“VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION”—AVOWED INFIDELITY.

(FROM THE IRISH ADVOCATE.)

We have certainly never read such a work as the volume now before us, and bearing the above title; it embraces a range of subjects, perhaps never before attempted to be compressed into one volume; as it presumes to present to the eye of the reader in 400 octavo pages, the science of every department of inanimate and animate creation. It begins with the first moment—when the Supreme Ruler of the world struck the first stroke in the construction of nature, and then accompanies the Creator, with the familiarity of a companion, all along through geology, mineralogy, fossil botany, marine and terrestrial zoology, and mounting up through all the insect and animal tribes, finishes its tour of creation in the human mind; here he pauses and divides the mens humana into several parts, and accounts for each act of the understanding and the will by a graduated scale of instinct, and then tries to prove that human action is regulated by something like a moral thermometer; the human will rising or falling according to the moral temperature by which man is surrounded. We again repeat, that we have never in all our experience read such a volume as this—assuming, as the author does, an acquaintance with every department of physical science, talking in a style of learned supremacy, and at the same time betraying a palpable ignorance of the very elements of the sciences on which he descants with such a silly solemnity; most certainly, our author has never read the very school-boy lessons of conic sections, or the mechanics of central forces, which may be called the very bolts and screws and moving power of creation; most assuredly he has never studied even the mere essentials of philosophical chemistry; the entire amount of his scientific acquirements may be fairly calculated to consist in hearing some popular lectures on botany and geology—but when he arrives at the subject of the human mind, it is painful and yet amusing to hear him “nickname” almost every term of moral philosophy; and this deficiency clearly arising from sheer ignorance of logic and ethics. But we might laugh at this silliness of our author, and think (as the Edinburgh Review has it) that he was a boarding school girl, if he or she did not in the end introduce an audacious infidelity, a palpable deism—attempted to be founded on science—of which no modern production can offer a comparison.

The omission of the Infidel Part by the various reviewers on the subject, has imposed on us the necessity of discussing at large, the gross infidelity of the present publication before us, and fortifying the public mind against the doctrines sought to be inculcated through the ignorant and wicked distortion of those very departments of science, which go to support religion by a palpable and infallible testimony; an additional reason weighs with us, namely, the work has gone through five editions in a few months; a fact, clearly proving the public rage for startling novelties; again, the author of this work is just the kind of person who invariably writes at Christianity, under the cover of a misunderstood science; and hence, as we have now fairly before us, a perfect specimen of a modern scientific infidel, who presumes to great learning, we are much mistaken if we shall not very soon convince our Christian readers of the base counterfeit knowledge, and empty pretensions which invariably belong to this modern class of philosophical theologians.

Although the author commences his book in astronomy and ends in Metaphysics, we shall take leave to reverse this order; and by presenting to our readers his ideas on religion, they will be enabled better to understand the motives which influenced him in the publication of his incomprehensible inventions in science. We shall therefore proceed at once to discuss his metaphysical system of man’s nature.

In page 340, he writes thus: “What has tended to take mind, in the eyes of the learned and unlearned, out of the range of nature is, its apparent irregular and wayward character. How different the manifestations in different beings! how unstable in all! at one time so calm, at another so wild and impulsive; it seemed impossible that anything so subtle and aberrant could be part of a system, the main features of which are uniformity and precision. But the irregularity of mental phenomena is only in appearance. When we give up the individual and take the mass, we find as much uniformity of result, as in any other class of natural phenomena. The irregularity is exactly of the same kind as that of the weather. No man can say what may be the weather of tomorrow; but the quantity of rain which falls in any particular place, in any five years, is precisely the same as the quantity that falls in any other five years in the same place. Thus, whilst it is impossible to predict of any one Frenchman, that during next year he will commit a crime, it is certain that about one in every six hundred and fifty of the French people will do so, because in past years the proportion has been in that amount, &c.

This statistical regulation of moral affairs establishes their being under the presidency of law.—Man is seen to be an enigma only as an individual; in the mass he is a MATHEMATICAL problem. It is hardly necessary to say, much less to argue, that MENTAL ACTION (that is, morality) being proved to be under law, passes at once into the category of natural things. Its old metaphysical character vanishes in a moment, and the distinction usually drawn between PHYSICAL AND MORAL is annulled. This view agrees with what all observation teaches, that mental phenomena (morality) flow directly from the brain. They are seen to be dependent on naturally constituted and naturally conditioned organs, and thus OBEDIENT, LIKE ALL OTHER ORGANIC phenomena, to law.”

On reading the above extract, how can any Christian, or we should say, any human being, restrain his withering contempt or boiling indignation, at seeing the cool, unblushing impudence with which this maniac assures his readers that the difference between morality and immorality [moral irregularity] is of the “same kind” as the difference in “the weather!!” that is to say, morality and profligacy are founded on “the same kind” of a law as the causes of storm or snow!! and the moral man differs from the crime-stained wretch only by the “same” difference that exists between a fog and a shower of rain!

Hence also the good father, or the good husband, or the good son, are governed by the “same laws” in their good and moral conduct, as the law which makes their beard grow! that is, the heat of the weather! and, of course, to kill a parent, or kill a bishop, is the result of “the same kind” of a law! and, moreover, of as invariable and necessary a law as the laws of March wind and water spouts! And, moreover, these murders (moral irregularities) must necessarily happen, because there is a necessary law to produce them, and they are part of a system formed for the purpose; and hence to maim, poison, mutilate, kill, and murder, differs from the contrary acts, only by the same difference that the darkness of night differs from the light of day—that is, the difference of the weather! Why, old Manicheus, with his good and evil principle, and Satan showing the whole world from the top of one mountain, were pigmies in devilment, compared with our author, who annihilates all moral relations, and reduces the ten commandments (the old system of natural law) to a grand principle of electricity and condensation! and makes the direction of the winds and the aurora borealis be the great atmospherical agents for the production of the natural phenomena called morality!

Except that we are beginning to laugh at this man or school girl, or whatever else the author is, we should run mad at this insane jibbering, and think the world had gone astray into mythology, for permitting this book to arrive at a fifth edition; but we must proceed with our philosopher!!—

Hear him in page 347:—“The brain of the vertebrata is merely an expansion of the anterior part of the ganglia of the articulata, or these ganglia may be regarded as the rudiment of the brain, the superior organ thus appearing as only a further development of the inferior. There are many facts to prove that the action of this apparatus is of an electric nature, &c. The brain of a newly killed animal being taken out and replaced by a substance which produces electric action, the operation of digestion which was interrupted by the death of the animal, was continued; showing that the brain in one of its powers is identical with the galvanic battery. Nor is this a sage or startling idea, when we reflect that electricity is almost as metaphysical as ever mind was supposed to be. It is a thing perfectly weightless, intangible, and yet electricity is a real thing, an actual existence in nature, as witness the effects of light and heat; it obeys the angle of incidence in reflection, as exactly as does a stone thrown obliquely against a wall; so mental action (morality) may be imponderable, intangible, and yet—a—real existence, and ruled by the Eternal through his laws.”

Our philosopher is beginning to make us laugh outright, and hence we may resume the discussion of the last monstrous quotations in good humour. He has invented, as our readers may see, a new grand system of mental “gas,” moved by electric action; and the mind under the influence of this electric action PRODUCES morality or immorality on the same principle as a mill grinds barley and oats! But the grand effort of genius at which he is driving, in this prodigious plan of reducing morality to a mechanical process, is far surpassed by the brilliant idea which he introduces of making mental action (morality) imponderable, as electricity! and yet having as an existence as electricity; so that he has, at length, by the deepest research into anatomy and natural philosophy, reduced mental action (morality) to a regular table of “avoirdupois!” and has discovered that human crime and human perfection are electric efforts like our common thunder storms! and he has moreover found that the natural fluid of morality, so produced in the mind, has no appreciable weight; so that any amount of mortal guilt in this new grand system, will not weigh even one penny weight or barley corn, which he views as a most strange fact, considering that the moral fluid is a real natural existence, and as such ought to be subject to the laws of gravitation!! It is to be hoped, however, that in the next edition he will favour the world with the ponderability of morality, and solve the important question, namely—“how many false oaths would break a camel’s back?” He is the very man of all the world to solve the question.

But, after all, this author furnishes an instance of most melancholy reflection. In the entire range of mental aberration there has never appeared anything so multitudinously extravagant or absurd as his new theory; and he is so egregiously ignorant of even the common terms of chemistry, he uses the word “heat” instead of “caloric;” and “the angle of incidence, in reflection, as exactly as a stone thrown against a WALL,” is a sentence that contains more ignorance of geometrical phrase and mechanical principle, than could be well conceived to be compressed into such a small space. But we must proceed to the grand climax of our author’s electrical system of morality:—

“If mental action be electric, the proverbial quickness of thought—that is, the quickness of the transmission of the sensation and will—may be presumed to have been brought to an exact measurement. The speed of light has long been known to be about 192,000 miles in a second; and experiment has shown that the electric agent travels at the same rate, thus showing a likelihood that one law rules all the imponderable bodies. Mental action may accordingly be presumed to have a rapidity equal to 192,000 miles in a second—a rate evidently far beyond what is necessary to make the design and execution of any of our ordinary muscular movements apparently identical in point of time—which they are.”

The extravagance of one principle always leads to the extravagance of all the numerous consequences that hang upon it; and hence, to all the absurdities that have gone before on this one point of “mental action” we find the concluding phenomenon discovered by our philosopher far surpassing any wild revery that has ever entered the head of any human being before the golden age of our author. What absurdity can equal the idea that mental action (morality) has a given rate of velocity, equal to light; so that from his theory one man may be said to kill another at the rate of 192,000 miles in a second! This is the grand climax of the system, and it surpasses all we have ever conceived before.

We have, indeed, often heard of “spectacles” being equal to a 500 horse power; but up to this time we have never heard of a man “cursing,” for instance, at the rate of 192,000 miles in a second!—This discovery is entirely to be attributed to the exclusive genius of our philosopher.

But the conclusion of his work is more than deplorable. His philosophical logic consists in premises of madness and conclusions of infidelity. It is deplorable, and it is more than deplorable, to see this mad work go through five editions in Great Britain. It proves the morbid appetite of Great Britain on religious subjects. That appetite is diseased, and can only be cured by the food of true faith and grace.

But let us hear our author’s profession of faith, page 407:—

“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 of its laws—there is a system of mercy and grace behind the screen of nature, towards which we stand in a peculiar class of relations. . . . For the existence of such a system, the actual constitution of nature is a powerful argument. The reasoning may be run 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 character of the Deity it is necessary to suppose that the present system is but 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 as it is, does not satisfy even man’s idea of what might be; . . . but the mundane economy might be very well as a portion of some greater phenomenon, the rest of which was yet to be evolved. Our system, therefore, though it may, at first, appear at variance with other doctrines in esteem amongst mankind, tends to come into harmony with them. . . I would say, in conclusion, that even where the two above arguments may fail of effect, there may be yet a FAITH derived from this view of nature sufficient to sustain us, under all sense of the imperfect happiness, calamities, woes, and pains of this sphere of being. . . . Surely, in such a faith we may well rest at ease. . . . Thinking of all the contingencies of this world, as to be in time melted into, or lost in some greater system, to which the present is only subsidiary, let us wait with patience, and be of good cheer.”

No one can read the above deplorable sentiments without seeing the open Deism of this unfortunate writer; he writes like a man who never heard of Christianity—who tries to reason himself into the idea that there may be some system besides nature, where grace and mercy exist; but which system (if such there be) is still part of nature—an advanced natural principle; and how melancholy to hear him say that the faith derived from nature is sufficient for man—that he may be well at ease in this system, and that hereafter he may perhaps see a greater system in eternity.

We need not say one word more on the metaphysical talent of our philosopher—he speaks for himself. In our next review we shall take him on his astronomical acquirements, where he figures away in the skies like a celestial rope-dancer, but from which we hope to take him down, to the amusement of our readers, and convince the public that our astronomer has never condescended to read the vulgar studies called geometry, trigonometry, conic sections, mechanics, optics, &c., &c., but, with one aspiring bound, has jumped into the milky way, and standing there in something of the character of a railroad overseer, he has ordered suns and moons, and curves, and seas and lands, and fish, and elephants, to be constructed and made, and to move and walk, on one grand principle of “electric action.” And moreover, we do not intend to let this gentleman out of our hands for some time—not that we are anxious to be particularly severe on him, but that in future, when any similar philosopher writes with his real name to his book, he may know that we are assisted by a corps of six writers, and that if he dare to write one word against the faith we profess, or the church to which we belong, or the clergy whom we revere, we shall meet him in his title page, and dispute every word he may utter against our principles, or our creed. In conclusion, we have a word to say to the Edinburgh Review on this subject, which we shall make known in due time, and shall convince the reviewer that he is not so scientific or historical as he vainly fancies himself to be, in his allusions to Popery.