Scientific Contemplations.

Under this title, the Hachette Bookstore will publish a new work by the young and eminent author of The Plurality of Inhabited Worlds, of God in Nature, of The Celestial Marvels, etc. etc.

The Scientific Contemplations, as its title indicates, combine, with the rigorous argumentation of the scholar, the depth of conception and elevation of thought of the spiritualist philosopher. Perusing these eloquent and poetic pages, Spiritists will find much material to gather.

After having affirmed and demonstrated the plurality and the solidarity of the inhabited worlds, Mr. C. Flammarion, in the first part of his new work, makes known to us our inferiors on Earth, from the infinitely small, visible only through the microscope, from the rudimentary plant and the insect, to the superior animals that immediately precede man in the scale of creation. The second part of the book is devoted to the industrial application of modern scientific discoveries. Pressed for space, we shall not accompany him in this order of ideas; but we cannot resist the desire to make known his opinion on the question, of the order of the day, of the infinite progress of all that exists and of the future of animality. Mr. Flammarion had the kindness to hand over to us a few proofs of this new and interesting publication, and we are certain that our readers will be glad that we point out to them the following passages:

THE WORLD OF PLANTS.

“Life is not represented on Earth only by the animate beings that walk on the surface of the globe, fly in the air, or swim in the depths of the ocean. Composing one same whole, the animals form the steps of the pyramid upon which man is seated, that superior compendium of the zoological series; they are linked among themselves by the same characteristics: movement, respiration, nourishment, the acts of animal life, instinct, and even thought for a great number of them. They are linked to man by the general laws of organization and we feel that they belong to the same system of existence to which we belong. But there is on Earth another life, quite different from the preceding one, although it is its primitive base and the fundamental element, another life distinct from ours, which perpetuates itself parallel to animal life and seems to confine itself in a kind of isolation in the midst of the rest of the world. It is the life of plants, of those mysterious beings that preceded us in creation and that, for a long time, reigned sovereignly over the continents upon which we later established our empire; true roots of our own existence, by which we suck the nutritive sap of the earth; sources of life incessantly renewed that radiate throughout Nature; creations that constitute an intermediate kingdom between the mineral and the animal, and whose value and real beauty we do not know how to appreciate… “…It is that there exists in this law that presides over the life, the death, the resurrection of plants a character of grandeur, of foresight, and of affection, which human thought senses without being able to grasp it; it is that there is in these mysterious beings called plants a kind of latent and hidden life that astonishes and fills the observing mind with strange surprise…

“Plants, animals, says a German poet, are the dreams of Nature, of which man is the awakening. This profound thought will reverberate in our soul if we consent to descend for an instant from human life, and even from animal life, to observe vegetable life…

“…And do not believe that it blindly undergoes, like an inert object, the conditions of existence that are imposed upon it. No: it chooses, refuses, seeks, labors…

“…Listen, for example, to this story:

“Upon the ruins of New-Abbey, in the county of Galloway, there grew a shrub in the midst of an old wall. There, far from the soil above which it rose a few feet upon the block of stones, our poor shrub was dying of hunger, the hunger of Tantalus, since at the very foot of the arid wall extended the good and nutritive earth.

“What shall be said of the dull tremors of the vegetable being that struggles against death, its silent tortures and its mute languors galvanized by covetousness? Who would know how to recount here in particular what takes place in the organism of our poor martyr? What attractions will be established, what faculties will be sharpened, what imperious laws will be revealed, what virtues, in short, were created?… Our shrub exists still, energetic and adventurous as it was, wishing to live at all costs and, unable to draw the earth to itself, it marches, motionless, enchained, toward this distant earth, the object of its ardent desires. “Marches? no; but it stretches, lengthens itself, extends a desperate arm. It emits a root improvised by the circumstance, which is thrust into the open air and, regaining its bearings, directs itself toward the soil until it reaches it… With what enthusiasm it buries itself there! Henceforth the tree was saved. Nourished by this new root, it shifted from one place to another, letting die those that plunged uselessly into the rubble; then, straightening itself little by little, it left the stones of the old wall and lived upon the liberating organ, which soon transformed itself into a true trunk.

“What do you think of this persistence? Do you not find that this instinct greatly resembles that of the animal and, we dare to confess, even human will?…

“Beneath these manifestations of an unknown life, can the philosopher refrain from recognizing in the world of plants a song of the universal choir? It is a world of a living reality, more moving than one thinks, this vegetable kingdom, harmonious, gentle, and dreaming, which, on the steps inferior to animality, seems to dream while it awaits the perfection glimpsed. Without doubt one should not fall into the excess of a school of antiquity which, under the authority of Empedocles, not hesitating to grant to plants choice faculties, had humanized and even divinized them. No; plants are neither animals nor men: an immense distance separates them from us; but they live an existence that we do not know how to appreciate, and we would be quite astonished if it were permitted us to enter for an instant into the secrets of the vegetable world and to listen to what the little flowers and the great trees can say in their language.” INTELLIGENCE OF ANIMALS.

“Inferior degrees of the zoological series, of which we have just had a particular aspect in our preceding study on the life of insects, raise us higher and now put us in relation with the highest manifestations of terrestrial life.

“Nature entire is constructed upon the same plan and manifests the permanent expression of the same idea. The great law of unity and of continuity reveals itself not only in the plastic form of beings, but also in the force that animates them, from the humble vegetable up to the most eminent man. In the plant, an organic force groups the cells according to the mode of each species, approaching the ideal type of the kingdom. The cedar of the mountains of Lebanon, the willow on the bank of the rivers, the trees of the dense forests, and the flowers of our gardens dream, asleep in the indecisive limbo of life. In a certain number of them, one observes spontaneous movements and expressions that seem to reveal the appearance of some rudiment of a nervous system. The inferior degrees of the animal kingdom, which inhabit the mobile regions of the ocean – the zoophytes – seem to belong, under certain aspects, to the world of plants. As one ascends in the scale of life, the spirit affirms little by little a more well-determined personality; it attains its most elevated development in man, the last link of the immense chain upon Earth. “This contemplation of life in Nature embraces, under one same conception, the whole of beings and puts us in relation with the living unity manifested under the terrestrial and sidereal forms. Inspired and affirmed by the fecund discoveries of contemporary science, it majestically surpasses the ideas of another age, which carved up creation and let nothing subsist but man on the throne of intelligence. Today we know that man is not isolated in the Universe, nor on the Earth; he is linked to the other worlds by the bonds of universal and eternal life, and to the earthly population, by the ties of the common organization of the inhabitants of our planet. There is no longer an impassable abyss between man and Jupiter, nor between the white man and the black man, nor between man and the monkey, the dog, or the plant. All beings are children of the same law and all tend toward the same objective, perfection. “The theological reaction of the seventeenth century had rigorously separated man from his elder brothers in the unexplained work of creation. Descartes represented the animals as simple living machines. Great discussions arose over the question of the soul of animals, and from time to time we find the varied pieces of this immense plea. Of the numerous treatises on this subject, written in that epoch, we shall cite above all that of Father Daniel, n disciple of Descartes, who completes his voyage to the Moon, and that of Father Boujeaut, n who takes the part of the animals… and even, finding in them so much wit, ends by seeing in them the incarnation of the most cunning devils… “Animals are endowed with the faculty of thinking; in them resides a soul, different from ours (and perhaps so different that no comparison can be established). The faculty of thinking reveals itself in diverse degrees according to the species, and there lies the great difficulty of the subject! Because, granting a soul to the dog, we are gradually led to grant it to the oyster; and if the oyster is animated by a spiritual monad, even adopting the classification of Leibnitz, we do not see why the sensitive plant and the rose should be deprived of it. Here, then, is a series of immortal souls in incalculable numbers, with which we would be much embarrassed if we were obliged to direct their metempsychoses. Fortunately, the mysterious author of Nature, in leaving us the faculty of dreaming and of conjecturing, has drawn us out of this difficulty. “This study would have no end if we did not present here all the materials we have at hand in favor of the soul of the superior animals. We can only relegate these so numerous facts to the complementary notes reported by us. By the friendship and by the hatred, by the attachment that the different animal species establish among themselves, we are authorized to admit in the animals intellectual faculties analogous to ours. This question involves one of the most curious and most grave problems of natural philosophy.

“In conclusion, we declare that Buffon erred in not having dared to say, after expounding the rational actions of the orangutan: ‘and, nevertheless, the orangutan does not think,’ and that the great Leibnitz was mistaken when he affirmed ‘that the most stupid of men is incomparably more rational and more docile than the most spirited of animals.’ What is certain is that there are in the world men coarse, brutish, more wicked and less intelligent than certain animals of good nature.”

C. Flammarion.

[1] [Contemplations scientifiques - Google books.]

[2] [Amusement philosophique sur le langage des bêtes. Par Guillaume-Hyacinthe Bougeant - Google books.]

[3] [Voiage Du Monde De Descartes. Par Gabriel Daniel - Google books.]