the clergy first established their authority, where the worst corruptions of Christianity took place, and where superstition has during the longest period retained the firmest hold. To this may be added another circumstance, indicative of the connexion between these physical phenomena and the predominance of the imagination. Speaking generally, the fine arts are addressed more to the imagination; the sciences to the intellect.194 Now it is remarkable, that all the greatest painters, and nearly all the greatest sculptors, modern Europe has possessed, have been produced by the Italian and Spanish peninsulas. In regard to science, Italy has no doubt had several men of conspicuous ability; but their numbers are out of all proportion small when compared with her artists and poets. As to Spain and Portugal, the literature of those two countries is eminently poetic, and from their schools have proceeded some of the greatest painters the world has ever seen. On the other hand, the purely reasoning faculties have been neglected, and the whole Peninsula, from the earliest period to the present time, does not supply to the history of the natural sciences a single name of the highest merit; not one man whose works form an epoch in the progress of European knowledge, 195

The manner in which the Aspects of Nature, when they are very threatening, stimulate the imagination,196 and by encouraging superstition, discourage knowledge, may be made still more apparent by one or two additional facts. Among an ignorant people, there is a direct tendency to ascribe all serious dangers to supernatural intervention; and a strong religious sentiment being thus aroused,197 it constantly happens, not only that the

194 The greatest men in scienee, and in fact all very great men, have no doubt been remarkable for the powers of their imagination. But in art the imagination plays a far more conspicuous part than in science; and this is what I mean to express by the proposition in the text. Sir David Brewster, indeed, thinks that Newton was deficient in imagination-"the weakness of his imaginative powers." Brewster's Life of Newton, 1855, vol. ii. p. 133. It is impossible to discuss so large a question in a note; but to my apprehension, no poet, except Dante and Shakespeare, ever had an imagination more soaring and more audacious than that possessed by Sir Isaac Newton.

195 The remarks made by Mr. Ticknor on the absence of science in Spain, might be extended even further than he has done. See Tichnor's History of Spanish Literature, vol. iii. pp. 222, 223. He says, p. 347, that in 1771, the University of Salamanca being urged to teach the physical sciences, replied, "Newton teaches nothing that would make a good logician or metaphysician, and Gassendi and Descartes do not agree so well with revealed truth as Aristotle does."

19 In Asiatic Researches, vol. vi. pp. 35, 36, there is a good instance of an earthquake giving rise to a theological fiction. See also vol. i. pp. 154-157; and compare Coleman's Mythology of the Hindus, p. 17.

197 See, for example, Asiatic Researches, vol. iv. pp. 56, 57, vol. vii. p. 94; and the effect produced by a volcano, in Journal of Geograph. Society, vol. v. p. 388. See also vol. xx. p. 8, and a partial recognition of the principle by Sextus Empiricus, in Tennemann's Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. i. p. 292. Compare the use the clergy

danger is submitted to, but that it is actually worshipped. This is the case with some of the Hindus in the forests of Malabar :198 and many similar instances will occur to whoever has studied the condition of barbarous tribes. 199 Indeed, so far is this carried, that in some countries the inhabitants, from feelings of reverential fear, refuse to destroy wild beasts and noxious reptiles; the mischief these animals inflict being the cause of the impunity they enjoy.2

200

It is in this way, that the old tropical civilizations had to struggle with innumerable difficulties unknown to the temperate zone, where European civilization has long flourished. The devastations of animals hostile to man, the ravages of hurricanes, tempests, earthquakes,201 and similar perils, constantly pressed upon them, and affected the tone of their national character. For the mere loss of life was the smallest part of the inconvenience. The real mischief was, that there were engendered in the mind, associations which made the imagination predominate over the understanding; which infused into the people a spirit of reverence instead of a spirit of inquiry; and which encour

made of a volcanic eruption in Iceland (Wheaton's History of the Northmen, p. 42); and see further Raffle's History of Java, vol. i. pp. 29, 274, and Tschudi's Peru, pp. 64, 167, 171.

198 The Hindus in the Iruari forests, says Mr. Edye, "worship and respect every thing from which they apprehend danger." Edye on the Coast of Malabar, in Journal of Asiatic Society, vol. ii. p. 337.

Dr. Prichard (Physical History, vol. iv. p. 501) says, "The tiger is worshipped by the Hajin tribe in the vicinity of the Garrows or Garudus." Compare Transactions of Asiatic Society, vol. iii. p. 66. Among the Garrows themselves this feeling is so strong, that "the tiger's nose strung round a woman's neck is considered as a great preservative in childbirth. Coleman's Mythology of the Hindus, p. 321. The Seiks have a curious superstition respecting wounds inflicted by tigers (Burnes' Bokhara, 1834, vol. iii. p. 140); and the Malasir believe that these animals are sent as a punishment for irreligion. Buchanan's Journey through the Mysore, vol ii. p. 385.

200 The inhabitants of Sumatra are, for superstitious reasons, most unwilling to destroy tigers, though they commit frightful ravages." Marsden's History of Sumatra, pp. 149, 254. The Russian account of the Kamtschatkans says, "Besides the above-mentioned gods, they pay a religious regard to several animals from which they apprehend danger." Grieve's History of Kamtschatka, p. 205. Bruce mentions that in Abyssinia, hyænas are considered "enchanters;" and the inhabitants "will not touch the skin of a hyæna till it has been prayed over and exorcised by a priest." Murray's Life of Bruce, p. 472. Allied to this, is the respect paid to bears (Erman's Siberia, vol. i. p. 492, vol. ii. pp. 42, 43); also the extensively-diffused worship of the serpent, whose wily movements are well calculated to inspire fear, and therefore rouse the religious feelings. The danger apprehended from noxious reptiles is connected with the Dews of the Zendavesta. See Matter's Histoire du Gnosticisme, vol. i. p. 380, Paris, 1828.

201 To give one instance of the extent to which these operate, it may be mentioned that in 1815 an earthquake and volcanic eruption broke forth in Sumbawa, which shook the ground "through an area of 1000 miles in circumference," and the detonations of which were heard at a distance of 970 geographical miles. Somer ville's Connexion of the Physical Sciences, p. 283; Hitchcock's Religion of Geology, p. 190; Low's Sarawak, p. 10; Bakewell's Geology, p. 438.

aged a disposition to neglect the investigation of natural causes, and ascribe events to the operation of supernatural ones.

Every thing we know of those countries proves how active this tendency must have been. With extremely few exceptions, health is more precarious, and disease more common, in tropical climates than in temperate ones. Now, it has been often observed, and indeed is very obvious, that the fear of death makes men more prone to seek supernatural aid than they would otherwise be. So complete is our ignorance respecting another life, that it is no wonder if even the stoutest heart should quail at the sudden approach of that dark and untried future. On this subject the reason is perfectly silent; the imagination, therefore, is uncontrolled. The operation of natural causes being brought to an end, supernatural causes are supposed to begin. Hence it is, that whatever increases in any country the amount of dangerous disease, has an immediate tendency to strengthen superstition, and aggrandize the imagination at the expense of the understanding. This principle is so universal that, in every part of the world, the vulgar ascribe to the intervention of the Deity those diseases which are peculiarly fatal, and especially those which have a sudden and mysterious appearance. In Europe it used to be believed that every pestilence was a manifestation of the divine anger;202 and this opinion, though it has long been dying away, is by no means extinct even in the most civilized countries. 203 Superstition of this kind will of course be strongest,

202 In the sixteenth century, "Les différentes sectes s'accordèrent néanmoins à regarder les maladies graves et dangereuses comme un effet immédiat de la puissance divine; idée que Fernel contribua encore à répandre davantage. On trouve dans Paré plusieurs passages de la Bible, cités pour prouver que la colère de Dieu est la seule cause de la peste, qu'elle suffit pour provoquer ce fleau, et que sans elle les causes éloignées ne sauraient agir." Sprengel, Histoire de la Médecine, vol. iii. p. 112. The same learned writer says of the Middle Ages (vol. ii. p. 372), “D'après l'esprit généralement répandu dans ces siècles de barbarie, on croyait la lèpre envoyée d'une manière immédiate par Dieu." See also pp. 145, 346, 431. Bishop Heber says that the Hindus deprive lepers of caste and of the right of possessing property, because they are objects of "Heaven's wrath." Heber's Journey through India, vol. ii. p. 330. On the Jewish opinion, see Le Clere, Bibliothèque Universelle, vol. iv. p. 402, Amsterdam, 1702. And as to the early Christians, see Maury Légendes Pieuses, p. 68, Paris, 1843: though M. Maury ascribes to "les idées orientales reçues par le christianisme," what is due to the operation of a much wider principle.

203 Under the influence of the inductive philosophy, the theological theory of disease was seriously weakened before the middle of the seventeenth century; and by the middle, or at all events the latter half of the eighteenth century, it had lost all its partizans among scientific men. At present it still lingers on among the vulgar; and traces of it may be found in the writings of the clergy, and in the works of other persons little acquainted with physical knowledge. When the cholera broke out in England, attempts were made to revive the old notion; but the spirit of the age was too strong for such efforts to succeed; and it may be safely predicted that men will never return to their former opinions, unless they first return to their former ignorance. As a specimen of the ideas which the cholera tended to excite, and of their antagonism to all scientific investigation, I may refer to a letter written in 1832

either where medical knowledge is most backward, or where disease is most abundant. In countries where both these conditions are fulfilled, the superstition is supreme; and even where only one of the conditions exists, the tendency is so irresistible, that, I believe, there are no barbarous people who do not ascribe to their good or evil deities, not only extraordinary diseases, but even many of the ordinary ones to which they are liable.204

Here, then, we have another specimen of the unfavourable influence which, in the old civilizations, external phenomena exercised over the human mind. For those parts of Asia where the highest refinement was reached, are, from various physical causes, much more unhealthy than the most civilized parts of

by Mrs. Grant, a woman of some accomplishments, and not devoid of influence, (Correspondence of Mrs. Grant, London, 1844, vol. iii. pp. 216, 217), where she states that "it appears to me great presumption to indulge so much as people do in speculation and conjecture about a disease so evidently a peculiar infliction, and different from all other modes of suffering hitherto known." This desire to limit human speculation, is precisely the feeling which long retained Europe in darkness; since it effectually prevented those free inquiries to which we are indebted for all the real knowledge we possess. The doubts of Boyle upon this subject, supply a curious instance of the transitionary state through which the mind was passing in the seventeenth century, and by which the way was prepared for the great liberating movement of the next age. Boyle, after stating both sides of the question, namely, the theological and the scientific, adds, "and it is the less likely that these sweeping and contagious maladies should be always sent for the punishment of impious men, because I remember to have read in good authors, that as some plagues destroyed both men and beasts, so some other did peculiarly destroy brute animals of very little consideration or use to men, as cats, &c."

"Upon these and the like reasons, I have sometimes suspected that in the controversy about the origin of the plague, namely, whether it be natural or supernatural, neither of the contending parties is altogether in the right; since it is very possible that some pestilences may not break forth without an extraordinary, though perhaps not immediate, interposition of Almighty God, provoked by the sins of men; and yet other plagues may be produced by a tragical concourse of merely natural causes." Discourse on the Air in Boyle's Works, vol. iv. pp. 288, 289. "Neither of the contending parties is altogether in the right!"—an instructive passage towards understanding the compromising spirit of the seventeenth century; standing midway, as it did, between the credulity of the sixteenth, and the scepticism of the eighteenth.

204 To the historian of the human mind, the whole question is so full of interest, that I shall refer in this note to all the evidence I have been able to collect; and whoever will compare the following passages, may satisfy himself that there is in every part of the world an intimate relation between ignorance respecting the nature and proper treatment of a disease, and the belief that such disease is caused by supernatural power, and is to be cured by it. Burton's Sindh, p. 146, London, 1851; Ellis's Polynesian Researches, vol. i. p. 395, vol. iii. pp. 36, 41, vol iv. pp. 293, 334, 375; Cullen's Works, Edinb. 1827, vol. ii. pp. 414, 434; Esquirol, Maladies Mentales, vol. i. pp. 274, 482; Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral, p. 277; Volney, Voyage en Syrie, vol. i. p. 426; Turner's Embassy to Tibet, p. 104; Syme's Embassy to Ava, vol. ii. p. 211; Ellis's Tour through Hawaii, pp. 282, 283, 332, 333; Renouard, Histoire de la Médecine, vol. i. p. 398; Broussais, Examen des Doctrines Médicales, vol. i. pp. 261, 262; Grote's History of Greece, vol. i. p. 485 (compare p. 251, and vol. vi. p. 213), Grieve's History of Kamtschatka, p. 217; Journal of Statist. Soc. vol. x. p. 10; Buchanan's North-American Indians, pp. 256, 257; Halkett's North-American Indians, pp. 36, 37, 388, 393, 394; Catlin's North-American Indians, vol. i. pp. 35-41; Briggs on the Aboriginal Tribes of India, in Report of

Europe. 205 This fact alone must have produced a considerable effect on the national character,206 and the more so, as it was aided by those other circumstances which I have pointed out, all tending in the same direction. To this may be added, that the great plagues by which Europe has at different periods been scourged, have, for the most part, proceeded from the East, which is their natural birthplace, and where they are most fatal. Indeed, of those cruel diseases now existing in Europe, scarcely one is indigenous; and the worst of them were imported from tropical countries in and after the first century of the Christian era.207

Summing up these facts, it may be stated, that in the civilizations exterior to Europe, all nature conspired to increase the authority of the imaginative faculties, and weaken the authority of the reasoning ones. With the materials now existing, it would be possible to follow this vast law to its remotest consequences, and show how in Europe it is opposed by another law diametrically Brit. Assoc. for 1850, p. 172; Transactions of Soc. of Bombay, vol. ii. p. 30; Percival's Ceylon, p. 201; Buchanan's Journey through the Mysore, vol. ii. pp. 27, 152, 286, 528, vol. iii. pp. 23, 188, 253 (so, too, M. Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, Anomalies de Organisation, vol. iii. p. 380, says that when we were quite ignorant of the cause of monstrous births, the phenomenon was ascribed to the Deity,-" de là aussi l'intervention supposée de la divinité;" and for an exact verification of this, compare Burdach, Traité de Physiologie, vol. ii. p. 247, with Journal of Geog. Society, vol. xvi. p. 113); Ellis's History of Madagascar, vol. i. pp. 224, 225; Prichard's Physical History, vol. i. p. 207, vol. v. p. 492; Journal of Asiatic Society, vol. iii. p. 230, vol. iv. p. 158; Asiatic Researches, vol. iii. pp. 29, 156, vol. iv. pp. 56, 58, 74, vol. xvi. pp. 215, 280; Neander's History of the Church, vol. iii. p. 119; Crawford's History of the Indian Archipelago, vol. i. p. 328; Low's Sarawak, pp. 174, 261; Cook's Voyages, vol. i. p. 229; Mariner's Tonga Islands, vol. i. pp. 194, 350-360, 374, 438, vol. ii. pp. 172, 230; Huc's Travels in Tartary and Thibet, vol. i. pp. 74-77; Richardson's Travels in the Sahara, vol. i. p. 27; M'Culloh's Researches, p. 105; Journal of Geog. Soc. vol. i. p. 41, vol. iv. p. 260, vol. xiv. p. 37. And in regard to Europe, compare Spence, Origin of the Laws of Europe, p. 322; Turner's Hist. of England, vol. iii. p. 443; Phillips on Scrofula, p. 255; Otter's Life of Clarke, vol. i. pp. 265, 266, which may be illustrated by the "sacred" disease of Cambyses, no doubt epilepsy; see Herodot. lib. iii. chap. xxxiv. vol. ii. p. 63.

205 Heat, moisture, and consequent rapid decomposition of vegetable matter, are certainly among the causes of this; and to them may perhaps be added the electrical state of the atmosphere in the tropics. Compare Holland's Medical Notes, p. 477; M'William's Medical Expedition to the Niger, pp, 157, 185; Simon's Pathology, p. 269; Forry's Climate and its Endemic Influences, p. 158; M. Lepelletier says, rather vaguely (Physiologie Médicale, vol. iv. p. 527), that the temperate zones are "favorables à l'exercice complet et régulier des phénomènes vitaux."

206 And must have strengthened the power of the clergy; for, as Charlevoix says with great frankness, "pestilences are the harvests of the ministers of God." Southey's History of Brazil, vol. ii. p. 254.

207 For evidence of the extra-European origin of European diseases, some of which, such as the small-pox, have passed from epidemics into endemics, compare Encyclop. of the Medical Sciences, 4to, 1847, p. 728; Transactions of Asiatic Society, vol. ii. pp. 54, 55; Michaelis on the Laws of Moses, vol. iii. p. 313; Sprengel, Histoire de la Médecine, vol ii. pp. 33, 195; Wallace's Dissertation on the Numbers of Mankind, pp. 81, 82; Huetiana, Amst. 1723, pp. 132-135; Sanders on the SmallPor, Edinb. 1813, pp. 3-4; Wilks's Hist. of the South of India, vol. iii. pp. 16-21; Clot-Bey de la Peste, Paris, 1840, p. 227.