The Philosophy of History. Friedrich von Schlegel
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and that though the Southern firmament is embellished by its own, they are neither in the same number, nor of the same beauty. To the impressions made by such objects, the men of the primitive ages were certainly far more alive than those of the present day; and an obscure feeling for nature, grounded on the real natural superiority of the North, as well as the poetical sagas which were in part the natural offspring of such feelings, may have contributed to direct the stream of the first migrations of nations towards the North, and have occasioned the very early colonization and settlement of its regions: for, in primitive antiquity, a certain presentient instinct, it is right to suppose, was much oftener the primary cause of those migrations than such a spirit of commercial speculation as afterwards animated the Phœnicians and their various colonies. We may here also observe that even in its present state, the remoter North has its own peculiar charms and advantages, and that by human industry it may attain to a much higher degree of productiveness, than we should be at first-sight tempted to suppose. In this sense ought to be taken the tradition of antiquity, as to the happy and virtuous people of the Hyperboreans; and it is easy to understand it in this sense without inferring thence too many consequences. If on the other hand, some able and learned naturalists, led away by this fact, appear almost inclined to regard the region of the North Pole, once in the enjoyment of a warm southern temperature, as one of the earliest, nay the very earliest abode of the human race; I cannot follow them in their hypothesis, opposed as it is to the positive and unanimous tradition of many and most ancient nations, pointing with one concurrent voice to central Asia as man's primitive dwelling-place. It appears indeed that the tradition of antiquity as to the Island of Atlantis ought to be considered historical; but instead of regarding this country as an island of the Blessed situated in the arctic circle, I think it much more natural to refer the whole tradition to an obscure nautical knowledge of America, or of those adjacent islands at which Columbus first touched, and to which the Phœnician pilots (who beyond all doubt circumnavigated Africa) may not improbably have been driven in the course of their voyage.
I have laid it down as an invariable maxim constantly to follow historical tradition, and to hold fast by that clue, even when many things in the testimony and declarations of tradition appear strange and almost inexplicable, or at least enigmatical; for so soon as in the investigations of ancient history, we let slip that thread of Ariadne, we can find no outlet from the labyrinth of fanciful theories, and the chaos of clashing opinions. For this reason I cannot concur in the very violent hypothesis which a celebrated geologist, towards the close of the last century, M. De Luc, has hazarded respecting the deluge, and which the excellent Stolberg has adopted in his great historical work;[38] although the author of this theory, so far from intending to oppose it to the Mosaic account of the deluge, or to set aside the narrative of the inspired historian, conceived his hypothesis was calculated to furnish the strongest confirmation and clearest illustration of the sacred text. But I cannot reconcile his theory either with Holy Writ, or with the general testimony of historical tradition. The supposition is this, that the deluge was not a general inundation of the whole earth, according to the ordinary belief, but a mere change of the solid and fluid parts of the earth's surface, a dynamical transmutation of land and sea, so that what was formerly land became sea, and vice versa. This is much more than can be found in the old account of the Noachian flood, or than a sound critical interpretation would infer; and the supposition that the names of rivers and countries occurring in the Bible, refer to those objects as they existed in the original dry land; and are again to be transferred to similar objects in the new land that sprang up with, or after, or out of the deluge; this supposition, I say, bears too evidently the stamp of arbitrary conjecture, to gain admission and credit with those who have taken historical tradition for their guide. If by the geological facts which offer, or which we think offer, satisfactory proof, not only of the general Noachian flood, but of more than one deluge and of still more violent catastrophes of nature; if by these geological facts before our eyes, such a total revolution and dynamic transmutation of land and sea were really proved (and the character of these proofs I must abandon to the investigation and judgment of others); this great revolution examined in an historical point of view, and in reference to the Mosaic history, must then be rather referred to that elder period, whereof it is said: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; but the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
These words which announce the presage of a new morn of creation, not only represent a darker and wilder state of the globe, but very clearly show the element of water to be still in predominant force. Even the division of the elements of the waters above the firmament, and of the waters below it, on the second day of creation—the permanent limitation of the sea for the formation and visible appearance of dry land, necessarily imply a mighty revolution in the earth, and afford additional proof that the Mosaic history speaks not only of one, but of several catastrophes of nature; a circumstance that has not been near enough attended to in the geological interpretation and illustration of the Bible. But to the bold and ill-founded hypothesis above-mentioned, many geological facts may be opposed, for in the midst of vast tracts and strata of an ancient bottom of the sea, many spots are found covered with the accumulated remains of land animals, with trunks of trees and various other products of vegetation, pertaining not to the sea, but to dry land.
With the clearest and most indubitable precision, the Mosaic history fixes the primitive dwelling-place of man in that central region of Western Asia situate near two great rivers, and amid four inland seas, the Persian and Arabian gulfs on the one hand, and the Caspian and Mediterranean seas on the other, and which is likewise designated for the same purpose by the concurrent traditions of most other primitive nations. The ancient tradition of the European nations as to their own origin and early history, conducts the enquirer constantly to the Caucasian regions, to Asia Minor, to Phœnicia, and to Egypt; countries all of them contiguous to, in the vicinity and even on the coast of, that central region. Among the primitive Asiatic nations, the Chinese place the cradle of their origin and civilization in the north-western province of Shensee; and the Indians fix theirs towards the north of the Himalaya mountains. Thus this last tradition points to Bactriana, which, as it borders on Persia, approximates consequently to that central region; whereof the holy and primitive country of the Persian Sagas, Atropatena or land of fire, now known by the name of Adherbijan forms a part. With a clearness and precision which admit of no doubt, the Mosaic history designates the two great rivers of that central region, the Tigris and Euphrates, by the same names which they have ever afterwards borne; and even the name of Eden, down to a later period, was affixed to a country near Damascus, and to another in Assyria. The third river of Paradise has been sought for by some in a more Northerly direction—in the region of Mount Caucasus; and though not with equal certainty as in the other two instances, they have thought to find it in the Phasis. The fourth river towards the South, the old Interpreters generally took to be the Nile; but the description of its course is so widely different from the present situation of that river, and the present geography of the whole of those regions, that here at least a very great change must have occurred, in order to occasion this discrepancy between the old description of this river's course, and the present geography of the country.
In another circumstance, also, which has been mostly too little attended to, this disparity between the Mosaic description and the present conformation of those regions is particularly striking. The geography of the rivers of Paradise, at least of two or three, may be easily traced, though the fourth remains a matter of uncertainty; but the one source of Paradise in which those four rivers had their rise, in order thence to spread, and diffuse fertility over the whole earth—this one source, which is precisely the object of most importance, can no where be found on the earth; whether it be dried or filled up, or howsoever it has been removed. In attending to some indications in Scripture, and without transgressing the due limits of interpretation, may we not be permitted to conjecture that the first chastisement inflicted on man by expulsion from his first glorious habitation and primeval home, may have been accompanied by a change in Paradise brought about by some natural convulsion? To judge by analogy, and from circumstances, which even a passage in Holy Writ alludes to, this convulsion must have been rather a volcanic eruption, by which even at the present day the sources of rivers are dried up, and their course completely changed, than a mere inundation that we are ever wont to regard as the sole possible cause of physical revolutions. Many vestiges of such changes may perhaps be proved from even geological observation;—thus to cite