THE STORM - Unabridged. Даниэль Дефо
to search after what our maker has not hid, only covered with a thin veil of natural obscurity, and which upon our search is plain to be read, seems to be justified by the very nature of the thing, and the possibility of the demonstration is an argument to prove the lawfulness of the inquiry.
The design of this digression, is, in short, that as where nature is plain to be searched into, and demonstration easy, the philosopher is allowed to seek for it; so where God has, as it were, laid his hand upon any place, and nature presents us with an universal blank, we are therein led as naturally to recognise the infinite wisdom and power of the God of nature, as David was in the texts before quoted.
And this is the case here; the winds are some of those inscrutables of nature, in which human search has not yet been able to arrive at any demonstration.
Mr. Bohun's Opinion.
“The winds,” says the learned Mr. Bohun, “are generated in the intermediate space between the earth and the clouds, either by rarefaction or repletion, and sometimes haply by pressure of clouds, elastical virtue of the air, &c., from the earth or seas, as by submarine or subterraneal eruption or decension or refelition from the middle region.”
All this, though no man is more capable of the inquiry than this gentleman, yet to the demonstration of the thing, amounts to no more than what we had before, and still leaves it as abstruse and cloudy to our understanding as ever. Not but that I think myself bound in duty to science in general, to pay a just debt to the excellency of philosophical study, in which I am a mere junior, and hardly any more than an admirer; and therefore I cannot but allow that the demonstrations made of rarefaction and dilation are extraordinary; and that by fire and water wind may be raised in a close room, as the Lord Verulam made experiment in the case of his feathers.
But that, therefore, all the causes of wind are from the influences of the sun upon vaporous matter first exhaled, which being dilated are obliged to possess themselves of more space than before, and consequently make the particles fly before them; this does not seem to be a sufficient demonstration of wind: for this, to my weak apprehension, would rather make a blow like gunpowder than a rushing forward; at best this is indeed a probable conjecture, but admits not of demonstration equal to other phenomena in nature.
And this is all I am upon, viz., that this case has not equal proofs of the natural causes of it that we meet with in other cases: the Scripture seems to confirm this, when it says, in one place, “He holds the wind in his hand;” as if he should mean, other things are left to the common discoveries of natural inquiry, but this is a thing he holds in his own hand, and has concealed it from the search of the most diligent and piercing understanding: this is farther confirmed by the words of our Saviour, “The wind blows where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but knowest not whence it Cometh”; it is plainly expressed to signify that the causes of the wind are not equally discovered by natural inquiry as the rest of nature is.
If I would carry this matter on, and travel into the seas, and mountains of America, where the mansones, the trade-winds, the sea-breezes and such winds as we have little knowledge of, are more common; it would yet more plainly appear ‘that we hear the sound, but know not from whence they come.’
Nor is the cause of their motion parallel to the surface of the earth, a less mystery than their real original, or the difficulty of their generation: and though some people have been forward to prove the gravity of the particles must cause the motion to be oblique; it is plain it must be very little so, or else navigation would be impracticable, and in extraordinary cases where the pressure above is perpendicular, it has been fatal to ships, houses, &c., and would have terrible effects in the world, if it should more frequently be so.
From this I draw only this conclusion, that the winds are a part of the works of God by nature, in which he has been pleased to communicate less of demonstration to us than in other cases; that the particulars more directly lead us to speculations, and refer us to infinite power more than the other parts of nature does.
That the wind is more expressive and adapted to his immediate power, as he is pleased to exert it in extraordinary cases in the world.
That it is more frequently made use of as the executioner of his judgments in the world, and extraordinary events are brought to pass by it.
From these three heads we are brought down directly to speak of the particular storm before us; viz., the greatest, the longest in duration, the widest in extent, of all the tempests and storms that history gives any account of since the beginning of time.
Storms recorded in scripture.
In the farther conduct of the story, it will not be foreign to the purpose, nor unprofitable to the reader, to review the histories of ancient time and remote countries, and examine in what manner God has been pleased to execute his judgments by storms and tempests; what kind of things they, have been, and what the consequences of them; and then bring down the parallel to the dreadful instance before us.
We read in the Scripture of two great storms; one past and the other to come. Whether the last be not allegorical rather than prophetical, I shall not busy myself to determine.
The first was when God caused a strong wind to blow upon the face of the deluged world; to put a stop to the flood, and reduce the waters to their proper channel.
I wish our naturalists would explain that wind to us, and tell us which way it blew, or how it is possible that any direct wind could cause the waters to ebb; for to me it seems, that the deluge being universal, that wind which blew the waters from one part must blow them up in another.
Whether it was not some perpendicular gusts that might by their force separate the water and the earth, and cause the water driven from off the land to subside by its own pressure.
I shall dive no farther into that mysterious deluge, which has some things in it which recommend the story rather to our faith than demonstration.
The other storm I find in the Scripture is that “ God shall reign upon the wicked, plagues, fire, and a horrible tempest.” What this shall be, we wait to know; and happy are they who shall be secured from its effects.
Histories are full of instances of violent tempests and storms in sundry particular places. What that was, which mingled with such violent lightnings set the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah on fire, remains to me yet undecided: nor am I satisfied the effect it had on the waters of the lake, which are to this day called the Dead Sea, are such as some fabulous authors have related, and as travellers take upon them to say.
Chapter II
Of the opinion of the Ancients, that this island was more subject to storms than other parts of the world.
I am not of opinion with the early ages of the world, when these islands were first known, that they were the most terrible of any part of the world for storms and tempests.
Cambden tells us, the Britons were distinguished from all the world by unpassable seas and terrible northern winds, which made the Albion shores dreadful to sailors; and this part of the world was therefore reckoned’ the utmost bounds of the northern known land, beyond which none had ever sailed: and quotes a great variety of ancient authors to this purpose; some of which I present as a specimen.
Et Penitus Toto Divisos Orbe Britannos.
Britain’s disjoined from all the well known world.
Quem Littus adusta,
Horrescit Lybiae ratibusq; Impervia 1 — Thule. Ignotumq; Fretum. — Claud.
And if the notions the world then had were true, it would be very absurd for us who live here to pretend miracles in any extremes of tempests; since by what the poets of