Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864

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_Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as modified by Human Action_. By
GEORGE P. MARSH. New York: Charles Scribner. 8vo. pp. 560.

The student of Physical Geography must not expect to find in this
massive book a systematic exposition of the science in the manner of
Guyot and the French and German geographers; nor must he expect to see
worked out on its pages the elaborate application of Geography to
History, such as one day will be done, and such as was attempted, though
with results of varied value and certainty, by the eloquent and
plausible Buckle; but he will find an unexpected development of man's
dominion over the world he inhabits. Mr. Marsh takes his readers very
much by surprise; for few are aware, we apprehend, that in the course of
his wandering life, and while prosecuting his eminent philological
studies, he has made leisure enough to survey the natural sciences with
critical exactness, pursue an extended course of inquiry into physical
phenomena, note and digest the results of Italian, Spanish, English,
French, German, Dutch, and American naturalists, ply every guide and
ploughman, every driver and forester, every fisherman and miner, every
lumberman and carpenter, for the results which men attain by observing
within the narrow circle of their occupation,--and weave all into a
copious work which subordinates all results to a grand psychological
law, the mastery of man's mind over the world it calls its home.

The work which we are noticing aspires to and rightly claims a foremost
place among the literary productions of America, despite a certain
homely flavor and a certain unpretending way which its author has of
saying things which are really great and fine. The main thought
illustrated is not new, but it is brought out so forcibly, and
illustrated by such encyclopedic learning, that it has the power of
novelty. Mr. Marsh shows, as many before him have done, that man is now
using the organic and inorganic forms of the earth in a manner so
subsidiary to the might of his intellect and his will, that such
obstacles as mountains and seas, which used to impede him hopelessly,
now are his auxiliaries; but he does more than this: he demonstrates the
destructive and annihilating sway of man over the world in the past and
in the present; and, proceeding from the historic fact that the
countries which in the palmy days of the Roman Empire were the granary
and the wine-cellar of the world have been given over by the improvident
destructiveness of man to desolation and desert, he enters into a
thorough study of the fact, that, no sooner does man recede from the
barbaric state than he commences a career of destructiveness, cutting
off, in a manner reckless and criminally wasteful, forests, the lives of
quadrupeds, birds, insects, and in short every living thing excepting
the few domestic animals which follow him and serve him for
companionship or for food. Mr. Marsh shows, with more than prophetic
insight, with the mathematical logic of facts, that, unless
compensations far more general and adequate than have yet been devised
are provided, the destructive propensities of civilized man will convert
the world into a waste. Some of our readers have paused thoughtfully
over that chapter in "Les Miserables" which deals so grimly with the
sewerage of cities, and details with the faithfulness of an historian
the exhausting demands of those conduits which carry untold millions to
the sea, and waste that aliment of impoverished soils which not all the
science of the age has found it possible to restore; but Mr. Marsh, not
drawing single pictures with so strong lines, spreads a broader canvas,
and compels his reader to equal thoughtfulness. To quote but one
instance is enough. We have in America thus far escaped, and as
singularly as fortunately, the importation of the wheat-midge which has
been the scourge of the grain-fields of Europe: it will, doubtless, some
time be a passenger on our Atlantic ships or steamers; it will commence
its work; and then man has the task of importing its natural
antagonists, of promoting their spread, and so of compensating the evil.
The work which we are noticing abundantly shows, that, if man were not
in the world, the natural compensations which the Divine Being has
introduced would produce perfect harmony in all things; that man, from
his first stroke at a tree, his first slaying of a beast or bird,
introduces an element of disorder which he can compensate only after
civilization has reached a height of which we yet know nothing, and of
which our present civilization gives us but the suggestion.

To those who may not care to master the philosophy of "Man and Nature,"
the book presents great attractions in the fund of new and entertaining
knowledge given in the text, and yet more largely in the foot-notes.
Many have waded through Mr. Buckle's two volumes a second time for the
purpose of gleaning his facts and gathering up in the easiest way the
latest word in science and literature. Mr. Marsh spreads a homelier
table, but one just as varied and hearty. Never in the course of our
miscellaneous reading have we met an equal store of fresh facts. As
hinted above, they are gathered from every source: the experience of the
maple-sugar maker in Vermont is quoted side by side with the testimony
of the European scholar. The reader will be amazed that there are so
many common things in the world of which he has never heard, and that
they have so large and fruitful an influence over the world's progress.

If there are striking faults in Mr. Marsh's work, they seem to be these:
want of continuity in treatment, and disproportionate development of
some subjects in contrast with others. The book is, in fact, too large
for a popular treatise, and not large enough for a scientific exposition
of all it essays to discuss. It claims to be a popular work; but the
elaborate discussion of Forests is far beyond the wishes or needs of any
but a scientific reader. The broken, jagged, paragraph style is a
drawback to the pleasure of perusing it: the notion seems to impress the
author that people will not read anything elaborate, unless it be broken
up into labelled paragraphs. It is true of the newspaper: it is not true
of the octavo, to which they sit down expecting a different mode of
treatment, a broad, discursive style, flowing, redundant, and even
eloquent. Yet Mr. Marsh has in some instances transgressed, we think,
even in fulness: the great prominence given, for example, to the
drainage of Holland is untrue to the general tenor of the book and to
the prospective future of the world. It was a great historic deed, when
the relations of man to Nature were quite other than what they are
to-day; but now that man is master of the sea, regulates the price of
bread in London by the price of corn in Illinois, and of broadcloth in
Paris by the cost of wool in Australia, the recovery of a few hundred
thousand acres from the bottom of the North Sea is a great thing for
Holland, but a small thing for the world.

Yet we accept this book with grateful thanks to the accomplished author.
In the present transition-stage from metaphysical to physical studies,
it will be eagerly accepted, as showing, not openly nor yet covertly,
yet suggestively, the true connection of both. Few books give in quiet,
modest fashion so much theology as this, and yet few claim to give so
little. Few bear more strongly on the mooted points of Anthropology; few
strike so strong a blow at that Development-theory which makes man
merely king of the beasts, and superior to the ape and the gorilla only
in degree; and yet few proceed in such high argument with less
ostentation. This book leaves one great want unfulfilled: to take up the
mantle of Ritter and proceed carefully to the study of French, German,
Russian, English, Spanish, and Italian history, and indeed all great
nations' history, by the light of geography. The problem is stated; it
has now only to be wrought out. Perhaps Mr. Marsh, whose acquisitions
seem to be boundless, and whose powers unlimited, may live to win fresh
laurels on this field.

* * * * *

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FOOTNOTES:

[A] I was once trying to convince an eminent prelate--one of the most
learned and liberal of his order, and even then close to the red hat--of
the importance of admitting laymen to certain State functions. "All
right," said he, "from your point of view; but still I shall oppose it
always, tooth and nail; for, if they come in, we must go out."

[B] Dr. Lieber, in his "Reminiscences of Niebuhr,"--a delightful book of
a delightful class,--records the great historian's testimony in favor of
Italian Latin.

[C] This is a metrical version of the following passage of the
"Scaligeriana":--"Les Allemans ne se soucient pas quel vin ils boivent
pourvu que ce soit vin, ni quel Latin ils parlent pourvu que ce soit
Latin."

[D] Need we say that this gentleman is a member of the French Academy, a
librarian of the Mazarin Library, and the well-known author of
"Mademoiselle de la Seigliere," "La Maison de Penarvan," "Sacs et
Parchemins," etc.?

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