42 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



scape and perspective" and then exclaims: "how is the mind 

 agitated and bewildered, at being thus, as it were, placed on the 

 borders of a new world ! On the first view of such an amazing 

 display of the wisdom and power of the supreme author of 

 nature, the mind for a moment seems suspended, and impressed 

 with awe" (p. 189). He first observes the animal creation, 

 "finely formed self -moving beings," and then arrives at spiritual 

 concepts: 



We admire the mechanism of a watch, and the fabric of a piece of 

 brocade, as being the production of art ; these merit our admiration, and 

 must excite our esteem for the ingenious artist or modifier ; but nature 

 is the work of God omnipotent ; and an elephant, nay even this world, 

 is comparatively but a very minute part of his works. If then the 

 visible, the mechanical part of the animal creation, the mere material 

 part, is so admirably beautiful, harmonious, and incomprehensible, what 

 must be the intellectual system.? that inexpressibly more essential prin- 

 ciple, which secretly operates within 7 that which animates the inimitable 

 machines, which gives them motion, impowers them to act, speak, and 

 perform, this must be divine and immortal.? " (pp. xxiv-xxv). 



This attitude is commonly found in the eighteenth century — 

 in the English Deists, in Rousseau's Profession de foi du Vicaire 

 Savoyard, in Bernardin de St. Pierre, and in many of the English 

 poets. 



Having passed from "the visible . . . part of the animal 

 creation" to the "essential principle" it is easy for Bartram to 

 speculate upon the problem of the intellectual and spiritual 

 difference between animals and man, who is also but a part of 

 God's creation. Thus from the aesthetic and the moral Bartram 

 passes into what approximates our modern psychological inter- 

 est in animals. In his case, this interest extended also to plants. 

 Observing the behaviour of the Dionea muscipula he is aston- 

 ished at its artifice " to intrap incautious deluded insects . . . 

 there behold one of the leaves just closed upon a struggling fly; 

 another has gotten a worm; its hold is sure, its prey can never 

 escape — carnivorous vegetable! " Soon his astonishment yields 

 to philosophical reflection. " Can we after viewing this object," 

 he argues, " hesitate a moment to confess, that vegetable beings 

 are endued with some sensible faculties or attributes, similar to 

 those that dignify animal nature; they are organical, living, and 



