---

Скачать книгу

---

they admitted into their system two stars which we have not. One of these, as the sun of the gods [Geister-sonne],[23] they placed high above the visible sun. The latter, which they named the “counter-earth,” (αντἱχθν) was placed directly opposite to the real earth. It would seem, therefore, that they regarded these two bodies as the invisible centers of the whole sidereal universe, and, as it were, the choir-leaders or choragi of the apparently orderless and scattered host of heaven. Are these two stars now extinct? or is their light too pure and ethereal to penetrate our dense and thickened atmosphere; or, like so much besides, was it little else than a still surviving tradition from the primitive world? This, however, must ever remain conjectural. As for the fact itself, that the Pythagoreans did so teach, and understood by these names, not merely figurative symbols, but real stars, has been placed beyond doubt by modern investigations into the Pythagorean doctrines. At any rate, their knowledge of these stars must have been acquired by some other means than the telescope of modern astronomy, with which, in fact, they were not acquainted, and nothing but some new observation or phenomenon in the sidereal heavens can ever throw light on this matter. And who shall say that even our present astronomical science shall not advance still further, and that it has not closed too soon, and been in all too great a haste to sum up its doubtless most elaborate and complicated calculations?

      Thus did the mind of man advance the first step toward the maturity of physical science, by attaining to a more comprehensive survey of the mundane system, and a more accurate knowledge of his own habitation, of this earthly planet. The next step in this sluggish progress was made by the chemical discoveries of modern times, and especially of the French chemists. In a merely negative point of view, these have been important, as establishing the fact that the old elements, water, for instance, and air, which had long been regarded as simple, are themselves decomposable into other constituents and aeriform parts. And, indeed, that such great powers of nature as these are, and must ever remain so long as the present constitution of the world shall last, could only subsist in the reciprocal dynamical relation of several conflicting forces, a profounder glance at nature would of itself have conjectured and presupposed. But in a positive sense, this second step has carried us very far toward the understanding of the hieroglyphics of nature. Those primary elements of things discovered and numbered by that chemical analysis which has subjected to its experiments almost every form and species of matter, constitute, as it were, the permanent material letters and consonants of the natural world around us. On the other hand, the vowels of human language are represented by the fundamental facts of the magnetism of the earth, together with the phenomena of electricity, the decomposition of light, and the chemical chain of the galvanic pile, in which the inner life of the terrestrial force, and of the eternally-moving atmosphere, as well as the soul whose pulse beats therein, finds an utterance, like a voice out of the lowest deep. And thus, by means of an alphabet of nature, which, however, is still most imperfect, we may hope to make a beginning, at least, and to decipher one or two entire words. But modern chemistry has made a more important advance toward a right understanding of nature as a whole. By analyzing and decomposing all solid bodies, as well as water itself, into different forms of a gaseous element, it has thereby destroyed forever that appearance of rigidity and petrifaction which the corporeal mass of visible and external nature presents to our observation. Every where we now meet with living elemental forces, hidden and shut up beneath this rigid exterior. The proportion of aqueous particles in the air is so great, that, if suddenly condensed, they would suffice for more than one flood. And a similar deluge of light would ensue, if all the luminous sparks which are latent in the darkness were simultaneously set free; and the whole globe itself would end in flame, were all the fiery elements that are at present dispersed throughout the world to be at once disengaged and kindled. The investigation of the salutary bonds which hold together these elementary forces in due equilibrium, controlling one by the other, and confining each within its prescribed limits, does not fall within the scope of our present inquiries, as neither does the question, whether these bonds be not of a higher kind than naturalists commonly suppose? More immediately connected with, as also more important for our general subject, is the result which chemical analysis has so indubitably established, that in the natural world every object consists of living forces, and that properly nothing is rigid and dead, but all replete with hidden life. This colossal mountain range of petrified mummies which forms nature on the whole—this pyramid of graves, piled one over the other, is therefore, it is true, a historical monument of the past—of all the bygone ages of the world in the advancing development of death; but nevertheless, there is therein a latent vitality. Beneath the vast tombstone of the visible world there slumbers a soul, not wholly alien, but more than half akin to our own. This planetary and sensible world, and the earth-soul imprisoned therein, is only apparently dead. Nature does but sleep, and will, perhaps, ere long awake again. Sleep generally is, if not the essence, yet, at least, an essential signature and characteristic of nature. Every natural object partakes of it more or less. Not the animals only, but the very plants sleep; while in the vicissitudes of the seasons, and of their influences on the productive surface of the earth, and, in truth, on the whole planet, a perpetual alternation is perceptible between an awakening of life and a state of slumbering repose. Whatever, consequently, partakes, and requires the refreshment of sleep, belongs, even on that account, to nature. Painters, indeed, have given us pictures of sleeping angels or genii; but the pure spirits sleep not, and stand, in truth, in no need of such rest, and their activity is not subject to this necessity of alternate repose.

      The comparison of a sentence in the Mosaic history of the creation, with a passage in the Hindoo cosmogony, somewhat similar in kind, but most different in the application, will serve, perhaps, to place this fact in the clearest light. In the former it is said, “God rested on the seventh day.” Now, in this expression there is nothing to startle us. In explaining it, there is no need to have recourse to a figurative interpretation. It does not allude to God’s inmost nature (which admits not of such alternation of states or need of rest), but simply to His external operations. For in every case where an operation of the Deity takes place, whether in history or nature, an alternation between the first divine impulse, and a subsequent period of repose, is not only conceivable but actually noticeable. For the divine impulse or hand is, as it were, withdrawn, in order that this first impulse of the Creator may fully expand itself, and that the creature adopting it, may carry it out and develop his own energies in accordance therewith. But instead of this correct statement, we have, in the Hindoo cosmogony, that “Brahma sleeps.” While he thus slumbers, the whole creation, with its worlds and mundane developments, is said to collapse into naught. Here, then, a single word hurries us from the sure ground of truth and divine revelation into the shifting domain of mythology. Of Him indeed, who is higher than the angels and created spirits, it is no doubt assumed throughout the New Testament that, while on earth, He slept like other men. Once, too, it is expressly stated, that during a great storm, while His disciples were filled with alarm, He was asleep in the hinder part of the ship; but that when He awoke the winds ceased. But here, also, the case is different. While implying many a great object and instructive lesson besides, this passage, like several others, seems designed to prove that our Lord’s body was no mere phantom; but that He took upon Him a real human form, and was, in truth, a man who stood in need of sleep. And from this we may infer, that sleep is so indispensable a condition of natural existence, that even God Himself, as soon as He condescended to enter its limits by taking upon Him a human body, became subject to nature’s essential law of sleep.

      The important part which sleep plays, not only in nature, but also in man, her first-born son, appears from the earliest event that is recorded of his history, even in Paradise. God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and out of his opened side took of his vital substance to invest it with a bodily veil and shape, and to present it before him on his awaking as the gentle helpmeet of his existence. Extremely significant also is the difference in the accounts of man’s and of woman’s material formation. Man is formed of the dust of the earth, and therefore shortly after invested with the dominion of the whole earthly globe as the deputy and vicegerent of Him from whom cometh all lordship and authority. But woman is taken and created out of the bosom or heart of man. Would human wit have ever invented, or even conceived the possibility of this great marvel of creative omnipotence?

      This was in Paradise—but with the loss of it man was deprived, in a great manner, of those higher powers of life and those secrets of nature which

---

Скачать книгу