 | Studies of Nature |  |
OF MOVEMENTS.
It remains that I suggest a few reflections on the subject of motions. Of these we shall also distinguish five which are fundamental: self-motion, or the rotation of a body round itself, which supposes no change of place, and is the principle of all motion; such is, perhaps, that of the sun; after that, the perpendicular, circular, horizontal, and state of rest. All movements may be referred to these five. Nay, geometricians, who represent them likewise by figures, suppose the circular motion to be generated of the perpendicular and horizontal, and, to use their language, produced by the diagonal of their squares.
I shall not insist on the analogies which actually exist between the white colour, the straight line, and self-motion, or rotation; the red colour, the spherical form, and circular motion; between darkness, vacuity, and rest. I leave to the reader the pleasure of following up this idea, and forming to himself, with these elements of Nature, harmonies the most enchanting, with the additional charm of novelty. I shall confine myself, at present, to a few hasty observations respecting motion.
Of all movements, the harmonic or circular motion is the most agreeable. Nature has diffused it over most of her works, and rendered even the vegetables in the earth susceptible of it. Our plains represent this, when the winds form,
The case differs with respect to the movements of ferocious or noxious animals. They advance leaping, springing, and join to slow movements others violently rapid; as in the motion of the cat watching a mouse: those of the tiger are exactly similar. The same discordancy is observable in the flight of carnivorous birds. The species of owl called the grand-duke floats through a tranquil sky, as if the wind carried him this way and that. Tempests present, in the heavens, the same characters of destruction. You sometimes perceive stormy clouds moving in opposite directions; now they fly like lightning, while others remain immoveable as the rock. In the tremendous hurricanes of the West Indies, the explosion is always preceded and followed by a dead calm.
The more a body possesses of self-motion, or rotation, the more agreeable it appears, especially when united to the harmonic or circular motion. From the effect of self-motion, every moral idea out of the question, animals interest us more than vegetables, because they have the principle of motion within themselves.
Motion is the expression of life. In this you see why Nature has multiplied the causes of it in all her works. One of the great charms of a landscape is objects in motion; but this the pictures of most of our great masters frequently fail to express. If you except those representing tempests, everywhere else their forests and meadows are motionless, and the water of their lakes congealed. Yet the inversion of the leaves of trees presenting a gray or white underside; the undulations of the grass in valleys, and on the ridges of mountains; those which ruffle the surface of the waters, and the foam which whitens the shores, recall, with inexpressible pleasure, in a burning summer scene, the breath so gentle and cooling of the zephyrs. To these might be added, with
So far are our painters, those even whose talents are conspicuous, from paying attention to accessories so agreeable, that they omit them in subjects of which those accessories form the principal character. For example, if they represent a chariot at full speed, they exhibit every spoke of the wheels. The horses, indeed, are galloping, but the chariot is immoveable. The wheels of a carriage, however, running with a rapid motion, present but one single surface; all their spokes are confounded to the eye. I have seen, in modern pictures, machines in motion, wrestlers and warriors in action, but in no one of them did I ever find attention paid to these effects so simple, yet so expressive of the truth of Nature. Our painters consider them as petty details, beneath the notice of a man of genius. Nevertheless, they are traits of character.
Details, frequently traits of character, are not to be despised. If our painters and sculptors withhold the expression of motion to landscapes, wrestlers, and chariots in the course, they bestow it on the portraits and statues of our great men. They represent them as angels sounding the alarm to judgment, with flowing hair, wild wandering eyes, the muscles of the face convulsed, and garments fluttering in the wind. These, they tell us, are the expressions of genius. But persons of genius, and great men, are not bedlamites. I have seen some of their portraits, on antiques, which represent them with a serene and tranquil air. It is the property of inanimate matter, vegetables, and animals, to obey the movements of Nature; but a great man should have his emotions under command, and only as he exercises this empire does he merit the name of Great.
I have just hinted the necessity of conformity to artists, who will find it much more difficult to execute, than it is easy for me to criticise. God forbid that I should give a moment's pain to men whose works have given me exquisite pleasure. It was simply my wish to stimulate the ingenious to tread in
This would be the place to speak of music, for sounds are movements merely: but persons of much ability have treated this noble art with consummate skill. If any foreign testimony could farther confirm me in the principles I have hitherto laid down, it is that of musicians, who have restricted harmonic expression to three sounds. I might, like them, reduce to three terms the elementary generations of colours, forms, and motions; but they have omitted, in their fundamental basis, the generative principle, sound, properly so called, and the negative term, silence; especially as this last produces powerful effects in the movements of music.
These proportions might be extended to the progressions of tasting; the most agreeable of them have similar generations, as we know by experience to be the case with regard to most fruits, whose different stages of maturity successively present five savours, namely, the acid, sweet, sugary, vinous, and bitter. They are acid while growing, sweet as they ripen, sugary in a state of perfect maturity, vinous in their fermentation, and bitter in a state of dryness. Farther, we should find the most agreeable of these savours, namely, the sugary, is that which occupies the middle place in this progression, of which it is the harmonic term; that, from its nature, it forms new harmonies, by a combination with its extremes; for the beverages most grateful to the palate consist of acid and sugar, as the refreshing liquors prepared with citron-juice; or of sugar and bitter, such as coffee.
Though I have a thorough conviction of the truth of these elementary generations, it would not, however, surprise me, should many of my readers dissent from what I have advanced. Our natural tastes are perverted by prejudices which determine our physical sensations, much more powerfully than these last give direction to our moral affections. I shall endeavour, in another place, to unfold the causes of these moral affections. They stand in connexion with laws more sublime than any physical laws: while these last amuse our senses, the others speak to the heart, and calmly admonish us, that man is ordained to a much higher destination. All I have hitherto said on this subject, or hereafter may say, is reducible to this great law: Every thing in Nature is formed of contraries: from their harmonies the sentiment of
This law extends also to morals. Every truth, those of fact excepted, is the result of two contrary ideas. It follows, that as often as we decompound a truth, by dialectics, we divide it into the two ideas of which it is constituted; and if we confine ourselves to one of its elementary ideas, as to a detached principle, and deduce consequences from it, we shall convert it into a source of endless disputation; for the other elementary idea, if pursued, will supply consequences diametrically opposite, themselves susceptible of contradictory decompositions without end. The schools are admirably adapted to instruct us how to manage this process, and thither are we sent to form our judgement.
All disorders, both physical and moral, are but the clashing opposition of two contraries. If man would pay attention to this law, wranglings and mistakes would speedily cease; for every thing being composed of contraries, whoever affirms a simple proposition is only half right, as the contrary proposition has equally an existence in nature.
There is perhaps in the world but one intellectual truth, pure, simple, and without contradiction. Those who have denied it only support their negation on the apparent disorders of Nature, the extreme principles of which alone they contemplated; so that they have not demonstrated that God did not exist, but that He was not intelligent or good. Their error proceeds from their ignorance of natural laws. Besides, their arguments have been mostly founded on the disorders of men, who exist in an order different from that of Nature, and who alone of all beings endowed with perception have been committed to their own direction.
As to the nature of GOD, I know that faith itself presents Him to us as the harmonic principle, not only with relation to all that surrounds Him, of which he is the Creator and Mover, but even in his essence divided into three persons. A single act of his will called us into being; the slightest communication of his works is sufficient to illuminate our reason; but I have a thorough persuasion that if the smallest ray of his divine essence were to communicate itself directly to us, in a human body, we must be annihilated.
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