THE BIBLIOTHECA SACRA, NO. XLII. AND AMERICAN BIBLICAL REPOSITORY, NO. XCIV. APRIL, 1854. ARTICLE I. HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY AND ETHNOGRAPHY, Translated from Rougemont's Essai d'une Géographie de l'Homme,1 by E. C. Tracy, Windsor, Vt. 1. Man and Nature. We have all a feeling, more or less distinct, that nature has great influence upon us. It seems to us that her action is adverse to our liberty, and oftener prejudicial to us than for our advantage. Under the influence of an instinctive fear that she excites, we shrink from a thorough examination of the relations that exist between her and man. We feel that we cannot too much enlarge the interval which separates rational from irrational existence; and are impelled to believe that the best thing for us is, to withdraw ourselves from every physical influence as much as possible. Yet the study of history, the study of nature, and the study of man, all lead us, though by different paths, to the consideration of this delicate subject. Multiplied investigations 1 The Précis d'Ethnographie, de Statistique, et de Géographie Historique, un Essai d'une Géographie de l'Homme, by Professor Fréd. de Rougemont, was published at Neufchatel, Switzerland, in 1838, in 2 vols. 12mo. This Article is the Introduction to that work, in which the author gives a rapid outline of his views of Historical Geography and Ethnography. The author is a pupil of Ritter, whose method he has aimed, in his lectures and by the publication of several geogra phical works, to introduce into the schools of Switzerland. have led to the conclusion that the influence of nature is even far greater than has been generally supposed; and, by a secret tendency towards materialism, the greater number of men of science have shut their eyes to all those facts which establish the superiority of man, and have given prominence, on the other hand, to such as prove his dependence; they have narrowed down more and more the sphere in which man is free, and have ended by declaring that the soul is the slave of the body-that there is no soul. Historical geography, then, the object of which is to investigate the influence of countries upon nations, is certainly one of the most perilous domains of science; and he that trusts himself there, without the Christian faith for his guide, is likely to go astray. Our understanding is naturally either too limited or too blind to grasp, at once, the opposite extremes of truth, or to avoid continually sacrificing the soul to the body, or the body to the soul, spirit to matter, or matter to spirit, the infinite to the finite, or the finite to the infinite. Christianity alone, overthrowing, at once, the degrading falsehoods of materialism and the noble errors of the idealists, proclaims to the world realism and its mysteries. The "unknown God" whom it reveals, is God become man. It teaches that man receives into his heart the spirit of God, which renews and sanctifies the body as well as the soul; that, when time shall be no longer, the soul shall again dwell in its human body, and man, risen from the grave, shall be forever man; that the earth participates in all the fortunes of our race; that faith hath the promises of the life that now is as well as those of the life that is to come; and, even as under the Mosaic dispensation the kingdom of God was a nation among other nations, so the time will doubtless come, when believers under the new covenant shall be united as one people, and constitute together one nation. The Christian alone can follow out to their last results the various influences of nature upon man, without exposing himself to dangerous error in regard to his personal accountability, and even the existence of the soul; and, on the other hand, he only is able to contemplate man in his union with God, and yet not be drawn to overlook his relations with nature. Frankly and without any materialistic afterthought, he represents each nation as bearing, in its character and its history, the imprint of the country it inhabits; for he knows that every man bears, in the centre of his being, the indestructible image of God; an image over which nature has no other power than to influence the forms of its outward manifestation. Three principles, equally simple and certain, guide him in all his researches, viz. that terrestrial nature was created with reference to man, and exercises upon nations an influence determined by the will of God; that man, who by his spirit is in a real communion with God and thus infinitely superior to every being destitute of reason, is incapable, nevertheless, of living elsewhere than on the earth, and was formed to develop himself under the salutary influences of nature; and that sin, which does not come from God, has polluted man and disturbed nature, and so altered their relations to each other that they have become in many cases injurious to man. The author of this work has a deep conviction that the Christian faith alone furnishes the solution of all the enigmas presented by physical and historical science. But, in the progress of his work, sometimes like a blind man just recovering the power of vision, he has been able to gain but a confused glimpse of objects illuminated by the sun of everlasting truth; sometimes he has feared lest he should mistake some poor glimmer of his own fancy for a ray of the true light, and thus dishonor by his errors the Divine Master who hath taken him into his service; and, finally, it sometimes has seemed to him that the unbelief of the age compelled him to silence. Therefore, to supply, to some extent, what is wanting in this respect in the body of the work, he has aimed, in an Introduction, to present some general views on nature and humanity; not that he undertakes by any means to discuss fundamentally the important subjects which come up; his object rather is simply to place his readers in what he believes to be the true point of view.1 Let the Bible, therefore, be our guide in the field of science, as it is our light in the path of life. The earth, like the heavens, is a manifestation of the invisible 1 True according to both science and revelation; for truth is one. Faith is the judge of profane and the guide of Christian science. Science confirms faith, and finds, out of the domains of religion and in those of science and of history, the products and the proofs of revealed truth. Faith and science are sisters; they have for their object the works of the same Deity, the twofold revelation of the same invisible Being; they cannot contradict one another; if ever they apparently do it, it must be either that science but poorly comprehends what is written in nature, history and man, or that faith has failed to hear with due attention the word of God. perfections of God; and, as it is the work of One who is Wisdom, Power and Love, and is from a Fountain of light in which there is no darkness at all, it rises into being answering in all points to the idea after which it is created; there cannot be in it the smallest fault; it is worthy of God in the infinite intelligence which it reveals, worthy of him in the unalloyed happiness enjoyed by all created beings of which it is the home. It glorifies its Creator by whom and for whom are all things (Rom. 11: 36). Such is the earth in its idea; such was the earth as it came from the Creator's hand. But in our time it speaks of suffering and degradation, not less than of glory and of bliss. God fully manifests himself only in beings who act freely and with complete self-consciousness, and to whom he can communicate his own life. Irrational creatures are subjected to those endowed with reason; the kingdom of nature and necessity, to that of freedom and conscience. But the two are complements of each other, and constitute but a single whole. The elements, plants, animals, and man, are but different parts of one and the same created work, the name of which is The Earth; but organs of one and the same body. They mutually suppose the existence of each other, and their destinies are inseparable. They were created progressively in the order of their relative perfection; the elements and the crystal, which has only theTM principle of organization, preceded vegetables, which have also the principle of development; and these again were followed by animals, which have the power of self-motion and are endowed with sensation. These the earth itself produced at the creative command of God. From one epoch to another it gave being to existences less material, and endowed with a higher power of life, and it seemed, as it were, to be aspiring towards the production of an intelligent and spiritual being, whose abode it should become; it labored to give birth (nascitura, natura) to man. But it was not from its bosom that its lord must come forth; it could do no more than furnish the material for the human body, which the Lord made after his own image and animated by his own spirit. Thus man was formed by an immediate act of God; but none the less is he a continuation of the progressive steps followed in the creation of the earth, and of which he is the highest.1 1 Vide Steffeus, Anthropologie. 2. Man in his Idea. Man is composed of body, soul, and spirit. His bodily form gives him rank as the first of animals; for the idea of animal organization, which expresses itself in forms less and less imperfect from the polypus to the monkey, is adequately realized only in man. Of all animals he only walks erect, while his eye reflects earth and sky at once, and his look glances freely over that nature in the midst of which he lives and reigns. His hands are so curiously made that materialists have sought in them the only cause of his intellectual superiority; and over his whole form there is an air of more than material beauty; the reflection of a soul infinitely rich in thought and emotion, Whatever passes within him is uttered, not by inarticulate cries, but in words. His soul renders man self-conscious, free and accountable; by it he lives, not for himself alone, but also for others; he possesses inventive genius, the sense of beauty, and the power to reproduce beauty in various forms; he has the desire to understand and the power to investigate everything. By his spirit, finally, man is in real communion with God, who dwells in him; the life eternal diffuses itself in the soul, where it sheds abroad a Divine love; it descends into the body, which is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and which is not subject to death. Man is a complex being, a summing-up of all earthly nature. In common with the crystal he has organized existence; with the plant, vegetable life; and with the animal, a body and the rudiments of a soul, But by his spirit he is raised infinitely above all nature; and an impassable gulf separates him from the most perfect of mere animals. After birth, man develops himself according to the immutable laws of his threefold nature, and, at the same time, according to the use that he makes of his liberty. By a regular and progressive movement, which it cannot be that death shall suddenly and permanently interrupt, he advances towards that perfection which is his right and duty. Yet, as he is but part of the great whole, and as his existence is interwoven with all other exist. ences, his development takes place in the midst of creatures and things whose influences upon him are diverse, and under 1 See Schubert, Geschichte d. Scele. |