Читать книгу Modern cosmogonies онлайн

13 страница из 31

Mystical cosmogonies belong to the period of ethnic infancy. They have not ceased to be current. World-fables must be invented wherever the obscure wonder of savage communities is excited by the mysterious spectacle of Nature's apparently designed operations and irresistible power. But they were superseded among peoples in the van of progress by philosophic cosmogonies at the epoch when Thales began to diffuse throughout Ionia the wisdom of the Egyptians and Chaldeans. Schemes, however, such as he and his successors elaborated result from the discourse of reason unfettered by any close attention to facts. They have been mostly wrought out by men who, in Delambre's words, 'Dissertaient à perte de vue, sans jamais rien observer, et sans jamais rien calculer.'

The insubstantial fabrics reared by them were then fatally discredited by Baconian methods and the Newtonian reign of law; they survived—forms of thought die slowly—but insecurely, with noticeably undermined foundations. Swedenborg was the last eminent reactionary, and his restoration in 1734 of the Cartesian gyrating medium as the motive power of the solar machine was a palpable failure. It could not be otherwise, since its inceptive idea had grown superannuated. The modern era of scientific cosmogony was at hand.