Part 37
The Rev. O. Fisher, F.G.S., has paid much attention to the superficial covering usually described as “heading,” or “drift,” as well as to the contour of the surface, in districts composed of the softer strata, and has published his views in various papers in the _Journal of the Geological Society_ and in the _Geological Magazine_. He thinks that the contour of the surface cannot be ascribed entirely to the action of rain and rivers, but that the changes in the ancient contour since produced by those changes can be easily distinguished. He finds the covering beds to consist of two members--a lower one, entirely destitute of organic remains, and generally unstratified, which has often been forcibly indented into the bed beneath it, sometimes exhibiting slickenside at the junction.
There is evidence of this lower member having been pushed or dragged over the surface, from higher to lower levels, in a plastic condition; on which account he has named it “The Trail.”
The upper member of the covering beds consists of soil derived from the lower one, by weathering. It contains, here and there, the remains of the land-shells which lived in the locality at a period antecedent to cultivation. It is “The Warp” of Mr. Trimmer.
Neither of these accumulations occur on low flats, where the surface has been modified since the recent period. They both alike pass below high-water mark, and have been noticed beneath estuarine deposits.
Mr. Fisher is of opinion that land-ice has been instrumental in forming the contour of the surface, and that the trail is the remnant of its _moraine profonde_. And he has given reasons[112] for believing that the climate of those latitudes may have been sufficiently rigorous for that result about 100,000 years ago. He attributes the formation of the superficial covering of Warp to a period of much rainfall and severe winter-frosts, after the ice-sheet had disappeared.
[112] _Geological Magazine_, vol. iii., p. 483.
The phenomena which so powerfully affected our hemisphere present themselves, in a much grander manner, in the New World. The glacier-system appears to have taken in America the same gigantic proportions which other objects assume there. Nor is it necessary, in order to explain the permanent existence of this icy mantle in temperate climates, to infer the prevalence of any very extraordinary degree of cold. On this subject M. Ch. Martins thus expresses himself: “The mean temperature of Geneva is 9° 5 Cent. Upon the surrounding mountains the limit of perpetual snow is found at 8,800 feet above the level of the sea. The great glaciers of the valley of Chamounix descend 5,000 feet below this line. Thus situated, let us suppose that the mean temperature of Geneva was lowered only 4°, and the average became 5° 5; the decrease of temperature with the height being 1° c. for every 600 feet, the limit of perpetual snow would be lowered by 2,437 feet, and would be 6,363 feet above the level of the sea. We can readily admit that the glaciers of Chamounix would descend below this new limit, to an extent at least equal to that which exists between their present limit and their lower extremity. Now, in reality, the foot of these glaciers is 5,000 feet above the ocean; with a climate 4° colder, it would be 2,437 feet lower; that is to say, at the level of the Swiss plain. Thus, the lowering of the line of perpetual snow to this extent would suffice to bring the glacier of the Arve to the environs of Geneva.... Of the climate which has favoured the prodigious development of glaciers we have a pretty correct idea; it is that of Upsala, Stockholm, Christiana, and part of North America, in the State of New York.... To diminish by four degrees the mean temperature of a country in order to explain one of the grandest revolutions of the globe, is to venture on an hypothesis not bolder than geology has sometimes permitted to itself.”[113]
[113] _Revue des Deux Mondes._
In proving that glaciers covered part of Europe during a certain period, that they extended from the North Pole to Northern Italy and the Danube, we have sufficiently established the reality of this _glacial period_, which we must consider as a curious episode, as well as certain, in the history of the earth. Such masses of ice could only have covered the earth when the temperature of the air was lowered at least some degrees below zero. But organic life is incompatible with such a temperature; and to this cause must we attribute the disappearance of certain species of animals and plants--in particular, the Rhinoceros and the Elephant--which, before this sudden and extraordinary cooling of the globe, appear to have limited themselves, in immense herds, to Northern Europe, and chiefly to Siberia, where their remains have been found in such prodigious quantities. Cuvier says, speaking of the bodies of the quadrupeds which the ice had seized, and in which they have been preserved, with their hair, flesh, and skin, up to our own times: “If they had not been frozen as soon as killed, putrefaction would have decomposed them; and, on the other hand, this eternal frost could not have previously prevailed in the place where they died; for they could not have lived in such a temperature. It was, therefore, at the same instant when these animals perished that the country they inhabited was rendered glacial. These events must have been sudden, instantaneous, and without any gradation.”[114]
[114] “Ossements fossiles. Discours sur les Révolutions du Globe.”
How can we explain the _glacial period_? We have explained M. Adhémar’s hypothesis, to which it may be objected that the cold of the glacial period was so general throughout the Polar and temperate regions on both sides of the equator, that mere local changes in the external configuration of our planet and displacement of the centre of gravity scarcely afford adequate causes for so great a revolution in temperature. Sir Charles Lyell, speculating upon the suggestion of Ritter and the discovery of marine shells spread far and wide over the Sahara Desert by Messrs. Escher von der Linth, Desor, and Martins--which seem to prove that the African Desert has been under water at a very recent period--infers that the Desert of Sahara constituted formerly a wide marine area, stretching several hundred miles north and south, and east and west. “From this area,” he adds, “the south wind must formerly have absorbed moisture, and must have been still further cooled and saturated with aqueous vapour as it passed over the Mediterranean. When at length it reached the Alps, and, striking them, was driven into the higher and more rarefied regions of the atmosphere, it would part with its watery burthen in the form of snow; so that the same aërial current which, under the name of the Föhn, or Sirocco, now plays a leading part with its hot and dry breath, sometimes, even in the depth of winter, in melting the snow and checking the growth of glaciers, must, at the period alluded to, have been the principal feeder of Alpine snow and ice.”[115] Nevertheless, we repeat, no explanation presents itself which can be considered conclusive; and in science we should never be afraid to say, _I do not know_.
[115] Lyell’s “Elements of Geology,” p. 175.
CREATION OF MAN AND THE ASIATIC DELUGE.
It was only after the glacial period, when the earth had resumed its normal temperature, that man was created. Whence came he?
He came from whence originated the first blade of grass which grew upon the burning rocks of the Silurian seas; from whence proceeded the different races of animals which have successively replaced each other upon the globe, gradually, but unceasingly, rising in the scale of perfection. He emanated from the supreme will of the Author of the worlds which constitute the universe.
The earth has passed through many phases since the time when--in the words of the Sacred Record--“the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” We have considered all these phases; we have seen the globe floating in space in a state of gaseous nebulosity, condensing into liquidity, and beginning to solidify at the surface. We have pictured the internal agitations, the disturbances, the partial dislocations to which the earth has been subjected, almost without interruption, while it could not, as yet, resist the force of the waves of the fiery sea imprisoned within its fragile crust. We have seen this envelope acquiring solidity, and the geological cataclysms losing their intensity and frequency in proportion as this solid crust increased in thickness. We have looked on, so to speak, while the work of organic creation was proceeding. We have seen life making its appearance upon the globe; and the first plants and animals springing into existence. We have seen this organic creation multiplying, becoming more complex, and constantly made more perfect with each advance in the progressive phases of the history of the earth. We now arrive at the greatest event of this history, at the crowning of the edifice, _si parva licet componere magnis_.
At the close of the Tertiary epoch, the continents and seas assumed the respective limits which they now present. The disturbances of the ground, the fractures of the earth’s crust, and the volcanic eruptions which are the consequence of them, only occurred at rare intervals, occasioning only local and restricted disasters. The rivers and their affluents flowed between tranquil banks. Animated Nature is that of our own days. An abundant vegetation, diversified by the existence of a climate which has now been acquired, embellishes the earth. A multitude of animals inhabit the waters, the dry land, and the air. Nevertheless, creation has not yet achieved its greatest work--a being capable of comprehending these marvels and of admiring the sublime work--a soul is wanting to adore and give thanks to the Creator.
God created man.
What is man?
We might say that man is an intelligent and moral being; but this would give a very imperfect idea of his nature. Franklin says that man is one that can make tools! This is to reproduce a portion of the first proposition, while depreciating it. Aristotle calls man the “wise being,” ζωον πολιτικον. Linnæus, in his “System of Nature,” after having applied to man the epithet of wise (_homo sapiens_) writes after this generic title these profound words: _Nosce te ipsum_. The French naturalist and philosopher, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, says, “The plant _lives_, the animal _lives and feels_, man _lives, feels, and thinks_”--a sentiment which Voltaire had already expressed. “The Eternal Maker,” says the philosopher of Ferney, “has given to man organisation, sentiment, and intelligence; to the animals sentiment, and what we call instinct; to vegetables organisation alone. His power then acts continually upon these three kingdoms.” It is probably the animal which is here depreciated. The animal on many occasions undoubtedly thinks, reasons, deliberates with itself, and acts in virtue of a decision maturely weighed; it is not then reduced to mere sensation.
To define exactly the human being, we believe that it is necessary to characterise the nature and extent of his intelligence. In certain cases the intelligence of the animal approaches nearly to that of man, but the latter is endowed with a certain faculty which belongs to him exclusively; in creating him, God has added an entirely new step in the ascending scale of animated beings. This faculty, peculiar to the human race, is _abstraction_. We will say, then, that man is an _intelligent_ being, gifted with the faculty of comprehending the _abstract_.
It is by this faculty that man is raised to a pre-eminent degree of material and moral power. By it he has subdued the earth to his empire, and by it also his mind rises to the most sublime contemplations. Thanks to this faculty, man has conceived the ideal, and realised poesy. He has conceived the infinite, and created mathematics. Such is the distinction which separates the human race so widely from the animals--which makes him a creation apart and absolutely new upon the globe. A being capable of comprehending the ideal and the infinite, of creating poetry and algebra, such is man! To invent and understand this formula--
(_a_ + _b_)² = _a_² + 2_ab_ + _b_²,
or the algebraic idea of negative quantities, this belongs to man. It is the greatest privilege of the human being to express and comprehend thoughts like the following:
J’étais seul près des flots, par une nuit d’étoiles, Pas un nuage aux cieux, sur les mers pas de voiles, Mes yeux plongeaient plus loin que le monde réel, Et les vents et les mers, et toute la nature Semblaient interroger dans un confus murmure, Les flots des mers, les feux du ciel.
Et les étoiles d’or, légions infinies, À voix haute, à voix basse, avec mille harmonies Disaient, en inclinant leur couronne de feu; Et les flots bleus, que rien ne gouverne et n’arrête: Disaient, en recourbant l’écume de leur crête: “C’est le Seigneur, le Seigneur Dieu!”*
VICTOR HUGO, _les Orientales_.
* * * * *
* Alone with the waves, on a starry night, My thoughts far away in the infinite; On the sea not a sail, not a cloud in the sky, And the wind and the waves with sweet lullaby Seem to question in murmurs of mystery, The fires of heaven, the waves of the sea.
And the golden stars of the heavens rose higher, Harmoniously blending their crowns of fire, And the waves which no ruling hand may know, ‘Midst a thousand murmurs, now high, now low, Sing, while curving their foaming crests to the sea, “It is the Lord God! It is He.”
The “Mécanique Céleste” of Laplace, the “Principia” of Newton, Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” the “Orientales” by Victor Hugo--are the fruits of the _faculty of abstraction_.
In the year 1800, a being, half savage, who lived in the woods, clambered up the trees, slept upon dried leaves, and fled on the approach of men, was brought to a physician named Pinel. Some sportsmen had found him; he had no voice, and was devoid of intelligence; he was known as the little savage of Aveyron. The Parisian _savants_ for a long time disputed over this strange individual. Was it an ape?--was it a wild man?
The learned Dr. Itard has published an interesting history of the savage of Aveyron. “He would sometimes descend,” he writes, “into the garden of the deaf and dumb, and seat himself upon the edge of the fountain, preserving his balance by rocking himself to and fro; after a time his body became quite still, and his face assumed an expression of profound melancholy. He would remain thus for hours--regarding attentively the surface of the water--upon which he would, from time to time, throw blades of grass and dried leaves. At night, when the clear moonlight penetrated into the chamber he occupied, he rarely failed to rise and place himself at the window, where he would remain part of the night, erect, motionless, his neck stretched out, his eyes fixed upon the landscape lit up by the moon, lost in a sort of ecstasy of contemplation.” This being was, undoubtedly, a man. No ape ever exhibited such signs of intelligence, such dreamy manifestations, vague conceptions of the ideal--in other words, that faculty of _abstraction_ which belongs to humanity alone. In order worthily to introduce the new inhabitant who comes to fill the earth with his presence--who brings with him intelligence to comprehend, to admire, to subdue, and to rule the creation (PL. XXXII.), we require nothing more than the grand and simple language of Moses, whom Bossuet calls “the most ancient of historians, the most sublime of philosophers, the wisest of legislators.” Let us listen to the words of the inspired writer: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his _own_ image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
“And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, _it was_ very good.”
* * * * *
Volumes have been written upon the question of the unity of the human race; that is, whether there were many centres of the creation of man, or whether our race is derived solely from the Adam of Scripture. We think, with many naturalists, that the stock of humanity is unique, and that the different human races, the negroes, and the yellow race, are only the result of the influence of climate upon organisation. We consider the human race as having appeared for the first time (the mode of his creation being veiled in Divine mystery, eternally impenetrable to us) in the rich plains of Asia, on the smiling banks of the Euphrates, as the traditions of the most ancient races teach us. It is there, where Nature is so rich and vigorous, in the brilliant climate and under the radiant sky of Asia, in the shade of its luxuriant masses of verdure and its mild and perfumed atmosphere, that man loves to represent to himself the father of his race as issuing from the hand of his Creator.
We are, it will be seen, far from sharing the opinion of those naturalists who represent man, at the beginning of the existence of his species, as a sort of ape, of hideous face, degraded mien, and covered with hair, inhabiting caves like the bears and lions, and participating in the brutal instincts of those savage animals.[116] There is no doubt that early man passed through a period in which he had to contend for his existence with ferocious beasts, and to live in a primitive state in the woods or savannahs, where Providence had placed him. But this period of probation came to an end, and man, an eminently social being, by combining in groups, animated by the same interests and the same desires, soon found means to intimidate the animals, to triumph over the elements, to protect himself from the innumerable perils which surrounded him, and to subdue to his rule the other inhabitants of the earth. “The first men,” says Buffon, “witnesses of the convulsive movements of the earth, still recent and frequent, having only the mountains for refuge from the inundations; and often driven from this asylum by volcanoes and earthquakes, which trembled under their feet; uneducated, naked, and exposed to the elements, victims to the fury of ferocious animals, whose prey they were certain to become; impressed also with a common sentiment of gloomy terror, and urged by necessity, would they not unite, first, to defend themselves by numbers, and then to assist each other by working in concert, to make habitations and arms? They began by shaping into the forms of hatchets these hard flints, the Jade, and other stones, which were supposed to have been formed by thunder and fallen from the clouds, but which are, nevertheless, only the first examples of man’s art in a pure state of Nature. He will soon draw fire from these same flints, by striking them against each other; he will seize the flames of the burning volcano, or profit by the fire of the red-hot lava to light his fire of brushwood in the forest; and by the help of this powerful element he cleanses, purifies, and renders wholesome the place he selects for his habitation. With his hatchet of stone he chops wood, fells trees, shapes timber, and puts it together, fashions instruments of warfare and the most necessary tools and implements; and after having furnished themselves with clubs and other weighty and defensive arms, did not these first men find means to make lighter weapons to reach the swift-footed stag from afar? A tendon of an animal, a fibre of the aloe-leaf, or the supple bark of some ligneous plant, would serve as a cord to bring together the two extremities of an elastic branch of yew, forming a bow; and small flints, shaped to a point, arm the arrow. They will soon have snares, rafts, and canoes; they will form themselves into communities composed of a few families, or rather of relations sprung from the same family, as is still the case with some savage tribes, who have their game, fish, and fruits in common. But in all those countries whose area is limited by water, or surrounded by high mountains, these small nations, becoming too numerous, have been in time forced to parcel out the land between them; and from that moment the earth has become the domain of man; he has taken possession of it by his labour, he has cultivated it, and attachment to the soil follows the very first act of possession; the private interest makes part of the national interest; order, civilisation, and laws succeed, and society acquires force and consistency.”[117] We love to quote the sentiments of a great writer--but how much more eloquent would the words of the naturalist have been, if he had added to his own grand eloquence of language, the knowledge which science has placed within reach of the writers of the present time--- if he could have painted man in the early days of his creation, in presence of the immense animal population which then occupied the earth, and fighting with the wild beasts which filled the forests of the ancient world! Man, comparatively very weak in organisation, destitute of natural weapons of attack or defence, incapable of rising into the air like the birds, or living under water like the fishes and some reptiles, might seem doomed to speedy destruction. But he was marked on the forehead with the Divine seal. Thanks to the superior gift of an exceptional intelligence, this being, in appearance so helpless, has by degrees swept the most ferocious of its occupants from the earth, leaving those only who cater to his wants or desires, or by whose aid he changes the primitive aspects of whole continents.
[116] It is told of a former distinguished and witty member of the Geological Society that, having obtained possession of the rooms on a certain day, when there was to be a general meeting, he decorated its walls with a series of cartoons, in which the parts of the members were strangely reversed. In one cartoon Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri were occupied with the skeleton of Homo sapiens; in another, a party of Crustaceans were occupied with a cranium suspiciously like the same species; while in a third, a party of Pterichthys were about to dine on a biped with a suspicious resemblance to a certain well-conditioned F.G.S. of the day.
[117] “Époques de la Nature,” vol. xii., pp. 322-325. 18mo. Paris, 1778.
* * * * *
The antiquity of man is a question which has largely engaged the attention of geologists, and many ingenious arguments have been hazarded, tending to prove that the human race and the great extinct Mammalia were contemporaneous. The circumstances bearing on the question are usually ranged under three series of facts: 1. The Cave-deposits; 2. Peat and shell mounds; 3. Lacustrine habitations, or Lake dwellings.