French or Breton extraction, for she signs herself, Oliva de Nantes, Sabuco Barrera.R. S.

The brief and imperfect notices of this Lady's system, which the Doctor had met with in the course of his reading, made him very desirous of procuring her works: this it would not be easy to do in England at this time, and then it was impossible. He obtained them however through the kindness of Mason's friend, Mr. Burgh, whom he used to meet at Mr. Copley's at Netterhall, and who in great or in little things was always ready to render any good office in his power to any person. Burgh procured the book through the Rev. Edward Clarke (father of Dr. Clarke the traveller) then Chaplain to the British Embassador in Spain. The volume came with the despatches from Madrid, it was forwarded to Mr. Burgh in an official frank, and the Doctor marked with a white stone the day on which the York carrier delivered it at his house. That precious copy is now in my possession;4my friend has noted in it, as was his custom, every passage that seemed worthy of observation, with the initial of his own name—a small capital, neatly written in red ink. Such of his books as I have been able to collect are full of these marks, showing how carefully he had read them. These notations have been of much use to me in my perusal, leading me to pause where he had paused, to observe what he had noted and to consider what had to him seemed worthy of consideration. And though I must of necessity more frequently have failed to connect the passages so noted with my previous knowledge as he had done, and for that reason to see their bearings in the same point of view, yet undoubtedly I have often thus been guided into the same track of thought which he had pursued before me. Long will it be before some of these volumes meet with a third reader; never with one in whom these vestiges of their former owner can awaken a feeling like that which they never fail to excite in me!

4This curious book I unluckily missed at the Sale of Southey's Library. I was absent at the time, and it passed into private hands. It sold for thirteen shillings only. See No. 3453. The title is as follows;—Sabuco (Olivia) Nueva Filosofia de la Naturaleza del hombre, no conocida ni alcançada de los Grandes Filosofos Antiguos. FIRSTEDITION.Madrid, 1587.

But the red letters in this volume have led me from its contents; and before I proceed to enter upon them in another chapter, I will conclude this, recurring to the similitude at its commencement, with an extract from one of Yorick's Sermons. “It is very remarkable,” he says, “that the Apostle St. Paul calls a bad man a wild olivetree, not barely a branch,” (as in the opposite case where our Saviour told his disciples that He was the vine, and that they were only branches)—“but a Tree, which having a root of its own supports itself, and stands in its own strength, and brings forth its own fruit. And so does every bad man in respect of the wild and sour fruit of a vicious and corrupt heart. According to the resemblance, if the Apostle intended it, he is a Tree,—has a root of his own, and fruitfulness such as it is, with a power to bring it forth without help. But in respect of religion and the moral improvements of virtue and goodness, the Apostle calls us, and reason tells us, we are no more than abranch, and all our fruitfulness, and all our support, depend so much upon the influence and communications of God, that without Him we can do nothing, as our Saviour declares.”

SOME ACCOUNT OF D. OLIVA SABUCO'S MEDICAL THEORIES AND PRACTICE.

Yo—volveréA nueva diligencia y paso largo,Que es breve el tiempo, 's grande la memoriaQue para darla al mundo está á mi cargo.BALBUENA.

Carew the poet speaking metaphorically of his mistress calls her foot,

the precious rootOn which the goodly cedar grows.

Doña Oliva on the contrary thought that the human body might be called a tree reversed, the brain being the root, and the other the bark. She did not know what great authority there is for thinking that trees stand upon their heads, for though we use vulgarly but improperly to call the uppermost of the branches the top of a tree, we are corrected, the learned John Gregory tells us, by Aristotle in his booksDe Animâ,1where we are taught to call the root the head, and the top the feet.

1Quære? Lib. ii. c. ii. § 6.αἱ δὲ ρἵζαι τῷ στόματι ἀνάλογον κ. τ. ἑ.

Thepia materaccording to her theory diffuses through this bark by the nerves that substance, moisture, sap, or white chyle which when it flows in its proper course, preserves the human vegetable in a state of well being, but when its course is reverted it becomes the cause of diseases. This nervous fluid, the brain derived principally from the air, which she held to be water in a state of rarefaction, air being the chyle of the upper world, water of the inferior, and the Moon with air and water, as with milk, feeding like a nursing mother, all sublunary creatures, and imparting moisture for their increase, as the Sun imparteth heat and life. Clouds are the milk of the Moon, from which, if she may so express herself, she says it rains air and wind as well as water, wind being air, or rarefied water rarefied still farther. The mutation or rarefaction of water into air takes place by day, the remutation or condensation of air into water by night: this is shown by the dew and by this the ebbing and flowing of the sea are caused.

In the brain, as in the root of the animal tree, all diseases, according to Doña Oliva, had their origin. From this theory she deduced a mode of practice, which if it did not facilitate the patient's recovery, was at least not likely to retard it; and tended in no way to counteract, or interfere with the restorative efforts of nature. And although fanciful in its foundation, it was always so humane and generally so reasonable as in a great degree to justify the confidence with which she advanced it. She requested that a board of learned men might be appointed, before whom she might defend her system of philosophy and of therapeutics, and that her practice might be tried for one year, that of Hippocrates and Galen having been tried for two thousand with what effect was daily and miserably seen, when of a thousand persons there were scarcely three who reached the proper termination of life and died by natural decay, the rest being cut off by some violent disease. For, according to her, the natural termination of life is produced by the exhaustion of the radical moisture, which in the course of nature is dried, or consumed, gradually and imperceptibly; death therefore, when that course is not disturbed, being an easy passage to eternity. This gradual desiccation it is which gives to old age the perfection of judgment that distinguishes it; and for the same reason the children of old men are more judicious than others, young men being deficient in judgment by reason of the excess of radical moisture, children still more so.

She had never studied medicine, she said; but it was clear as the light of day that the old system was erroneous, and must needs be so, because its founders were ignorant of the nature of man, upon which being rightly understood the true system must, of necessity, be founded. Hope is what supports health and life; fear, the worst enemy of both. Among the best preservatives and restoratives she recommended therefore cheerfulness, sweet odours, music, the country, the sound of woods and waters, agreeable conversation, and pleasant pastimes. Music, of all external things, she held to be that which tends most to comfort, rejoice and strengthen the brain, being as it were a spiritual pleasure in which the mind sympathizes; and the first of all remedies, in this, her true system of medicine, was to bring the mind and body into unison, removing thus that discord which is occasioned when they are ill at ease; this was to be done by administering cheerfulness, content, and hope to the mind, and in such words and actions as produced these, the best medicine was contained. Next to this it imported to comfort the stomach, and to cherish the root of man, that is to say the brain, with its proper corroborants, especially with sweet odours and with music. For music was so good a remedy for melancholy, so great an alleviator of pain, such a soother of uneasy emotions, and of passion, that she marvelled wherefore so excellent a medicine should not be more in use, seeing that undoubtedly many grievous diseases, as for example epilepsy, might be disarmed and cured by it; and it would operate with the more effect if accompanied with hopeful words and with grateful odours, for Doña Oliva thought with Solomon that “pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.”

Consequently unpleasant sounds and ill smells, were, according to her philosophy injurious. The latter she confounded with noxious air, which was an error to be expected in those days, when nothing concerning the composition of the atmosphere had been discovered. Thus she thought it was by their ill odour that limekilns and charcoal-fires occasioned death; and that owing to the same cause horses were frequently killed when the filth of a stable was removed, and men who were employed in cleaning vaults. Upon the same principle, in recommending perfumes as alexipharmic, she fell in with the usual practice. The plague according to her, might be received not by the breath alone, but at the eyes also, for through the sight there was ready access to the brain; it was prudent therefore to close the nostrils when there might be reason to apprehend that the air was tainted; and when conversing with an infected person, not to talk face to face, but to avert the countenance. In changing the air with the hope of escaping an endemic disease, the place to go to should be that from whence the pestilence had come, rather than one whither it might be going.

Ill sounds were noxious in like manner, though not in like degree, because no discord can be so grating as to prove fatal; but any sound which is at once loud and discordant she held to be unwholesome, and that to hear any one sing badly, read ill, or talk importunately like a fool was sufficient to cause a defluxion from the brain; if this latter opinion were well founded, no Speaker of the House of Commons could hold his office for a single Session without being talked to death. With these she classed the sound of a hiccup, the whetting of a saw, and the cry of bitter lamentation.

Doña Oliva it may be presumed was endued with a sensitive ear and a quick perception of odours, as well as with a cheerful temper, and an active mind. Her whole course of practice was intended to cheer and comfort the patient, if that was possible. She allowed the free use of water, and fresh air, and recommended that the apartments of the sick should be well ventilated. She prescribed refreshing odours, among others that of bread fresh from the oven, and that wine should be placed near the pillow, in order to induce sleep. She even thought that cheerful apparel conduced to health, and that the fashion of wearing black which prevailed in her time was repugnant to reason. Pursuing her theory that the brain was the original seat of disease, she advised that the excessive moisture which would otherwise take a wrong course from thence, should be drawn off through the natural channels by sneezing powders, or by pungent odours which provoke a discharge from the eyes and nostrils, by sudorifics also, exercise, and whatever might cause a diversion to the skin. When any part was wounded, or painful, or there was a tumour, she recommended compression above the part affected, with a woollen bandage, tightly bound, but not so as to occasion pain. And to comfort the root of the animal tree she prescribes scratching the head with the fingers, or combing it with an ivory comb,—a general and admirable remedy she calls this, against which some former possessor of the book who seems to have been a practitioner upon the old system, and has frequently entered his protest against the medical heresies of the authoress, has written in the margin “bad advice.” She recommended also cutting the hair, and washing the head with white wine, which as it were renovated the skin, and improved the vegetation.

But Doña Oliva did not reject more active remedies, on the contrary she advised all such as men had learnt from animals, and this included a powerful list, for she seems to have believed all the fables with which natural history in old times abounded, and of which indeed it may almost be said to have consisted. More reasonably she observed that animals might teach us the utility of exercise, seeing how the young lambs sported in the field, and dogs played with each other, and birds rejoiced in the air. When the stomach required clearing she prescribed a rough practice, that the patient should drink copiously of weak wine and water, and of tepid water with a few drops of vinegar and an infusion of camomile flowers; and that he should eat also things difficult of digestion, such as radishes, figs, carrots, onions, anchovies, oil and vinegar, with plenty of Indian pepper, and with something acid the better to cut the phlegm which was to be got rid of; having thus stored the stomach well for the expenditure which was to be required from it, the patient was then to lay himself on a pillow across a chair, and produce the desired effect either by his fingers or by feathers dipt in oil. After this rude operation which was to refresh the brain and elevate the pia mater, the stomach was to be comforted.

To bathe the whole body with white wine was another mode of invigorating the pia mater; for there it was that all maladies originated, none from the liver; the nature of the liver, said she, is that it cannot err;es docta sin doctor.

The latter treatises in her book are in Latin, but she not unfrequently passes, as if unconsciously, into her own language, writing always livelily and forcibly, with a clear perception of the fallacy of the established system, and with a confidence, not so well founded, that she had discovered the real nature of man and thereby laid the foundation of a rational practice, conformable to it.

THE MUNDANE SYSTEM AS COMMONLY HELD IN D. OLIVA'S AGE.—MODERN OBJECTIONS TO A PLURALITY OF WORLDS BY THE REV. JAMES MILLER.

Un cerchio immaginato ci bisogna,A voler ben la spera contemplare;Cosi chi intender questa storia agognaConviensi altro per altro immaginare;Perchè qui non si canta, e finge, e sogna;Venuto è il tempo da filosofare.PULCI.

One of Doña Oliva's treatises is upon theCompostura del Mundo, which may best be interpreted the Mundane System; herein she laid no claim to the merit of discovery, only to that of briefly explaining what had been treated of by many before her. The mundane system she illustrates by comparing it to a large ostrich's egg, with three whites and eleven shells, our earth being the yolk. The water which according to this theory surrounded the globe she likened to the first or innermostalbumen, the second and more extensive was the air; the third and much the largest consisted of fire. The eleven shells, were so many leaves one inclosing the other, circle within circle, like a nest of boxes. The first of these was the first heaven wherein the Moon hath her appointed place, the second that of the planet Mercury, the third that of Venus; the fourth was the circle of the Sun; Mars, Jupiter and Saturn moved in the fifth, sixth and seventh; the eighth was the starry sky; the ninth the chrystalline; the tenth theprimum mobile, which imparted motion to all; and the eleventh was theimmobile, or empyreum, surrounding all, containing all, and bounding all; for beyond this there was no created thing, either good or evil.

A living writer of no ordinary powers agrees in this conclusion with the old philosophers whom Doña Oliva followed; and in declaring his opinion he treats the men of science with as much contempt as they bestow upon their unscientific predecessors in astronomy.

Reader if thou art capable of receiving pleasure from such speculations, (and if thou art not, thou art little better than an Oran-Otang) send for a little book entitled the Progress of the Human Mind, its objects, conditions and issue: with the relation which the Progress of Religion bears to the general growth of mind; by the Rev. James Miller. Send also for the “Sibyl's Leaves, or the Fancies, Sentiments and Opinions of Silvanus, miscellaneous, moral and religious,” by the same author, the former published in 1823, the latter in 1829. Very probably you may never have heard of either: but if you are a buyer of books, I say unto you, buy them both.

“Infinity,” says this very able and original thinker, “is the retirement in which perfect love and wisdom only dwell with God.

“In Infinity and Eternity the sceptic sees an abyss in which all is lost, I see in them the residence of Almighty Power, in which my reason and my wishes find equally a firm support.—Here holding by the pillars of Heaven, I exist—I stand fast.

“Surround our material system with a void, and mind itself becoming blind and impotent in attempting to travel through it, will return to our little lights, like the dove which found no rest for the sole of her foot. But when I find Infinity filled with light and life and love, I will come back to you with my olive branch: follow me, or farewell! you shall shut me up in your cabins no more.”

“In stretching our view through the wide expanse which surrounds us, we perceive a system of bodies receding behind one another, till they are lost in immeasureable distance. This region beyond though to us dark and unexplored, from the impossibility of a limit, yet gives us its infinity as the most unquestionable of all principles. But though the actual extent to which this infinite region is occupied by the bodies of which the universe is composed, is far beyond our measure and our view, and though there be nothing without to compel us anywhere to stop in enlarging its bounds, Nature herself gives us other principles not less certain, which prove that she must have limits, and that it is impossible her frame can fill the abyss which surrounds her. Her different parts have each their fixed place, their stated distance. You may as well measure infinity by mile-stones as fill it with stars. To remove any one from an infinite distance from another, you must in fixing their place, set limits to the infinity you assume. You can advance from unity as far as you please, but there is no actual number at an infinite distance from it. You may in the same manner, add world to world as long as you please, only because no number of them can fill infinity, or approach nearer to fill it. We have the doctrine of Nature's abhorrence of avacuum;it is from aplenumlike this she shrinks, as from a region in which all her substance would be dissipated into nothing. Her frame is composed of parts which have each their certain proportion and relation. It subsists by mutual attractions and repulsions, lessening and increasing with distance; by a circulation which, actually passing through, every part rejects the idea of a space which it could never pervade. Infinity cannot revolve; the circulation of Nature cannot pervade infinity. The globe we inhabit, and all its kindred planets, revolve in orbits which embrace a common power in the centre which animates and regulates their motions, and on the influence of which their internal energies evidently depend. That we may not be lost in looking for it in the boundless regions without, our great physical power is all within, in the bosom of our own circle; and the same facts which prove the greatness of this power to uphold, to penetrate, to enliven at such a distance, shew in what manner it might at last become weak,—become nothing. Whatever relations we may have to bodies without, or whatever they may have to one another, their influence is all directed to particular points,—to given distances. Material Nature has no substance, can make no effort, capable of pervading infinity. The light itself of all her powers the most expansive, in diffusing itself through her own frame, shews most of all her incapacity to occupy the region beyond, in which (as the necessary result of its own effort) it soon sinks, feeble and faint, where all its motion is but as rest, in an extent to which the utmost possible magnitude of Nature is but a point.”

The reader will now be prepared for the remarks of this free thinker upon the Plurality of Worlds. Observe I call him free thinker not in disparagement, but in honour; he belongs to that service in which alone is perfect freedom.

“Perceiving,” he says, “as it is easy to do, the imperfection of our present system, instead of contemplating the immense prospect opened to our view in the progress of man, in the powers and the means he possesses, the philosopher sees through his telescope worlds and scales of being to his liking. By means of these, without the least reference to the Bible, or the human heart, Pope, the pretty talking parrot of Bolingbroke, with the assistance of his pampered goose, finds it easy to justify the ways of God to man. From worlds he never saw, he proves ours is as it should be.”

“To form the children of God for himself, to raise them to a capacity to converse with him, to enjoy all his love, this grand scenery is not unnecessary,—not extravagant. A smaller exhibition would not have demonstrated his wisdom and power. You would make an orrery serve perhaps! By a plurality of Gods, error degraded the Supreme Being in early ages; by a plurality of worlds it would now degrade his children, deprive them of their inheritance.”

“What are they doing in these planets? Peeping at us through telescopes? We may be their Venus or Jupiter. They are perhaps praying to us, sending up clouds of incense to regale our nostrils. Hear them, far-seeing Herschel! gauger of stars. I will pray to One only, who is above them all; and if your worlds come between me and Him, I will kick them out of my way. In banishing your new ones, I put more into the old than is worth them all put together.”

“These expanding heavens, the residence of so many luminous bodies of immeasurable distance and magnitude, and which the philosopher thinks must be a desert if devoted to man, at present possessing but so small a portion of his own globe, shall yet be too little for him,—the womb only in which the infant was inclosed, incapable of containing the mature birth.”

“We shall yet explore all these celestial bodies more perfectly than we have hitherto done our own globe, analyse them better than the substances we can shut up in our retorts, count their number, tell their measure.”

“As nature grows, mind grows. It grows to God, and in union with him shall fill, possess all.”

“Our rank among worlds is indeed insignificant if we are to receive it from the magnitude of our globe compared with others, compared with space. Put Herschel with his telescope on Saturn, he would scarcely think us worthy of the name of even a German prince. We may well be the sport of Jupiter, the little spot round which Mars and Venus coquette with one another. Little as it is however,—pepper-corn, clod of clay as it is, with its solitary satellite, and all its spots and vapours, I prefer it to them all. I am glad I was born in it, I love its men, and its women, and its laws. It's people shall be my people; it's God shall be my God. Here I am content to lodge and here to be buried. What Abanas and Pharphars may flow in these planets I know not: there is Jordan, here is the river of life. From this world I shall take possession of all these; while those, who in quest of strange worlds have forsaken God, shall be desolate.”

“This globe is large enough to contain man; man will yet grow large enough to fill Heaven.”

“Fear not, there is no empty space in the universe, none in eternity: nothing lost. God possesses all, and there is room for nothing but the objects of his affections.”

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST CHRISTIANITY DRAWN FROM A PLURALITY OF WORLDS SHEWN TO BE FUTILE: REMARKS ON THE OPPOSITE DISPOSITIONS BY WHICH MEN ARE TEMPTED TO INFIDELITY.

—ascoltaSiccome suomo di verace lingua;E porgimi l'orecchio.CHIABRERA.

The extracts with which the preceding Chapter concludes, will have put thee in a thoughtful mood, Reader, if thou art one of those persons whose brains are occasionally applied to the purpose of thinking upon such subjects as are worthy of grave consideration. Since then I have thee in this mood, let us be serious together. Egregiously is he mistaken who supposes that this book consists of nothing more than

Fond Fancy's scum, and dregs of scattered thought.1

1SIRP. SIDNEY.

Every where I have set before thee what Bishop Reynolds callsverba desiderii,—“pleasant, delightful, acceptable words, such as are worthy of all entertainment, and may minister (not a few of them) comfort and refreshment to the hearers.” I now come to thee withverba rectitudinis,—“equal and right words; not loose, fabulous, amorous, impertinent, which should satisfy the itch of ear, or tickle only a wanton fancy; but profitable and wholesome words,—so to please men as that it may be unto edification and for their profit; words written to make men sound and upright;—to make their paths direct and straight, without falseness or hypocrisy.” Yea they shall beverba veritatis,—“words of truth, which will not deceive or misguide those that yield up themselves to the direction of them: a truth which is sanctifying and saving, and in these respects most worthy of our attention and belief.”

Make up your mind then to be Tremayned in this chapter.

The benevolent reader will willingly do this, he I mean who is benevolent to himself as well as towards me. The so-called philosopher or man of liberal opinions, who cannot be so inimical in thought to me, as they are indeed to themselves, will frown at it; one such exclaims pshaw, or pish, according as he may affect thefortémanner, or the fine, of interjecting his contemptuous displeasure; another already winces, feeling himself by anticipation touched upon a sore place. To such readers it were hopeless to sayfavete, “Numquid æger laudat medicum secantem?” But I shall say with the Roman Philosopher of old, who is well entitled to that then honourable designation, “tacete,—et præbete vos curationi: etiam si exclamaveritis, non aliter audiam, quam si ad tactum vitiorum vestrorum ingemiscatis.”2

2SENECA.

My own observation has led me to believe with Mr. Miller, that some persons are brought by speculating upon a Plurality of Worlds to reason themselves out of their belief in Christianity: such Christianity indeed it is as has no root, because the soil on which it has fallen is shallow, and though the seed which has been sown there springs up, it soon withers away. Thus the first system of superstition, and the latest pretext for unbelief have both been derived from the contemplation of the heavenly bodies. The former was the far more pardonable error, being one to which men, in the first ages, among whom the patriarchal religion had not been carefully preserved, were led by natural piety. The latter is less imputable to the prevalence of unnatural impiety,—than to that weakness of mind and want of thought which renders men as easily the dupe of the infidel propagandist in one age, as of the juggling friar in another. These objectors proceed upon the gratuitous assumption that other worlds are inhabited by beings of the same kind as ourselves, and moreover in the same condition; that is having fallen, and being therefore in need of a Redeemer. Ask of them upon what grounds they assume this, and they can make no reply.

Too many alas there are who part with their heavenly birth-right at a viler price than Esau! It is humiliating to see by what poor sophistries they are deluded,—by what pitiable vanity they are led astray! And it is curious to note how the same evil effect is produced by causes the most opposite. The drunken pride of intellect makes one man deny his Saviour and his God: another under the humiliating sense of mortal insignificancy, feels as though he were “a worm and no man,” and therefore concludes that men are beneath the notice, still more beneath the care, of the Almighty. “When I consider thy Heavens, the work of thy fingers, the Moon and the Stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him?” Of those who pursue this feeling to a consequence as false as it is unhappy, there is yet hope; for the same arguments (and they are all-sufficient) by which the existence of the Deity is proved, prove also his infinite goodness; and he who believes in that goodness, if he but feelingly believe, is not far from trusting in it,

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