TO DR. JOHN MANNERS
Monticello, February 22, 1814.
Sir,—The opinion which, in your letter of January 24, you are pleased to ask of me, on the comparative merits of the different methods of classification adopted by different writers on Natural History, is one which I could not have given satisfactorily, even at the earlier period at which the subject was more familiar; still less, after a life of continued occupation in civil concerns has so much withdrawn me from studies of that kind. I can, therefore, answer but in a very general way. And the text of this answer will be found in an observation in your letter, where, speaking of nosological systems, you say that disease has been found to be an unit. Nature has, in truth, produced units only through all her works. Classes, orders, genera, species, are not of her work. Her creation is of individuals. No two animals are exactly alike; no two plants, nor even two leaves or blades of grass; no two crystallizations. And if we may venture from what is within the cognizance of such organs as ours, to conclude on that beyond their powers, we must believe that no two particles of matter are of exact resemblance. This infinitude of units or individuals being far beyond the capacity of our memory, we are obliged, in aid of that, to distribute them into masses, throwing into each of these all the individuals which have a certain degree of resemblance; to subdivide these again into smaller groups, according to certain points of dissimilitude observable in them, and so on until we have formed what we call a system of classes, orders, genera and species. In doing this, we fix arbitrarily on such characteristic resemblances and differences as seem to us most prominent and invariable in the several subjects, and most likely to take a strong hold in our memories. Thus Ray formed one classification on such lines of division as struck him most favorably; Klein adopted another; Brisson a third, and other naturalists other designations, till Linnæus appeared. Fortunately for science, he conceived in the three kingdoms of nature, modes of classification which obtained the approbation of the learned of all nations. His system was accordingly adopted by all, and united all in a general language. It offered the three great desiderata: First, of aiding the memory to retain a knowledge of the productions of nature. Secondly, of rallying all to the same names for the same objects, so that they could communicate understandingly on them. And Thirdly, of enabling them, when a subject was first presented, to trace it by its character up to the conventional name by which it was agreed to be called. This classification was indeed liable to the imperfection of bringing into the same group individuals which, though resembling in the characteristics adopted by the author for his classification, yet have strong marks of dissimilitude in other respects. But to this objection every mode of classification must be liable, because the plan of creation is inscrutable to our limited faculties. Nature has not arranged her productions on a single and direct line. They branch at every step, and in every direction, and he who attempts to reduce them into departments, is left to do it by the lines of his own fancy. The objection of bringing together what are disparata in nature, lies against the classifications of Blumenbach and of Cuvier, as well as that of Linnæus, and must forever lie against all. Perhaps not in equal degree; on this I do not pronounce. But neither is this so important a consideration as that of uniting all nations under one language in Natural History. This had been happily effected by Linnæus, and can scarcely be hoped for a second time. Nothing indeed is so desperate as to make all mankind agree in giving up a language they possess, for one which they have to learn. The attempt leads directly to the confusion of the tongues of Babel. Disciples of Linnæus, of Blumenbach, and of Cuvier, exclusively possessing their own nomenclatures, can no longer communicate intelligibly with one another. However much, therefore, we are indebted to both these naturalists, and to Cuvier especially, for the valuable additions they have made to the sciences of nature, I cannot say they have rendered her a service in this attempt to innovate in the settled nomenclature of her productions; on the contrary, I think it will be a check on the progress of science, greater or less, in proportion as their schemes shall more or less prevail. They would have rendered greater service by holding fast to the system on which we had once all agreed, and by inserting into that such new genera, orders, or even classes, as new discoveries should call for. Their systems, too, and especially that of Blumenbach, are liable to the objection of giving too much into the province of anatomy. It may be said, indeed, that anatomy is a part of natural history. In the broad sense of the word, it certainly is. In that sense, however, it would comprehend all the natural sciences, every created thing being a subject of natural history in extenso. But in the subdivisions of general science, as has been observed in the particular one of natural history, it has been necessary to draw arbitrary lines, in order to accommodate our limited views. According to these, as soon as the structure of any natural production is destroyed by art, it ceases to be a subject of natural history, and enters into the domain ascribed to chemistry, to pharmacy, to anatomy, &c. Linnæus' method was liable to this objection so far as it required the aid of anatomical dissection, as of the heart, for instance, to ascertain the place of any animal, or of a chemical process for that of a mineral substance. It would certainly be better to adopt as much as possible such exterior and visible characteristics as every traveller is competent to observe, to ascertain and to relate. But with this objection, lying but in a small degree, Linnæus' method was received, understood, and conventionally settled among the learned, and was even getting into common use. To disturb it then was unfortunate. The new system attempted in botany, by Jussieu, in mineralogy, by Haüy, are subjects of the same regret, and so also the no-system of Buffon, the great advocate of individualism in opposition to classification. He would carry us back to the days and to the confusion of Aristotle and Pliny, give up the improvements of twenty centuries, and co-operate with the neologists in rendering the science of one generation useless to the next by perpetual changes of its language. In botany, Wildenow and Persoon have incorporated into Linnæus the new discovered plants. I do not know whether any one has rendered us the same service as to his natural history. It would be a very acceptable one. The materials furnished by Humboldt, and those from New Holland particularly, require to be digested into the Catholic system. Among these, the Ornithorhyncus mentioned by you, is an amusing example of the anomalies by which nature sports with our schemes of classification. Although without mammæ, naturalists are obliged to place it in the class of mammiferæ; and Blumenbach, particularly, arranges it in his order of Palmipeds and toothless genus, with the walrus and manatie. In Linnæus' system it might be inserted as a new genus between the anteater and manis, in the order of Bruta. It seems, in truth, to have stronger relations with that class than any other in the construction of the heart, its red and warm blood, hairy integuments, in being quadruped and viviparous, and may we not say, in its tout ensemble, which Buffon makes his sole principle of arrangement? The mandible, as you observe, would draw it towards the birds, were not this characteristic overbalanced by the weightier ones before mentioned. That of the Cloaca is equivocal, because although a character of birds, yet some mammalia, as the beaver and sloth, have the rectum and urinary passage terminating at a common opening. Its ribs also, by their number and structure, are nearer those of the bird than of the mammalia. It is possible that further opportunities of examination may discover the mammæ. Those of the Opossum are asserted, by the Chevalier d'Aboville, from his own observations on that animal, made while here with the French army, to be not discoverable until pregnancy, and to disappear as soon as the young are weaned. The Duckbill has many additional particularities which liken it to other genera, and some entirely peculiar. Its description and history needs yet further information.
In what I have said on the method of classing, I have not at all meant to insinuate that that of Linnæus is intrinsically preferable to those of Blumenbach and Cuvier. I adhere to the Linnean because it is sufficient as a ground-work, admits of supplementary insertions as new productions are discovered, and mainly because it has got into so general use that it will not be easy to displace it, and still less to find another which shall have the same singular fortune of obtaining the general consent. During the attempt we shall become unintelligible to one another, and science will be really retarded by efforts to advance it made by its most favorite sons. I am not myself apt to be alarmed at innovations recommended by reason. That dread belongs to those whose interests or prejudices shrink from the advance of truth and science. My reluctance is to give up an universal language of which we are in possession, without an assurance of general consent to receive another. And the higher the character of the authors recommending it, and the more excellent what they offer, the greater the danger of producing schism.
I should seem to need apology for these long remarks to you who are so much more recent in these studies, but I find it in your particular request and my own respect for it, and with that be pleased to accept the assurance of my esteem and consideration.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON
Quincy, February, 1814.
Dear Sir,—I was nibbing my pen and brushing my faculties, to write a polite letter of thanks to Mr. Counsellor Barton, for his valuable memoirs of Dr. Rittenhouse, (though I could not account for his sending it to me), when I received your favor of January 25th. I now most cordially endorse my thanks over to you. The book is in the modern American style, an able imitation of Marshall's Washington, though far more entertaining and instructive; a Washington Mausoleum; an Egyptian pyramid. I shall never read it any more than Taylor's aristocracy. Mrs. Adams reads it with great delight, and reads to me what she finds interesting, and that is indeed the whole book. I have not time to hear it all.
Rittenhouse was a virtuous and amiable man, an exquisite mechanician, master of the astronomy known in his time; an expert mathematician, a patient calculator of numbers. But we have had a Winthrop, an Andrew Oliver, a Willard, a Webber, his equals, and we have a Bowditch his superior in all these particulars, except the mechanism. But you know Philadelphia is the heart, the censorium, the pineal gland of the United States.
In politics, Rittenhouse was a good, simple, ignorant, well-meaning, Franklinian democrat, totally ignorant of the world. As an anchorite, an honest dupe of the French Revolution; a mere instrument of Jonathan Dickinson Sargent, Dr. Hutchinson, Genet, and Mifflin, I give him all the credit of his Planetarium. The improvement of the Orrery to the Planetarium was an easy, natural thought, and nothing was wanting but calculations of orbits Distranus, and periods of revolutions; all of which were made to his hands long before he existed. Patience, perseverance, and sleight of hand, is his undoubted merit and praise. I had read Taylor in the Senate, till his style was so familiar to me that I had not read three pages, before I suspected the author. I wrote a letter to him, and he candidly acknowledged that the six hundred and fifty pages were sent me with his consent. I wait with impatience for the publication, and annunciation of the work. Arator ought not to have been adulterated with politics, but his precept "Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost," is of inestimable value in agriculture and horticulture. Every weed, cob, husk, stalk, ought to be saved for manure.
Your researches in the laws of England establishing Christianity as the law of the land, and part of the common law, are curious and very important. Questions without number will arise in this country. Religious controversies, and ecclesiastical contests, are as common, and will be as sharp as any in civil politics, foreign and domestic. In what sense, and to what extent the Bible is law, may give rise to as many doubts and quarrels as any of our civil, political, military, or maritime laws, and will intermix with them all, to irritate factions of every sort. I dare not look beyond my nose into futurity. Our money, our commerce, our religion, our National and State Constitutions, even our arts and sciences, are so many seed plots, of division, faction, sedition and rebellion. Everything is transmuted into an instrument of electioneering. Election is the grand Brahma, the immortal Lama, I had almost said, the Juggernaut; for wives are almost ready to burn upon the pile, and children to be thrown under the wheel. You will perceive, by these figures, that I have been looking into oriental history, and Hindoo religion. I have read voyages, and travels, and everything I could collect, and the last is Priestley's "Comparison of the Institutions of Moses with those of the Hindoos, and other Ancient Nations," a work of great labor, and not less haste. I thank him for the labor, and forgive, though I lament the hurry. You would be fatigued to read, and I, just recruiting from a little longer confinement and indisposition than I have had for thirty years, have not strength to write many observations. But I have been disappointed in the principal points of my curiosity:
1st. I am disappointed by finding that no just comparison can be made, because the original Shasta, and the original Vedams are not obtained, or if obtained, not yet translated into any European language.
2d. In not finding such morsels of the sacred books as have been translated and published, which are more honorable to the original Hindoo religion than anything he has quoted.
3d. In not finding a full development of the history of the doctrine of the Metempsichosis which originated—
4th. In the history of the rebellion of innumerable hosts of angels in Heaven against the Supreme Being, who after some thousands of years of war, conquered them, and hurled them down to the regions of total darkness, where they have suffered a part of the punishment of their crime, and then were mercifully released from prison, permitted to ascend to earth, and migrate into all sorts of animals, reptiles, birds, beasts, and men, according to their rank and character, and even into vegetables, and minerals, there to serve on probation. If they passed without reproach their several gradations, they were permitted to become cows and men. If as men they behaved well, i. e. to the satisfaction of the priests, they were restored to their original rank and bliss in Heaven.
5th. In not finding the Trinity of Pythagoras and Plato, their contempt of matter, flesh, and blood, their almost adoration of fire and water, their metempsichosis, and even the prohibition of beans, so evidently derived from India.
6th. In not finding the prophecy of Enoch deduced from India, in which the fallen angels make such a figure. But you are weary. Priestley has proved the superiority of the Hebrews to the Hindoos, as they appear in the Gentoo laws, and institutes of Menu; but the comparison remains to be made with the Shasta.
In his remarks on Mr. Dupuis, page 342, Priestley says: "The History of the fallen angels is another circumstance, on which Mr. Dupuis lays much stress. According to the Christians, he says, Vol. I, page 336, there was from the beginning a division among the angels; some remaining faithful to the light, and others taking the part of darkness, &c.; but this supposed history is not found in the Scriptures. It has only been inferred, from a wrong interpretation of one passage in the 2d epistle of Peter, and a corresponding one in that of Jude, as has been shown by judicious writers. That there is such a person as the Devil, is not a part of my faith, nor that of many other Christians, nor am I sure that it was the belief of any of the Christian writers. Neither do I believe the doctrine of demoniacal possessions, whether it was believed by the sacred writers or not; and yet my unbelief in these articles does not affect my faith in the great facts of which the Evangelists were eye and ear witnesses. They might not be competent judges in the one case, though perfectly so with respect to the other."
I will ask Priestley, when I see him, do you believe those passages in Peter and Jude to be interpolations? If so, by whom made? And when? And where? And for what end? Was it to support, or found, the doctrine of the fall of man, original sin, the universal corruption, depravation and guilt of human nature and mankind; and the subsequent incarnation of God to make atonement and redemption? Or do you think that Peter and Jude believed the book of Enoch to have been written by the seventh from Adam, and one of the sacred canonical books of the Hebrew Prophets? Peter, 2d epistle, c. 2d, v. 4th, says "For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved unto Judgment." Jude, v. 6th says, "and the angels which kept their first estate, but left their own habitations, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day." Verse 14th, "And Enoch, also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these sayings, behold the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all," &c. Priestley says, "a wrong interpretation" has been given to these texts. I wish he had favored us with his right interpretation of them. In another place, page 326, Priestley says, "There is no circumstance of which Mr. Dupuis avails himself so much, or repeats so often, both with respect to the Jewish and Christian religions, as the history of the Fall of Man, in the book of Genesis." I believe with him, and have maintained in my writings, that this history is either an allegory, or founded on uncertain tradition, that it is an hypothesis to account for the origin of evil, adopted by Moses, which by no means accounts for the facts.
March 3d. So far was written almost a month ago; but sickness has prevented progress. I had much more to say about this work. I shall never be a disciple of Priestley. He is as absurd, inconsistent, credulous and incomprehensible, as Athanasius. Read his letter to the Jews in this volume. Could a rational creature write it? Aye! such rational creatures as Rochefoucauld, and Condorcet, and John Taylor, in politics, and Towers' Jurieus, and French Prophets in Theology. Priestley's account of the philosophy and religion of India, appears to me to be such a work as a man of busy research would produce—who should undertake to describe Christianity from the sixth to the twelfth century, when a deluge of wonders overflowed the world; when miracles were performed and proclaimed from every convent, and monastery, hospital, churchyard, mountain, valley, cave and cupola.
There is a book which I wish I possessed. It has never crossed the Atlantic. It is entitled Acta Sanctorum, in forty-seven volumes in folio. It contains the lives of the Saints. It was compiled in the beginning of the sixteenth century by Bollandus, Henschenius and Papebrock. What would I give to possess in one immense mass, one stupendous draught, all the legends, true, doubtful and false.
These Bollandists dared to discuss some of the facts, and hint that some of them were doubtful. E. G. Papebrock doubted the antiquity of the Carmellites from Elias; and whether the face of Jesus Christ was painted on the handkerchief of St. Véronique; and whether the prepuce of the Saviour of the world, which was shown in the church of Antwerp, could be proved to be genuine? For these bold scepticisms he was libelled in pamphlets, and denounced by the Pope, and the Inquisition in Spain. The Inquisition condemned him; but the Pope not daring to acquit or condemn him, prohibited all writings pro. and con. But as the physicians cure one disease by exciting another, as a fever by a salivation, this Bull was produced by a new claim. The brothers of the Order of Charity asserted a descent from Abraham, nine hundred years anterior to the Carmellites.
A philosopher who should write a description of Christianism from the Bollandistic Saints of the sixth and tenth century would probably produce a work tolerably parallel to Priestley's upon the Hindoos.