The Philosophy of History. Friedrich von Schlegel

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СКАЧАТЬ central fire in the interior of the earth. The interior parts of the earth and its internal depths are a region totally impervious to the eye of mortal man, and can least of all be approached by those ordinary paths of hypothesis adopted by naturalists and geologists. The region designed for the existence of man, and of every other creature endowed with organic life, as well as the sphere open to the preception of man's senses, is confined to a limited space between the upper and lower parts of the earth, exceedingly small in proportion to the diameter, or even semi-diameter of the earth, and forming only the exterior surface, or outer skin, of the great body of the earth. Even at a very slight depth below the earth's surface, all change of seasons ceases, and an even temperature eternally prevails, approximating rather to cold, than living heat. Yet on this side the earth is more easy of access than in the upper regions, where not only the higher Alps and glaciers are the last attainable limit to human daring, but even the pure ether of the supernal atmosphere made an aeronaut, celebrated for his disaster, learn at his own cost, how very near is that boundary where, in deadening cold, all life and all observation cease. It is in the physical, as in the moral world—where light and heat should exist, there two things are necessary—a power to give light and communicate heat, and a substance capable of receiving and absorbing the one and the other. Where either condition is wanting, there reigns eternal darkness, and deadly and eternal cold; and so the fact, that the whole action of heat, and of all the life it produces, is confined entirely to this lower atmosphere, should awake attention rather than create surprise. In all matters, even of this sort, we cannot be too mindful of the necessity of confining our researches to that small narrowly circumscribed sphere inhabited by man, and of never exceeding those limits.

      Thus to explain the fact that the habitable earth has not, as originally, so warm a temperature as the north, we need not have recourse to any supposition of a central fire suddenly extinguished, like an oven that becomes cold, or to any other violent hypothesis of the same kind; for this fact may be sufficiently accounted for by the last great revolution of Nature—the general deluge, which as may be assumed with great probability, produced a change in the heretofore much purer, balmier, and more genial atmosphere. That, towards the equator, the position of the earth's axis has undergone a change, and that thereby this great revolution in the earth's climate was occasioned, is indeed a bare possibility; but until further proof, this must be regarded as a purely gratuitous hypothesis. But without subscribing to these fanciful suppositions, and mathematical theories, and without wishing to penetrate, with some geologists, into the hidden depths of the earth in quest of an imagined central fire, we shall find on the inhabited surface of the globe, or very near it, many proofs and indications of the once superior energy of the principle of fire—a principle whereof volcanoes whether subsisting or extinct, and the kindred phenomena of earthquakes, may be considered the last feeble, surviving effects; for not basalt only, but porphyry, granite, and in general all the primary rocks, and those which, according to the classifications of geologists, are more immediately akin to them, can be proved to be of a volcanic nature with as much certainty, as we can trace, in the horizontal secondary formations, the destructive influence and operation of the element of water. Hence this layer of subterraneous, though now in general slumbering fire, with all its volcanic arteries and veins of earthquakes, may once have been as widely diffused over the surface of the globe as the element of water, now occupying so large a portion of that surface. As volcanic rocks exist in the ocean, or rather at its bottom, and as their eruptions burst through the body of waters up to the surface of the sea; as their volcanic agency gives birth to earthquakes, and not unfrequently raises and heaves up new islands from the depths of the ocean; naturalists have concluded, with reason from these various facts, that the volcanic basis of the earth's surface though tolerably near, must still be somewhat deeper than the bottom of the sea. And without stopping to examine the hypothesis relative to the immeasurable depth of the ocean, the opinion which fixes the earth's basis at about 30,000 feet, or one geographical mile and a half below the surface of the sea, does not exceed the modest limits of a well-considered probability. In the present period of the globe, water is the predominant element on the earth's surface. But if that volcanic power which lies deeper in the bosom of the earth, and the kindred principle of fire, had at an earlier epoch of nature, the same influence and operation on the earth, as water afterwards had; we can well imagine such an influence to have materially affected the lower atmosphere, and to have rendered the climate of the earth, even in the North, totally different from what it is at present.

      The strata of bones formed by the old flood, and the buried remains of a former race of animals, call forth a remark, which is not without importance in respect to the primitive history of man:—it is, that among the many bones of other large and small land animals, which form of themselves a rich and varied collection of the subterraneous products of nature, the fossile remains of man are scarcely any where to be found. It has sometimes happened that what were at first considered the bones of human giants have been afterwards proved to have been those of animals. It is so very rare an instance to meet in fossile remains with a real human bone, skull, jaw-bone or entire human skeleton (as in one particular instance was found enclosed in a lime-stone, mixed with some few utensils and instruments of the primitive world, such as a stone-knife, a copper axe, an iron club, and a dagger of a very ancient form, together with some human bones); that the very rareness of the exception serves only to confirm the general rule. Were we from this fact immediately to draw the conclusion that during all those revolutions of nature mankind had not yet existence, such an hypothesis would be rash, groundless, completely at variance with history—one to which many even physical objections, too long to detail here, might be opposed. That so very few, and indeed scarcely any human bones are to be found among the fossile remains of the primitive world, may possibly be owing to the circumstance that by the very artificial, hot, and highly seasoned food of men, their bones, from their chemical nature and qualities, are more liable to destruction than those of other animals. I may here repeat what I have already had occasion to remark, and what is here of especial importance, as applying particularly to the history and circumstances of the primitive world;—namely, that all things are not susceptible of an entire, satisfactory, and absolutely certain explanation; and that yet we may form a tolerably correct conception of general facts; though many of the particulars may remain for a time unexplained, or at least not capable of a full explanation. So on the other hand, it would be premature, and little conformable to the grave circumspection of the historian, to reduce all those natural catastrophes (the vouching monuments and mysterious inscriptions of which are now daily disclosed to the eye of Science as she explores the deep sepulchres of the earth)—to reduce, I say, all those natural catastrophes exclusively to the one nearest to the historical times, and which indeed is attested by the clear, unanimous tradition of all, or at least of most ancient nations; for several mighty and violent, revolutions of nature, of various kinds, though of a less general extent, may possibly have happened, and very probably did really happen simultaneously with, or subsequently, or even previously to the last general flood.

      The irruption of the Black Sea into the Thracian Bosphorus is regarded by very competent judges in such matters, as an event perfectly historical, or at least, from its proximity to the historical times, as not comparatively of so primitive a date. A celebrated Northern naturalist has shewn it to be extremely probable, that the Caspian Sea, and the lake Aral were originally united with the Euxine, and that on the other hand the North Sea extended very far over land, and even near to those regions, leaving some marine plants very different from those of the Southern Seas. The sea originally must have stretched much farther over the earth and even over many places where now is dry land, as may easily be inferred from the great and extensive salt-steppes in Asia, Africa, and some parts of Eastern Europe, which furnish many and irrefragable proofs that the land was once occupied by the sea.

      All these great physical changes are not necessarily and exclusively to be ascribed to the last general deluge. The presumed irruption of the Mediterranean into the ocean, as well as many other mere partial revolutions in the earth and sea, may have occurred much later and quite apart from this great event. The original magnificence of the climate of the North, as displayed in the luxuriant richness of all organic productions, is commemorated in many traditions of the primitive nations, especially those of Southern Asia; and in these sagas, the North is ever made the subject of uncommon eulogy. That the North enjoys a certain natural pre-eminence СКАЧАТЬ