same part as they play in our own day, rejecting every novelty, and therefore opposing every improvement. The angry contest which arose between the two parties, and the hostility directed against the Royal Society, as the first institution in which the idea of progress was distinctly embodied, are among the most instructive parts of our history, and on another occasion I shall relate them at considerable length. At present it is enough to say, that the reactionary party, though led by an overwhelming majority of the clergy, was entirely defeated; as, indeed, was to be expected, seeing that their opponents had on their side nearly all the intellect of the country, and were moreover reinforced by such aid as the court could bestow. The progress was, in truth, so rapid, as to carry away with it some of the ablest members even of the ecclesiastical profession; their love of knowledge proving too strong for the old traditions in which they had been bred. But these were exceptional cases, and, speaking generally, there is no doubt that in the reign of Charles II. the antagonism between physical science and the theological spirit was such as to induce nearly the whole of the clergy to array themselves against the science, and seek to bring it into discredit. Nor ought we to be surprised that they should have adopted this course. That inquisitive and experimental spirit which they wished to check, was not only offensive to their prejudices, but it was also detrimental to their power. For in the first place, the mere habit of cultivating physical science taught men to require a severity of proof which it was soon found that the clergy were, in their own department, unable to supply. And, in the second place, the additions made to physical knowledge opened new fields of thought, and thus tended still further to divert attention from ecclesiastical topics. Both these effects would of course be limited to the comparatively few persons who were interested in scientific inquiries: it is, however, to be observed, that the ultimate results of such inquiries must have been extended over a far wider surface. This may be called their secondary influence; and the way in which it operated is well worth our attention, because an acquaintance with it will go far to explain the reason of that marked opposition which has always existed between superstition and knowledge.

It is evident, that a nation perfectly ignorant of physical laws, will refer to supernatural causes all the phenomena by which it is surrounded." But so soon as natural science begins

77 The speculative view of this tendency has been recently illustrated in the most comprehensive manner by M. Auguste Comte, in his Philosophie Positive; and his conclusions in regard to the earliest stage of the human mind are confirmed by every thing we know of barbarous nations; and they are also confirmed, as he has deci

to do its work, there are introduced the elements of a great change. Each successive discovery, by ascertaining the law that governs certain events, deprives them of that apparent mystery in which they were formerly involved. The love of the marvellous becomes proportionably diminished; and when any science has made such progress as to enable those who are acquainted with it to foretell the events with which it deals, it is clear that the whole of those events are at once withdrawn from the jurisdiction of supernatural, and brought under the authority of natural powers." The business of physical philosophy is, to explain external phenomena with a view to their prediction; and every successful prediction which is recognized by the people, causes a disruption of one of those links which, as it were, bind the imagination to the occult and invisible world. Hence it is

sively proved, by the history of physical science. In addition to the facts he has adduced, I may mention, that the history of geology supplies evidence analogous to that which he has collected from other departments.

A popular notion of the working of this belief in supernatural causation may be seen in a circumstance related by Combe. He says, that in the middle of the eighteenth century the country west of Edinburgh was so unhealthy, "that every spring the farmers and their servants were seized with fever and ague." As long as the cause of this was unknown, "these visitations were believed to be sent by Providence;" but after a time the land was drained, the ague disappeared, and the inhabitants perceived that what they had believed to be supernaturai was perfectly natural, and that the cause was the state of the land, not the intervention of the Deity. Combe's Constitution of Man, Edinb. 1847, p. 156.

78 I say apparent mystery, because it does not at all lessen the real mystery. But this does not affect the accuracy of my remark, inasmuch as the people at large never enter into such subtleties as the difference between Law and Cause; a difference, indeed, which is so neglected, that it is often lost sight of even in scientific books. All that the people know is, that events which they once believed to be directly controlled by the Deity, and modified by Him, are not only foretold by the human mind, but are altered by human interference. The attempts which Paley and others have made to solve this mystery by rising from the laws to the cause, are evidently futile, because to the eye of reason the solution is as incomprehensible as the problem; and the arguments of the natural theologians, in so far as they are arguments, must depend on reason. As Mr. Newman truly says, A God uncaused and existing from eternity, is to the full as incomprehensible as a world uncaused and existing from eternity. We must not reject the latter theory as incomprehensi ble; for so is every other possible theory." Newman's Natural History of the Soul, 1849, p. 36. The truth of this conclusion is unintentionally confirmed by the defence of the old method, which is set up by Dr. Whewell in his Bridgewater Treatise, pp. 262-5; because the remarks made by that able writer refer to men who, from their vast powers, were most likely to rise to that transcendental view of religion which is slowly but steadily gaining ground among us. Kant, probably the deepest thinker of the eighteenth century, clearly saw that no arguments drawn from the external world could prove the existence of a First Cause. See, among other passages, two particularly remarkable in Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kant's Werke, vol. ii. pp. 478, 481, on "der physikotheologische Beweis."

19 This is tersely expressed by M. Lamennais: "Pourquoi les corps gravitent-ils les uns vers les autres? Parceque Dieu l'a voulu, disaient les anciens. Parceque les corps s'attirent, dit la science." Maury, Légendes du Moyen Age, p. 33. See to the same effect Mackay's Religious Development, 1850, vol. i. pp. 5, 30, 31, and elsewhere. See also a partial statement of the antithesis in Copleston's Inquiry into Necessity and Predestination, p. 49; an ingenious but overrated book.

80

that, supposing other things equal, the superstition of a nation must always bear an exact proportion to the extent of its physical knowledge. This may be in some degree verified by the ordinary experience of mankind. For if we compare the different classes of society, we shall find that they are superstitious in proportion as the phenomena with which they are brought in contact, have or have not been explained by natural laws. The credulity of sailors is notorious, and every literature contains evidence of the multiplicity of their superstitions, and of the tenacity with which they cling to them. This is perfectly explicable by the principle I have laid down. Meteorology has not yet been raised to a science; and the laws which regulate winds and storms being in consequence still unknown, it naturally follows, that the class of men most exposed to their dangers should be precisely the class which is most superstitious. S 81 On the other hand, soldiers live upon an element much more obedient to man, and they are less liable than sailors to those risks which defy the calculations of science. Soldiers, therefore, have fewer inducements to appeal to supernatural interference; and it is universally observed, that as a body they are less superstitious than sailors. If, again, we compare agriculturists with manufacturers, we shall see the operation of the same principle. To the cultivators of land, one of the most important circumstances is the weather, which, if it turn out unfavourable, may at once defeat all their calculations. But science not having yet succeeded in discovering the laws of rain, men are at present unable to foretell it for any considerable period; the inhabitant of the country is, therefore, driven to believe that it is the result of supernatural agency, and we still see the extraordinary spectacle of prayers offered up in our churches for dry weather or for wet weather; a superstition which to future ages will appear as childish as the

80 I much regret that I did not collect proof of this at an earlier period of my reading. But having omitted taking the requisite notes, I can only refer, on the superstition of sailors, to Heber's Journey through India, vol. i. p. 423; Richardson's Travels in the Sahara, vol. i. p. 11; Burckhardt's Travels in Arabia, vol. ii. p. 347; Davis's Chinese, vol. iii. pp. 16, 17; Travels of Ibn Batuta in the Fourteenth Century, p. 43; Journal of Asiat. Soc. vol. i. p. 9; Works of Sir Thomas Browne, vol. i. p. 130; Alison's Hist. of Europe, vol. iv. p. 566; Burnes's Travels into Bokhara, vol. iii. p. 53; Leigh Hunt's Autobiography, 1850, vol. ii. p. 255; Cumberland's Memoirs, 1807, vol. i. pp. 422-425; Walsh's Brazil, vol. i. pp. 96, 97; Richardson's Arctic Expedition, vol. i. p. 93; Holcroft's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 207, vol. iii. p. 197.

81 Andokides, when accused before the dikastery at Athens, said, "No, dikasts; the dangers of accusation and trial are human, but the dangers encountered at sea are divine." Grote's Hist. of Greece, vol. xi. p. 252. Thus, too, it has been observed, that the dangers of the whale-fishery stimulated the superstition of the Anglo-Saxons. See Kemble's Saxons in England, vol. i. pp. 390, 391. Erman, who mentions the dangerous navigation of the Lake of Baikal, says, There is a saying at Irkutsk, that it is only upon the Baikal, in the autumn, that a man learns to pray from his heart." Erman's Travels in Siberia, vol. ii. p. 186.

feelings of pious awe with which our fathers regarded the presence of a comet, or the approach of an eclipse. We are now acquainted with the laws which determine the movements of comets and eclipses; and as we are able to predict their appearance, we have ceased to pray that we may be preserved from them.2 But because our researches into the phenomena of rain happen to have been less successful, 83 we resort to the impious contrivance of calling in the aid of the Deity to supply those deficiencies in science which

82 In Europe, in the tenth century, an entire army fled before one of those appearances, which would now scarcely terrify a child: "Toute l'armée d'Othon se dispersa subitement à l'apparition d'une éclipse de soleil, qui la remplit de terreur, et qui fut regardée comme l'annonce du malheur qu'on attendait depuis long-temps." Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. ii. p. 368. The terror inspired by eclipses was not finally destroyed before the eighteenth century; and in the latter half of the seventeenth century they still caused great fear both in France and in England. See Evelyn's Diary, vol. ii. p. 52, vol. iii. p. 372; Carlyle's Cromwell, vol. ii. p. 366; Lettres de Patin, vol. iii. p. 36. Compare Voyages de Monconys, vol. v. p. 104, with Hare's Guesses at Truth, 2d series, pp. 194, 195. There probably never has been an ignorant nation whose superstition has not been excited by eclipses. For evidence of the universality of this feeling, see Symes's Embassy to Ava, vol. ii. p. 296; Raffle's Hist. of Java, vol. i. p. 530; Southey's Hist. of Brazil, vol. i. p. 354, vol. ii. p. 371; Marsden's Hist. of Sumatra, p. 159; Niebuhr, Description de l'Arabie, p. 105; Moffat's Southern Africa, p. 337; Mungo Park's Travels, vol. i. p. 414; Moorcroft's Travels in the Himalayan Provinces, vol. ii. p. 4; Crawfurd's Hist. of the Indian Årchipelago, vol. i. p. 305; Ellis's Polynesian Researches, vol. i. p. 331; Mackay's Religious Development, vol i. p. 425; Works of Sir W. Jones, vol. iii. p. 176, vol. vi. p. 16; Wilson's Note in the Vishnu Purana, p. 140; Wilson's Theatre of the Hindus, vol. i. part ii. p. 90; Montuela, Hist. des Mathématiques, vol. i. p. 444; Asiatic Researches, vol. xii. p. 484; Ward's View of the Hindoos, vol. i. p. 101; Prescott's Hist. of Peru, vol. i. p. 123; Kohl's Russia, p. 374; Thirlwall's Hist. of Greece, vol. iii. p. 440, vol. vi. p. 216; Murray's Life of Bruce, p. 103; Turner's Embassy to Tibet, p. 289; Grote's Hist. of Greece, vol. vii. p. 432, vol. xii. pp. 205, 557; Journal Asiatique, I. série, vol. iii. p. 202, Paris, 1823; Clot-Bey, de la Peste, Paris, 1840, p. 224.

In regard to the feelings inspired by comets, and the influence of Bayle in removing those superstitions late in the seventeenth century, compare Tennemann, Gesch. der Philosoph. vol. xi. p. 252; Le Vassor, Hist. de Louis XIII. vol. iii. p. 415; Lettres de Sevigné, vol. iv. p. 336; Autobiography of Sir S. D'Ewes, edit. Halliwell, vol. i. pp. 122, 123, 136.

83 On the peculiar complications which have retarded meteorology, and thus prevented us from accurately predicting the weather, compare Forbes on Meteorology, in Second Report of British Association, pp. 249-251; Cuvier, Progrès des Sciences, vol. i. pp. 69, 248; Kaemtz's Meteorology, pp. 2-4; Prout's Bridgewater Treatise, pp. 290-295; Somerville's Physical Geog. vol. ii. pp. 18, 19. But all the best authori ties are agreed that this ignorance cannot last long; and that the constant advance which we are now making in physical science will eventually enable us to explain even these phenomena. Thus, for instance, Sir John Leslie says, "It cannot be disputed, however, that all the changes which happen in the mass of our atmosphere, involved, capricious, and irregular as they may appear, are yet the necessary results of principles as fixed, and perhaps as simple, as those which direct the revolutions of the solar system. Could we unravel the intricate maze, we might trace the action of each distinct cause, and hence deduce the ultimate effects arising from their combined operation. With the possession of such data, we might safely predict the state of the weather at any future period, as we now calculate an eclipse of the sun or moon, or foretell a conjunction of the planets." Leslie's Natural Philosophy, p. 405; see also p. 185, and the remarks of Mr. Snow Harris (Brit. Assoc. for 1844, p. 241), and of Mr. Hamilton (Journal of Geog. Soc. vol. xix. p. xci.). Thus, too, Dr. Whewell (Bridgewater Treatise, p. 3) says, that "the changes of winds and skies" are produced by causes, of whose rules "no philosophical mind" will doubt the fixity.

are the result of our own sloth; and we are not ashamed, in our public churches, to prostitute the rites of religion by using them as a cloak to conceal an ignorance we ought frankly to confess.54 The agriculturist is thus taught to ascribe to supernatural agency the most important phenomena with which he is concerned ;55 and there can be no doubt that this is one of the causes of those superstitious feelings by which the inhabitants of the country are unfavourably contrasted with those of the town. 86 But the manufacturer, and, indeed, nearly every one engaged in the business of cities, has employments, the success of which being regulated by his own abilities, has no connexion with those unexplained events that perplex the imagination of the cultivators of the earth. He who, by his ingenuity, works up the raw material, is evidently less affected by uncontrollable occurrences, than he by whom the raw material is originally grown. Whether it is fair, or whether it is wet, he pursues his labours with equal success, and learns to rely solely upon his own energy, and the cunning

"This connexion between ignorance and devotion is so clearly marked, that many nations have a separate god for the weather, to whom they say their prayers. In countries where men stop short of this, they ascribe the changes to witchcraft, or to some other supernatural power. See Mariner's Tonga Islands, vol. ii. pp. 7, 108; Tuckey's Expedit. to the Zaire, pp. 214, 215; Ellis's Hist. of Madagascar, vol. ii. p. 354; Asiatic Researches, vol. vi. pp. 193, 194, 297, vol. xvi. pp. 223, 342; Southey's Hist. of Brazil, vol. iii. p. 187; Davis's Chinese, vol. ii. p. 154; Beausobre, Hist. de Manichée, vol. ii. p. 394; Cudworth's Intellect. Syst. vol. ii. p. 539. The Hindus refer rain to supernatural causes in the Rig Veda, which is the oldest of their religious books; and they have held similar notions ever since. Rig Veda Sanhita, vol. i. pp. xxx. 10, 19, 26, 145, 175, 205, 224, 225, 265, 266, vol. ii. pp. 28, 41, 62, 110, 153, 158, 164, 166, 192, 199, 231, 258, 268, 293, 329; Journal of Asiat. Soc. vol. iii. p. 91; Coleman's Mythol, of the Hindus, p. 111; Ward's View of the Hindoos, vol. i. p. 38. See further two curious passages in the Dabistan, vol. i. p. 115, vol. ii. p. 337; and on the "Rain-makers," compare Catlin's North-American Indians, vol. i. pp. 134-140, with Buchanan's North-American Indians, pp. 258, 260: also a precisely similar class in Africa (Moffat's Southern Africa, pp. 305-325), and in Arabia (Niebuhr, Desc. de l'Arabie, pp. 237, 238).

Coming to a state of society nearer our own, we find that in the ninth century it was taken for granted in Christian countries that wind and hail were the work of wizards (Neander's Hist. of the Church, vol. vi. pp. 118, 139); that similar views passed on to the sixteenth century, and were sanctioned by Luther (Maury, Légendes Pieuses, pp. 18, 19); and finally, that when Swinburne was in Spain, only eighty years ago, he found the clergy on the point of putting an end to the opera, because they "attributed the want of rain to the influence of that ungodly entertainment." Swinburne's Travels through Spain in 1775 and 1776, vol. i. p. 177, 2d edit. London,

1787.

See some remarks by the Rev. Mr. Ward, which strikes me as rather incautious, and which certainly are dangerous to his own profession, as increasing the hostility between it and science, in Ward's Ideal of a Christian Church, p. 278. What Coleridge has said, is worth attending to: see The Friend, vol. iii. pp. 222, 223.

M. Kohl, whose acuteness as a traveller is well known, has found that the agricultural classes are the "most blindly ignorant and prejudiced" of all. Kohl's Rus εία, p. 365. And Sir R. Murchison, who has enjoyed extensive means of observation, familiarly mentions the "credulous farmers." Murchison's Siluria, p. 61. In Asia exactly the same tendency has been noticed: see Marsden's History of Sumatra, p. Some curious evidence of agricultural superstitions respecting the weather may be seen in Monteil, Hist. des divers Etats, vol. iii. pp. 31, 39.

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