Название: History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1 of 3
Автор: Henry Buckley
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
isbn: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44493
isbn:
Of those physical events which increase the insecurity of Man, earthquakes are certainly among the most striking, in regard to the loss of life which they cause, as also in regard to their sudden and unexpected occurrence. There is reason to believe that they are always preceded by atmospheric changes which strike immediately at the nervous system, and thus have a direct physical tendency to impair the intellectual powers.226 However this may be, there can be no doubt as to the effect they produce in encouraging particular associations and habits of thought. The terror which they inspire excites the imagination even to a painful extent, and, overbalancing the judgment, predisposes men to superstitious fancies. And what is highly curious, is, that repetition, so far from blunting such feelings, strengthens them. In Peru, where earthquakes appear to be more common than in any other country,227 every succeeding visitation increases the general dismay; so that, in some cases, the fear becomes almost insupportable.228 The mind is thus constantly thrown into a timid and anxious state: and men witnessing the most serious dangers, which they can neither avoid nor understand, become impressed with a conviction of their own inability, and of the poverty of their own resources.229 In exactly the same proportion, the imagination is aroused, and a belief in supernatural interference actively encouraged. Human power failing, superhuman power is called in; the mysterious and the invisible are believed to be present; and there grow up among the people those feelings of awe and of helplessness, on which all superstition is based, and without which no superstition can exist.230
Further illustration of this may be found even in Europe, where such phenomena are, comparatively speaking, extremely rare. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are more frequent and more destructive in Italy, and in the Spanish and Portuguese peninsula, than in any other of the great countries; and it is precisely there that superstition is most rife, and the superstitious classes most powerful. Those were the countries where 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.231 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.232
The manner in which the Aspects of Nature, when they are very threatening, stimulate the imagination,233 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,234 it constantly happens, not only that the danger is submitted to, but that it is actually worshipped. This is the case with some of the Hindus in the forest of Malabar;235 and many similar instances will occur to whoever has studied the condition of barbarous tribes.236 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.237
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,238 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 encouraged a disposition to neglect the investigation of natural causes, and ascribe events to the operation of supernatural ones.
Everything 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;239 and this opinion, though it has long been dying away, is by no means extinct, even in the most civilized countries.240 Superstition of this kind will of course be strongest, 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.241
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 Europe.242 This fact alone must have produced a considerable effect on the national character,243 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.244
Summing up these facts, it may be stated, that in the civilizations exterior to Europe, all nature conspired to СКАЧАТЬ
226
‘Une augmentation d'électricité s'y manifeste aussi presque toujours, et ils sont généralement annoncés par le mugissement des bestiaux, par l'inquiétude des animaux domestiques, et dans les hommes par cette sorte de malaise qui, en Europe, précède les orages dans les personnes nerveuses.’
227
‘Peru is more subject perhaps than any other country to the tremendous visitation of earthquakes.’
228
A curious instance of association of ideas conquering the deadening effect of habit. Dr. Tschudi (
229
Mr. Stephens, who gives a striking description of an earthquake in Central America, emphatically says, ‘I never felt myself so feeble a thing before.’
230
The effect of earthquakes in encouraging superstition, is noticed in Lyell's admirable work,
231
The greatest men in science, 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.’
232
The remarks made by Mr. Ticknor on the absence of science in Spain, might be extended even further than he has done. See
233
In
234
See for example,
235
The Hindus in the Iruari forests, says Mr. Edye, ‘worship and respect everything from which they apprehend danger.’
236
Dr. Prichard (
237
The inhabitants of Sumatra are, for superstitious reasons, most unwilling to destroy tigers, though they commit frightful ravages.
238
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 1,000 miles in circumference,’ and the detonations of which were heard at a distance of 970 geographical miles.
239
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 fléau, et que sans elle les causes éloignées ne sauraient agir.’
240
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 partisans 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 by Mrs. Grant, a woman of some accomplishments, and not devoid of influence (
‘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.’
241
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.
242
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
243
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.’
244
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