University of Virginia Library

OF SOME OTHER LAWS OF NATURE, HITHERTO IMPERFECTLY KNOWN>

There are, besides those which have been mentioned, some physical laws not hitherto profoundly investigated, though we have had a glimmering of them, and made them the frequent subject of conversation. Such is the law of attraction. It has been acknowledged in the planets, and in some metals, as in iron and the loadstone, in gold and mercury. I believe attraction to be common to all metals, and even fossils; but that it acts in each in particular circumstances, not yet ascertained. Each of the metals, perhaps, may incline toward different points of the earth, as magnetic iron does to the north. It would probably be necessary to ascertain this by experiment, that each metal should be armed with its proper attraction; which takes place when united to its contrary.

How do we know whether a needle of gold, rubbed with mercury, might not have attractive poles, as a needle of steel has when rubbed with the magnet? Thus prepared, it might possibly indicate the places which contain mines of that rich metal. Perhaps it might determine the general points of direction to the east or west, which might indicate the longitudes more steadily than the variations of the magnetic needle.

If there be a point at the pole, on which the globe revolves, there may possibly be one under the equator, from which commenced, and which may have determined, its motion of rotation. It is, however, certain there exist many of those particular points of attraction, scattered over the earth, such as the matrices which renovate the mines of metals, by attracting to themselves the metallic parts dispersed in the elements. Metals have besides other attractions; and I consider these as the principal matrices of all fossil bodies, and as

the ever active means employed by Nature for repairing the mountains and rocks, which the action of the other elements, but especially the injudicious labours of men, have an incessant tendency to impair.

I shall here remark, on the subject of mines of gold, that they are placed, as well as those of all metals, not only on the most elevated part of continents, but in icy mountains. The gold mines of Peru and Chili are situated in the Cordilleras; those of Mexico in the vicinity of Mount St. Martha, covered with snow all the year round. It may be said that all rivers which wash down particles of gold along their shores, issue from icy mountains.

To this it may be objected, that gold was formerly found in Europe, in places where there were no icy mountains; nay, that some has been picked up on the surface of the ground, as in Brazil. But, if I might venture to hazard a conjecture respecting the origin of this gold, I believe it to have proceeded from the total effusion of the ices of the mountains at the time of the deluge, when vegetable earths and minerals were forced along other countries, where their fragments were found, in the earlier ages, in grains, and even in larger masses.

It would appear as if Nature, by burying the foci of this rich metal under the snows, had intended to fence it with ramparts still more inaccessible than the flinty bosom of the rock, lest the undismayed ardour of human avarice should at length destroy them entirely. It has become the most powerful bond of society, the perpetual object of a life so rapidly hurrying to a close. Alas! were Nature to inflict condign punishment on this insatiable thirst in the nations of Europe, for a metal so useless as a real necessary of human life, she has only to change the territory of some one of them into gold. Every other nation would instantly flock thither, and soon exterminate its wretched inhabitants. The Peruvians and Mexicans have had the dreadful experience of this.

There are metals not so highly prized, but much more useful. The peaks and crests of the mountains are filled with iron or copper, intermingled with a vitreous body of granite or of natural crystal, which attracts the rains and stormy clouds. Seamen have seen, a thousand times, those peaks and crests covered with a cloudy cap concealing them from view, without once suspecting the cause of this appearance;

and philosophers, deducing their conclusions from charts, have taken those rocky protuberances for wrecks of a primitive earth, without troubling themselves about their effects. They ought to have observed that those metallic pyramids and crests, as well as most mines of iron and copper, are to be found in elevated situations, and at the source of rivers, of which they are the primitive causes by their attractions. Their general inattention to this subject is thus only to be accounted for; seamen observe, and do not reason; and the learned reason, but do not observe. Undoubtedly, had the experience of the one been united to the sagacity of the other, prodigies of discovery might have been expected.

I am persuaded we might acquire the art of forming, by electric stones, artificial fountains, which should attract the rainy clouds in dry situations, as chains and rods of iron attract thunder-clouds. It is true princes must be at the expense of such costly and useful experiments; but they would immortalize their memory. The Pharaohs, who built the pyramids of Egypt, would not have drawn upon themselves the curses of their subjects, as Pliny assures us they did, for their enormous and useless labours, had they reared, amidst the sands of Upper Egypt, an electrical pyramid, which might there have formed an artificial fountain. The Arab who should resort thither at this day to quench his thirst, would still pronounce benedictions on names which, if we may believe the great Natural Historian, had already sunk into oblivion, and ceased to be mentioned in his time.

For my own part, I think that several metals might be proper for producing similar effects. A Prussian officer of rank informed me that having remarked vapours to be attracted by lead, he had employed it for drying the atmosphere of a powder-magazine, constructed under ground, in the throat of a bastion, but useless from its humidity. He ordered the concave ceiling of the arch to be lined with lead, where the gunpowder was deposited in barrels; the vapours of the vault collected in great drops, on the leaden roof, run off in streamlets along the sides, and left the gunpowder barrels perfectly dry.

There are many other harmonic laws as yet undiscovered; as the proportions of magnitudes, and durations of existence, of beings vegetative and sensible, which differ exceedingly, though their nutriment and climates may be the same. Man,

while yet a youth, sees his dog die of old age; and also the sheep he fondled when a lamb. Though the former lived at his own table, and the latter on the herbage of his meadow, neither the fidelity of the one, nor the temperance of the other, could prolong their days; whereas animals which live only on carrion and garbage live for ages, as the crow. In such researches we must follow the spirit of conformity, the basis of our own, and of the reason of Nature.

By consulting this we shall find, that if such a carnivorous animal, the crow for instance, is long-lived, it is because his services and experience are long necessary for purifying the earth. If an innocent animal lives but a little while, it is because his flesh and skin are necessary to man. If the domestic dog, by his death, diffuses sorrow over the children of the family, Nature undoubtedly intended to give them, in the loss of an animal so worthy the affections and regret of man, the first experience of the privations with which human life is to be exercised.

The duration of an animal's life is sometimes proportioned to that of the vegetable on which it feeds. A multitude of caterpillars are born and die with the leaves by which their transitory existence is supported. There are insects whose being is limited to five hours; such is the ephemera. But as Nature has made nothing in vain, it is not credible that she should have created momentary lives, and beings infinitely minute, to fill up imaginary chains of existence.

The aversions and instincts of animals emanate from laws of a superior order, into which we shall never be able to penetrate; but supposing those intimate conformities to elude our researches, they must be referred to the general conformity of beings, and especially to that of man. There is nothing so luminous in the study of Nature, as to refer every thing that exists to the goodness of GOD, and to the demands of humanity. This method of viewing objects not only discovers to us a multitude of unknown laws, but it sets bounds to those we do know, and believe to be universal.

If Nature were governed by the laws of attraction only, every thing would be in a state of rest. Bodies, tending toward one common centre, would there accumulate, and arrange themselves round it in the ratio of their gravity. The substances which compose the globe would be so much heavier as they approached the centre, and those at the surface

would all be reduced to a level. The bason of the seas would be choked with the wrecks of the land; and this magnificent architecture, formed of harmonies so various, would soon become an aquatic globe entirely. All bodies, hurled downward by one common precipitation, would be condemned to an everlasting immobility.

On the other hand, if the law of projection employed for explaining the motions of the heavenly bodies, on the supposition of their tendency to fly off in the tangent of a curve; if, I say, this law predominated, all bodies not actually adherent to the earth would be hurled from it, like stones from a sling: our globe itself, subjected to this law, would fly off from the sun never to return. It would sometimes traverse the spaces of immensity, where no star would be perceptible for many ages; sometimes, swinging through regions where chance might have collected the matrices of creation, it might pass along amidst the elementary parts of suns, aggregated by the central laws of attraction, or scattered about in sparks and rays, by those of projection.

But supposing these two contrary forces combined happily enough in favour of the globe, to fix it, with its vortex, in a corner of the firmament, where they should act without destroying themselves, it would present its equator to the sun as regularly as it describes its annual course round him. From those two constant motions never could be produced that other motion so varied, by which it daily inclines one of its poles toward the sun, till its axis has formed, on the plane of its annual circle, an angle of twenty-three degrees and a half; then that other retrograde motion, by which it presents to him, with equal regularity, the opposite pole. Far from presenting to him alternately its poles, in order that his fertilizing heat may by turns melt their ices, it would regain them buried in eternal night and winter, with a part of the temperate zones, whereas the rest of its circumference would be burned up by the too constant fires of the tropics.

But if we suppose a third variable law, which gives to the earth the movement that produces the seasons, and a fourth, which gives it the diurnal motion of rotation round itself; and that no one of these laws, so opposite, should ever surpass the others, and, at least, determine it to obey but one single impulsion; it would be impossible to affirm they had determined the forms and movements of the bodies on its

surface. First, the force of projection, or centrifugal, would not have left upon it any one detached body. On the other hand, the force of attraction, or gravity, would not have permitted the mountains to rise, and still less the metals, the heaviest part of them, to be placed at their summits, where they are usually found.

Vegetables themselves, entirely subjected to the action of the elements, have configurations diversified without end. But how comes it that animals have the principles of so many motions, so entirely different? Wherefore has not gravity nailed them down to the surface of the earth? They ought to crawl along it at most. How comes it to pass, that the laws which regulate the course of the stars, those laws whose influence has, in modern times, been made to extend even to the operations of the human soul, should permit the birds to rise into the air and fly as they please, notwithstanding the united powers of the attraction and projection of the globe?

It is conformity, adaptation to use, which has regulated those laws, and generalized or suspended their effects subordinate to the necessities of sensible beings. Though Nature employs an infinity of means, she permits man to know only the end she has in view. Her works are subjected to rapid dissolutions; but she always suffers him to perceive the immortal consistency of her plans. It is on this she wishes to fix his heart and mind. She aims not at rendering man ingenious and proud, but good and happy. She universally mitigates necessary evils; and multiplies blessings often superfluous. In her harmonies, formed of contraries, she has opposed the empire od death to life; but life endures for an age, death only an instant. She allows man to enjoy the expansions of beings, so delightful to behold; but conceals from him, with a precaution truly maternal, their transient state of dissolution.

If an animal dies, if plants are decompounded in a morass, putrid emanations, and reptiles of a disgusting form, chase us away from them. An infinite number of secondary beings are created for the purpose of hastening forward the decompositions. If cavernous mountains and rocks present appearances of ruin; owls, birds of prey, and ferocious animals, keep us at a distance. Nature drives far from us the spectacles and the ministers of destruction, and allures us to her harmonies.

From a profusion of this unbounded benevolence of Nature, the action of the sun is multiplied wherever it was most necessary, and mitigated where it might have been hurtful. When the orb of day has left us, the moon appears to reflect his light, with varieties in her phases which have relations, hitherto unknown, to a great number of species of animals, and especially of fishes, which travel only in the night-time, at the epochas which she indicates to them. The farther the sun withdraws from one pole, the more are his rays refracted there; but when he has entirely abandoned it, then his lift is supplied in a most wonderful manner. First, the moon, by a movement altogether incomprehensible, replaces him there, and appears perpetually above the horizon, as was observed in 1596, at Nova Zembla, by the unfortunate Dutchmen who wintered there, in the 76th degree of north latitude.

In those dreadful climates Nature multiplies her resources, to bestow on sensible beings, and even on animals, the benefits of light and heat. When the season returns, the sun reappears there before his natural term, as the Dutch mariners saw him to their astonishment above the horizon of Nova Zembla, on the 24th of January, fifteen days sooner than they expected him. This return, so much earlier than their hopes, filled them with joy, and disconcerted the calculations of their intelligent pilot, the unfortunate Barents.

Naturalists consider colours as accidents. But if we attend to the general uses for which Nature employs them, we shall be persuaded there is not, even on rocks, a single shade impressed without a meaning and a purpose. Let us observe the principal effects of the two extreme colours, white and black, with relation to the light. Of all colours, white best reflects the rays of the sun, because it sends them back without any tint, as pure as it receives them; black, on the contrary, is the least adapted to their reflection, because it absorbs them. Hence gardeners whiten the walls against which their espaliers are planted, to accelerate the maturity of their fruits, by the reverberation of the sun's rays; and opticians blacken the walls of the camera-obscura, that their reflexes may not disturb the luminous picture on the tablet.

Nature frequently employs contrary means for producing the same effect. She makes glass with fire; she makes it too with water, crystal for instance: farther, she produces it from animal organization, such as certain transparent shell-

fish. She forms the diamond by a process to us utterly unknown. Conclude now, because a body has been vitrified, it must certainly be by the effect of fire, and rear on this perception the system of the universe! The utmost that we can do is to catch some harmonic instants in the existence of beings. That which is vitrifiable becomes calcareous, and what is calcareous changes into glass, by the action of the same fire. Deduce, then, from these simple modifications of the fossil kingdom, invariable characters for determining the general classes of it!

On the other hand, Nature frequently employs the same means for producing effects directly contrary. For example, to increase the heat over the lands of the north, and to mitigate it over those of the south, she makes use of opposite colours; she produces in both the same effects, by covering the face of both with rocks. These rocks are essentially necessary to vegetation.

Nature proposes to herself, universally, only the accommodation of beings possessed of sensibility. This remark is all-important in the study of her works; otherwise, form the similitude which she employs, or the exceptions from them, we might be tempted to doubt of the consistency of her laws, instead of ascribing the majestic obscurity which pervades them to the multiplicity of her resources, and to the profundity of our own ignorance.

This law of adaptation and conformity has been the source of all our discoveries. It was this which wafted Columbus to America; because, as Herrera tells us, he thought, contrary to the opinion of the ancients, that the whole five zones must be inhabited, as GOD had not formed the earth to be a desert. This law regulates our ideas respecting objects absolutely beyond the reach of our examination. By means of it, though ignorant whether there may be men in the planets, we are assured there must be eyes, because there is light. It has awakened a sense of justice in the heart of every man, informing him there is another order of things after this life. This law, in a word, is the most irresistible proof of the existence of GOD; for amidst such a multitude of adaptations, so ingenious and so numerous, that every day is presenting some with all the merit of novelty, the first of all,

which is the DEITY, must undoubtedly exist, as he is the general conformity of all particular conformities.

How often, on coming out of the King's magnificent Cabinet of Natural History, do we stop mechanically to look at a gardener digging a hole in the field, or a carpenter hewing a piece of timber! It looks as if we expected some new harmony to start out of the bosom of the earth, or burst from the side of a lump of oak. We set no value on those we have just been enjoying, unless they lead us forward to others we do not know as yet. But were the complete history given us of the stars of the firmament, and the invisible planets which encircle them, we should perceive a multitude of ineffable plans of intelligence and goodness, after which the heart would continue fondly to sigh: its last and only end is the DIVINITY himself.