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PREFACE
Winter is the season of nature’s
annual repose,— the time when the working structures are reduced to the
minimum of their extent, and the energies of growth and life to the
minimum of their activity, and when the phenomena on the earth are
fewer, and address themselves less pleasingly to our senses than they do
in any other of the three seasons. There is hope in the bud of Spring,
pleasure in the bloom of Summer, and enjoyment in the fruit of Autumn;
but, if we make our senses our chief resource, there is something both
blank and gloomy in the aspect of Winter.
And, if we were of and for this world alone, there is no doubt that this
would be the correct view of the Winter, as compared with the other
seasons; and the partial death of the year would point as a most
mournful index to the death and final close of our existence. But we are
beings otherwise destined and endowed,— the world is to us only what the
lodge is to the wayfaring man; and while we enjoy its rest, our thoughts
can be directed back to the past part of our journey, and our hopes
forward to its end, when we shall reach our proper home, and dwell there
securely and for ever. This is our sure consolation—the anchor of hope
to our minds, during all storms, whether they be of physical nature or
of social adversity; and let the one or the other be ever so dark and
gloomy, this hope can limn them with hues of the most enchanting
delight; and in the very depth of the Winter, we can command the spring,
the summer, and all the gay seasons of the times and the lands of the
sun, to stand mustered before us in full array, and clothed in variety
and beauty, which never could by possibility fall on the retina of the
eye of some, though we were to ransack the world for its chosen
landscape, and tax the year for the very hey-day of its perfection. We
can do this, and we can do it when the Winter night is moonless,
starless, and dark as a pit dug to the earth’s very centre where sunbeam
never came, and when all the angry voices of the Winter are howling and
thundering around us, with far more certainty and mental satisfaction
than we could do, if laid on the most flowery bank, in the sweetest day
in which summer ever beamed on the earth.
We are beings of sensation, certainly; many and exquisite are the
pleasures which we are fitted for enjoying in this way, and much ought
we to be grateful for their capacity of giving pleasure, and our
capacity of receiving it; for this refined pleasure of the senses is
special and peculiar to us out of all the countless variety of living
creatures which tenant the earth around us. They eat, they drink, they
sleep, they secure the succession of their race, and they die; but not
one of them has a secondary pleasure of sense beyond the accomplishment
of these very humble ends. We stand far higher in the mere
gratifications of sense; and in the mental ones there is no comparison,
as the other creatures have not an atom of the element to bring to the
estimate.
The Winter is, therefore, the especial season of man —our own season, by
way of eminence; and men who have no Winter in the year of the region in
which they are placed, never of themselves display those traits of
mental development which are the true characteristics of rational man,
as contrasted with the irrational part of the living creation. It is
true that there must be the contrast of a summer, in order to give this
Winter its proper effect; but still, the Winter is the intellectual
season of the year,—the season during which the intellectual and
immortal spirit in man enables him most triumphantly to display his
superiority over “the beasts that perish.”
Such are the feelings with regard to the Winter season, under which the
following pages were composed; but whether the execution does or does
not come up to this feeling, is a matter to be determined by the reader,
not by the author.
In order that this volume might be somewhat in accordance with the
character of the season after which it is named, I have endeavoured to
make it more reflective than the former ones of the series. But the
matter of it does not easily admit of prefatory analysis, and therefore
I must refer to the Table of Contents, and especially to the book
itself, which, if it should be found to have no other recommendation, is
at least original, and different from any which has been previously
written on the subject, numerous as these are, and valuable as are some
of them.
There are two points of difference between the volumes both of this
series and the former one, and most books upon similar subjects, to
which it may be as well to call the attention of the reader, lest that
which has been done purposely, and in the belief that it is an
improvement, should be regarded as oversight and imperfection.
In the first place, every thing like system has been avoided with the
utmost solicitude; and thus, the transitions from the earth to the air
or the sun, from one part of the earth to another of the very opposite
character, from plant to animal, from sea to land, from natural
appearance to moral reflection, and from nature to the Author of nature,
may seem abrupt, and without any obvious connexion. That they have none
of the apparent regularity of the systems of the schools, I will admit;
but then, the regularity of these is only in the artificial parts of the
systems, and not in the nature of the subjects which they embrace; so
that, if a student were to go forth to any locality, be that locality
what it might, he would not be able to trace a correspondence with the
system there, but would find himself in a state of constant transition
from one part of the artificial system to another, if he followed the
succession of subjects as he met with them in nature.
Now if the observation of nature is to be pleasant, and to operate
profitably in teaching us to take heed of every thing, which is clearly
the grand practical use of it, we must not go forth in quest of a genus,
an order, or a class, we must be equally prepared to understand and
enjoy all that we meet with, in the order in which we may happen to meet
them ; and over that order we ourselves have no control. This is the
system of nature which presents itself to our observation ; and though,
as compared with the artificial systems of the learned on these
subjects, it appears to be no system at all, yet it is the only natural
one. There is always a natural reason why any production or appearance
is met with in one place and at one time rather than another; this
reason should be one of the main objects of our observation; and it is
one upon which, from the mode of their arrangement, the natural systems
can afford us very little assistance. These systems all have reference
to the productions of nature as if they were dead subjects, which we
could place in any juxta-position which suited our fancy; and what we
meet with is living and active nature, of which all the parts and all
their changes have adequate causes, which tie them down to place and to
time.
The other part refers to the natural theology; and in this I have
endeavoured to avoid what appear to me to be the chief errors of those
who have treated of the subject,—namely, that comparison of the working
of God with the working of man, by means of which it has been attempted
to heighten our admiration of the former; and that comparison of the
instincts of animals with human reason, by injudicious allusions to
which, our belief in the immortality, and even the existence of the
mind, is apt to be shaken.
It was my original intention to follow up the four volumes on the
Heavens, Earth, Air, and Sea, and these four on the Seasons, by other
four on the Natural History of Man, as a physical, intellectual, moral,
and social being; but as a series of books may be too long, as Man
stands in many respects insulated from the rest of nature, and as the
work which I intend to publish respecting him must necessarily be of a
different character from this and its precursors, I have, on mature
reflection, deemed it better that it should appear in another shape, and
thus be a distinct work in form as well as in substance.
ROBERT MUDIE.
Grove Cottage, Chelsea, November, 1837.
Winter
Or, The Causes, Appearances, and effects of the great seasonal repose of
nature by R. Mudie (1837) (pdf) |
