I hold that the depravity of the physical and moral nature of man
originated in his unnatural habits of life.
originated in his unnatural habits of life.
Shelley
If, therefore, the human mind, by any future
improvement of its sensibility, should become conscious of an infinite
number of ideas in a minute, that minute would be eternity. I do not
hence infer that the actual space between the birth and death of a man
will ever be prolonged; but that his sensibility is perfectible, and
that the number of ideas which his mind is capable of receiving is
indefinite. One man is stretched on the rack during twelve hours;
another sleeps soundly in his bed: the difference of time perceived by
these two persons is immense; one hardly will believe that half an hour
has elapsed, the other could credit that centuries had flown during his
agony. Thus, the life of a man of virtue and talent, who should die in
his thirtieth year, is, with regard to his own feelings, longer than
that of a miserable priest-ridden slave, who dreams out a century of
dulness. The one has perpetually cultivated his mental faculties, has
rendered himself master of his thoughts, can abstract and generalize
amid the lethargy of every-day business;--the other can slumber over the
brightest moments of his being, and is unable to remember the happiest
hour of his life. Perhaps the perishing ephemeron enjoys a longer life
than the tortoise.
Dark flood of time!
Roll as it listeth thee--I measure not
By months or moments thy ambiguous course.
Another may stand by me on the brink
And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken
That pauses at my feet. The sense of love,
The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought
Prolong my being: if I wake no more,
My life more actual living will contain
Than some gray veteran's of the world's cold school,
Whose listless hours unprofitably roll,
By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed. --
See Godwin's "Pol. Jus. " volume 1, page 411; and Condorcet, "Esquisse
d'un Tableau Historique des Progres de l'Esprit Humain", epoque 9.
8. 211, 212:--
No longer now
He slays the lamb that looks him in the face.
I hold that the depravity of the physical and moral nature of man
originated in his unnatural habits of life. The origin of man, like that
of the universe of which he is a part, is enveloped in impenetrable
mystery. His generations either had a beginning, or they had not. The
weight of evidence in favour of each of these suppositions seems
tolerably equal; and it is perfectly unimportant to the present argument
which is assumed. The language spoken, however, by the mythology of
nearly all religions seems to prove that at some distant period man
forsook the path of nature, and sacrificed the purity and happiness of
his being to unnatural appetites. The date of this event seems to have
also been that of some great change in the climates of the earth, with
which it has an obvious correspondence. The allegory of Adam and Eve
eating of the tree of evil, and entailing upon their posterity the wrath
of God and the loss of everlasting life, admits of no other explanation
than the disease and crime that have flowed from unnatural diet. Milton
was so well aware of this that he makes Raphael thus exhibit to Adam the
consequence of his disobedience:--
Immediately a place
Before his eyes appeared, sad, noisome, dark;
A lazar-house it seemed; wherein were laid
Numbers of all diseased--all maladies
Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds,
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,
Dropsies and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums.
And how many thousands more might not be added to this frightful catalogue!
The story of Prometheus is one likewise which, although universally
admitted to be allegorical, has never been satisfactorily explained.
Prometheus stole fire from heaven, and was chained for this crime to
Mount Caucasus, where a vulture continually devoured his liver, that
grew to meet its hunger. Hesiod says that, before the time of
Prometheus, mankind were exempt from suffering; that they enjoyed a
vigorous youth, and that death, when at length it came, approached like
sleep, and gently closed their eyes. Again, so general was this opinion
that Horace, a poet of the Augustan age, writes:--
Audax omnia perpeti,
Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas;
Audax Iapeti genus
Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit:
Post ignem aetheria domo
Subductum, macies et nova febrium
Terris incubuit cohors,
Semotique prius tarda necessitas
Lethi corripuit gradum.
How plain a language is spoken by all this! Prometheus (who represents
the human race) effected some great change in the condition of his
nature, and applied fire to culinary purposes; thus inventing an
expedient for screening from his disgust the horrors of the shambles.
From this moment his vitals were devoured by the vulture of disease.
improvement of its sensibility, should become conscious of an infinite
number of ideas in a minute, that minute would be eternity. I do not
hence infer that the actual space between the birth and death of a man
will ever be prolonged; but that his sensibility is perfectible, and
that the number of ideas which his mind is capable of receiving is
indefinite. One man is stretched on the rack during twelve hours;
another sleeps soundly in his bed: the difference of time perceived by
these two persons is immense; one hardly will believe that half an hour
has elapsed, the other could credit that centuries had flown during his
agony. Thus, the life of a man of virtue and talent, who should die in
his thirtieth year, is, with regard to his own feelings, longer than
that of a miserable priest-ridden slave, who dreams out a century of
dulness. The one has perpetually cultivated his mental faculties, has
rendered himself master of his thoughts, can abstract and generalize
amid the lethargy of every-day business;--the other can slumber over the
brightest moments of his being, and is unable to remember the happiest
hour of his life. Perhaps the perishing ephemeron enjoys a longer life
than the tortoise.
Dark flood of time!
Roll as it listeth thee--I measure not
By months or moments thy ambiguous course.
Another may stand by me on the brink
And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken
That pauses at my feet. The sense of love,
The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought
Prolong my being: if I wake no more,
My life more actual living will contain
Than some gray veteran's of the world's cold school,
Whose listless hours unprofitably roll,
By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed. --
See Godwin's "Pol. Jus. " volume 1, page 411; and Condorcet, "Esquisse
d'un Tableau Historique des Progres de l'Esprit Humain", epoque 9.
8. 211, 212:--
No longer now
He slays the lamb that looks him in the face.
I hold that the depravity of the physical and moral nature of man
originated in his unnatural habits of life. The origin of man, like that
of the universe of which he is a part, is enveloped in impenetrable
mystery. His generations either had a beginning, or they had not. The
weight of evidence in favour of each of these suppositions seems
tolerably equal; and it is perfectly unimportant to the present argument
which is assumed. The language spoken, however, by the mythology of
nearly all religions seems to prove that at some distant period man
forsook the path of nature, and sacrificed the purity and happiness of
his being to unnatural appetites. The date of this event seems to have
also been that of some great change in the climates of the earth, with
which it has an obvious correspondence. The allegory of Adam and Eve
eating of the tree of evil, and entailing upon their posterity the wrath
of God and the loss of everlasting life, admits of no other explanation
than the disease and crime that have flowed from unnatural diet. Milton
was so well aware of this that he makes Raphael thus exhibit to Adam the
consequence of his disobedience:--
Immediately a place
Before his eyes appeared, sad, noisome, dark;
A lazar-house it seemed; wherein were laid
Numbers of all diseased--all maladies
Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds,
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,
Dropsies and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums.
And how many thousands more might not be added to this frightful catalogue!
The story of Prometheus is one likewise which, although universally
admitted to be allegorical, has never been satisfactorily explained.
Prometheus stole fire from heaven, and was chained for this crime to
Mount Caucasus, where a vulture continually devoured his liver, that
grew to meet its hunger. Hesiod says that, before the time of
Prometheus, mankind were exempt from suffering; that they enjoyed a
vigorous youth, and that death, when at length it came, approached like
sleep, and gently closed their eyes. Again, so general was this opinion
that Horace, a poet of the Augustan age, writes:--
Audax omnia perpeti,
Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas;
Audax Iapeti genus
Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit:
Post ignem aetheria domo
Subductum, macies et nova febrium
Terris incubuit cohors,
Semotique prius tarda necessitas
Lethi corripuit gradum.
How plain a language is spoken by all this! Prometheus (who represents
the human race) effected some great change in the condition of his
nature, and applied fire to culinary purposes; thus inventing an
expedient for screening from his disgust the horrors of the shambles.
From this moment his vitals were devoured by the vulture of disease.
