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B I M A N A. 



the same may be said, with equal confidence, of the 

 valley pf the Danube. If such was the case in those 

 southerly places, which are not much elevated above 

 the mean level, much more must it have been the 

 case in places having a greater elevation, or lying 

 nearer the pole. 



It is no doubt not only true but highly probable 

 that the summers were warmer then than they are 

 now; indeed, in Britain at least, there has been a 

 remarkable tendency to equalisation between those 

 two seasons during the last half century; and many 

 places in the north, and towards the wilds, which 

 were, fifty years ago, buried under snow for four 

 months of the year, and scorched by unbroken heat 

 during other three or four, have now comparatively 

 mild winters, and summers refreshed by occasional 

 showers, in consequence of cultivation having forced 

 vegetable action over a greater part of the year. 

 That vines are said to have been abundant in the 

 south of England, and the vintage from them good, in 

 former times, while they do not now bring their 

 clusters to such maturity as to furnish a sufficient 

 quantity of saccharine matter even for tolerable wine, 

 proves nothing as to the general temperature. The 

 vine is a hybernating plant, coming out rather late 

 in the season, but rapidly when it does corne ; and 

 therefore all that its maturation would prove would 

 be the heat of the summer, which, upon other prin- 

 ciples, we may conclude to have been greater in 

 former times than now ; and we have a corroboration 

 of this in the wild berries which the country still 

 affords, which are not only not eo vinous and racy 

 on the warm bottoms as on the bleak heights where 

 the winter is cold, but refuse to come to maturity at 

 all in such situations. 



Many other facts might be adduced, all tending 

 to show that the constitution of man is so formed, 

 or so flexible to circumstances, that he can command 

 all latitudes ; and even in those places which are 

 accounted decidedly unhealthy, it is not to difference 

 of temperature that the unhealthiness is wholly or 

 chiefly owing. When that is natural, excessive 

 humidity or excessive drought is generally found to 

 conspire with temperature; and sometimes, as in the 

 case of the malaria, on the plains of Italy, along the 

 Mediterranean shore, the pestilent quality of the 

 climate does not appear to nave much to do either 

 with heat or with humidity. 



It would perhaps be too much to say, that in all 

 places where man finds an unhealthy climate, it is 

 his own fault ; because there are phenomena in nature 

 the controlling of which is above any means that the 

 skill of man can use, at least for the production of 

 immediate or even very rapid change. But still, so 

 much has been done in the way of amelioration, that 

 it is not very easy so to fix a limit as to say confidently 

 that nothing beyond it can be done Farther, it 

 appears, that where the climate is apparently un- 

 favourable to human life, the mode of living has 

 always at least as great a share in it as the mere 

 locality. Thus the conclusion that man is fitted for 

 all the earth, and all the earth for him, or if not so, 

 naturally capable of being rendered so by art, if not 

 altogether universal, is at least very general. 



It is much the same with regard to the necessaries 

 of life, as with the fact of living. There are very 

 few situations in which human beings, duly informed 

 and prepared for the purpose, cannot find subsistence. 

 No doubt, there can be no cultivation above the line 



of perpetual frost, and as little can there be any upon 

 the dry and shifting sand ; but the line of frost may 

 be made to retreat upward, if cultivation is pushed 

 vigorously against it; and though tlie process is often 

 both slow and laborious, the desert is not utterly 

 irreclaimable. There are many instances on a small 

 scale in our own country, and Holland is a remarkable 

 one of the change of a soil naturally bad, under a 

 climate assuredly none of the best, into the garden of 

 Europe. Many of those places which are now desert 

 were formerly the abodes of plenty and activity, and 

 they have been deteriorated through the neglect and 

 misconduct of man, and not through any natural cause. 

 We do not know the properties of all plants, or the 

 modes which are best tor improving them into human 

 food, but from the thirsty soils in which water melons, 

 dourrha, rye, and various other cultivated vegetables, 

 come to maturity without almost a drop of rain, we 

 must not say that any one place is utterly hopeless. 



It is true that the very principle which enables 

 man to combat with, and, in the end, subdue the 

 climate and the soil, operates against him when he 

 goes to a place the appearance and circumstances of 

 which are wholly new to him. We always proceed 

 by imitation, sometimes by imitating that which we 

 ourselves have observed, but more frequently by 

 imitating others. Thus, those who have been brought 

 up in any society acquire the habits of that society, 

 and cannot shake these off without considerable diffi- 

 culty when they move to places where they do not 

 so well apply. In consequence of this, the expe- 

 rienced sometimes fail, when those who must depend 

 wholly upon observation succeed. 



To guard against the consequences of this im- 

 plicit and unreasoning adherence to habit, or to 

 following the example of others, which is some- 

 times unwise, even where very general and of 

 long standing and when wise, often wise only be- 

 cause it is local is one of the greatest advantages 

 which result from the counter habit of observing 

 for ourselves, and understanding the cause of suc- 

 cess before we imitate that which we observe to suc- 

 ceed in others. The observation requisite for this 

 purpose is nowhere to be found but by attending to 

 what takes place in nature. Considering practical 

 advantage as the good of that which is done, we 

 never can, by observing only the conduct of men, 

 decide whether that conduct is the best possible or 

 not, because we go to measure without any standard ; 

 but when we study those substances and events which 

 are the subjects of human action, so as to know the 

 extent of their capabilities, this becomes a standard, 

 by the application of which we may safely try the 

 conduct of others or of ourselves in all cases where 

 it becomes necessary. 



The comparison with this standard of knowledge 

 is the process to which the several names of sound 

 judgment, reason, good sense, and various other 

 commendatory terms of similar import, are applied ; 

 and the only means which we have of possessing our- 

 selves of the standard, without which there can be no 

 comparison, is observation. This, though the organs 

 of the senses are its instruments, is iu itself entirely 

 an intellectual operation, and one which no animal 

 possesses, or can possess, in common with man. It is 

 his grand characteristic, that which, without going 

 into either his physiology or his history, is the pur- 

 pose to which the whole of his organisation tends. 

 Other animals have senses, and many of them have 



