Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief | Page 5

expression,
occurred in the height of the last general war, and, for a novelty, it
occurred in an English ship. A French privateer captured the vessel on
her passage home, the flaxseed was condemned and sold, my ancestors
being transferred in a body to the ownership of a certain agriculturist in
the neighborhood of Evreux, who dealt largely in such articles. There
have been evil disposed vegetables that have seen fit to reproach us
with this sale as a stigma on our family history, but I have ever

considered it myself as a circumstance of which one has no more
reason to be ashamed than a D'Uzes has to blush for the robberies of a
baron of the middle ages. Each is an incident in the progress of
civilization; the man and the vegetable alike taking the direction
pointed out by Providence for the fulfilment of his or its destiny.
{Milesian = slang for Irish, from Milesius, mythical Spanish conqueror
of Ireland; Evreux = town in Normandy, France; a D'Uzes = a member
of an ancient noble family in southern France}
Plants have sensation as well as animals. The latter, however, have no
consciousness anterior to their physical births, and very little, indeed,
for some time afterwards; whereas a different law prevails as respects
us; our mental conformation being such as to enable us to refer our
moral existence to a period that embraces the experience, reasoning and
sentiments of several generations. As respects logical inductions, for
instance, the linum usitatissimum draws as largely on the intellectual
acquisitions of the various epochas that belonged to the three or four
parent stems which preceded it, as on its own. In a word, that
accumulated knowledge which man inherits by means of books,
imparted and transmitted information, schools, colleges, and
universities, we obtain through more subtle agencies that are
incorporated with our organic construction, and which form a species
of hereditary mesmerism; a vegetable clairvoyance that enables us to
see with the eyes, hear with the ears, and digest with the understandings
of our predecessors.
{epochas = archaic Latinized spelling of epochs}
Some of the happiest moments of my moral existence were thus
obtained, while our family was growing in the fields of Normandy. It
happened that a distinguished astronomer selected a beautiful seat, that
was placed on the very margin of our position, as a favorite spot for his
observations and discourses; from a recollection of the latter of which,
in particular, I still derive indescribable satisfaction. It seems as only
yesterday--it is in fact fourteen long, long years--that I heard him thus
holding forth to his pupils, explaining the marvels of the illimitable
void, and rendering clear to my understanding the vast distance that
exists between the Being that created all things and the works of his
hands. To those who live in the narrow circle of human interests and
human feelings, there ever exists, unheeded, almost unnoticed, before

their very eyes, the most humbling proofs of their own comparative
insignificance in the scale of creation, which, in the midst of their
admitted mastery over the earth and all it contains, it would be well for
them to consider, if they would obtain just views of what they are and
what they were intended to be.
I think I can still hear this learned and devout man--for his soul was
filled with devotion to the dread Being that could hold a universe in
subjection to His will--dwelling with delight on all the discoveries
among the heavenly bodies, that the recent improvements in science
and mechanics have enabled the astronomers to make. Fortunately, he
gave his discourses somewhat of the progressive character of lectures,
leading his listeners on, as it might be step by step, in a way to render
all easy to the commonest understanding. Thus it was, I first got
accurate notions of the almost inconceivable magnitude of space, to
which, indeed, it is probable there are no more positive limits than there
are a beginning and an end to eternity! Can these wonders be, I
thought--and how pitiful in those who affect to reduce all things to the
level of their own powers of comprehension, and their own experience
in practice! Let them exercise their sublime and boasted reason, I said
to myself, in endeavoring to comprehend infinity in any thing, and we
will note the result! If it be in space, we shall find them setting bounds
to their illimitable void, until ashamed of the feebleness of their first
effort, it is renewed, again and again, only to furnish new proofs of the
insufficiency of any of earth, even to bring within the compass of their
imaginations truths that all their experiments, inductions, evidence and
revelations compel them to admit.
"The moon has no atmosphere," said our astronomer one