THE WORLD OR INSTABILITY (1836)
by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque(a)
Exordium, pp 11
Rafinesque wrote: "The constant gradual progress of mutations and changes all over the world, has been long surmised; but never explained nor sung, nor deemed a general perpetual law, which it is the aim of this poem to do and prove the fact."
"The Laws of Change and Symetry(b)
In endless shapes, mutations quick and slow,
The world revolves, and all above, below,
In various molds and frames all things were cast,
But none forever can endure nor last.
Whatever took a form, must change or mend;
Whatever once began, must have an end.
...the Law of CHANGE, pp13
Or else mutations ever there recurring;
Diversity and mutability,
Divine and Earthy Instability:
That in perpetual motion keep the world,
Pervading and controlling ev'ry thing
That is, or was, or ever may exist (2)
How few suspect nothing ever can
Belong to permanent stability
In skies or sod? Eternal is that law
That wisely bids to spring, to live and lie,
Not man and beast alone, but blooming plants
Also, and all the Beings born: besides
The globes, and worlds, and suns, that fill the skies.
But CHANGE extends also to vary forms,
And none of these were ever born alike,
Nor ever will. Not even two leaves or blooms
In vain you'll seek to match upon a tree.
No human being can be found on earth,
With face or limbs alike, in shape or size:
Much less two stars or planets wide apart.
This change is then a law in time and space
Existing, and on matter ever acting,
To modify, embellish all the Beings
That live to fill the wide extent of life:
With all the bodies holding now or ever
A seat in space; thus clothing them in shapes
Forever new or pleasing to the sight.
Not them alone in features strange and bold;
But ev'ry thing they do, or ever did,
From birth to death, from youth to oldest age.
In men, in nations, cities and empires,
In their complexion, notions, actions, speech,
Whatever once began must have an end,
Whatever took a form must change or mend.
This is the Law, the positive decree
Written in heav'n, on earth; to us untold,
Yet eas'ly seen in daily facts and scenes.
But who can tell the terms of many lives,
When much beyond our own? Who ever saw
The birth and death of solar globes and stars? (3)
For whom perhaps an age is but a day;
Unless ^�tis Him who sits on high and holds
The countless orbs within his potent grasp,
For whom their longest ages are as naught,
Not even days! Eternity his shrine,
Expanse his throne, and both within himself:
Nay, all that is must be in him alone,
By him we all enjoy the life he gave,
By him we move, and moving seek the grave
.
Tis him who made that law a boon of life:
... Former Earth
pp 52
From crystals bright and gems so fair and pure
Of atoms form'd in series superposed,
To vegetative cells and tubes minute,
That in combining, vessels, fibres, wood
Become, disclosing art and wise design;
Growing by fluids circulating up
And down, from roots to stems convey'd in plants
Or Trees, inward a latent motion having
Obtained. From these but fewer changes may
Produce the motions of spontaneous fixt
Polyps and animals; next spring at last
The moving beings, freely ranging far:
Whose molds were cast by will divine and wise.
Each growing from their original germs,
As plants from buds ands seeds, while stony gems
From molecules arise: and altogether
In elements the stream of life imbibe.
But who shall dare to scan the hidden course
O f this process divine that bids to be?
And all is born to live in changeful mood,
So slowly newer shapes assuming, that
By mortal eyes, but seldom 'tis perceived.
What is an age to God? Or thousand years?
Hardly a day, an hour, or even less.
He bids all things to be, and they appear
.
He chose they should forever change, and this
They do by human eyes unseen, because
Only awhile we live. Yet men and cattle,
The dogs and beast, and all the trees or plants,
That we have kept for ages under view
Or cultivation, have in many ways
Their colors, shapes and fruits so often changed,
Tant this process the dullest sight may strike,
and cant escape a keen investigation.
From this we may presume the same to happen
To other things and bodies, slower still
Or quite beyond the human reach and notice.
But when, and how, and why? Are questions bold:
Let wiser minds resolve and answer, when
Longer experience, the truth may teach.
I will not say with him, Lamark, who dreamt
Of late upon this curious subject, that
This spreading globe, with all its boasted ruins,
Was once a ball of water filled with life,
And atoms quite minute, by heat and light
Of life endow'd; who moving, mixing, changing,
Growing and dying to decay, and sink,
Out of organic ashes, made whatever
We see on land, and all the solid bodies
Inert or living, stones and rocks and mountains,
As well as plants and moving animals.
This theory so fanciful, has few
Believers or supporters; yet we find
That many deem the limy rocks by shells
Alone once made, and others will ascribe
To trees the birth of fossil coals; because
Forsooth, they hold some shells and wood entomb'd.
Graves were not built of human bones, although
Many as yet they hold conceal'd inside.
There is no strange conceit upon this score,
Or any other subject of proud lore,
That has not been by learned men supposed
Or vainly dreamt, to scan, explain, and tell
The why of ev'ry thing. When plausible
Hypotheses are built in harmless fancy,
They are mere curious themes of no importance.
But when they ground their visions strange and wild
Upon belief at variance with facts
Or truth, in order to support the creeds
Dogmas or tenets held: they cease to be
Mare harmless dreams, and weapons may become
Of angry strife. Whoever seeks with care
The real truth, of such ought to beware:
And never bow the head to absurd thoughts,
Nor worship learned idols, seldom trustful,
Who worse than idols made by human hands,
In baneful mental bondage keep the mind.
In caves, plaster, clay, and other soils
Are found the bones of beast so strange and huge
As stagger human faith in times of yore.
Formerly thought the bones of giants, such
They were declar'd by leaned wonders seekers:
Until in later times Cuvier, was born
Whose lofty mind the truth surmising said,
As if a Diety; arise again
To view, you beings of the earliest days!
He took their bones and set them side to side,
Until their former frames became restored:
A kind of resurrection taking place,
By skulls and teeth with joints and claws united.
These skeletons were made to stand upright
As when alive, and show the framing structure
Of bodies in decay restor'd to view.
When once in science the path is open,
The lesser minds can follow on the steps
Of daring pioneers: thus yearly are
Now brought to light, the fragments of the tombs,
Where living tribes met their early fate.
Th' enquiring mind in this another theme
Has found, to think upon or dream awhile.
When were these beings born and ceased to live:
The why and how? Are now the questions, which
Curvier himself has hardly dar'd unfold:
But bolder minds have tried to make their lives
Agree with strange opinions and beliefs.
Belief is never proof, conviction flows
From holy truth: but truth by diff'rent minds
Conceiv'd, appears in various shades and forms,
That give belief to some, but certainty
To few: Nor proofs to ev'ry mind convey.
That there has been upon this earthly globe
Another race of living beings, born
To dwell and roam, to sport and feed, as we
Now do, is truth. Also that long before
They dwelt on land, and the dry soil appeared
To be their home; there was another breed
Of water beings swarming in the waves,
Of polyps, shells and crabs, with fishes, whales
And monsters of the deep: In early ages
When yet the ocean over many lands
Was spread, and this youthful globe was bath'd
In briny tears, or healthy dews and fluids,
Forming around the whole a liquid veil,
Where islands stood as many spots apart.
These are the truths, but if beyond we soar
And seek minute details, or to explain
Ever thing we see, in wonder lost
Or idle dreams indulging, we obtain
No certainty; but wander far astray
In theories and speculations wild.
To man it was not giv'n to know the whole
Dark mysteries of generations past;
Nor when the potent hand that made the stars,
Did people this small globe with living swarms
Of active moving bodies, gradually
Evolving from each other, thro' the love
Of reproduction and of changes; gifts
Of holy origin, so kindly granted.
Some bounds were set to human scrutiny,
And searching lore. What was and what will be
Often becomes a riddle, else a theme
Too lofty, to obscure and deep. Let us
Apply the soaring intellect to facts;
Let us but try to know, survey, enquire
And prize what is, this study to admire,
Most useful to us all, while here we live.
Beware thou daring man to dive too deep
Into the abyss of eternity,
Before thou was or afterdeath will be.
The present is thy own, the past so far
As memory can reach, the future is
Into the hands of God, who rules the whole
Of time and existence, in endless course.
Thus I shall not attempt to raise the veil
That hides the earthly doom and human fate,
In times to come. I must myself confine
To past and present years, what is displayed
To mortal view, and I delight to study.
***
(2) The constant gradual progress of mutations and changes all over the world, has been long surmised; but never explained nor sung, nor deemed a general perpetual law, which it is the aim of this poem to do and prove the fact.
(3) Some astronomers have noticed appearances in the skies, which might be surmised to be such. Stars have suddenly appeared and others disappeared; but it may happen that these phenomena of light, were luminous floods or cataclysms of those solar Suns, and other variations of light; or even the passage of Stars to the state of planets by the extinction of their luminous atmosphere. Others have surmised opaque bodies eclipsing them."
***
Quoting from Charles Boewe in his introduction to the reprint of the book, "... This is a part of the great universal law of perpetual mutability in ever thing. This of course is not Darwinism, because there is no recognition of natural selection as the modus operandi of the evolutionary process. (Rafinesque covers this nicely in his directing attention to the selection of plants with improved characteristics - that's not "natural" but the result can be the same. Nor is it Lamarckism, because no theory of use and disuse is invoked for a similar purpose. It is a foreshadowing of the theory of evolution as it has developed since the concept of mutations was added by Hugo De Vires in 1900."
Methinks, too much is made of "natural selection". Darwin actually downplayed the concept. After all, he advocated ridding the world of the weak on mind and body so that they would not become a part of the selection pool. Perhaps the problem is in the definition of the word natural. When the drake kills the duckling that can't swim fast enough to escape him, is this natural selection (survival of the fittest seems more appropriate.) Rather than following too closely, Daniel C. Dennett's book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea,(c) it is far better to revisit Darwin himself in, The Descent of Man(d). Or as Windelband points in History of Philosophy,(e) if natural selection were equated with improvement of the species, "Fittest, is scarcely necessary to say, is not synonymous with ethically best. If the temperature of the earth should be reduced, the survival of the fittest would mean a return to lichens and diatoms."
Beyond the usual commentary made regarding Rafinesque and his writings several items go unstated;
1) Science at the time of Rafinesque and until the late nineteenth century rested in the hands of the English (include Scots and Irish to make it all encompassing). If it wasn't invented, discovered, or written about by them, it didn't exist. (At least at the level of the learned ones.) Rafinesque recognized this well. He added the name, Schmaltz to his own to suggest that perhaps he was an American (He was in Sicily at a time when the French and English were at war. Schmaltz was his mother's maiden name.)
2) Rafinesque, the botanist, was an advocate of wine making and he wrote in his materia medica a discourse on grapes and wine. In the period, in the United States, this may not have been a "popular" subject although rum, whiskey, wine and beer were common products. Rafinesque wrote often that he did not partake of strong drink.
3) Religion or anti-religion (more properly) was the vogue. Without Huxley, Darwin's great contributions would have gone unnoticed. But because they could be used to distance the "thinking" population from the church, Darwin's writings found ready acceptance. Now consider Rafinesque's poem. Throughout, is reference to a greater being. And if that is not enough, he "preached" love and honor.
4) Having an angel to back research and writing was very much a fact. In his book, A Life of Travels(f), he bemoaned the fact that Audubon and others were able to find charitable support while he was dependent upon his own efforts to get his works published. In an earlier day, John Fothergill provided needed support to the Bartrams, permitting them to travel and then maintain plant collections on their farm near Philadelphia.
5) And related to the fourth, was the active competition between biologist, artist and writers. Audubon was at his critical best when he attacked George Catlin for what Audubon saw as Catlin's clumsy drawings and misrepresentation of the state of the West. Benjamin Smith Barton, on whose work some of Rafinesque's botany rest, used the work of William Bartram without proper crediting Bartram. Rafinesque gave credit to Barton(g) but not to Bartram. Rafinesque did, in his "Travels" give reference to the botanical collections of the Bartrams.
***
The poem, some 248 pages covers many topics only one of which I have chosen in this abstract, demonstrates the breadth of understanding scientist in the first quarter of the nineteenth century had and while they lacked modern day conveniences of communication were able to make their findings and opinions known. Rafinesque is guilty of making errors, but if you are not making mistakes, you are not making progress.
***
a) The World or Instability, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, Scholars'
Facsimiles & Reprints, Gainesville, Florida, 1956 (reprint of 1836 edition)
(pages cited)
b) That's how Rafinesque spelled symmetry.
c) Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Evolution and the Meanings of Life, D. C.
Dennett, Simon & Schuster, 1995.
d) Origin of Species, Descent of Man, C. Darwin, Humboldt Library of
Popular Science Literature, New York, July 1884.
e) History of Philosophy with especial reference to The Formation and
Development of Its Problems and Conceptions, W. Windelband, The
Macmillan Company, New York, 1921, pp 669.
f) A Life of Travels, C. S. Rafinesque, the Chronica Botanica Co.
Waltham Mass, USA, 1994 (reprint of 1836 publication).
g) Medical Flora: or, Manual of Medical Botany of the United States,
C. S. Rafinesque, Philadelphia, 1828/30. (Photocopy of Alexander Drapers
personal copy).
****
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