Sir Humphry Davy, Bart. - 89 



His opinions in reference to religion may be sufficiently ga- 

 thered from his notes; and in his last work, *' Consolations 

 in Travel," he considered that *' the only pure foundation 

 of natural religion is instinctive feeling; that there is a 

 sense in regard to religion as there is in regard to colour, 

 sound, tastes, or smells; or as in regard to the propensity 

 for society, and the ties of kindred and family; that they 

 who have the taste or instinctive feeling will be religious, 

 obeying the impulse of their natures, and see a supreme 

 intelligence governing the universe by fixed laws, and will 

 worship this intelligence in its power and goodness dis- 

 played in all the works of creation ; whilst those (if any 

 such» there be) who are destitute of the feeling can no more 

 acquire a sentiment of religion, than a blind man can a 

 notion of colours, or the deaf of sounds ; and that, conse- 

 quently, like the brute animal, their desires must be very 

 much bounded by the present, and will be low and grovel- 

 ling—no hopes beyond the grave ; no aspirations after im- 

 mortality ; no fervent, however humble, longings after the 

 perfecting of their nature, the exaltation of intellect, the 

 purifying of sense, and, in brief, the acquirement of a glo- 

 rified nature, such as we imagine belongs to angelic beings 

 and to the spirits of the just made perfect." The term in- 

 stinct here indicated as the cause of religion, is one which 

 has been too much employed to mar inquiry, and refers to 

 some unknown secondary cause. But what Davy meant by 

 instinctive religion, was, merely, that certain individuals 

 are constituted with benevolent dispositions, the result 

 undoubtedly of peculiar organic developement, and are, 

 consequently, more capacitated for cultivating the finer 

 sensibilities of our nature, and exhibiting gratitude suitable 

 to the author of our being. His answer to those who would 

 annihilate the human mind after the termination of the 

 present earthly scene is well conceived — 



" If matter cannot be destroyed. 

 The living mind can never die." 



In May, 1818, he left ^^ngland on his second journey to 

 the Continent. He passed through Flanders, into Ger- 

 many, and arrived at Vienna about the 13th of June. He 

 then proceeded to Venice, and crossed the Appenines to 



