274 FINAL CAUSES : THEIR BEARING 



regulate all his actions or fixed phenomena ; — he reasons 

 from cause to effect, or from effect to cause ; and, when placed 

 in circumstances in which, from some lack of the necessaiy 

 basis, he cannot so reason, he becomes a wretched, timid, 

 superstitious creature, greatly more helpless and abject than 

 even the inferior animals. This unhappy state is strikingly 

 exemplified by that deep and peculiar impression made on 

 the mind by a severe earthquake, which Humboldt, from his 

 own experience, so powerfully describes. " This impression," 

 he says, " is not, in my opinion, the result of a recollection 

 of those fearful pictures of devastation presented to our ima- 

 gination by the historical narratives of the past, but is rather 

 due to the sudden revelation of the delusive nature of the 

 inherent faith by which we had clung to a belief in the im- 

 mobility of the solid parts of the earth. We are accustomed 

 from early childhood to draw a contrast between the mobility 

 of water and the immobility of the soil on which we tread ; 

 and this feeling is confirmed by the evidence of our senses. 

 When, therefore, we suddenly feel the ground move beneath 

 us, a mysterious force, with which we were previously un- 

 acquainted, is revealed to us as an active disturber of stabi- 

 lity. A moment destroys the illusion of a whole life ; our 

 deceptive faith in the repose of Mature vanishes ; and we feel 

 transported into a realm of unknown destructive forces 

 Every sound — the faintest motion of the air — arrests our 

 attention, and we no longer trust the ground on which we 

 stand. There is an idea conveyed to the mind, of some uni- 

 versal and unlimited danger. We may flee from the crater 

 of a volcano in active eruption, or from the dwelling whose 

 destruction is threatened by the approach of the lava stream ; 

 but in an earthquake, direct our flight whithersoever we will, 

 we still feel as if we trod upon the very focus of destruction." 

 Not less striking is the testimony of Dr Tschudi, in his 

 ** Travels in Peru," regarding this singular effect of earth- 



