Introduction: From Translation to Translating
The initial idea for this book arose from the experience of living in different countries and languages. Living ‘in translation’ can produce a strange liberation by alienation. Speaking in a second language creates a sense of freedom and discovery whereby new ways of expressing the world are opened up which also opens up new worlds. Accompanying this is a sense of being able to discover oneself through these new experiences, as though the light of what is foreign or other can illuminate hidden recesses of oneself. Perhaps this is because there is an impression of escaping the shackles of what is expected of oneself in one’s home culture or ‘mother tongue’. ‘Tromper la surveillance,’ Jacques Derrida terms it: ‘eluding the watchful eye of some monitor, in order to tell the truth.’1 Words in a second language which seem to reveal something ‘new’ in the world can thus seem more ‘true’. We often don’t notice our ‘own’ language, the strange idioms where history’s ghost can live, whereas idioms of a second tongue can seem to resound with truth and wonder. In discussing translation, Maurice Blanchot describes this as the sensation that ‘words need a certain ignorance to keep their power of revelation.’2 Yet there is also, paradoxically, a sense of fiction that seems to permeate this experience, as though the words of a second language are both more ‘true’ while at the
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 L. Foran, Derrida, the Subject and the Other, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-57758-0_1
1
same time not being ‘real’. Words in another language seem to apply to the other or second country and not to one’s home. There can be a feeling of living in a state of suspension when one lives in another country, as if ‘real life’ were paused and would begin again on the return home.
All of these curious and vague ideas revolve around the linguistic construction of identity and alterity. In Ireland, ‘my’ country, the relations between language and identity are particularly complex. Few Irish nationals speak the Irish language Gaeilge. Ireland is one of very few postcolonial countries that lost its mother tongue so completely. ‘I only have one language, yet it is not mine’3 says Derrida of his relation to the French language; the same could be said for the vast majority of Irish nationals who speak the English language as their mother tongue. Speaking a language that belongs to another country, but having no other language in which to speak, produces a sense of distantiation—the feeling of living in someone else’s home and a homesickness for somewhere you’ve never been. A desire to put philosophical flesh on these skeletal (not to mention subjective) impressions motivated this book and its central questions: can we speak of subject and other as ‘constructed’? If so, what role does language play in this construction? Do subject and other relate as languages in a play of mutually constructive translation? If so, what are the ethical implications of that exchange?
The practice of translation is of course as old as the history of languages. Insofar as it seeks to make an unintelligible meaning intelligible, it forms part of the history of hermeneutics. While hermeneutics as a discipline may only have arisen in the post-Kantian atmosphere of Romantic Germany, its roots reach back across antiquity. ‘Words spoken are symbols or signs of affections or impressions of the soul; written words are the signs of words spoken.’4 Aristotle’s description of language as the clothing of inner mental experience in many senses offers a neat summation of the dominant approach to translation for many centuries. As Jean Grondin has pointed out, the Greek understanding of saying as hermeneuein or ‘interpreting’ arises from the notion of language as a translation of the soul’s thoughts. Expression or hermeneia ‘is simply the logos comprehended in words.’5 Hermeneuein then, as the interpretation of those words, is the process of mediating external signs inwards towards the ‘inside’ of meaning. Translation, as the transformation of
a word in one language into a word in another language, would follow much the same path as a general hermeneuein. The meaning, the inner logos or thought (dianoia) could change its ‘outer’ clothing as simply as one changes a coat.
The occasional commentary on translation found in the works of Roman orators and unnamed grammarians, stages translation as a choice between two opposites. Faced with a text in Greek, a Latin scholar, in the later words of St. Jerome following Cicero, should proceed: ‘non verbum e verbo sed sensum de sensu’—‘not word for word but sense for sense.’6 Yet these Roman commentators and their early Christian counterparts in many senses follow the Greek approach to language in that the transposition of meaning is considered a simple dissociation of signifier from signified—whether that be at the level of the word or the broader level of the phrase. What is distinct in St. Jerome, and also in the commentary of Augustine, is the question of divine inspiration. Provided the translator proceed in faith, her words are guaranteed by the presence of the divine logos. While the Reformation placed interpretation and translation at the centre of the European stage, the resultant theories of translation remained largely confined to biblical exegesis. Although Wilhelm Dilthey claims that the Reformation led to the birth of hermeneutics in its Romantic form, Grondin argues that the influence of the Church fathers was far greater than often thought ‘so that this pivotal period is much less revolutionary than the classic history of hermeneutics, itself indebted to Protestant theology, would suggest.’7 Through the Reformation debates, the question of translation, or more broadly interpretation, centred on the relation to a transcendental divine spirit which made itself present in the transformation of words. Moreover, for many centuries translation was concerned with the transfer of meaning from one text to another, from one said to another said. My interest here is the movement of translation towards its own limit; towards the unsaid, unsayable and untranslatable.
The first step of this movement, propelled by a conflux of historical and philosophical forces, was taken by Eighteenth Century German speakers. German speaking translators at that time sought to define themselves against the prevailing French and English literary trends. Rather than aiming for a transparent translation where all traces of the ‘original’ text’s foreignness had been erased, translators working in German
endeavoured to make the foreign as obvious as possible. Johann Gottfried Herder advocated ‘bending’ German itself to a foreign strain in order to accrue ‘great advances’ to the German language.8 In this regard, Johann Heinrich Voss’s translations of the Odyssey (1781) and the Iliad (1793), the first to retain the hexameter in German, had a profound impact on the German literary scene.9 They ushered in an openness to translation as a possibility of transformation—not of the foreign text but of the German language itself. Such a view of translation as linguistic enrichment marks the move away from the separation of language and thought towards an understanding of thinking as inherently linguistic. As Lawrence Venuti phrases it ‘language is conceived, not as expressing thought and meaning transparently, but as shaping them according to linguistic structures and cultural traditions which are in turn shaped by language use.’10 Between Voss’s Odyssey and Iliad, Immanuel Kant’s three critiques appeared; the Critique of Pure Reason was published the same year as Voss’s Odyssey (1781, second edition 1787), followed closely by the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and the Critique of Judgement (1790). The seismic shift in thinking that ensued evidently led to a radical re-evaluation of language and translation, although this was by no means immediate.
Kant’s phenomena/noumena distinction introduced both an emancipation and a limitation of reason. On the one hand, the projection of a finite subject’s categories upon the world of experience is what makes that world and the experience of it possible. On the other hand of course, the world as it is experienced is not the world as it is in itself. The disjunction introduced by Kant made way for the philosophical hermeneutics of the twentieth century via its romantic precursors of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Dilthey. Grondin describes post-Kantian philosophy as unfolding along two different paths: speculative idealism and hermeneutics. While these may well not have been in line with Kant’s own ambitions, they nonetheless emerge from an interpretative, that is to say hermeneutic, engagement with the latter’s thinking. It is in Schleiermacher and Dilthey’s response to Kant that we can find the beginnings of a shift in the direction of the unsaid; the concern of post-Heideggerian philosophical hermeneutics as it is found in the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur.11
Traditionally understanding was considered ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ so that a method of hermeneutics was considered requisite only in the
exceptional situation of non-understanding; such as encountering a text in a foreign language. However, Schleiermacher reversed this perspective, claiming that non-understanding is the ‘normal’ state and that any fruitful understanding of anything that is said or written can emerge only from the application of a Kunstlehre or methodology of understanding. Traces of the radical uncertainty of post-Kantian subjectivity, whose possibilities for understanding have been limited by the phenomenal distinction, are evident in this focus on non-understanding. Hermeneutics under Schleiermacher becomes for the first time the science of understanding in its most general form and is no longer restricted to the occasional event of non-understanding. Language, claims Schleiermacher, can be interpreted both grammatically and technically. The grammatical side of an interpretation would centre on the language itself, syntactical rules, idioms in usage at the time of writing—its context would be the broader context of the language as a whole. On the other hand, technical or what Schleiermacher would later call ‘psychological’ interpretation, is concerned with the particular art or technē of an author, her intentions and characteristics—its context would be the ‘inner’ life of the individual author.
It is this psychological mode of interpretation that was taken up by Dilthey in an effort to find a methodological foundation for the human sciences. This foundation was sought on the basis of ‘inner experience’ or what Dilthey also later termed an ‘interpretative psychology.’12 Such a psychology ‘tries to describe aspects of mental life by reference to their intrinsic structure, or (since that amounts to conceiving the parts in terms of the whole) it simply tries to “understand”.’13 The advantage claimed by Dilthey for this methodology is that the inner experiences of the subject—or author—are immediately intelligible, since they do not rely on the mediation of the senses required by experiences of the external world. It is precisely this notion of the immediacy of one’s inner experiences that Derrida will much later interrogate in his reading of Edmund Husserl. Indeed Dilthey’s descriptive psychology of Erlebnis or ‘lived experience’ is in a way a precursor of the former’s phenomenology. In his later work14 Dilthey sought to marry Erlebnis, understanding, and expression so that the human sciences would proceed by a hermeneutic. That is, by an understanding of the external expression of their subject
of inquiry towards what lies beneath—towards contents of meaning carried in the author’s lived experiences. There is of course a certain tension here between the aspiration of a methodology specifically for the human sciences and the fact that understanding permeates all human historical experience, as Dilthey himself recognized.
Translation throughout these early beginnings of hermeneutics is deemed always possible; there is the text or the situation to be interpreted and it is possible to at least envisage a methodology for so doing. The shift, however, brought about through Schleiermacher and Dilthey points towards two things. First, that understanding is not immediately guaranteed but is rather something one works towards, pointing to the gradual effacement of the idea of a ‘transparent’ meaning. And second, almost paradoxically, that understanding is concerned with the understanding of ‘inner mental life’; it proceeds from the outward signs of this life—expression—to its inner manifestations of meaning. It is with Martin Heidegger that the art of understanding expands dramatically so that existence itself becomes a hermeneutic. Grondin marks the radicalization of hermeneutics that took place with Heidegger in the following manner:
‘Making sense of things’, the beginning and end of hermeneutic endeavour, was no longer a marginalized epiphenomenon limited to text-based disciplines; it was instead a fundamental aspect of existence for a being that understands itself in time, and whose own being is concerned with being. Now indisputably philosophical, this has remained the nature of hermeneutics up to Gadamer and Habermas.15
While previously the interpreter or translator needed to overcome their present situation in order to free themselves (as much as possible) of potential prejudices, Heidegger invigorates hermeneutics so that what is made intelligible in its process is not simply a text or an author but the translator herself. As Miguel de Beistegui phrases it, with Heidegger the ‘ultimate goal of hermeneutics is to render the interpreter transparent to himself as factical life. Hermeneutics is directed towards the living present, or the “fundamental mobility” of life.’16 It is this radicalization of hermeneutics (and indeed its eventual abandonment) that marks Heidegger as the beginning point of this book.
Crucially, Heidegger arrives at this radicalization through his marriage of Husserlian phenomenology with Romantic hermeneutics, notably that of Dilthey.17 Certainly the hermeneutic of factical life presented in Being and Time would not have been possible without its phenomenological method. Key, in terms of my concerns here, is the Husserlian notion of intentionality (itself adopted by the latter through Franz Brentano). The fact that consciousness is always directed towards something shows that it is open outwards towards the world, it is always about something outside of itself. As De Beistigui sums up the Heideggerian interpretation of Husserl: ‘in the same way that Heidegger “translates” (that is, reinterprets) consciousness (Bewusstsein) as factical life and then as existence (Dasein), he also translates intentionality as openness-towards-something.’18 This openness-towards of Dasein is where my account begins and crucially with the ‘translation’ of parts of the word ‘phenomenology’. Phainomenon, translated as ‘that which shows itself in itself’19 and logos, translated as ‘discourse’ understood as ‘letting something be seen’,20 leads Heidegger to the translation of ‘phenomenology’ as: ‘to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself.’21
My account of translation and alterity therefore begins at that point where hermeneutics becomes ‘indisputably philosophical’ through its confrontation with phenomenology. The first chapter examines the manner in which translation is deployed in Heidegger’s thinking. I begin with Being and Time and trace the role of language therein focusing particularly on assertion, logos, and the question of repeatability. Over the course of the 1930s and 1940s Heidegger evinced a turn which led to the gradual abandonment of certain terms, notably ‘hermeneutics’ and ‘phenomenology’. If the path of philosophy after Kant forked into hermeneutics and speculative idealism, then we might say that post-Heideggerian philosophy produced a similar fork between the hermeneutics of Gadamer and the deconstruction of Derrida. Here I follow this latter path towards the emergence of deconstruction in Heidegger’s own thinking, notably in his later work. During the 1940s translation took on a crucial role in Heidegger’s thinking, in this regard I move from Being and Time to a close analysis of ‘The Anaximander Fragment’ (1946). Here translation acts as an axis point from which and around which Heidegger’s thinking
turns. It opens the possibility of original thinking that has, at the very least, de-centred metaphysical language. This analysis opens the way into Heidegger’s On the Way to Language. Heidegger’s thinking can be read as seeking to go beyond the phenomenology of Husserl, breaking out of the rigidity of the latter’s terminology in an effort to allow the essence of language to be heard. Emmanuel Levinas also seeks a beyond phenomenology, but in a notably different way.
In Chapter Two I examine Levinas’s writing on absolute alterity and his conception of the subject as ‘hostage’. Such a subject is offered by Levinas as a ‘counterpoint’ to Husserl’s transcendental intentional ego and to Heidegger’s Dasein which, in its belonging to Being, belongs to the same.22 Following the emergence of language as a desire to respond to the Other in Levinas, I argue for a subject who is constituted as a passive translating between being and otherwise than being through an unsaying of the ontological said. Having thus framed my account with Heidegger’s ontological difference and Levinas’s ethical difference, I proceed in Chapter Three to Derrida’s différance. I begin by establishing the crucial role of death in the production of meaning for Derrida by taking a close look at the seminal Voice and Phenomena. From here I outline and develop the Derridean notion of survie23 through his reading of Maurice Blanchot and Walter Benjamin opening up the problematic of the untranslatable and the impossible.
Chapter Four explores Derrida’s explicit engagement with translation in various works. I begin with his own translation of Shakespeare and go on to examine his reading of Descartes’ Discourse on Method. These readings reveal the power-play of language and enforced translation; themes which take centre stage in the second part of this chapter which deals with Derrida’s own relation to France and the French language. Finally, I outline here the implications of ‘origin myths’ of translation, notably the Biblical narrative of Babel. Under the rubric of this myth I demonstrate the impossibility of the proper name and the inherent multiplicity at the heart of any so-called identity. Chapter Five deals with the ‘impossible’ through two names of absolute alterity: ‘God’ and ‘Death’. I conclude with the relation between translating, sur-viving and mourning, and argue that the subject/ other relation in Derrida can be conceived as ‘sur-viving translating’.
Tackling the work of an author as prolific as Derrida—and one around whom a whole industry of secondary material appears to have been
founded—inevitably demands a highly selective attitude to bibliography. Surprisingly few works have focused on translation in Derrida. Two exceptions of note are Kathleen Davis’s Deconstruction and Translation24 and Michael Thomas’s The Reception of Derrida: Translation and Transformation. 25 The first of these places Derrida’s work within the discipline of Translation Studies and aims to highlight the impact Derrida’s thinking can and should have on the practising translator. The latter text provides an overview of the manner in which ‘deconstruction’ has been transformed by its own translation into other languages and academic contexts. My own interest is slightly different; I want to follow the operation of translation throughout Derrida’s writings as a way to approach his accounts of alterity. It is not until the last chapter that I begin to draw on works where Derrida reads Heidegger and Levinas; I have done this with the hope that the reader might follow the deployment of translation from Heidegger, to Levinas and finally to the absolute dynamism accorded to this term in Derrida’s work. In other words, I want to (at least initially) read Derrida through Heidegger and Levinas, rather than reading Heidegger and Levinas through Derrida. My overall claim is that translation operates in the work of each of these three thinkers in a crucial way; that it is through an invigorated notion of translation that each author takes a step beyond what Derrida terms ‘a certain concept’ of philosophy. Significantly, this step ‘beyond’ is taken at the limits of the possibility of translation. Translating thus reveals an other way of thinking and most notably of all, another way of thinking the Other. In Derrida’s words:
What does philosophy say? Let’s imagine that it’s possible to ask such a question: What does philosophy say? What does the philosopher say when he is being a philosopher? He says: What matters is truth or meaning, and since meaning is before or beyond language, it follows that it is translatable. Meaning has the commanding role, and consequently one must be able to fix its univocality or, in any case, to master its plurivocality. If this plurivocality can be mastered, then translation, understood as the transport of a semantic content into another signifying form, is possible. There is no philosophy unless translation in this latter sense is possible. […]This, then, was what I thought of as the passage into philosophy, the program of translation. The origin of philosophy is translation or the thesis of translatability, so that wherever translation in this sense has failed, it is nothing less than philosophy that finds itself defeated.26
Notes
1. Survivre p. 191 /trans. p. 120.
2. Maurice Blanchot La part du feu (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1949) p. 173 /trans. by Charlotte Mandell The Work of Fire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995) p. 176.
3. Mono. p. 15 /trans. p. 2 & passim.
4. Aristotle De Interpretatione I.16a 3–8 (trans. by Harold P. Cook).
5. Jean Grondin (trans. by Joel Weinsheimer) Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics (Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1994) p. 21.
6. Jerome (trans. by Kathleen Davis) ‘Letter to Pammachius’ (395 CE) in Lawrence Venuti (ed.) The Translation Studies Reader 2nd ed. (New York & London: Routledge, 2004) pp. 21–30, p. 23.
7. Grondin Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics (op.cit.) p. 19.
8. Johann Gottfried Herder (trans. by Michael N. Forster) ‘Fragments on Recent German Literature (1767–8)’ in Michael N. Forster (ed.) Herder: Philosophical Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) pp. 33–65. Herder’s phrase in full is: ‘What great advantages would not inevitably accrue to our language if it learned to mold [sic.] itself to the Greek and Latin languages as far as possible and showed its flexibility to the public’s eyes!’ p. 38.
9. The translations are praised by Wilhelm von Humboldt in the preface to his own translation of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon and the ‘foreignizing’ strategy they employ is also praised by Goethe in the West-Easterly Divan (see Lawrence Venuti, ‘Foundational Statements’, op.cit. p. 19). Interestingly, they inspired Hölderlin’s ill received translation of Sophocles which was vehemently attacked by Voss’s son Heinrich (though it was later praised by Heidegger and Walter Benjamin). For more on Hölderlin’s approach to translation in this work see Kathrin H. Rosenfield ‘Getting inside Sophocles’ Mind through Hölderlin’s “Antigone” in New Literary History Vol. 30 No. 1 (Winter 1999) pp. 107–27.
10. Venuti ‘Foundational Statements’ (op.cit.) p. 19.
11. Grondin Sources of Hermeneutics (op.cit). p.ix-x.
12. Grondin Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics (op.cit.) p. 85.
13. Ibid. p. 86.
14. Namely ‘Der Aufbau der geschtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaftern’ [The Construction of the Historical World in the Human Sciences] in Bernhard Groethuysen (ed.) Gesammelte Schriften Vol.7 (Stuttgart: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958).
15. Grondin Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics p. 20.
16. Miguel de Beistegui The New Heidegger (London & New York: Continuum, 2005) p. 23.
17. Which is not to say that these two traditions are wholly separate; Husserl’s phenomenology of Erlebnis owes at least something to Dilthey’s account of descriptive psychology. Heidegger devotes an entire section of Being and Time (§77) to Dilthey (see SZ pp. 397–404 /trans. pp. 449–455).
18. De Beistigui (op.cit.) p. 24.
19. SZ p. 28 /trans. p. 51.
20. SZ p. 32–3 /trans. p. 56.
21. SZ p. 34 /trans. p. 58.
22. In discussions that deal with or cite Hiedegger directly I will maintain the orthographical distinction of ‘Being’ for Sein and ‘being’ for seiend introduced by Macquarrie & Robinson in their translation of Being and Time. Similarly, in discussions that deal with or cite Levinas directly I will maintain the orthographical distinction between ‘other’, for autre and Other for autrui introduced by Lingis in his translations of Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being.
23. This term can be variously translated. James Hulbert translates it as ‘living on’ whereas Joseph Graham uses ‘sur-vival’; as he puts it: ‘Survie: The word means “survival” as well as “afterlife”; its use in the text also brings out the subliminal sense of more life and more than life. The hyphenation of “sur-vival” is an admitted cheat.’ (DTB TN p. 206). I will often use Graham’s ‘cheat’ of sur-vival to emphasize this double meaning.
24. Manchester: St. Jerome, 2001.
25. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
26. OA pp. 159–60 /trans. p. 120.
The Saying of Heidegger
Introduction
Derrida notes on many occasions the impact Heidegger’s work had on his own, even once claiming that he could not have written anything without Heidegger.1 As such, my investigation into translation and the relation with the other, begins with an examination of Heidegger’s thinking on language. In this chapter I do three things—first, I set out the role of language in Heidegger’s work through an exegesis of some of Heidegger’s most pertinent texts on the theme. Second, I demonstrate the manner in which translation in many senses operates as a hodos or ‘way’ into the task of thinking. Finally, I ask whether Heidegger’s thinking of difference is radical enough or whether his thinking remains trapped in some way in a thinking of the same; a question that will return in subsequent chapters. I begin with the account of language in Heidegger’s seminal Being and Time (1927). Here I mark the relation between the truth of Being and language as apophansis. I note in particular the manner in which Heidegger sees writing and repeatability as a threat to the revelatory power of language and the implications of such a view for translation. Between the publication of Being and Time in 1927 and that of the
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 L. Foran, Derrida, the Subject and the Other, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-57758-0_2
‘Letter on Humanism’ in 1947, Heidegger’s thinking underwent a ‘turn’ or Kehre. This turn, as Heidegger is at pains to point out in that latter work; is not a radical departure from Being and Time but rather a development of his thinking. Key to this development is a deeper engagement with language and its relation to Being. It is no coincidence that many of Heidegger’s texts from the 1940s deal with translation and so, in the second section of this chapter, I examine Heidegger’s extended translation of the Anaximander fragment. In the last section I examine what Heidegger terms the essence of language—Saying—and its relation with man as a co-belonging. I claim that while Heidegger consistently emphasizes the as yet ‘unsaid’ of Saying, he falls short of positing an ‘unsayable’ and that this has radical implications for the translatable and untranslatable.
Language in Being and Time
In Being and Time Dasein, ‘that entity that each of us is,’ is described as Being-in-the-world, which is a unitary phenomenon. In order to analyze this unitary phenomenon Heidegger examines the ‘constitutive items in its structure’ which are not to be understood as contents subsequently pieced together, but rather as aspects occurring simultaneously within the whole. These ‘constitutive items’ are the worldhood of the world, the ‘who’ of Dasein and Being-in as such. Within the structure of Being and Time, the principal analysis of language takes place in the broader context of the ‘Being-in as such’ (Division One, Chapter Six).2 Here Heidegger describes the ‘there’ of Dasein’s Being-there (or ‘there-Being’, Da-sein) as state-of-mind (Befindlichkeit), understanding (Verstehen) and discourse (Rede). These three existentialia, or conditions of Dasein’s existence, are co-constitutive and co-occurring. For the sake of space I will focus here on the accounts of understanding and discourse without dwelling on state-of-mind. I will then illustrate the relationship between discourse and the possibility of truth as unconcealment.
Ordinarily when we use the word ‘understanding’ we tend to mean ‘being able’ or ‘competent’ to do something or ‘being a match for it.’ However, for Heidegger this kind of understanding is derived from primordial or existential understanding where that ‘which we have such
competence over is not a “what”, but Being as existing.’3 As an existentiale understanding is a mode of Dasein’s very Being. Dasein, as being-there is always already in a world, this world is disclosed to Dasein as significant and as its (Dasein’s) potentiality-for-Being. This disclosedness of the world is existential understanding which has the structure of projection. ‘Projection’ (Entwurf ) here means that Dasein, in its Being, is always ‘throwing’ possibilities for its Being ahead of itself.4 These possibilities are on the one hand described by Heidegger as definite and on the other hand as purely possible.5 While this may at first seem contradictory it is essential to grasp these two characteristics of the possible together. Since Dasein is Being-in-the-world and the world is always already disclosed to Dasein in a particular way, then Dasein ‘has already got itself into definite possibilities.’6 Dasein either lets these possibilities pass by or ‘seizes upon them,’ this is the modality of Dasein’s Being. Nonetheless, since Dasein is thrown into a world in which other entities already are, and which has already been disclosed in a certain way; these possibilities are pre-structured. There is a ‘range’ of possibilities in terms of what can be disclosed to Dasein at any given time. Dasein’s possibilities are different today than they will be a century from now. What will remain the same, however, is Dasein’s existential structure of Being-possible. The possibilities that Dasein throws ahead of itself can subsequently be ‘seized upon’ and appropriated but within understanding itself, they remain only possibilities. Understanding then, as an existentiale, is the mode of Dasein’s Being in which ‘it is its possibilities as possibilities.’7
‘Sight’, ‘light’ and ‘showing’ play important roles in Being and Time and many of the descriptions of Dasein emphasize the ability to ‘see’ that which is. Dasein’s ability to engage with its environment and the things it finds there in a meaningful way is described as Umsicht generally translated as ‘circumspection’ or literally ‘around sight.’8 Understanding too is described as a type of ‘sight,’ although this is neither ‘just perceiving with the bodily eyes’ nor ‘pure non-sensory awareness of something presentat-hand.’9 Rather, understanding allows Dasein to ‘see’ entities as meaningful through their network of involvements in the world within which Dasein finds itself. Understanding, as which Dasein projects its Being upon possibilities, has its own possibility of developing itself in interpretation. Interpretation is the manner in which understanding appropriates
the possibilities it had previously projected: interpretation is the manner in which understanding ‘becomes itself.’10
The relation between interpretation and understanding is perhaps best understood in terms of what Heidegger calls the ‘fore-structure’ and the ‘as-structure’. Understanding acts as a tripartite fore-structure made up of fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. Fore-having (Vorhabe) is an understanding of the background network of involvements of that which we wish to interpret. Fore-sight (Vorsicht) is an understanding of how to approach the entity in question. Fore-sight ‘takes the first cut’ at what was understood in fore-having in a definite way. An interpretation of an entity has always ‘already decided for a definite way of conceiving’ the entity in question and this way of preconceiving is what Heidegger terms fore-conception (Vorgriff ).11 It can either be drawn from the entity itself or it can force the entity into concepts that do not belong to its way of Being, in either case it reflects Dasein’s anticipated understanding of how the interpretation will terminate.12
Interpretation, emerging out of existential understanding is not the process of ‘throwing a signification’ over something present-at-hand but rather the ‘laying out’ of the involvement of something initially grasped through understanding. It is through interpretation that the ‘as’ structure is made explicit. We ‘understand’ a room when we enter it, interpretation brings particular things within the room ‘close’ to us—seeing the vacant chair as a possibility to be grasped (and sat upon). Further, interpretation feeds into understanding modifying and developing our background understanding through experiences of improving things or putting them to rights.13 This circular movement of background understanding to interpretative articulation and its subsequent return to a background understanding is not, argues Heidegger, to be understood as a vicious circle. Rather, this hermeneutic to-ing and fro-ing provides the positive possibility of knowing and the disclosure of meaning: ‘only Dasein can be meaningful or meaningless.’14 But what exactly is meaning for Heidegger? As understanding, Dasein projects possibilities ahead of itself which are then articulated by interpretation. These possibilities are projected upon meaning which is to be understood as the intelligibility of an entity, its disclosure to Dasein. Since Dasein alone has the form of Being which is a disclosive Being-in-the-world, and since only Dasein has the mode of
Being as understanding; then only Dasein can reveal the meaning of an entity. Meaning is not at all the definition of words in a dictionary but rather the existential framework upon which Dasein as understanding projects and from which interpretation articulates.15
Interpretative articulation, where the fore-structures of understanding are made explicit through the as-structure of interpretation, is not yet assertion but only its possibility. Assertion, understood as the expression of interpretation in a predicative statement, serves three purposes for Heidegger. As derivative of interpretation and understanding, assertion will bring these two modalities ‘more sharply into view’ and reveal the manner in which they can be modified. Secondly, the analysis of assertion reveals a relationship with logos; a crucial concept in ‘ancient ontology’ for defining the Being of entities. Finally, though not unrelated to Heidegger’s second purpose, assertion is related to the problem of truth which is fundamentally ‘coupled with the problem of Being.’16
Heidegger argues that the history of the word logos has been a history of mistranslations: ‘λόγος [logos] gets “translated” (and this means that it is always getting interpreted) as “reason”, “judgment”, “concept”, “definition”, “ground”, or “relationship”.’17 These translations have covered up the fundamental signification of logos as ‘discourse’. Aristotle had already seen this when he described logos as apophainesthai. That is, the logos ‘points something out’, namely what the discourse is about, and thereby allows it to be seen. Further, discourse ‘has the character of speaking –vocal proclamation in words. The λόγος [logos] is φΩνή [phonē], and indeed,
[phonē meta phantasias] – an utterance in which something is sighted in each case.’18 The structural form of apophantic discourse is ‘synthesis’ for Heidegger, although he uses this word in a specific way. Synthesis here is not to be understood as a ‘binding’ of something ‘inside’ the subject to representations of that which is ‘outside’, but is rather the ‘letting something be seen in its togetherness [Beisammen] with something – letting it be seen as something.’19 While Heidegger’s engagement with the term logos develops and in some ways changes in his later work as we will see in subsequent sections of this chapter; this role in revealing the togetherness of beings remains decisive throughout.
Heidegger argues that logos, as that which allows something to be seen, can be either true or false, provided we understand ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’ in
a particular way. The ‘truth’ of logos has been covered-up by an understanding of truth as adequatio intellectus rei or as correspondentia or as conventia. 20 These traditional understandings of truth are rather derived from the primordial signification of truth which is Dasein’s disclosedness of the world. Truth, for Heidegger, is a question of covering-up or lettingbe-seen and this is rooted in Dasein as Being-uncovering which allows an entity to be-uncovered in itself:
These entities become that which has been uncovered. They are ‘true’ in a second sense. What is primarily ‘true’ – that is, uncovering – is Dasein. ‘Truth’ in the second sense does not mean Being-uncovering (uncovering), but Being-uncovered (uncoveredness).21
It is crucial to highlight the emphasis here on the verbal as opposed to the nominal mode. Dasein as truth is uncovering, and as we will see this stress on the processual nature of truth continues throughout Heidegger’s writings. ‘Truth’ for Heidegger is always conceived as a movement, rather than a static judgement. The entities talked about in discourse can either be revealed or hidden in such a way that ‘truth’ as alētheia is the coming out of concealment. In discourse entities must be taken out of their concealment in order to be seen as something unhidden (alethēs). In this way falsity, as pseudesthai would be discourse which covers up, allowing an entity to be seen—but not to be seen in itself or in its essence. Falsity is to allow an entity to be seen as that which it is not. 22 The primary function of logos then, is ‘apophantical discourse’. From discourse emerges the possibility of assertion which does three things at the same time: points out, predicates and communicates.23
An assertion is not a ‘representation’ (Vorstellung) of an entity but rather, as logos, an assertion is apophantic—it points out an entity, disclosing it and allowing it to be seen from itself. Werner Marx states that for Heidegger, Aristotle’s definition of man as a ‘rational animal’ (zōion logon echon) reveals an original understanding of Dasein that Aristotle only partly grasped. That is, Aristotle failed to notice that logos apophanitkos as an alētheuein originates in hermēneia, which arises from ‘circumspective’ understanding.24 In other words, because part of our very Being as Dasein is to understand our world and interpret it (hermēneia), we can
unconceal (alētheuein) things therein and point them out (apophantikos) through language (logos). Aristotle failed to follow this role of language as a ‘pointing out’ back to its ontological foundation in Dasein’s existential constitution.
Assertion is also a predication; it gives the entity that it has pointed out a definite character. As such it narrows our ‘view’ or understanding of the entity. If we say ‘the hammer is too heavy’ we focus on this singular character of the hammer and ‘dim down’ its other characteristics. However, this in no way diminishes the fact that an assertion is apophantic. Rather assertion operates in the double modality of letting an entity be seen while at the same time restricting the view we have of that entity. Finally, assertion is communication. When we make an assertion we share with another Dasein our Being-towards that which we have asserted. If I say to you ‘the hammer is too heavy’ we are together towards the hammer and the hammer is revealed in itself. Heidegger conceives of this sharing of Being-towards as existential communication. What is said then is not the focus here but rather the sharing of a way of Being which reveals our Being-in-the-world as a Being-with. Assertion then as apophantic, predicative and communicative, not only lets an entity be seen, not only gives that entity a definite character, but also reveals Dasein to itself as a Being-in-the-world-with-others.25
Assertion, like interpretation, makes that which is projected in understanding explicit and, again like interpretation, it has fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception as its existential foundations. However, assertion is ‘an extreme case’ and ‘a derivative mode of interpretation’26 for two reasons. Firstly, assertion modifies an entity by taking it out of its involvement or togetherness with other entities in the world. Ordinarily we come across entities ready-to-hand as equipment and interpretatively understand them within their totality of involvements. Once we make an assertion about an entity, for example the hammer, we take that entity out of its involvements and make it present-at-hand. The definite character we assert about the entity, its ‘what’, is only revealed in its being presentat-hand, so that the assertion simultaneously covers-up its readiness-tohand. In this way the ‘as’ structure of interpretation becomes modified, no longer reaching out and articulating the totality of involvements
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clever; the Gordian knot of every question might easily be solved in this way.
Bearing in mind that the question we are now trying to solve is this, “What is the evidence afforded by Geology, as to the history of creation, and in what way does the geological age of the world affect the supposed statement of Scripture, that the world is only 6,000 years old?” I reply thus, and I prefer to use the words of others rather than my own, lest it should be supposed that I am introducing mere novelties of opinion on this subject:—“That the first sentence in Genesis is a simple, independent, all-comprehending axiom to this effect; that matter, elementary or combined, aggregated only or organized, and dependent, sentient and intellectual beings have not existed from eternity, either in self-continuity or in succession: but had a beginning; that their beginning took place by the all-powerful will of One Being, the self-existent, independent and infinite in all perfection, and that the date of that beginning is not made known.”
These are the words of Dr. Pye Smith,[123] of whose name as an authority, both in matters of science and philology, no one need be ashamed.
Dr. Redford says, “We ought to understand Moses as saying, indefinitely, far back, and concealed from us in the mystery of eternal ages, prior to the first moment of mundane time, ‘God created the heavens and the earth.’”
“My firm persuasion is,” says Dr. Harris, “that the first verse of Genesis was designed by the Divine Spirit to announce the absolute origination of the material universe by the Almighty Creator, and that it is so understood in the other parts of Holy Writ; that, passing by an indefinite interval, the second verse describes the state of our planet immediately prior to the Adamic creation; and that the third verse begins the account of the six days’ work.”
Dr. Davidson, in his “Sacred Hermeneutics,” says,—“If I am reminded, in a tone of animadversion, that I am making science, in this instance, the interpreter of Scripture, my reply is, that I am simply making the works of God illustrate His word in a department in which they speak with a distinct and authoritative voice; that it is all the same whether our geological or theological investigations have been prior, if we have not forced the one into accordance with the other. And it may be deserving consideration whether or not the
conduct of those is not open to just animadversion who first undertake to pronounce on the meaning of a passage of Scripture, irrespective of all appropriate evidence, and who then, when that evidence is explored and produced, insist on their à priori interpretation as the only true one.”
But I quote no more: such are some of the eminent theological contributions to this department of science:—satisfactory in this respect, that a fair interpretation of Scripture does not require us to fix any precise date, much less the inconsiderable one of six thousand years, as the period of the earth’s formation.
Geology teaches the same thing.—Of the various formations that compose the earth’s trust, to the ascertained extent of ten miles, suppose we select two,—the Old Red Sandstone and the Chalk formations. Laborious and scientific men have been at the pains to calculate the gradual increase of some of these now proceeding deposits,—such as the Deltas, in course of formation at the mouth of the Nile, and at the gorges of the Ganges; and they find that the progress of the depth of increase is exceedingly small,—probably not more than a foot in many years. Mr. Maculloch, a name standing very high for accurate investigation, states, from his own observation, that a particular Scottish lake does not form its deposit at the bottom, and hence raise its level, at the rate of more than halfa-foot in a century; and he observes, that the country surrounding that lake presents a vertical depth of far more than 3,000 feet, in the single series of the Old Red Sandstone formation; and no sound geologist, he hence concludes, will, therefore, accuse the computer of exceeding, if, upon the same ratio as the contiguous lake, he allows 600,000 years for the production of this series of rock alone.
A last instance which may here be adduced, of the apparent length of time required for the construction of a particular rock, offers itself in the Chalk formation. The enormous masses of this rock, presenting their tall white precipices in such simple grandeur to our view, might well excite our astonishment at the periods which would seem needful for their collection and deposition, even if they were mere inorganic concretions of calcareous matter. But what shall we say when the investigations of the microscope have lately revealed to us that these mountains of chalk, instead of being formed of mere inert matter, are, on the contrary, mighty congeries of decayed
animal life,—the white apparent particles, of which the chalk masses are composed, being each grain a well-defined organized being, in form still so perfect, their shells so entire, and all their characteristics so discoverable, as to cause no doubt to naturalists as to the species in the animal economy to which they belonged. How justly does Sir Charles Lyell, who in his “Elements” records at length this surprising discovery, exclaim,—
“The dust we tread upon was once alive!”
“Look at the lofty precipices which lay naked a slight section of the Chalk at the Culvers, or the Needles in the Isle of Wight, or the still loftier Shakspeare Cliff at Dover, and let the mind form a conception, if it can, of the countless generations of these minutest of living creatures it must have required to build up, from their decayed bodies and their shelly exuviæ, layer on layer, those towering masses thus brought to our view. Who shall dare to compute the time for this entire elaboration? The contemplation almost advances us a step towards forming a conception of infinitude.”[124]
I need not dwell longer on the antiquity of the globe:—Geology and Scripture present no conflicting testimonies on this subject. Our interpretation of Scripture has, undoubtedly, been modified; but the living Word itself abideth, in all its grandeur and purity, for ever. And “the time is not far distant when the high antiquity of the globe will be regarded as no more opposed to the Bible than the earth’s revolution round the sun and on its axis. Soon shall the horizon, where geology and revelation meet, be cleared of every cloud, and present only an unbroken and magnificent circle of truth.”[125]
The reader shall not be detained so long on the second point of inquiry, which is
II. “Was death introduced into the world before the fall of man? and if it was, how are the statements of Scripture, on this question, to be explained?” To this I have replied by anticipation, that, in my opinion, death, upon a most extensive scale, prevailed upon the earth, and in the waters that are under the earth, countless ages before the creation of man. Into the proof of this position allow me to go very briefly, although I am well aware that I run the risk of incurring the charge of heterodoxy, when I state my full conviction, that death, as well as the world, was pre-Adamite. The general
impression is the contrary; but general impressions are not always right:—“general impression” is a very unsubstantial ghost to deal with, very like that cant phrase we spoke of at the beginning of this lecture,—“the intelligence of the age.” “General impression” has it, that death was not pre-Adamite; that there was no death before the fall; and that, to say the contrary, is, at least, to tread on very dangerous ground. In vain does Geology—“now happily a true science, founded on facts, and reduced to the dominion of definite laws”—lay bare the Silurian rocks, and discover even there extinct forms of life in exquisitely beautiful preservation. In vain does Geology, after showing us the fossil trilobite and coral, unfold the volume of the Old Red Sandstone, and show us there the fossil remains of fish—so perfect that we might imagine them casts rather than fossils. In vain does Geology open its vast Oolitic system, and show us there other forms of extinct life in fossil insects, tortoises, mighty saurians, and huge iguanodons. In vain does Geology lay bare the Chalk, with its marine deposits; and the Tertiary formation, with its enormous theroid mammalia, far surpassing in size the largest animals we are acquainted with. In vain are all these fossil remains exhibited imbedded in the earth; and in vain do we search, amidst all these, for one fossil remain of man, or one fossil vestige of man’s works. The easy, the cheap, the unreflective answer is, “Oh! these things were created there, or else Noah’s flood left them there.”
Of course, we can fall back upon a miracle as having done all this; but to have recourse to miracles when no miracle is recorded, is just to shake our faith in that all-inspired testimony, that supernatural Book, the existence of which is the great miracle of time. But there are the fossils! How did they come there if the forms of animal life, once inhabiting those remains, had not previously lived and died? Created! What? Created fossils? Then why not, when the Almighty created man, did he not create, at the same time, some skeletons of man, and place them in the earth, as he put skeletons of trilobites, fishes, reptiles, and mammals there? Our common sense and reverence both reject the idea. As to the puerile notion that Noah’s flood put them there, did not Noah’s flood overwhelm man as well as animals? and as the bones of man are as durable as the bones of animals, how is it that we never meet with a fossil human skull or thigh bone, or house?
We believe that death was a part of the divine plan of God’s creation; that death is a law of all organic life—a necessary law and a most benevolent provision; that the living structure of all animals derives its substance from dead organic matter. We believe that, altogether apart from human sin, preceding and successive generations must be the order of being; for if there were no death, animals would soon pass beyond the limit of provision sufficient for nutritive support, or of localities for suitable habitations. We believe that if there had been no death prior to man’s sin, it would involve the supposition that all animals were herbivorous; whereas, even the little ladybird cannot live without its meal of aphides; and, so believing, we find our faith in Scripture deepened when, seeing on every hand the extensive proofs of death, we find man, the moment he lost his lordship and proud eminence, and reduced himself voluntarily to the condition of animalism, immediately brought penally within the influence of that law of death, whose existence he must have recognised in the death of animals from the first day of his creation.
Does any one reply, “This is contrary to Scripture?” I ask them what Scripture teaches that the death of animals is the result of man’s sin?—rather would not Scripture sanction the thought that death was a part of the divine plan of God’s creation, and that the certainty of man’s transgression was the reason for giving this constitution to nature? True, Milton sings, in his noble poem, that will live as long as the English language lives—
“Of man ’ s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe: ”
but we are not obliged to call the Paradise Lost our Bible; or to quote Milton as a physiological authority, although the prevalence of the opinion that death was not pre-Adamite, and a good deal of theology besides, is more of Miltonic than of Scripture teaching.
I leave this branch of my subject far before it is exhausted: so far from that, each of the three points enumerated might easily be expanded into a lecture; and I can only hope that my brevity in treating these topics will not be misconstrued into a desire to shirk any of the difficulties with which their investigation is surrounded.
III. I come, lastly, to the question of the Noachian Deluge, and shall again repeat my own words: “What was the character of the Noachian Deluge?—was it partial or universal? and what are the apparent discrepancies, in this case, between science and the Bible?” And I have added to this my belief that the Noachian Deluge was quite partial in its character, and very temporary in its duration: that it destroyed only those animals that were found in those parts of the earth habitable by man, and that it has not left a single shell or fossil, or any drift boulders or pebbles, or any other remains that may be traced to its action.
Very briefly we shall try and prove this; and perhaps the most popular way will be the best remembered,—only that the reader will bear in mind that this little book does not pretend to exhaust the subject, but only to realize the idea expressed at the beginning of this chapter. Presuming, that all have in their recollection the Scriptural account of the Noachian Deluge, instead of quoting words with which all are familiar, I will only remark, as the basis of my illustrations, that rain descended, and probably the ocean overflowed, for forty days; that the waters lay upon the land, and covered them one hundred and fifty days; that at the end of that time they began to subside, and that in twelve months and twenty-seven days they were gone from the face of the earth, and the Noachian family liberated from the ark.
The question is, was this flood universal, and were all kinds of animals preserved in the ark? To which my answer, as involving my belief, is this, that the flood was local, and that only the animals peculiar to Armenia were provided for in Noah’s ark.
“Oh! but the Bible says it was universal,” says everybody. Yes; but that, you know, is just the question between us. The terms “all the earth” seem to imply universality, but they do not necessarily involve this. “All countries came to Egypt to buy corn;” certainly not all the world literally, but all the surrounding countries. So there were once dwelling at Jerusalem devout Jews “from out of every nation under heaven;” but not literally out of every nation, for the names of the nations are immediately given, and we find the nations to have been a few between Egypt and the Black Sea, and between Italy and Palestine. There are many other illustrations of a similar character: these will suffice: I only adduce these to show that at the beginning
Scripture does not oblige us to consider “all” as meaning “every one;” or to understand literally “all the inhabitants of the earth” as meaning every creature.
Now, looking at the structure and composition of the earth’s crust, especially its fossiliferous rocks, I am driven to one of three conclusions, each of them involving difficulty, I acknowledge, but the one that involves the least is, of course, the most preferable. Either I must admit—
1. That the fossils in these rocks were all deposited in order and in succession, without injury, through a crust of rocks ten miles in thickness, during twelve months’ violent diluvial action:
2. Or that they were all deposited there during the 15,000 or 16,000 years that had elapsed since the creation of man prior to the Deluge; that is, supposing the creation of man and the creation of the earth to have been synchronous. Or, lastly, which theory I accept—
3. That the date of the earth’s physical being is unknown to us, and that the fossiliferous rocks were deposited in decades of ages before the creation of man.
For, on the other hand, let us suppose the flood to have been universal, in the strict and literal sense of the term; then let me suggest some of the consequences and difficulties of such a theory.
1. One consequence would be that some remains of man or of his works would have been found; but nothing of this kind has occurred. Even Armenia has been geologically examined, and no human remains have been found; and surely man’s bones would last as long as the shells of a trilobite or terebratula?
2. And, secondly, the organic remains, the fossils themselves, would have been found confusedly heaped together; whereas, the remains in the crust of the earth are as carefully arranged as the contents of a well-ordered cabinet. We know always to a certainty what fossils will be found in any rock before we examine that rock.
3. Besides which, some, at least, of the organic remains found ought to correspond with existing beings and species: yet the contrary is the case, except only a few fossils found near the surface of the earth, in that portion of the earth’s crust occupied by the tertiary system.
Nor is this all. Consider the vast difficulties the universal flood theory has to contend with, all of which are removed by the theory we have adopted.
1. There is the quantity of water required. If all over the earth the water rose twenty-two feet six inches above the tops of the highest mountains, the quantity of water required would be eight times the whole quantity of water now existing. Where all this could have come from first and gone to afterwards, are prodigious stumbling-blocks. Of course we can resort to miracle; but this is not the way to get rid of difficulty in a manly and honest spirit.
2. Then consider the number of animals the ark must have contained. There are 1,000 species of mammalia, 5,000 species of birds, 2,000 species of reptiles, and 120,000 well-ascertained and distinct species of insects. Do we pretend that all these were housed and fed for nearly thirteen months in a vessel that was only 450 feet long, 75 feet broad, and 45 feet high; and that such a vessel contained room for them, and their food, besides that of man, for such a long period. The little toys of Noah’s ark are certainly pretty, but very mischievous, and most of the popular notions of the flood have grown up from our nurseries as much from the use of this toy in this case, as from the reading of Paradise Lost in the other: and the result is, the Bible is made responsible for it all.
3. Then consider the subsequent distribution of animals: the polar bear and the tropical elephant, the ferocious tiger and a young fawn, going out together in order, and without violence: of course we can suppose another miracle to repress passions and violence. Besides which, in addition to the fauna, the animal kingdom, we must ask what became of the flora or vegetable kingdom during this period, if the flood were universal? We have at least twenty-five botanical provinces, with their peculiar and numberless farms of vegetable life; what became of them? Were they preserved in the ark, or under the water?—for such questions must be answered by those who charge us with inconsistency in attempting to reconcile the facts of science with the words of Scripture. And as a last difficulty, (suggested first, I believe, by Dr. Pye Smith, and which I shall therefore state in his words, lest it should seem that I use “plainness of speech,”) let us look at the descent from Ararat out of the ark, into Armenia, with all these animals, birds, insects, plants and trees. “That mountain is
17,000 feet high, and perpetual snow covers about 5,000 feet from its summit. If the water rose, at its liquid temperature, so as to overflow that summit, the snows and icy masses would be melted; and on the retiring of the flood, the exposed mountain would present its pinnacles and ridges, dreadful precipices of naked rock, adown which the four men and the four women, and with hardly any exception the quadrupeds, would have found it utterly impossible to descend. To provide against this difficulty, to prevent them from being dashed to pieces, must we again suppose a miracle? Must we conceive of the human beings and the animals as transported through the air to the more level regions below; or that, by a miracle equally grand, they were enabled to glide unhurt adown the wet and slippery faces of the rock?”
Such are some of the difficulties and some of the consequences that must flow from an acceptance of any other theory than the one I have proposed: that the flood was partial in its character, extending only over the habitable parts of the earth; and that it was so temporary in its character as not to have left a single trace of its influence visible on rock or fossil.
I have thus endeavoured to suggest points of reconciliation between the accepted facts of Geology and the recorded statements of Scripture; and if this slight contribution be accepted as an aid to faith, and a proof of candour on my part to meet those who linger on the border land of doubt, my purpose will be fully answered.
Let me add, in the words of Chenevix Trench—words uttered in the University of Cambridge not long since: “May we in a troubled time be helped to feel something of the grandeur of the Scriptures, and so of the manifold wisdom of that Eternal Spirit by whom it came; and then petty objections and isolated difficulties, though they were multiplied as the sands of the sea, will not harass us. For what are they all to the fact, that for more than 1,000 years the Bible collectively taken, has gone hand in hand with civilization, science, law—in short, with the moral and intellectual cultivation of the species, always supporting and often leading the way? Its very presence as a believed book, has rendered the nations emphatically a chosen race; and this, too, in exact proportion as it is more or less generally studied. Of those nations which in the highest degree enjoy its influences, it is not too much to affirm that the differences, public
and private, physical, moral, and intellectual, are only less than what might be expected from a diversity in species. Good and holy men, and the best and wisest of mankind, the kingly spirits of history enthroned in the hearts of mighty nations, have borne witness to its influence, and have declared it to be beyond compare the most perfect instrument and the only adequate organ of humanity: the organ and instrument of all the gifts, powers, and tendencies, by which the individual is privileged to rise beyond himself, to leave behind and lose his dividual phantom self, in order to find his true self in that distinctness where no division can be,—in the Eternal I , the ever-living W , of whom all the elect, from the archangel before the throne to the poor wrestler with the Spirit until the breaking of day, are but the fainter and still fainter echoes.”
M. CLAY, PRINTER HEAD STREET HILL.
1. Whewell’s Astronomy and Physics, p. 48.
2. From παλαιός, ancient, and ζωόν, life; ancient-life period.
3. Hughes, Physical Geography. 3d ed. p. 21.
4. Hughes, Physical Geog. p. 22.
5. Dr. Pye Smith.
6. As Chimborazo in South America, 21,414; Ararat, 16,000; Dhawalagiri, in the Himalayas, 28,000 feet above the level of the sea; compared with which what a mole-hill is Vesuvius, only 8,947 feet; or Blue Mountain Peak, 8,600, or even Mont Blanc, that monarch of mountains, which is 15,816 feet above the sea!
7. Hughes, p. 16.
8. Chambers’ Rudiments of Geology, p. 71.
9. These wells are so frequently spoken of as to need no explanation, further than to remind the reader that they are so called from having been first introduced in the province of Artois, the ancient Artesium in France.
10. The deepest Artesian well is the famous one in the Plaine de Grenelle, Paris. This well yields 516 gallons a minute; its temperature is 81° Fahr.; and its depth is nearly 1,800 feet.
11. How truly hieroglyphics sacred carvings; (ieros, sacred, glupho, I carve;) and in this sense there is a holier meaning than Shakspeare could have dreamt of in his well-known lines, when applied by the geologist to his researches:
“And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
12. And I may say, my friend also, to whom, during my residence in Jamaica, I was frequently indebted for contributions on natural history to the Jamaica Friendly Instructor, of which I was Editor.
13. A Naturalist’s Sojourn in Jamaica, by P. H. Gosse, Esq. pp. 496–7.
14. So called because of its grained or granular appearance.
15. First brought from Syene, in Egypt.
16. Feld-spar, written also felspar, a compound of feld, field, and spar.
17. See Ansted’s Ancient World, p. 21.
18. Memnon, or Ramesis. This famous head is in the British Museum; the body is of greenstone, the head of syenite, and the bust one continuous mass.
19. From dis and integer. The separation of the whole parts of a rock, without chemical action, by means of the light, the air, or the rain, is called disintegration.
20. Lieut. Portlock on Geology, p. 93.
21. Ansted’s Geology, Descriptive and Practical, vol. ii. pp. 290, 291.
22. Ansted’s Geology, p. 291.
23. As the ancients did not know or use the compound metal brass, though bronze was common amongst them, we must in this verse, and all others in which the word “brass” is used, understand it to mean copper. Hughes’ Scripture Geography, Art. Geology of Palestine, p. 133.
24. Murray’s Hand-book for Cornwall, p. 199.
25. Ansted, vol. ii. p. 418.
26. Whewell, Anniversary Address to Geol. Society, 1839.
27. In Memoriam.
28. Dr. Pye Smith says 140,000 feet.
29. See a valuable map of fossils published by the Christian Knowledge Society.
30. Trilobite: treis, three, and lobos, a lobe; having three lobes.
31. Bridgewater Treatise, vol. i. p. 396.
32. A fossil shell allied to the Argonauta and Carinaria.
33. “Man has no tail, quantum mutatus; but the notion of a much-ridiculed philosopher of the last century is not altogether without foundation; for the bones of a caudal extremity exist in an undeveloped state in the os coccygis of the human subject.” Poor man! Vestiges of Creation, p. 71.
34. Sedgwick, p. 216, “On the Studies of the University of Cambridge.”
35. “My School and Schoolmasters,” by Hugh Miller.
36. “Old Red Sandstone; or, New Walks in an Old Field;” by Hugh Miller, p. 48.
37. “By mind, by hand, and by hammer.”
38. “Old Red Sandstone,” p. 66.
39. Ichthyolite: ichthus, a fish, lithos, a stone: fossil fish, or the figure or impression of a fish in the rock.
40. “Old Red Sandstone,” pp. 41, 42.
41. “Old Red Sandstone,” p. 69.
42. From akanthos, a thorn, and pterugion, the fin.
43. From malakos, soft, and pterugion, the fin.
44. 1. Ganoid, from ganos, splendour, because the scales are coated with a bright enamel.
45. 2. Placoid, from plax, a plate; sometimes large, sometimes reduced to a point; e.g. shark.
46. 3. Ctenoid, from kteis (gen. ktenos, a comb); scales jagged like a comb.
47. 4. Cycloid, from kuklos, a circle; scales smooth and simple: e.g. salmon, &c.
48. From kephalē, the head; aspis, a buckler.
49. Coccosteus, from kokkos, a berry, and osteon, a bone.
50. “Old Red Sandstone,” p. 86.
51. Pterichthys: pteron, a wing, and ichthus, a fish.
52. “Old Red Sandstone,” pp. 80, 81.
53. Osteolepis: osteon, a bone, and lepis, a scale.
54. Operculum, the flap which covers the gill.
55. “Old Red Sandstone,” p. 111.
56. “Vast quantities:” let any reader go and turn over the non-bituminous shale lying on the waste heaps of every coalpit, and he will see that this is no exaggeration.
57. Capillus Veneris.
58. Corruption of arrière-dos, a fire-place. See a view and description of one in “A Visit to Penshurst,” in Howitt’s “Visits to Remarkable Places,” Second Series.
59. Juicy and soft, as peas, beans, plantains, bananas, &c.
60. “Ancient World,” pp. 76, 77.
61. This may seem strange at first; but I have journeyed through tropical forests that realized completely this sketch, so far as stillness and silence are concerned. A modern and most accomplished naturalist says of a Jamaica virgin forest, “Animal life is almost unseen; the solitude is scarcely broken by the voices of birds, except that now and then the rain-bird or the hunter (large cat-tailed cuckoos that love the shade) sound their startling rattle, or the mountain partridge utters those mournful cooings which are like the moans of a dying man. ” Gosse’s Jamaica, p. 198.
62. From κάλαμος (calamus), a reed.
63. Ansted’s “Ancient World,” p. 82.
64. Mesozoic: i.e. middle life period; mesos, middle, zoos, life.
65. The Religious Tract Society.
66. Lyell’s “Manual of Elementary Geology.” Postscript, p. 13.
67. Ansted’s Geology, vol i. p. 306.
68. Ichnites; from ichnon, a footstep, and eidos, like.
69. Ornithos, a bird, and ichnon.
70. Marsupial, from marsupium, a pouch; animals of the fourth order of Cuvier, that have a pouch in which the young are carried.
71. Batrachian, from batrachos, a frog; animals in Cuvier’s fourth class of reptiles.
72. Cheir, the hand, therion, a wild beast; a wild beast with a foot like a hand.
73. From labyrinthus, a labyrinth, and odous, a tooth; so called from the labyrinthine structure of the tooth.
74. In some cases we find, corresponding to a set of footmarks, a continuous furrow, presumed to be the impression of a tail dragged along the sand by the animal while walking.
75. Ansted’s Ancient World, pp. 125–127.
76. Knight’s Cyclopædia of Arts, &c.
77. Quarterly Review, May, 1852. Article on Roger de Coverley.
78. This is a corruption, we are inclined to think, of the word “layers;” one of those provincial corruptions of the Queen’s English that get stereotyped.
79. Buckland’s Bridgewater Treatise. pp. 351, 352.
80. A fossil bivalve, allied to the oyster, and very abundant in the secondary strata.
81. Belemnite, from belemnos, a dart, and so called from its arrow-headed shape.
82. Saurian, from sauros, a lizard, the name by which the great family of lizards is designated.
83. From ichthus, a fish, and sauros, a lizard; so called from its resemblance to both.
84. Heteroclite; heteros, another, and klitos, inclining; a word applied to any thing or person deviating from common forms.
85. Very unlike the alligator, whose eyes are placed at a considerable distance behind the nose.
86. From pleiōn, more, and sauros, a lizard; because it is more like a lizard than the Ichthyosaurus.
87. Mantel’s Fossils of the British Museum, p. 341.
88. This formation is sometimes called the Jurassic system.
89. Lyell’s Manual of Elementary Geology, p. 12, ed. 1852.
90. “So vast an expanse!” Mr. Darwin traced coral reefs in the Pacific, 4,000 miles long and 600 broad. Between the coasts of Malabar and Madagascar there is a chain of coral reefs, called the Maldives and Laccadives, 480 miles long and 50 miles wide. On the east coast of Australia there is an unbroken reef of 350 miles long; and between Australia and Guinea, coral reefs extend 700 miles in length. Truly the coral animals, like the “conies,” are a “feeble folk,” but their habitations survive our proudest monuments.
91. Hugh Miller’s First Impressions, pp. 203, 204.
92. Brash is s Wiltshire word for short or brittle; and thus a quick-tempered, irritable person, is said to have a brashy temper.
93. Geology for Beginners (Weale’s Series), p. 147.
94. Juke’s Popular Geology, pp. 42–44.
95. From krinos, a lily, and eidos, like; lily-shaped animals of the Radiated division, forming a link between the animal and vegetable world.
96. From trochos, a wheel; wheel-shaped crinoideans.
97. From pteron, a wing, and dactulos, a finger; the wing-fingered animal.
98. The term Weald or Wold is the old Saxon for our present Wood; and now, altered by pronunciation, is found in connexion with many words and names of places: e.g. Waltham (Weald-ham), the wood house or home; Walthamstow, the wood house store, and so on. Thus it is that words are “fossil poetry.”
99. Alison’s description of South America, in History of Europe (Article, South American Revolution); vol. viii.
100. “Our disposition is, and has been, not to multiply miracles after the sort in which this has been done by many more zealous than wise friends of revelation. In all cases we allow the miracle without question, which is distinctly claimed to be such in the Scriptures, and where the circumstances clearly indicate that a miracle was necessary, we say ‘ necessary, ’ because we are persuaded that the Almighty has almost invariably chosen to act through natural agencies, and under the laws which he has imposed on nature, whenever they are adequate to produce the required result. We believe it is one of the beautiful peculiarities of the Bible, that it has none of those gratuitous and barren wonders, which form the mass of the pretended miracles which the various systems of false religion produce.... For our own part, we do not wish to hear of small miracles, which leave us doubtful whether there be any miracle at all. If we are to have miracles, let them be decidedly miraculous, and let not our veneration for the Divine character be offended by exhibitions of the Almighty, as laying bare his holy arm to remove the small remaining difficulty which theorists leave him to execute.” Dr. Kitto’s Biblical History of Palestine.
101. We have a fine specimen before us which we brought from Demerara, answering well to Gosse’s description of the iguana found in Jamaica. “In the eastern parts of the island the great iguana (Cyclura lophoma), with its dorsal crest, like the teeth of a saw, running all down its back, may be seen lying out on the branches of the trees, or playing bo-peep from a hole in the trunk.” It is considered a great delicacy by many, but it never seemed Christian food to us, and we never ventured to provoke our palate with a taste.
102. Enaliosaurians are sea lizards, such as those found in the Lias; and deinosaurians are terrible lizards, such as those found in the Wealden.
103. Ansted’s Ancient World, pp. 164–168.
104. Just published by Bohn, in his valuable “Scientific Library;” a marvel of cheapness and value.
105. Since writing the above we have met with the following, which proves that this origin of chalk is not so fabulous as some think it: “Lieut. Nelson, Mr. Dance, and others have shown, that the waste and débris derived from coral reefs produces a substance exactly resembling chalk. I can corroborate this assertion from my own observations, both on some very white chalky limestones in Java and the neighbouring islands, which I believe to be nothing else than raised fringing coral reefs, and on the substance brought up by the lead over some hundreds of miles in the Indian Archipelago, and along the north-east coast of Australia, and the coral sea of Flinders,” Juke’s Physical Geology, p. 263.
106. We take the origin of the word Folkstone to mean, that that old town was once built of the brick that may be made of the galt: it was the folk’s-stone.
107. “The Religion of Geology,” &c., by E. Hitchcock, LL.D. &c. p. 70.
108. Mantell’s “Geological Excursions,” p. 145.
109. Richardson, p. 391.
110. Under-borne rocks; upo, below, and ginomai, to be formed.
111. Middle life period: mesos, middle, and zoos, life.
112. Recent-life period: kainŏs, recent, and zoos, life.
113. Juke’s Practical Geology, p. 265.
114. Lyell’s Manual of Geology, pp. 97, 98.
115. Ansted’s Geology, vol. ii. p. 14.
116. Even Hitchcock’s good book is sadly disfigured and damaged, by trying to make geology prove too much. How can geology teach or suggest sin and the resurrection?
117. British Quarterly, Feb. 1852.
118. Owen’s British Fossil Mammals and Birds, p. 255.
119. Mantell, pp. 477–479.
120. Mantell, p. 471.
121. The skeleton is not more than 150 years old, and is probably one of an Indian who fell in war; and has been covered with carbonate of lime, held in solution in some spring.
122. Hugh Miller’s “First Impressions of England and its People,” p. 362.
123. No sooner did geology give signs of being able to speak from her subterranean abode, and say something new about the history of this old world, than Dr. Smith was among the foremost of the geologists, intent upon the interpretation of these mysterious, and at first incoherent sounds. At times the sounds seemed unscriptural, but his faith never failed; at other times it seemed in confirmation of Scripture, and he was filled with delight. There were sepulchres older than what he had accounted the era of death, and he must solve the mystery. Mineralogy, to which from his youth he had given considerable attention, became to him history more ancient than that of Moses, and poetry more fascinating than that of Homer. His minerals became books of wonderful tales; his fossils, before riddles of nature, the pictures of things in ancient worlds. The earth was a land of monuments, and the rock which before seemed nothing more than the solid masonry of the foundation on which men might build their dwellings, became the enduring chronicle of the millions of years in which extinct ages had risen, flourished and decayed. From that time he suffered no discovery of the geologists to escape his attention; and every valuable book upon the subject in English, German, or French, contributed its supplies to mitigate his insatiate craving after further information.
Dr. Smith had another reason for devoting a large proportion of his time to geological studies. The new science had something to say about Holy Scripture. It threatened, as many understood its first ambiguous words, to contradict the book of Genesis.
Whatever affected theology was of supreme importance in the estimation of the Homerton professor. Having full confidence in the truth of God’s word, he was sure that nature and revelation, however they appeared to superficial observers, could not be really at variance. In that confidence he patiently listened to every word the new science had to say about the creation of the world. To him belongs the honour, in the opinion of the most eminent geologists, of having relieved their science of every appearance of hostility to Scripture. Of his book on this subject, Dr. Mantell said, “It is, indeed, the dove sent out from the ark of modern geology; and it has returned with the olive branch in its mouth.” British Quarterly, Jan. 1854. Art. D . P S .
124. Gray’s Antiquity of the Globe, pp. 57–59.
125. Hitchcock, p. 70.
August, 1854.
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