Has it not asthma, and ague, and fever,
and dropsy, and flatulence, and pleurisy, and is it not afflicted with
vermin? Has it not its healthful laws counteracted, and its vital energy
which will yet redeem it? No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly
directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise; as the laws of
man’s own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to health
and happiness. Our panaceas cure but few ails, our general hospitals are
private and exclusive. We must set up another Hygeian than is now worshipped.
Do not the quacks even direct small doses for children, larger for adults,
and larger still for oxen and horses? Let us remember that we are to
prescribe for the globe itself.
This fair homestead has fallen to us, and how little have we done to improve
it, how little have we cleared and hedged and ditched! We are too inclined to
go hence to a “better land,” without lifting a finger, as our
farmers are moving to the Ohio soil; but would it not be more heroic and
faithful to till and redeem this New England soil of the world? The still
youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper
channel. Every gazette brings accounts of the untutored freaks of the wind,
— shipwrecks and hurricanes which the mariner and planter accept as
special or general providences; but they touch our consciences, they remind
us of our sins. Another deluge would disgrace mankind. We confess we never
had much respect for that antediluvian race. A thoroughbred business man
cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into
his accounts. How many things are now at loose ends! Who knows which way the
wind will blow to-morrow? Let us not succumb to nature. We will marshal the
clouds and restrain tempests; we will bottle up pestilent exhalations; we
will probe for earthquakes, grub them up, and give vent to the dangerous gas;
we will disembowel the volcano, and extract its poison, take its seed out. We
will wash water, and warm fire, and cool ice, and underprop the earth. We
will teach birds to fly, and fishes to swim, and ruminants to chew the cud.
It is time we had looked into these things.
And it becomes the moralist, too, to inquire what man might do to improve and
beautify the system; what to make the stars shine more brightly, the sun more
cheery and joyous, the moon more placid and content. Could he not heighten
the tints of flowers and the melody of birds? Does he perform his duty to the
inferior races? Should he not be a god to them? What is the part of
magnanimity to the whale and the beaver? Should we not fear to exchange
places with them for a day, lest by their behavior they should shame us?
Might we not treat with magnanimity the shark and the tiger, not descend to
meet there on their own level, with spears of shark’s teeth and
bucklers of tiger’s skin? We slander the hyena; man is the fiercest and
cruelest animal. Ah! he is of little faith; even the erring comets and
meteors would thank him, and return his kindness in their kind.
How meanly and grossly do we deal with nature! Could we not have a less gross
labor? What else do these fine inventions suggest, — magnetism, the
daguerreotype, electricity? Can we not do more than cut and trim the forest
— can we not assist in its interior economy, in the circulation of the
sap? Now we work superficially and violently.
