Certain moral philosophers, with a due disdain of the flimsy foundations
of human pride, have shown that every man is equally descended from a
million of ancestors, within a given number of generations; thereby
demonstrating that no prince exists who does not participate in the
blood of some beggar, or any beggar who does not share in the blood
of princes. Although favored by a strictly vegetable descent myself, the
laws of nature have not permitted me to escape from the influence of
this common rule. The earliest accounts I possess of my progenitors
represent them as a goodly growth of the Linum Usitatissimum, divided
into a thousand cotemporaneous plants, singularly well conditioned, and
remarkable for an equality that renders the production valuable. In this
particular, then, I may be said to enjoy a precedency over the
Bourbons, themselves, who now govern no less than four different
states of Europe, and who have sat on thrones these thousand years.
{Linum Usitatissimum = Linum usitatissimum (Cooper's capitalization
varies) is the botanical name for the variety of flax from which linen is
made}
While our family has followed the general human law in the matter just
mentioned, it forms a marked exception to the rule that so absolutely
controls all of white blood, on this continent, in what relates to
immigration and territorial origin. When the American enters on the
history of his ancestors, he is driven, after some ten or twelve
generations at most, to seek refuge in a country in Europe; whereas
exactly the reverse is the case with us, our most remote extraction being
American, while our more recent construction and education have taken
place in Europe. When I speak of the "earliest accounts I possess of my
progenitors," authentic information is meant only; for, like other races,
we have certain dark legends that might possibly carry us back again to
the old world in quest of our estates and privileges. But, in writing this
history, it has been my determination from the first, to record nothing
but settled truths, and to reject everything in the shape of vague report
or unauthenticated anecdote. Under these limitations, I have ever
considered my family as American by origin, European by emigration,
and restored to its paternal soil by the mutations and calculations of
industry and trade.
The glorious family of cotemporaneous plants from which I derive my
being, grew in a lovely vale of Connecticut, and quite near to the banks
of the celebrated river of the same name. This renders us strictly
Yankee in our origin, an extraction of which I find all who enjoy it fond
of boasting. It is the only subject of self-felicitation with which I am
acquainted that men can indulge in, without awakening the envy of their
fellow-creatures; from which I infer it is at least innocent, if not
commendable.
We have traditions among us of the enjoyments of our predecessors, as
they rioted in the fertility of their cis-atlantic field; a happy company of
thriving and luxuriant plants. Still, I shall pass them over, merely
remarking that a bountiful nature has made such provision for the
happiness of all created things as enables each to rejoice in its existence,
and to praise, after its fashion and kind, the divine Being to which it
owes its creation.
{cis-atlantic = this side of the Atlantic (Latin)}
In due time, the field in which my forefathers grew was gathered, the
seed winnowed from the chaff and collected in casks, when the whole
company was shipped for Ireland. Now occurred one of those chances
which decide the fortunes of plants, as well as those of men, giving me a
claim to Norman, instead of Milesian descent. The embarkation, or
shipment of my progenitors, whichever may be the proper expression,
occurred in the height of the last general war, and, for a novelty, it
occurred in an English ship. A French privateer captured the vessel on
her passage home, the flaxseed was condemned and sold, my ancestors
being transferred in a body to the ownership of a certain agriculturist in
the neighborhood of Evreux, who dealt largely in such articles. There
have been evil disposed vegetables that have seen fit to reproach us
with this sale as a stigma on our family history, but I have ever
considered it myself as a circumstance of which one has no more reason
to be ashamed than a D'Uzes has to blush for the robberies of a baron
of the middle ages. Each is an incident in the progress of civilization; the
man and the vegetable alike taking the direction pointed out by
Providence for the fulfilment of his or its destiny.
{Milesian = slang for Irish, from Milesius, mythical Spanish conqueror
of Ireland; Evreux = town in Normandy, France; a D'Uzes = a member
of an ancient noble family in southern France}
Plants have sensation as well as animals. The latter, however, have no
consciousness anterior to their physical births, and very little, indeed, for
some time afterwards; whereas a different law prevails as respects us;
our mental conformation being such as to enable us to refer our moral
existence to a period that embraces the experience, reasoning and
sentiments of several generations. As respects logical inductions, for
instance, the linum usitatissimum draws as largely on the intellectual
acquisitions of the various epochas that belonged to the three or four
parent stems which preceded it, as on its own. In a word, that
accumulated knowledge which man inherits by means of books,
imparted and transmitted information, schools, colleges, and universities,
we obtain through more subtle agencies that are incorporated with our
organic construction, and which form a species of hereditary
mesmerism; a vegetable clairvoyance that enables us to see with the
eyes, hear with the ears, and digest with the understandings of our
predecessors.
{epochas = archaic Latinized spelling of epochs}
Some of the happiest moments of my moral existence were thus
obtained, while our family was growing in the fields of Normandy. It
happened that a distinguished astronomer selected a beautiful seat, that
was placed on the very margin of our position, as a favorite spot for his
observations and discourses; from a recollection of the latter of which,
in particular, I still derive indescribable satisfaction. It seems as only
yesterday--it is in fact fourteen long, long years--that I heard him thus
holding forth to his pupils, explaining the marvels of the illimitable void,
and rendering clear to my understanding the vast distance that exists
between the Being that created all things and the works of his hands. To
those who live in the narrow circle of human interests and human
feelings, there ever exists, unheeded, almost unnoticed, before their very
eyes, the most humbling proofs of their own comparative insignificance
in the scale of creation, which, in the midst of their admitted mastery
over the earth and all it contains, it would be well for them to consider,
if they would obtain just views of what they are and what they were
intended to be.
I think I can still hear this learned and devout man--for his soul was
filled with devotion to the dread Being that could hold a universe in
subjection to His will--dwelling with delight on all the discoveries among
the heavenly bodies, that the recent improvements in science and
mechanics have enabled the astronomers to make. Fortunately, he gave
his discourses somewhat of the progressive character of lectures,
leading his listeners on, as it might be step by step, in a way to render all
easy to the commonest understanding. Thus it was, I first got accurate
notions of the almost inconceivable magnitude of space, to which,
indeed, it is probable there are no more positive limits than there are a
beginning and an end to eternity! Can these wonders be, I thought--and
how pitiful in those who affect to reduce all things to the level of their
own powers of comprehension, and their own experience in practice!
Let them exercise their sublime and boasted reason, I said to myself, in
endeavoring to comprehend infinity in any thing, and we will note the
result! If it be in space, we shall find them setting bounds to their
illimitable void, until ashamed of the feebleness of their first effort, it is
renewed, again and again, only to furnish new proofs of the insufficiency
of any of earth, even to bring within the compass of their imaginations
truths that all their experiments, inductions, evidence and revelations
compel them to admit.
"The moon has no atmosphere," said our astronomer one day, "and if
inhabited at all, it must be by beings constructed altogether differently
from ourselves. Nothing that has life, either animal or vegetable as we
know them, can exist without air, and it follows that nothing having life,
according to our views of it, can exist in the moon:--or, if any thing
having life do exist there, it must be under such modifications of all our
known facts, as to amount to something like other principles of being."
"One side of that planet feels the genial warmth of the sun for a fortnight,
while the other is for the same period without it," he continued. "That
which feels the sun must be a day, of a heat so intense as to render it
insupportable to us, while the opposite side on which the rays of the sun
do not fall, must be masses of ice, if water exist there to be congealed.
But the moon has no seas, so far as we can ascertain; its surface
representing one of strictly volcanic origin, the mountains being
numerous to a wonderful degree. Our instruments enable us to perceive
craters, with the inner cones so common to all our own volcanoes,
giving reason to believe in the activity of innumerable burning hills at
some remote period. It is scarcely necessary to say, that nothing we
know could live in the moon under these rapid and extreme transitions
of heat and cold, to say nothing of the want of atmospheric air." I
listened to this with wonder, and learned to be satisfied with my station.
Of what moment was it to me, in filling the destiny of the linum
usitatissimum, whether I grew in a soil a little more or a little less fertile;
whether my fibres attained the extremest fineness known to the
manufacturer, or fell a little short of this excellence. I was but a speck
among a myriad of other things produced by the hand of the Creator,
and all to conduce to his own wise ends and unequaled glory. It was my
duty to live my time, to be content, and to proclaim the praise of God
within the sphere assigned to me. Could men or plants but once elevate
their thoughts to the vast scale of creation, it would teach them their
own insignificance so plainly, would so unerringly make manifest the
futility of complaints, and the immense disparity between time and
eternity, as to render the useful lesson of contentment as inevitable as it
is important.
I remember that our astronomer, one day, spoke of the nature and
magnitude of the sun. The manner that he chose to render clear to the
imagination of his hearers some just notions of its size, though so familiar
to astronomers, produced a deep and unexpected impression on me.
"Our instruments," he said, "are now so perfect and powerful, as to
enable us to ascertain many facts of the deepest interest, with near
approaches to positive accuracy. The moon being the heavenly body
much the nearest to us, of course we see farther into its secrets than into
those of any other planet. We have calculated its distance from us at
237,000 miles. Of course by doubling this distance, and adding to it the
diameter of the earth, we get the diameter of the circle, or orbit, in
which the moon moves around the earth. In other words the diameter of
this orbit is about 480,000 miles. Now could the sun be brought in
contact with this orbit, and had the latter solidity to mark its
circumference, it would be found that this circumference would include
but a little more than half the surface of one side of the sun, the diameter
of which orb is calculated to be 882,000 miles! The sun is one million
three hundred and eighty-four thousand four hundred and seventy-two
times larger than the earth. Of the substance of the sun it is not so easy
to speak. Still it is thought, though it is not certain, that we occasionally
see the actual surface of this orb, an advantage we do not possess as
respects any other of the heavenly bodies, with the exception of the
moon and Mars. The light and warmth of the sun probably exist in its
atmosphere, and the spots which are so often seen on this bright orb,
are supposed to be glimpses of the solid mass of the sun itself, that are
occasionally obtained through openings in this atmosphere. At all
events, this is the more consistent way of accounting for the appearance
of these spots. You will get a better idea of the magnitude of the
sidereal system, however, by remembering that, in comparison with it,
the distances of our entire solar system are as mere specks. Thus, while
our own change of positions is known to embrace an orbit of about
200,000,000 of miles, it is nevertheless so trifling as to produce no
apparent change of position in thousands of the fixed stars that are
believed to be the suns of other systems. Some conjecture even that all
these suns, with their several systems, our own included, revolve around
a common centre that is invisible to us, but which is the actual throne of
God; the comets that we note and measure being heavenly messengers,
as it might be, constantly passing from one of these families of worlds to
another."
I remember that one of the astronomer's pupils asked certain
explanations here, touching the planets that it was thought, or rather
known, that we could actually see, and those of which the true surfaces
were believed to be concealed from us. "I have told you," answered the
man of science, "that they are the Moon, Mars and the Sun. Both
Venus and Mercury are nearer to us than Mars, but their relative
proximities to the sun have some such effect on their surfaces, as placing
an object near a strong light is known to have on its appearance. We
are dazzled, to speak popularly, and cannot distinguish minutely. With
Mars it is different. If this planet has any atmosphere at all, it is one of
no great density, and its orbit being without our own, we can easily
trace on its surface the outlines of seas and continents. It is even
supposed that the tinge of the latter is that of reddish sand-stone, like
much of that known in our own world, but more decided in tint, while
two brilliant white spots, at its poles, are thought to be light reflected
from the snows of those regions, rendered more conspicuous, or
disappearing, as they first emerge from a twelvemonths' winter, or melt
in a summer of equal duration."
I could have listened forever to this astronomer, whose lectures so
profoundly taught lessons of humility to the created, and which were so
replete with silent eulogies on the power of the Creator! What was it to
me whether I were a modest plant, of half a cubit in stature, or the
proudest oak of the forest--man or vegetable? My duty was clearly to
glorify the dread Being who had produced all these marvels, and to fulfil
my time in worship, praise and contentment. It mattered not whether my
impressions were derived through organs called ears, and were
communicated by others called those of speech, or whether each
function was performed by means of sensations and agencies too subtle
to be detected by ordinary means. It was enough for me that I heard
and understood, and felt the goodness and glory of God. I may say that
my first great lessons in true philosophy were obtained in these lectures,
where I learned to distinguish between the finite and infinite, ceasing to
envy any, while I inclined to worship one. The benevolence of
Providence is extended to all its creatures, each receiving it in a mode
adapted to its own powers of improvement. My destiny being toward a
communion with man--or rather with woman--I have ever looked upon
these silent communications with the astronomer as so much
preparatory schooling, in order that my mind might be prepared for its
own avenir, and not be blinded by an undue appreciation of the
importance of its future associates. I know there are those who will
sneer at the supposition of a pocket-handkerchief possessing any mind,
or esprit, at all; but let such have patience and read on, when I hope it
will be in my power to demonstrate their error.
{avenir = future; esprit = soul or vital spirit }