The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 35, September, 1860

"That is transcendental moonshine, and you don't believe a word of it!"

Well, my friend, allow me, then, to tell you, in all charity and with bowels of compassion, that you hold dangerous and fatal views respecting one of the cardinal doctrines of mythology,—yes, to be plain, you are a Joveless infidel, and in fearful danger of being locked out of Elysium; and I shall offer up a smoking sacrifice, the next time I get a sirloin, and pour out a solemn libation, in the presence of my whole family seated around the domestic altar early in the morning, for your speedy conversion.

Know, then, O obtuse, faithless, and perverse skeptic, that these things are so: that ocular and auricular evidence, indubitable and overwhelming, exists, that the arboreal and human natures are in substance one. Know that once on a time, as Daphne, the lovely daughter of Peneus, was amusing herself with a bow and arrows in a forest of Thessaly, she was surprised by a rude musician named Phoebus. Timid and bashful, as most young ladies are, she turned and fled as fast as her [Greek: skelae] could carry her. After running, closely pursued by the eager Delphian, for several miles, and becoming very much fatigued, she felt inclined to yield: but wishing to faint in a reputable manner, she lifted up her hands and asked the gods to help her. Her call was heard in a jiffy, and quicker than you could say, "Presto: change!" she was a Laurel-tree, which Phoebus married on the spot. This was the Eve of the Laurel family, so that all these trees you meet in the world at present must be rational beings, since they are the descendants of the beautiful Greek maiden Daphne. And to satisfy you that this is no foolish legend, but, on the contrary, a well-authenticated fact, clinched and riveted in the boiler-head of historical truth, permit me to assure you,—for I have seen it myself,—that in the Villa Borghese, near Rome in Italy, is an exact representation of the wonderful incident, cut in Carrara marble,—the bark of the Laurel growing over the vanishing girl, and her hands and fingers sprouting into branches and leaves,—supposed to have been copied from a photograph taken on the spot,—for there is a photograph in existence exactly like the marble statue.

We know positively—for we have an equally minute account of the transaction—that the Cypress originated in a similar way. And is it not reasonable to infer, therefore, though we may not find the facts stated in every case, that all trees were created out of men and women, their bodies being miraculously clothed in woody tissue? In the time of Virgil this was certainly the established orthodox belief; for he relates an anecdote, expressing no doubt whatever of its truth, of a party of travellers who commenced one day in a forest the indiscriminate destruction of some young trees, when their roots forthwith began to bleed, and voices proceeded from them, begging to be spared from laceration. And, in fact, hundreds of instances, similarly weighty as evidence, from equally veracious and trustworthy classic authors, might be cited to the point, did time and space permit. But we hasten to the other proof of their essential humanity, which I set out with assuming as an undoubted fact, and which is already foreshadowed in the adventure of the Trojan wanderers just related,—namely, that they possess the faculty of speech.

Tasso, the author of a well-known metrical history, states distinctly, as you shall see in half a moment, that a tree upon one occasion discoursed with Major General Tancred,—

  "Pur tragge alfin la spada e con gran forza  Percuote l' alta pianta. Oh, maraviglia!  –quasi di tomba, uscir ne sente  Un indistinto gemito dolente,  Che poi distinto in voci."

And then it goes on to tell the General how it once rejoiced in extensive hoops, wore a coal-scuttle on its head, and rubbed its face with prepared chalk,—(w-w-w-hy! what was I saying? such a mistake! I should say)—was a woman by the name of Clorinda, and is still animated and sentient both in trunk and limbs, and that he will presently be guilty of murder, if he continues to hack her with his sword.

The celebrated explorer, Sir John Mandeville, relates in the history of his discoveries that he heard whole groves of trees talking to one another. And when we come down to the present day, R.W. Emerson, of Concord, asseverates that trees have conversed with him,—that they speak Italian, English, German, Basque, Castilian, and several other languages perfectly,—

  "Mountain speech to Highlanders,  Ocean tongues to islanders,"—

and that he himself was on one occasion transformed into a Pine (Pinus rigida) and talked quite a large volume of philosophy while in that condition. Walter Whitman, Esq., author of "Leaves of Grass," relates similar personal experience. Tennyson, (Alfred,) now the Laureate of England, and upon whom the University of Oxford, a few years ago, conferred the title of Doctor of Laws, gives us a long conversation he once held with an Oak, reporting the exact words it said to him: they are excellent English, and corroborate what I said above respecting the wisdom of trees.

If all this evidence, and I might add much more equally conclusive, did I think it necessary, does not, O skeptic, convince you of the humanity of trees, why, let me say that you hold for true a hundred things not based upon half so good testimony as this,—that I have seen juries persuaded of facts, and bring in verdicts in accordance with them, not nearly so well authenticated as these,—and that I have heard clergymen preach sermons two hours long, constructed out of arguments which they positively persisted you should regard as decisive, that were, to say the least, no better than those here advanced. And now, if these things be so, in the words of the great Grecian, John P., what are you going to do about it?

Trees, like animals, are righteously sacrificed only when required to supply our wants. A man does not go out into the fields and mutilate or destroy his horses and oxen: let him treat the oaks and the elms with the same humanity. I would that enough of the old mythology to which I have alluded, and which our fathers called religion, still lived among us to awaken a virtuous indignation in our breasts when we witnessed the wanton destruction of trees. I once remonstrated with a cruel wretch whom I saw engaged in taking the life of some beautiful elms inhabiting a piece of pasture-land. He replied, that in the hot days of summer the cattle did nothing but lie under them and chew their cud, when they should be at work feeding on the grass,—that his oxen did not get fat fast enough, nor his cows give as much milk as they should give,—"and so," said he, "I'm goin' to fix 'em,"—and down came every one of the hospitable old trees. We are not half so humane in our conduct towards the inferior races and tribes as the old Romans whom we calumniate with the epithet of Pagans. The Roman Senate degraded one of its members for putting to death a bird that had taken refuge in his bosom: would not the Senate of the United States "look pretty," undertaking such a thing? A complete Christian believes not only in the dogmas of the Bible, but also in the mythology, or religion of Nature, which teaches us, no less than it taught our fathers, to regard wanton cruelty towards any vegetable or animal creature which lives in the breath and smile of the Creator, as a sin against Heaven.

Having in the above paragraph got into the parson's private preserve, as I shall be liable anyhow to an action for trespass, I am tempted to commit the additional transgression of poaching, and to give you a few extracts from a sermon a friend of mine once delivered. [It was addressed to a small congregation of Monothelites in a village "out West," just after the annual spring freshet, when half the inhabitants of the place were down with the chills and fever. It was his maiden effort,—he having just left the Seminary,—and did not "take" at all, as he learned the next day, when Deacon Jenners (the pious philanthropist of the place) called to tell him that his style of preaching "would never do," that his thoughts were altogether of too worldly a nature, and his language, decidedly unfit for the sacred "desk." Besides,—though he would not assume the responsibility of deciding that point before he had consulted with the Standing Committee,—he did not think his sentiments exactly orthodox. My friend was disgusted on the spot, and, being seized with a chill shortly afterwards, concluded not to accept the "call," and, packing his trunk, started in quest of a healthier locality and a more enlightened congregation.]

"And here permit me to add a word or two for the purpose of correcting a very prevalent error.

"Most men, I find, suppose that this earth belongs to them,—to the human race alone. It does not,—no more than the United States belong to Rhode Island. Human life is not a ten-thousand-millionth of the life on the planet, nor the race of men more than an infinitesimal fraction of the creatures which it nourishes. A swarm of summer flies on a field of clover, or the grasshoppers in a patch of stubble, outnumber the men that have lived since Adam. And yet we assume the dignity of lords and masters of the globe! Is not this a flagrant delusion of self-conceit? Let a pack of hungry wolves surround you here in the forest, and who is master? Let a cloud of locusts descend upon a hundred square miles of this territory, and what means do you possess to arrest their ravages?…

"As a matter of fact, then, we do not own the world. And now let me say, that, as a matter of right, we ought not: man was the last created of creatures. When our race appeared on the earth, it had been for millions of years in quiet, exclusive, undisputed possession of the birds, beasts, fishes, and insects: it was their world then, and we were intruders and trespassers upon their domain….

"If, then, the other races have a right to exist on the planet as much as we, what follows? Surely, that they have a right to their share and proportion of the ground and its fruits, and the blessings of Heaven by which life here is sustained: man has no right to expect a monopoly of them. If we get a week of sunshine which supplies our wants, we have no reason to complain of the succeeding week of rain which supplies the wants of other races. If we raise a crop of wheat, and the insect foragers take tithes of it, we have no right to find fault: a share of it belongs to them. If you plant a field with corn, and the weeds spring up also along with it, why do you complain? Have not the weeds as much right there as the corn? If you encamp in one of the numberless swamps which surround this settlement, and get assailed by countless millions of robust mosquitoes, why do you rave and swear (as I know most of you would do under such circumstances) and want to know 'what in the – mosquitoes were made for'? Why, to puncture the skin of blockheads and blasphemers like you, and suck the last drop of blood from their veins. Why, let me ask you, did you go out there? That place belonged to the mosquitoes, not to you; and you knew you were trespassing upon their land. The mosquitoes exist for themselves, and were created for the enjoyment of their own mosquito-life. Why was man created? The Bible does not answer the question directly; the divines in the Catechism say, 'To glorify God.' Now I should like to know if a Westminster Catechism of the mosquitoes would'nt make as good an answer for them?

"And here I am just in the act of annihilating with a logical stroke a multitude of grumblers and croakers. If this world does not belong exclusively to man, and the other races have as much right here as he, and, consequently, a claim to their proportion of land, water, and sky, and their share of food for the sustenance of life, what follows?

"A great many men, taking northeast storms, bleak winds, thunder-showers, flies, mosquitoes, Canada thistles, hot sunshine, cold snows, weeds, briers, thorns, wild beasts, snakes, alligators, and such like things, which they don't happen to like, and putting them all together, attempt to persuade you that this green earth is a complete failure, a wreck and blasted ruin. Don't you believe that, for it's wicked infidelity. I tell you the world is not all so bad as Indiana, and especially that part of the State which you, unfortunately, inhabit. I have seen, my friends, a large portion of the planet, and if there is another spot anywhere quite so infernal as Wabashville, why, I solemnly assure you I never found it.—And now for the point which shall prick your conscience and penetrate your understanding! Do the bears and wolves, the coons and foxes, the owls and wild-geese, find this region unhealthy, and get the chills and fever, and go around grumbling and cursing? Don't they find this climate especially salubrious and suited exactly to their constitutions? Well, then, that's because they belong here, and you don't. This region was never intended for the habitation of man: it belongs exclusively to the wild beasts and the fowls of the air, and you have no business here. [Manifest signs of disapprobation on part of Deacon Taylor, an extensive owner of town-lots.] And if you persist in remaining here, what moral right have you to complain of God?…

"Remember, then, in conclusion, that, for millions of years before our race existed, mosquitoes, weeds, briers, thorns, thistles, snow-storms, and northeast winds prevailed upon this planet, and that during all this time it was pronounced by the Deity himself to be 'very good.' If, then, the earth appears to be evil, is it not because 'thine eye is evil'? We share this world, my friends, with other races, whose wants are different from ours; and we are all of equal importance in the eyes of our Maker, who distributes to each its share of blessings—man and monster both alike—with impartial favor. Is not thus the fallacy of the corruption of Nature exposed, and the lie against our Creator's wisdom, love, and goodness dragged into noonday light?"

* * * * *

But it is time to recommence our rambles through the City of the Dead.

Right here I come across on a tombstone,—"All our children. Emma, aged 1 mo. 23 days. John, 3 years 5 days. Anna, aged 1 year 1 mo." As a physiologist, I might make some very instructive comments upon this; but I forbear.

And here, upon another, a few rods farther on, is an epitaph in verse:—

(FIRST VERSE.)  "Calm be her slumbers near kindred are sighing,  A husband deplores in deep anguish of heart,  Beneath the cold earth unconsciously lying,  No murmur can reach her, no tempest can start."(SECOND VERSE.)  "Calm be her sleep as the silence of even  When hearts unto deep invocation give birth.  With a prayer she has knelt at the portal of heaven  And found the admission she hoped for on earth_."

Not to speak of the "poetry" just here, how charmingly consistent with each other are the ideas contained in the passages I have italicized! In the first verse, you observe, the inmate is sleeping unconscious beneath the ground: in the second verse, she has ascended to heaven and found admittance to mansions in the skies!—A similar confusion and contradiction of ideas occur in most of the epitaphs I see. Does our theology furnish us with no clear conception of the state of the soul after death? The Catholic Church teaches that the spirit at death descends into the interior of the earth to a place called Hades, where it is detained until the day of judgment, when it is reunited with the dust of the body, and ascends to a heaven in the sky. This doctrine has the merit of being positive, clear, and comprehensible, and, consequently, whenever expressed, it always means something exact and well-defined. Has the Protestant Church equally definite notions on the subject, or, in fact, any fixed opinions respecting it whatever? If not, why, as a matter of good taste, for no weightier reason, in records almost imperishable like these, leave the matter alone! Silence is better than nonsense. Suppose a few thousand years hence our civilization to have become extinct, and that some antiquary from the antipodes should visit this desolate hill to excavate, like Layard at Nineveh, for relics of the old Americans. Suppose, having collected a ship-load of broken tombstones, he should forward them to the Polynesian Museum, and set the savans of the age at work deciphering their inscriptions, what sense would be made out of these epitaphs? How would they interpret our notions of a future state? Taking our own monuments, cut with our own hands, inscribed with our own signs-manual, what would they infer our system of religion to have been? If the Egyptians were as vague and careless as we in this matter, our archaeologists must have made some amusing blunders.

Here are two epitaphs which suggest something else:—

No. I.

  "I loved him in his beauty,  A mother boy while here,  I knew he was an angel bright  Formed for another sphere."

No. II.

  "Farewell my wife and children dear  God calls you home to rest.  Still Angels wisper in my ear  We'll meet in heavenly bliss."

I want to make two annotations upon these. In No. 1 you will notice that a possessive 's is wanting, and in No. 2 that the h is omitted from whisper. A marble-cutter told me once, that a Pennsylvania Dutchman came to him one day to have an inscription cut upon a gravestone for his daughter, whose name was Fanny. The father, upon learning that the price of the inscription would be ten cents a letter, insisted that Fanny should be spelt with one n, as he should thereby save a dime! The marble-cutter, unable to overcome the obstinacy of the frugal Teuton, and unwilling to set up such a monument of his ignorance of spelling, compromised the matter by conforming to the current orthography, and inserted the superfluous consonant for nothing. And my second annotation shall consist of an inquiry: What is there in corrupt and diseased human nature which makes persons prefer such execrable rhyme as that quoted above, and that which I find upon two-thirds of the tombstones here, to decent English prose, which one would suppose might have been produced at a much less expenditure of intellectual effort? But since it is an unquestionable fact that we are thus totally depraved in taste and feeling, why don't some of our bards, to whom the Muse has not been propitious in other departments of metrical composition, and who, to be blunt, are good for nothing else, such as –, or –, and many others you know, come out here among the marble-cutters and open an epitaph-shop? Mournful stanzas might then be procured of every size and pattern, composed with decent reverence for the rules of grammar, respect for the feet and limbs of the linear members, and possibly some regard for consistency in the ideas they might chance occasionally to express. Genin the hatter, and Cockroach Lyon, each keeps a poet. Why cannot the marble-cutters procure some of the Heliconian fraternity as partners? Bards would thus serve the cause of education, benefit future antiquaries, and earn more hard dimes ten times over than they do in writing lines for the blank corners of newspapers and the waste spaces between articles in magazines. I throw this hint out of the window of the "Atlantic," in the fervent hope that it will be seen, picked up, and pocketed by some reformer who is now out of business; and I would earnestly urge such individual to agitate the question with all his might, and wake up the community to the vital importance, by making use of "poetic fire" and "inspired frenzy" now going to waste, or some other instrumentality, of a reformation in epitaphic necrology.

Seriously, modern epitaphs are a burlesque upon religion, a caricature of all things holy, divine, and beautiful, and an outrage upon the common sense and culture of the community. A collection of comic churchyard poetry might be made in this place which would eclipse the productions of Mr. K.N. Pepper, and cause a greater "army of readers to explode" than his "Noad to a Whealbarrer" or the "Grek Slaiv" has done.

* * * * *

During our rambles among the tombstones the sun has long since passed the meridian, and the streets and avenues of the cemetery are crowded with carriages and thronged with pedestrians, the tramping of horses' feet, the rumbling of wheels, and the voices of men fill the air, and the place which was so silent and deserted this morning is now as noisy and bustling as the metropolis yonder. And soon begin to arrive thick and fast the funeral trains. Many of the black-plumed hearses are followed by only a single hired coach or omnibus, others by long trails of splendid equipages. Upon the broad slope of a hill, whither the greater number of the processions move, entirely destitute of trees and flooded with sunshine, many thousand graves, mostly unmarked by headstones, lie close together, resembling in appearance a corn-field which has been permitted to run to grass unploughed. Standing upon an elevated point near the summit, and looking down those acres of hillocks to where the busy laborers are engaged in putting bodies into the ground, covering them with earth, and rounding the soil over them, one is perhaps struck for the first time with the full force, meaning, and beauty of the language of Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians:—"That which thou sowest is not that body which shall be, but bare grain. It [the human body] is sown in corruption, is sown in dishonor, is sown in weakness. It is sown a natural body; it is raised [or springs up, to complete the figure] a spiritual body. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven."—I once heard a distinguished botanist dispute the accuracy of this simile, inasmuch, he said, as the seed, when it is sown in the ground, does not die, but in fact then first begins to live and to display the vital force which was previously asleep in it; while the human body decays and is resolved into its primitive gaseous, mineral, and vegetable elements, the particles of which, disseminated everywhere, and transferred through chemical affinities into other and new organisms, lose all traces of their former connection.—In answer to such a finical criticism as this, intended to invalidate the authority of the great Apostolic Theologian, I replied, that Paul was not an inspired botanist,—in fact, that he probably knew nothing whatever about botany as a science,—but an inspired religious teacher, who employed the language of his people and the measure of knowledge to which his age had attained, to expound to his contemporaries the principles of his Master's religion. I am not familiar with the nicer points of strict theological orthodoxy, but, from modern sermons and commentaries, I should infer that few doctors of even the most straitest school of divinity hold to the doctrine of verbal inspiration. That the Prophets and Apostles were acquainted with botany, chemistry, geology, or any other modern science, is a notion as unfounded in truth as it is hostile and foreign to the object and purpose of Revelation, which is strictly confined to religion and ethics. Those persons, therefore, (and they are a numerous class,) who resort to the Bible, assuming that it professes to be an inspired manual of universal knowledge, and then, because they find in its figurative Oriental phraseology, or in its metaphors and illustrations, some inaccuracies of expression or misstatements of scientific facts, would throw discredit upon the essential religious dogmas and doctrines which it is its object to state and unfold, are, to say the least, extremely disingenuous, if not deficient in understanding.

But a much more prolific source of injury to the character of the Bible than that just mentioned is the injudicious and impertinent labors of many who volunteer in its defence. "Oh, save me from my friends!" might the Prophets and Apostles, each and all, too often exclaim of their supporters.—It is said that all men are insane upon some point: so are classes and communities. The popular monomania which at present prevails among a class of persons whose zeal surpasses their prudence and knowledge is a foolish fear and trembling lest the tendencies of science should result in the overthrow of the Bible. They seem, somehow, to be fully persuaded that the inspired word of God has no inherent power to stand alone,—that it has fallen among thieves and robbers,—is being pelted with fossil coprolites, suffocated with fire-mist and primitive gases, or beaten over the head with the shank-bones of Silurian monsters, and is bawling aloud for assistance. Therefore, not stopping to dress, they dash out into the public notice without hat or coat, in such unclothed intellectual condition as they happen to be in,—in their shirt, or stark naked often,—and rush frantically to its aid.