Chapter 5

The low and sweet voice ceased; it appeared as if I had fallen suddenly upon the earth, but there was a bright light before me and I heard my name loudly called; the voice was not of my intellectual guide--the genius before me was my servant bearing a flambeau in his hand. He told me he had been searching me in vain amongst the ruins, that the carriage had been waiting for me above an hour, and that he had left a large party of my friends assembled in the Palazzo F---.

DIALOGUE THE SECOND. DISCUSSIONS CONNECTED WITH THE VISION IN THE COLOSAEUM.

The same friends, Ambrosio and Onuphrio, who were my companions at Rome in the winter, accompanied me in the spring to Naples. Many conversations occurred in the course of our journey which were often to me peculiarly instructive, and from the difference of their opinions generally animated and often entertaining. I shall detail one of these conversations, which took place in the evening on the summit of Vesuvius, and the remembrance of which from its connection with my vision in the Colosaeum has always a peculiar interest for me. We had reached with some labour the edge of the crater and were admiring the wonderful scene around us. I shall give the conversation in the words of the persons of the drama.

_Philalethes_.--It is difficult to say whether there is more of sublimity or beauty in the scene around us. Nature appears at once smiling and frowning, in activity and repose. How tremendous is the volcano, how magnificent this great laboratory of Nature in its unceasing fire, its subterraneous lightnings and thunder, its volumes of smoke, its showers of stones and its rivers of ignited lava! How contrasted the darkness of the scoriae, the ruins and the desolation round the crater with the scene below! There we see the rich field covered with flax, or maize, or millet, and intersected by rows of trees which support the green and graceful festoons of the vine; the orange and lemon tree covered with golden fruit appear in the sheltered glens; the olive trees cover the lower hills; islands purple in the beams of the setting sun are scattered over the sea in the west, and the sky is tinted with red softening into the brightest and purest azure; the distant mountains still retain a part of the snows of winter, but they are rapidly melting and they absolutely seem to melt reflecting the beams of the setting sun, glowing as if on fire. And man appears emulous of Nature, for the city below is full of activity; the nearest part of the bay is covered with boats, busy multitudes crowd the strand, and at the same time may be seen a number of the arts belonging to civilised society in operation--house-building, ship-building, rope-making, the manipulations of the smith and of the agriculturist, and not only the useful arts, but even the amusements and luxuries of a great metropolis may be witnessed from the spot in which we stand; that motley crowd is collected round a policinello, and those smaller groups that surround the stalls are employed in enjoying the favourite food and drink of the lazzaroni.

_Ambrosio_.--We see not only the power and activity of man, as existing at present, and of which the highest example may be represented by the steam-boat which is now departing for Palermo, but we may likewise view scenes which carry us into the very bosom of antiquity, and, as it were, make us live with the generations of past ages. Those small square buildings, scarcely visible in the distance, are the tombs of distinguished men amongst the early Greek colonists of the country; and those rows of houses, without roofs, which appear as if newly erecting, constitute a Roman town restored from its ashes, that remained for centuries as if it had been swept from the face of the earth. When you study it in detail you will hardly avoid the illusion that it is a rising city; you will almost be tempted to ask where are the workmen, so perfect art the walls of the houses, so bright and uninjured the painting upon them. Hardly anything is wanting to make this scene a magnificent epitome of all that is most worthy of admiration in Nature and art; had there been in addition to the other objects a fine river and a waterfall the epitome would, I think, have been absolutely perfect.

_Phil_.--You are most unreasonable in imagining additions to a scene which it is impossible to embrace in one view, and which presents so many objects to the senses, the memory, and to the imagination; yet there is a river in the valley between Naples and Castel del Mare; you may see its silver thread and the white foam of its torrents in the distance, and if you were geologists you would find a number of sources of interest, which have not been mentioned, in the scenery surrounding us. Somma which is before us, for instance, affords a wonderful example of a mountain formed of marine deposits, and which has been raised by subterraneous fire, and those large and singular veins which you see at the base and rising through the substance of the strata are composed of volcanic porphyry, and offer a most striking and beautiful example of the generation and structure of rocks and mineral formations.

_Onuphrio_.--As we passed through Portici, on the road to the base of Vesuvius, it appeared to me that I saw a stone which had an ancient Roman inscription upon it, and which occupied the place of a portal in the modern palace of the Barberini.

_Phil_.--This is not an uncommon circumstance: Most of the stones used in the palaces of Portici had been employed more than two thousand years before in structures raised by the ancient Romans or Greek colonists; and it is not a little remarkable that the buildings of Herculaneum, a town covered with ashes, tufa, and lava, from the first recorded eruption of Vesuvius more than seventeen hundred years ago, should have been constructed of volcanic materials produced by some antecedent igneous action of the mountain in times beyond the reach of history; and it is still more remarkable that men should have gone on for so many ages making erections in spots where their works have been so often destroyed, inattentive to the voice of time or the warnings of nature.

_Onu_.--This last fact recalls to my recollection an idea which Philalethes started in the remarkable dream which he would have us believe occurred to him in the Colosaeum, namely--that no important facts which can be useful to society are ever lost; and that, like these stones, which though covered with ashes or hidden amongst ruins, they are sure to be brought forward again and made use of in some new form.

_Amb_.--I do not see the justness of the analogy to which Onuphrio refers; but there are many parts of that vision on which I should wish to hear the explanations of Philalethes. I consider it in fact as a sort of poetical epitome of his philosophical opinions, and I regard this vision or dream as a mere web of his imagination in which he intended to catch us, his summer-flies and travelling companions.

_Phil_.--There, Ambrosio, you do me wrong. I will acknowledge, if you please, that the vision in the Colosaeum is a fiction; but the most important parts of it really occurred to me in sleep, particularly that in which I seemed to leave the earth and launch into the infinity of space under the guidance of a tutelary genius. And the origin and progress of civil society form likewise parts of another dream which I had many years ago, and it was in the reverie which happened when you quitted me in the Colosaeum that I wove all these thoughts together, and gave them the form in which I narrated them to you.

_Amb_.--Of course we may consider them as an accurate representation of your waking thoughts.

_Phil_.--I do not say that they strictly are so, for I am not quite convinced that dreams are always representations of the state of the mind modified by organic diseases or by associations. There are certainly no absolutely new ideas produced in sleep, yet I have had more than one instance, in the course of my life, of most extraordinary combinations occurring in this state, which have had considerable influence on my feelings, my imagination, and my health.

_Onu_.--Why Philalethes, you are becoming a visionary, a dreamer of dreams. We shall perhaps set you down by the side of Jacob Behmen or of Emanuel Swedenbourg, and in an earlier age you might have been a prophet, and have ranked perhaps with Mahomet. But pray give us one of these instances in which such a marvellous influence was produced on your imagination and your health by a dream that we may form some judgment of the nature of your second sight or inspirations; and whether they have any foundation, or whether they are not, as I believe, really unfounded, inventions of the fancy, dreams respecting dreams.

_Phil_.--I anticipate unbelief, and I expose myself to your ridicule in the statement I am about to make, yet I shall mention nothing but a simple fact. Almost a quarter of a century ago, as you know, I contracted that terrible form of typhus-fever known by the name of gaol- fever, I may say, not from any imprudence of my own, but whilst engaged in putting in execution a plan for ventilating one of the great prisons of the metropolis. My illness was severe and dangerous. As long as the fever continued, my dreams or delirium were most painful and oppressive; but when the weakness consequent to exhaustion came on, and when the probability of death seemed to my physicians greater than that of life, there was an entire change in all my ideal combinations. I remained in an apparently senseless or lethargic state, but in fact my mind was peculiarly active; there was always before me the form of a beautiful woman, with whom I was engaged in the most interesting and intellectual conversation.

_Amb_.--The figure of a lady with whom you were in love.

_Phil_.--No such thing; I was passionately in love at the time, but the object of my admiration was a lady with black hair, dark eyes, and pale complexion; this spirit of my vision, on the contrary, had brown hair, blue eyes, and a bright rosy complexion, and was, as far as I can recollect, unlike any of the amatory forms which in early youth had so often haunted my imagination. Her figure for many days was so distinct in my mind, as to form almost a visual image. As I gained strength, the visits of my good angel (for so I called it) became less frequent, and when I was restored to health they were altogether discontinued.

_Onu_.--I see nothing very strange in this--a mere reaction of the mind after severe pain--and, to a young man of twenty-five, there are few more pleasurable images than that of a beautiful maiden with blue eyes, blooming cheeks, and long nut-brown hair.

_Phil_.--But all my feelings and all my conversations with this visionary maiden were of an intellectual and refined nature.

_Onu_.--Yes, I suppose, as long as you were ill.

_Phil_.--I will not allow you to treat me with ridicule on this point till you have heard the second part of my tale. Ten years after I had recovered from the fever, and when I had almost lost the recollection of the vision, it was recalled to my memory by a very blooming and graceful maiden, fourteen or fifteen years old, that I accidentally met during my travels in Illyria; but I cannot say that the impression made upon my mind by this female was very strong. Now comes the extraordinary part of the narrative. Ten years after, twenty years after my first illness, at a time when I was exceedingly weak from a severe and dangerous malady, which for many weeks threatened my life, and when my mind was almost in a desponding state, being in a course of travels ordered by my medical advisers, I again met the person who was the representative of my visionary female, and to her kindness and care I believe I owe what remains to me of existence. My despondency gradually disappeared, and though my health still continued weak, life began to possess charms for me which I had thought were for ever gone; and I could not help identifying the living angel with the vision which appeared as my guardian genius during the illness of my youth.

_Onu_.--I really see nothing at all in this fact, whether the first or the second part of the narrative be considered, beyond the influence of an imagination excited by disease. From youth, even to age, women are our guardian angels, our comforters; and I dare say any other handsome young female, who had been your nurse in your last illness, would have coincided with your remembrance of the vision, even though her eyes had been hazel and her hair flaxen. Nothing can be more loose than the images represented in dreams following a fever, and with the nervous susceptibility produced by your last illness, almost any agreeable form would have become the representative of your imaginary guardian genius. Thus it is, that by the power of fancy, material forms are clothed in supernatural attributes; and in the same manner imaginary divinities have all the forms of mortality bestowed upon them. The gods of the pagan mythology were in all their characters and attributes exalted human beings; the demon of the coward, and the angelic form that appears in the dream of some maid smitten by devotion, and who, having lost her earthly lover, fixes her thoughts on heaven, are clothed in the character and vestments of humanity changed by the dreaminess of passion.

_Amb_.--With such a tendency, Philalethes, as you have shown to believe in something like a supernatural or divine influence on the human mind, I am astonished there should be so much scepticism belonging to your vision in the Colosaeum. And your view of the early state of man, after his first creation, is not only incompatible with revelation, but likewise with reason and everything that we know respecting the history or traditions of the early nations of antiquity.

_Phil_.--Be more distinct and detailed in your statements, Ambrosio, that I may be able to reply to them; and whilst we are waiting for the sunrise we may discuss the subject, and for this, let us seat ourselves on these stones, where we shall be warmed by the vicinity of the current of lava.

_Amb_.--You consider man, in his early or first created state, a savage, like those who now inhabit New Holland or New Zealand, acquiring by the little use that they make of a feeble reason the power of supporting and extending life. Now, I contend, that if man had been so created, he must inevitably have been destroyed by the elements or devoured by savage beasts, so infinitely his superiors in physical force. He must, therefore, have been formed with various instinctive faculties and propensities, with a perfection of form and use of organs fitting him to become the master of the earth; and, it appears to me, that the account given in Genesis of the first parents of mankind having been placed in a garden fitted with everything necessary to their existence and enjoyment, and ordered to increase and multiply there, is strictly in harmony with reason, and accordant with all just metaphysical views of the human mind. Man as he now exists can only be raised with great care and difficulty from the infant to the mature state; all his motions are at first automatic, and become voluntary by association; he has to learn everything by slow and difficult processes, many months elapse before he is able to stand, and many years before he is able to provide for the common wants of life. Without the mother or the nurse in his infant state, he would die in a few hours; and without the laborious discipline of instruction and example, he would remain idiotic and inferior to most other animals. His reason is only acquired gradually, and when in its highest perfection is often uncertain in its results. He must, therefore, have been created with instincts that for a long while supplied the want of reason, and which enabled him from the first moment of his existence to provide for his wants, to gratify his desires, and enjoy the power and the activity of life.

_Phil_.--I acknowledge that your objection has some weight, but not so much as you would attribute to it. I will suppose that the first created man or men had certain powers or instincts, such as now belong to the rudest savages of the southern hemisphere; I will suppose them created with the use of their organs for defence and offence and with passions and propensities enabling them to supply their own wants. And I oppose the fact of races who are now actually in this state to your vague historical or traditionary records; and their gradual progress or improvement from this early state of society to that of the highest state of civilisation or refinement may, I think, be easily deduced from the exertions of reason assisted by the influence of the moral powers and of physical circumstances. Accident, I conceive, must have had some influence in laying the foundations of certain arts; and a climate in which labour was not too oppressive, and in which the exertion of industry was required to provide for the wants of life must have fixed the character of the activity of the early improving people; where nature is too kind a mother, man is generally a spoiled child; where she is severe, and a stepmother, his powers are usually withered and destroyed. The people of the south and the north and those between the tropics offer, even at this day, proof of the truth of this principle; and it is even possible now to find on the surface of the earth, all the different gradations of the states of society, from that in which man is scarcely removed above the brute, to that in which he appears approaching in his nature to a divine intelligence. Besides, reason being the noblest gift of God to man, I can hardly suppose that an infinitely powerful and all- wise Creator would bestow upon the early inhabitants of the globe a greater proportion of instinct than was at first necessary to preserve their existence, and that he would not leave the great progress of their improvement to the development and exaltation of their reasoning powers.

_Amb_.--You appear to me in your argument to have forgotten the influence that any civilised race must possess over savages; and many of the nations which you consider as in their original state, may have descended from nations formerly civilised; and, it is quite as easy to trace the retrograde steps of a people as their advances; the savage hordes who now inhabit the northern coast of Africa are probably descended from the opulent, commercial, and ingenious Carthaginians who once contended with Rome for the empire of the world; and even nearer home, we might find in Southern Italy and her islands, proofs of a degradation not much inferior. What I contend for is the civilisation of the first patriarchal races who peopled the East, and who passed into Europe from Armenia, in which paradise is supposed to have been placed. The early civilisation of this race could only have been in consequence of their powers and instincts having been of a higher character than those of savages. They appear to have been small families--a state not at all fitted for the discovery of arts by the exercise of the mind; and they professed the most sublime form of religion, the worship of one Supreme Intelligence--a truth which, after a thousand years of civilisation, was with difficulty attained by the most powerful efforts of reasoning by the Greek sages. It appears to me, that in the history of the Jews, nothing can be more in conformity to our ideas of just analogy than this series of events. Our first parents were created with everything necessary for their wants and their happiness; they had only one duty to perform, by their obedience to prove their love and devotion to their Creator. In this they failed, and death--or the fear of death--became a curse upon their race; but the father of mankind repented, and his instinctive or intellectual powers given by revelation were transmitted to his offspring more or less modified by their reason, which they had gained as the fruit of their disobedience. One branch of his offspring, however, in whom faith shone forth above reason, retained their peculiar powers and institutions and preserved the worship of Jehovah pure, whilst many of the races sprung from their brethren became idolatrous, and the clear light of heaven was lost through the mist of the senses; and that Being, worshipped by the Israelites only as a mysterious word, was forgotten by many of the nations who lived in the neighbouring countries, and men, beasts, the parts of the visible universe, and even stocks and stones, were set up as objects of adoration. The difficulty which the divine legislators of the Jewish people had to preserve the purity of their religion amongst the idolatrous nations by whom they were surrounded, proves the natural evil tendency of the human mind after the fall of man. And, whoever will consider the nature of the Mosaical or ceremonial law and the manner in which it was suspended before the end of the Roman Empire, the expiatory sacrifice of the Messiah, the fear of death destroyed by the blessed hopes of immortality established by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and the triumphs of Christianity over paganism in the time of Constantine, can I think, hardly fail to acknowledge the reasonableness of the truth of revealed religion as founded upon the early history of man; and whoever acknowledges this reasonableness and this truth, must I think be dissatisfied with the view which Philalethes or his genius has given of the progress of society, and will find in it one instance, amongst many others that might be discovered, of the vague and erring results of his so much boasted human reason.