The Faces of Nature in Enlightenment Europe

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The Faces of Nature

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Concepts & Symboles du Dix-huitieme Siecle Européen Concepts dc Symbols of the Eighteenth Century in Europe edité par I edited by Peter-Eckhard Knabe et I and Roland Mortier

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The Eases of Nature in Enlightenment Europe Lorraine Daston Gianna Pomata

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Table of Contents

Lorraine Daston and Gianna Pornara The Faces of Nature: ‘Visibility and Authority ............................ .. Roy Porter The Enviromnent and the Enlightemnent: The English Experience Sarah Bendaii Mapping and Displaying an English Marshland Landscape in the MidEighteenth Century .......................................................... .. Fernando Vidai Extraordinary Bodies and the Physicotheological Imagination ......... .. Martha Feirirnan Nature Personified: Remaking Stage and Spectator in lvIid-EighteenthCentury Parma ........................................ ... ..................... ..

Christian Licoppe A French mid-eighteenth Centwy Crisis in Experimental Natural Philosophy through Public Display. Nollet's Electrical Shows vs. the Devious Ways of Franklin's Electrical Annospheres .................... .. Anneiore Rieire-Mrliiier Von der lebendigen Kunstkamrner eta Liebhaberei. Fiirstliche Menagerien im deutschsprachigen Raum tvfihrend des 13. Jahrhunderts .......................................................... .. Ernrna C. Spar)’ Forging Nature at the Republican Museum ............................... .. Andrew Canninghan: Auto-Icon: Jeremy Bentham's Three Bodies, the Moral Laws of Nature, and the Ideology of Industrial Capitalism ........................ .. Fania Findien

The Scientistis Body: The Nature of a Woman Philosopher in

Enlightenment Italy .......................................................... ..

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Marta Cavaaaa Women's Dialectics, or the Thinking Uterus: An Eighteenth-Century Controversy on Gender and Education .................................. ., Nadia Maria Fiiiopini "Sanctuaire de la nature ou prison du fcetus": nature et corps féminin sous le combat sur la cesarienne en France an XV[IIe siecle ........ ..

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The Faces of Nature: Visibility and Authority Lorraine Daston and Giarma Pomata

Making Nature Visible In the preface to his hugely popular poern The Ternpie ofitiaasre (1803), the

English physician and natural philosopher Erasmus Darwin described the purpose of the work as simply to amuse by bringing distinctly to the imagination the beautiful and sublime images of the operations of Nature in the order, as the Author believes, in which the progressive course of time presented them.’

The Eleusinian mysteries of Antiquity were in reality, Darwin believed, natural philosophy, as allegorically revealed to the initiated hierophants. The meaaotint frontispiece of his poem shows two priestesses in classical dress, one kneeling and the other raising a curtain on a multi-breasted female figure representing Nature, as she is evoked in the poem: SI-IRlN'[) in the midst majestic NATURE stands,i Extends o'er earth and sea her hundred hands,',i Tower upon tower her beamy forehead crests,i And births unnumber"d milk her hundred breasts? This image of nature as at once mighty yet mysterious, vast yet veiled, points to a characteristically Enlightemnent predicament. Never had the authority of

Nature (almost always majuscule in these contexts) been so often and broadly invoked, to justify everything from the Christian religion to neo-classical aesthetics to the metric system of weights and measures. Natural laws allegedly govemed not only the course of the planets but also the passions of the human heart and indeed goverrnnents themselves. Yet the very enormity and ubiquity of Nature created the impression of nebulosity, of a near-divine power hidden by a curtain. Hence the innumerable Enlightenment attempts to make Nature visible, to give nature a face — and sometimes a body to boot. The essays collected in this volume’ describe a range of eighteenth-century efforts to render abstract Nature concrete and, as Darwin put it, vivid to the I 2

Erasmus Darwin, The Tenrpie of Nature," Or, the Origin of Society-.' A Poem, with Pniiosophicai Notes, London I803, Preface, n.p. Darwin, Temple of Nature , L129-I32, p. I2. The fionfispiece was drawn by Fuseli and

engraved by Houghton. On the identification of Nature with the many-breasted Diana of Ephesus figure, see Mechthild tvlodersohn, Nature ais Gtiitiin im Mirreiairer. Hconographische Sradien ea Darsreiiangen tier personrfieierten Natar, Berlin 199?, p. lo ff; also Theodora Jelmy-Rapper, Mattergdrrin and Gorresntatter in Ephesos: Von Artemis ca Maria, Ziirich I936. 3 The essays were originally written for two conferences held under the auspices of the European Science Foundation project on "Concepts and Symbols of the Eighteenth-

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imagination. These efforts span vanguard natural philosophy and provincial map-making, the opera and the menagerie, ribald satires on learned women and ponderous treatises of natural theology, the garden and the museum. They draw upon sources in French, German, Italian, English, and Latin, spamring the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Amidst all of this variety, several eonnnon themes may be discemed: first, the perpetually bltnred boundaries between the natural versus the artificial, the preternatural, or the supemattnal; second, the repeated efforts to visualize abstract Nature by means of specific natures — be these latter exotic animals displayed in a

royal zoo, electrical experiments, women's bodies, or on-stage personifications; and third, the question of who can know nature and in what institutional setting - who is qualified to draw the curtain, and what sites qualify as true "temples of nature"? Fluid Boundaries Modem nature is defined by a series of eitherior oppositions: the natural versus the artificial, the natural versus the cultural, the natural versus the supernatural. Although eighteenth-century Europeans routinely appealed to these oppositions (or to their rough equivalents: nature versus culttue would usually have been phrased more narrowly as nature versus education), they just

as routinely tmdertnined them. Venerable pattems of thought and practice inherited from Greek and Roman Antiquity, as well as from the Latin Middle Ages, encouraged a more fluid model of the relationship between nature and

its various opposites than the rigid, either-or categories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries permit. In the case of nature and art, for example, eighteenth-century Europeans still subscribed to a co-operative model, in which art can aid or improve nature. The paradigm cases here would have been medicine, in which the physician's art assists the healing power of nature, and agriculture, in which the farmer improves the land by plowing, fertilizing, and other georgic arts. However, the co-operative model could be and was extended to education ("cultivation" in a metaphorical sense), in which the child's nature was perfected by the proper upbringing. The co-operative model of art and nattue implied a certain plasticity in nature. To speak, for example, of woman's "nature" (including her anatomy and physiology) was not yet to speak of her destiny: for better or for ill, nature could be superCentury in Europe" (organized by Roland lvlortier and Peter-Eckhard Knabe), in the section on "Nature" (chaired by I-lans-Peter Reill): "The Display of Nature in Eighteenth-

Century Europe" (organized by Lonaine Daston in Berlin, 12-14 December I996) and "l'-Iattu'e Embodied" (organised by Gianna Pomata in Bologna, 4-ti July 199?). We me

grateful to the ESF, the Ivlax-Planck-lnstitut fiir Wissenschaflsgeschichte, and the Dipartimento di Discipline Storiche dell'Universita degli Studi di Bologna for their support.

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seded by education. The French physician Pierre Roussel for example believed that women's softer and more delicate bodily tissues and organs suited them for a life of retiring domesticity, but feared that this natural order, both

corporeal and familial, had been subverted by pemicious education and custom. " Similarly, the claim that all htnnan beings were equal under natural law by no means implied that this was their actual political condition. Nature could be thwarted, as well as helped, by art and education. Roy Porter's essay "'ln England's Green and Pleasant Land‘: The English Enlightemnent and the Enviromnent" describes the intertwining of art and nature in eighteenth-century English attitudes towards improving agriculture, landscape, and gardens. Porter argues that the model relationship between humans and natrue was the fann, in which the farmer served as God's steward, carrying out the divine directive to cultivate and enrich the earth and its products. It was "man's right - his duty even - to harness nature", and to improve it by "turning wasteland into wealth". Previously, the farm had been viewed as an outpost of civilization against the encroaching wildness of nature. But once nature itself became domesticated as the farm, prosperous English la.ndowners were free to aestheticize wildness in their gardens land-

scaped after the fashion set by Capability Brown for "a new Arcadian escapism", that turned "the mansion into an island lapped by a sea of parkland". Yet this "sea" was not without its carefully plarmed vistas and poplarlined boundaries. Even more assertively wild nature was turned into art and mentally flamed: not only erupting volcanoes but even vistas outside of Ttmbridge Wells could be perceived as sublime paintings by Salvator Rosa. The motif of nature framed, in both literal and figurative senses, recurs in Sarah Bendall's essay "Mapping and Displaying an English Marshland Landscape in the Mid-Eighteenth Century". Maps conmrissioned by country squires were often large and elaborate, drawn on expensive materials like parchment and vellrun, richly ornamented, proudly indicating improvements made by the landowner, and sometimes framed for prominent display. The maps connnissioned of Ronmey Marsh in South-eastern England were at once utilitarian and symbolic, intended to be accurate and beautiful. On the one hand, they served as the basis for levying taxes to maintain drainage and sea

walls; on the other, they were frequently decorated and coloured. They were a visible statement of the prosperity of Kentish landed families as well as of

the skill of the surveyors who drew and embellished them with coats of arms and compass roses. At least in the case of the surveyor and mapmaker Thomas Hogben, these artistic touches seem to be due to his own aspirations as a skilled artisan, rather than to instructions given by a client-landowner. Regardless of style, I-logben charged the same flat rate of sixpence per acre to all his customers. 4 Pierre Roussel, Systems physique er morai tie ia femme [ITTS], 5th ed., Paris 1309, pp. 21-22.

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Like the bnundary between nature and art, that between the natural and the supernatural was alsn cnnsiderably mnre permeable than the prnnnuncements nf eighteenth-century philnsnphers and thenlngians m.ight at first glance indicate. First, even thnse whn claimed that the tmiverse is gnverned entirely by natural laws, which Gnd nrdains and vinlates nnly very rarely nr never, nnnetheless believed that the natural nrder was infused with ends, that nature

was at nnce purpnse-built and benevnlent. Eighteenth-century accnunts cf the wnrl-rings nf natural law almnst always assumed that creatinn was design-ad fnr the gnnd nf its creatures, especially nf mankind. If the planets were all clustered within seventeen degrees nf the ecliptici, nr if the ratin nf births was slightly skewed in favnr nf buys“, this was all evidence nf a divine plan tn safeguard the stability nf the snlar system nr mnnngamnus maniages, respectively. Final causes might have been discarded in precept in Enlightemnent natural philnsnphy, but in practice every naturalist still reasnned by the fit nf fnrrn tn functinn, especially but nnt exclusively in the case nf nrganic nature. Mnrenver, an inductive epistemnlngy made it difficult tn draw an absnlute distinctinn between the natural and the supematural. If natural laws were nnt necessary but rather simply what David Htune called "unifnrm experience" as repnrted " in any age nr cnuntry'", then it was always

pnssible that an exceptinn might nne day cnme tn light. Hume attempted tn bar any testimnny nf putative miracles as intrinsically less plausible than the nrdinary nbserved cnurse nf nature, but prnvided nn hard-and-fast criterinn as tn hnw bizarre a repnrted event must be in nrder tn be rejected nut nf hand. Ln his essay "Extranrdinary Bndies and the Physicnthenlngical Imaginatinn", Femandn Vidal describes yet annther reasnn why Enlightenment writers cnuld nnt maintain a hard-and-fast line between the natural and supernatu-

ral. Between the supematural and the natural lay the shadnwy reahn nf the pretematural, i.e. unusual phennmena due tn natural causes - the marvelnus as

nppnsed tn the miraculnus. Althnugh Enlightemnent intellectuals, nrthndnx thenlngians as well as heterndnx phttnsnphes, made cnmmnn cause in debunking marvels“, pretematural examples cnuld still be put tn use in physicnthenlngy in nrder tn render the mysteries nf faith plausible, if nnt strictly cnmprehensible. Natural prncesses and hypntheses cnuld serve as analngies fnr miracles like the resurrectinn nr the virgin birth: the metamnrphnses nf caterpillars intn butterflies nr the manufacture nf transparent glass finm npaque lead suggested tn the physicnthenlngists that human flesh was alsn -

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Daniel Bemnulli, "Recherches physiques et astrnnnmiques," in: Recnetl des pieces qnt nnt retnpnrtes tes prtx de tldendemte Rnynte des Sciences 3 (W52), pp. 93-122. I5 Jnlm Arbuthnnt, "An Argument fnr Divine Prnvidence, Taken frnm the Regularity Dbserv'd in the Birth cf Bnth Sexes," in: Phtlnsnphtcnt Trnnsncttnns nf the Rnynt Snctety cfLnndnn 27 (U10-I2), pp. I86-190. 7' David Hume, "Of Miracles", in: An Enquiry Cnneerntng Hnntnn Understanding [H43],

ed. by Eric Steinberg, Indianapnlis I977, pp. 72-90, nn p. 7?. 3

Lnrraine Dastnn and Katharine Park, Wnnders and the Order nfNntnre, H50-I ?5tJ, New Ynrk 1993, pp. 329-363.

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capable of undergoing remarkable perfections and refinements. The aim of these analogies was not to explain, much less explain away, miracles vouchsafed by the bible, but rather tn provide what Leibniz called a "certitude mnrale" (versus a "certitude absolue") for the devout but perplexed believer. In

order tn render miracles reasonable, if not rational, "the physicotheology of mysteries searched for marks of the natural in the supernatural."

Spectacles and Spectators

Just as the pretematural could buttress belief by suggesting hypothetical mechanisms for miracles to the natural philosophical imagination, so artistic and scientific techniques of allegory and demonstration could transforrn abstract Nature into concrete naturalia through display. Nature was presented in words, images, collections, and experiments as the play of dazzling surfaces: the pearly lustre of a seashell, the hellish red glow of a volcano, the eerie blue sparks of static electricity, the elegant line of a landscaped hedgerow, the iridescence of an insect wing. This spectacular aesthetic of the natural blurred seamlessly into that of art, not only the fine arts of landscape and still life painting, but also the decorative arts of porcelain painting, embroidery, and textile design, as well as natural history illustrations in various media. The same nattualia - the polished nautilus shell, the exotic flower, the shiny beetle - could be displayed in the vitrines of collectors, described in the books of naturalists, sketched and engraved by their illustrators, painted in still lifes,

and stitched in silk threads onto satin flocks and waistcoats. From at least the mid-seventeenth century on, artists who illustrated works on natural history (some of whom, like Charles Phnnier or Maria Sybilla Merian, were themselves naturalists) often also worked as painters of still lifes and embroiderers (specialising in realistically rendered flowers and insects)?’ Nicolas Robert, miniaturist to Louis XIV for whom he produced over seven hundred vellum paintings of flowers, also published a highly successful pattem book of flowers for tapestry designers and embroiderers, as did Merian. Madeleine Basseporte, who became "painter of miniatures" at the Paris Jardin du Roi in 1735, did the botanical drawings for the Abbe de la Pluche‘s Spectacie de in nature and was also interior decorator to Mme de Pompadour. 9

Jean Collard, "Un grand graveur meconnu: Le Pete Charles Plumier (I6-46-ITU4) et son Traité des fougeres de l‘Amerique (l?l]5)," in: Bniietin dn biiriiopiriie 2 (1931), pp. I5?l’?l; Maria Sybille Merian, Metamorphosis insectortnn snrinantensinnr. Ojte Verandering der Snrinainische insecten, Amsterdam l'?U5. Du l'vlerian's life and work, see Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in tire Origins of Modern Science, Cambridge, l'vlA1’London 1939, pp. 68-7'3; Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on tire Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives, Cambridge, lvlAiLnndon 1995, pp. l4D-202; and Kurt Wettengl {ed}, Maria Sibyiia Merian (I64?-I Fi F’). Kiinstierin and Natntforscherin. Attssteiinngsitatnioge des Historischen Mnsennrs Frnnigfnrt ain Main,

Frankfurt a.M. l9'9’i'.

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Gerard van Spaendonck, Basseporte's successor at the Jardin du Roi and first professor of "natural iconography" at the Muséum d‘Histoire Naturelle during the French Revolution, had been trained as a flower painter in the Dutch still life tradition."' This dense interweaving of naturalia as subjects (almost all of which, from the oriental carpet to the parrot, counted as luxtrries) of still lifes and natural history illustration together with lrrxury objects strengthened the associations between nature and lavish display. The same brush techniques might depict the sheen of a flamed tulip and of a velvet sleeve in candlelight; the same artists rendered a butterfly for a work of natural history and for a

Gobelin tapestry. Comucopia-like abundance and ostentation characterized eighteenth-century portrayals of nature, echoing the aesthetic of the still life.“ Against a courtly background, display as opulence could easily shade into display as magnificence and majesty. In the course of the eighteenth century, however, there is a decided trend towards a more decorous view of nature, matched by demands for sobriety among nature's spectators. Nature's parsimony came to be emphasized as opposed to its splendor; metaphors of nahu'e (and science) as theatre gave way to images of nature (and savants) as diligent workers. Architecturally, these trends were reflected in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century differentiation of scientific and non-scientific displays of nature. Museums distinguished between working collections for scientists and displays for the

public; experiments ceased to be spectacles staged for a mixed audience of colleagues and genteel laymen (and women) and were increasingly perfomred in sequestered laboratories with minimal personnel. The essays of Martha Feldman and Christian Licoppe describe these changes in settings as far apart as operatic theatre and the performance of electrical experiments. As Feldman shows, the operatic refonn implemented in mid-eighteenth-century Parrna by Guillamne du Tillot, the energetic prime minister of the newly-established Spanish Bourbon dynasty, was masterminded by Francesco Algarotti, a prominent Enlightemnent intellectual and vulgarizer of the new physics. Algarotti wanted to sweep away the fanciful and grotesque artifices of old Baroque opera, replacing them with a more sober, decorous and "natural" performance, as heralded by the Arcadian literary sensibility and Metastasio's opera seria. "Naturalness" on the operatic stage meant for Algarotti closer coordination of text and music, voice and gesture, scenes and costumes: the fusion of different artistic media towards the ll) Madeleine Pinault, Le peintre et ifllristoire nntureiie, Paris 1990, pp. 23-23, I36-I39; Luc ‘iiezin, Les artistes nu Jardin des Piantes, Paris 1990, pp. 20-25, 41-42. ll Norman Bryson comments on this aspect of Dutch seventeenth-century still lifes in Looiting at tire t9veriooked.* Four Essays on Stiii Life Painting, Cambridge, Masss’

London I990, pp. 10!-I35 {note especially the prevalence of naturalia in the paintings cited}; on naturalia as luxury objects in the eighteenth century, see Marina Bianchi, "In the Name of the Tulipe: Why Speculation?" in: Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford (eds.), Consumers and Lro:ury.' Consumer Culture in Europe idfill-I359, lvlanchesteriflew York 1999, pp. 38-I02.

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goal of recruiting music - the least "imitative" of the arts, as argued by D‘Alembert - into a neo-classical aesthetics of imitation. The new artistic

coherence that Algarotti required fi'om the opera aimed at the double and somewhat contradictory goals of naturalism and historicism: a moralizing

view of tmiversal human nature, based on the mythological repertoire of classical Antiquity, was coupled with the effort to achieve some historical perspective and authenticity. Thus for instance, the stage sets for the perfom1ance of Traetta‘s Ippoiito e Aricia, the opera that according to Feldman epitomized Du Tillot‘s and Algarotti‘s refomi program, were inspired by the archaeological discoveries of Herculaneum and Pompeii, following Algarotti‘s

precept that costumes and scenery come as close as possible to the customs of the times and nations represented in the piece. On the other hand, the version of the Phaedra myth adopted in the libretto of the Pannense Ippoiito e Aricia had a contemporary moralizing agenda. Phaedra, the central character in Racine (and Euripides), is secondary in the Pam:rense opera's cast hierarchy. The opera‘s prima donna is not the adulterous wife Phaedra but the virtuous

maid Alicia . Phaedra the mad virago, representing the uncontrolled side of nature, is subordinated to the chaste goddess Diana, who shows the spectators the calm and decorous face of nature-under-control. Old-regime court theatre, Feldman stresses, was meant as an enlightened school of morality and decorrmr. In Bourbon Panna in fact, refonning the opera artistic content went hand in hand with refonning audience behaviour. The noisy manifestations of approval or disapproval, such as "pormding, babbling and other excesses", were forbidden, as were also discouraged the visits from box to box that made of opera attendance a premiere occasion of aristocratic sociability (and intrigue), to the detriment of audience absorption. The tension between the culture of aristocratic sociability and the new intellectual trends of mid-eighteenth century is even more apparent on another stage, that of scientific experiment, as examined here by Licoppe. Licoppe

describes the 1760s-1770s French controversy between the advocates of Nollet's and Franklin's electrical theories as a clash not only between models of experimental demonsnution but also between models of scientific sociability. Nollet's approach to electrical phenomena was rooted in a tradition that saw scientific experiment as a spectacle for gentlemen. Since facts had to be identified through the public display of experiments in front of credible (i.e. gentlemanly) witnesses, the validation of experimental facts necessarily implied a spectacular dimension, the display of nature for a curious public of amateurs. Licoppe argues that this spectacular construction of experimental knowledge was increasingly challenged in the first half of the eighteenth century. Franklin, for instance, constructed matters of fact not by staging their public display but by providing recipes that would enable skilled experimenters to replicate such matters of facts anywhere. Franklin's approach points to a more general demise of the spectacular display of nature in the construction

of experimental knowledge — a trend that was especially reinforced by the 'i

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introduction of precision measurements. Since precise thennometric, electric or magnetic measurements were disturbed by the body heat of spectators, the key operations of exact physics had to be conducted in private. Witnessing did not disappear but counted less and less as valid proofl the construction of which became the province of the expert. Spectacular experiments lost their probative role and took on a strictly pedagogical function. Increasingly, Nature showed a different face to educated layman and to expert experimenter.

Thus within scientific culture the aristocratic model of pageantry and dramatic effects performed for an appreciative but dilettante audience gave way to an expert model of qualified observers focused with undistracted attention

on commonplace or at least visually drab phenomena. Examples of the latter model can be fotmd as early as the mid-seventeenth century, but usually as the butts of satire or moral criticism: it was a sigr of pedantry or irresponsibility to dedicate one's time and fortune to the study of electricity or insects.“ But by the late eighteenth century, savants were self-confidently proclaiming and practicing fomis of intellectual and emotional dedication to their

objects that may be described as genuinely vocational, i.n the sense of a worthy calling (though not yet professional: salaried careers, formal training, and specialized societies were mostly a mid-nineteenth-century development). The replacement of the aristocratic by the expert model did not imply the demise of scientific sociability and cormoisseurship of natrn*alia, but rather the

emergence of a new form of both, based on different objects, practices, and emotions. '3 The demise of aristocratic sociability as the framework of natural knowledge and its substitution with a new sociability of experts is shown also in the essays of Atmelore Rieke-Miiller and Emma Spary, which follow the changing meaning of natural history collections from the princely courts of old-regime Europe to revolutionary Paris. Both Rieke-Miller and Spary focus mainly on one kind of collection, the menagerie, but their essays show how the meaning of exotic animals in captivity could be strikingly different at the

imperial pleasure pavilion of Schonbrunn in Vienna and at the Paris Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Rieke-Mttller shows that menageries of exotic animals were a staple item of absolutist courts - live animals collections being symbol and proof of princely wealth and power, lavishly displayed for an exclusive audience of courtiers. (The model was the menagerie at Versailles, reachable by boat to give the aristocratic viewers the thrilling illusion of an exotic trip). Princely menageries declined in German countries during the first I2 See for example Thomas Shadwell, The Virtuoso [I676], ed. by Marjorie Hope Nicolson

and David Stuart Rodes, London 1966, I11.iii, p. 69; Jean de la Bruyere, "De la mode", in: Les carccteres de Theophrcste trader! dc grec rrvec {es corccteres on les mreurs dc cs steels [H533], ed. by Robert Pignarre, Paris 1965, pp. 334-349, esp. pp. 334-333. 13 Lorraine Daston, Eras {curse Geschichre der wisserrschcfllichen Anfinerkscnrkeir, Mturich 2001.

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half of the eighteenth century, mostly because enlightened utilitarianism saw them as devoid of lasting value, in contrast with other collectibles. They were also perceived as of limited scientific use, since natural history was interested in the morphological systematics of animal species, for whose purposes exotic animals were of marginal relevance. Though the mid-eighteenth century witnessed several new establishments of royal menageries, the days of the menagerie as princely luxury were counted. Emma Spary describes its final demise during the French Revolution: the Jacobirrs closed the Versailles menagerie and turned the exclusive Jardin du Roi into the Museum d'I-listoire Nat1u'elle, open to the general public. Their intention was to legitimate the new democratic politics by means of an institution that would display nature for general edification and instruction.

In fact, as Spary stresses, by handing over the running of the Museum to the professors of natural history, the Revolution accelerated a trend towards a sharper separation between nature for savour and nature for common people -between nature scrutinized for scientific purposes and nature displayed for the education and entertainment of the general public. The separation between the scientific and the crrrious approach to nature had already started in the old

regime: the naturalist Daubenton, the curator of the natural history Cabinet at the Jardin du Roi, had separated the "methodical" and the "agreeable", in his own words "what pleases the mind and what appeals to the eyes". The naturalist, stressed Daubenton, should not let himself be dazzled by the omamental qualities of naturalia. In turn, the revolutionary museturr

consolidated the eighteenth-century trend towards the separation of natrualia and artificialia," thus furthering the distancing of the natural from the omamental and of scientific expertise from artistic virtuosity. In old regime aristo-

cratic collections, nature and art could still be found united in the same object: in 1783, for instance, a trader in naturalia wrote to the Genoese aristocratic collector Giacomo Filippo Durazzo that he could provide marble samples with a two-fold visual effect: unpolished on one side, to show the "true nature" of the stone, polished on the reverse, to show "what the stone can become with the aid of art" - a conception that perfectly fined the notion of an improvable nature and the co-operative model of the relation of nature and artli

The policy of the revolutionary museum in contrast was to only accept works of nature: Fontarra's wax anatomical models, for instance, were rejected l4 Cln the separation of naturalia and artificialia in the early 13th-century collections of Luigi Ferdinando lvlarsili, the founder of the Bolognese lstituto delle Scienze, cf. Giuseppe Olmi, L'inventorio der‘ morrdo. Cotoiogozione rieiio noiuro e iuogiri o'er’ sopere nello prime erd moderrro, Bologna I992, p. 3ll ff. 15 Dsvaldo Raggio, Storio iii roro possione. Cuirnro orisioerotieo e coiieziorrisrno oiio fine rielfrrrrcierr regime, Venezia 2000, pp. ll5, 153. The Durazzo collections in late 13thcentury Genoa (painting gallery, botanical garden, menagerie and natural history cabinets) were mostly geared to the purposes of aristocratic sociability rather than scientific

investigation.

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by the Museum because suitable only for the cruious not the scientific pursuit of anatomy. The status of demonstrators of wax-works druing the old regime had been both that of spectacle entrepreneurs and that of savants (witness the case of the Bolognese Anna Morandi Manzolini, whose ability in making wax anatomical models led her to a University appointment as public anatomy demonstrator)."" But at the nun of the eighteenth century the

roles of artist and scientist were becoming much more sharply demarcated. At the revolutionary Museum Lamarck rejected Cuvier's application for the job of aide-rraturaiiste because he was "more savaut than artiste". The expertise

of the true savour was not in the production of lifelike displays of nature: that was the artist's province. Above all, Spary shows, the revolutionary Musemn d‘Histoire Naturelle cemented the distinction between exhibitions for public and for savarrt. The Musemn publications, for hrstance, branched out in two diverging directions: guides for the public advertised the museum's crrrious and pictruesque aspects, while the scientific Armaies du Museum were launched as a specialized scientific journal, meant for a readership of experts. Thus two distinct reper-

toires were created for representing nature: the spectacular and the scientific. Spectacular nature became synonymous with popularisation, and popularisetion became opposed to serious scientific inquiry." Changes in the classification of natural objects implied changes in the classification of the individuals who were pennitted to participate in the making of natural knowledge. Henceforth, nature would have one face for the lay public and another face for the savants. This did not mean that savants ceased to use nature to stage their own spectacles, in the service of altemative moral codes. The body of the savour was often at the center of such new rituals. Spary describes the elaborate ceremony accompanying Daubenton's funeral at the Museum in 1799, in which the greenhouse was transformed into a temple, and the sarcophagus

16 [In Arma Morandi Manzolini see ‘Vittoria Uttani and Gabriella Giuliani-Piccari, "L'opera di Arma Morandi Manzolini nella ceroplastica anatonrica bolognese" in: slima Mater Studiorum. La preseuza femmiuiie rial XVIII at X71’ secoio, Bologna 1988, pp.Sl-104 and Rebecca Messbarger, "Waxing Poetic: Anna Morandi Manzolini's Anatomical Sculptures", in: Configurations, 9, l (2001), pp. 65-97.

17 Interestingly, a double register of representation — one geared to scholarly use and one meant for the entertairnnent of the common viewer — is also discemible in the prototype of historical museum created in post-revolutionary Paris, the Musee de Cluny. The museum, formed by assembling various cabinets d'antiquites, housed medieval and Renaissance objects salvaged from the revolutionary looting of churches, convents and castles. Clbjects were newly arranged and displayed in two distinct ways: some in rooms

containing specimens organized by century; some in "thematic rooms", such as a reconstructed kitchen, dining room, bedroom, etc. The "century rooms" implied the classifying activity of the expert historian, while the thematic rooms gave the viewers the illusion of direct and spectacular access to the past, without the intennediation of an expert. See Stephen Bann, "Historical Text and Historical Object: the Poetics of the Musee de Cluny", in: History and Theory, 17, 3 (1973), pp. 251-66.

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holding the deceased naturalist's corpse was displayed upon a plinth depicting Athenian philosophers among tapestries decorated with naturalia. Andrew Cunningham's paper on Jeremy Bentham examines how the philosopher's own body figured as both substance and symbol of radical utilitarianism. Bentham had carefirlly plarmed his own funeral, giving exact instructions as to how his corpse was to be dissected before the assembled mourners and specially invited class of medical students. In life Bentham had campaigned energetically for the Anatomy Bill (passed by Parliament in August I332), which aimed to insure that medical students had a steady supply of cadavers to dissect, obtained by legal means. The dramatic dissection of his own body (accompanied by a series of anatomical lectures) was meant by Bentham to communicate anatomical knowledge to students and to remove "the primitive horror at dissection" — a last act of Enlightenment. The philosopher's body was then to be dressed in his wonted clothes, with a wax model of the head affixed to the re-articulated skeleton, and publicly displayed in the pose of "having a great Utilitarian thought." The Auto-Icon, as Bentham jocularly called this literal self-portrait, can still be seen at University College London.

Bentham imagined a very different kind of spectacle for the reform of criminals and the non-laboring poor, the bee-hive-like Panopticon in which an unseen Inspector could observe what went on in every cell of the prison. The Panopticon was in the first instance a mechanism for disciplining the bodies of its inmates, but Bentham revealingly described it as a kind of artificial body, with the Inspector at its heart. These spectacles of the body, natural and artificial, point to another, more personal way in which the authority of nature could be enlisted for philosophical and political ends. The symbolically charged body of the savaut entered into arguments about who could and could not speak for nature.

Speaking for Nature These changes were heavy in implications for who could speak for nature, and where nature might be heard. Throughout the eighteenth century these were controversial issues. The very magnitude of nat|.u'e's authority in social, political, aesthetic, and theological matters made the question of who qualified as nature's rightful interpreters urgent. In the disciplines traditionally devoted to the explication of nature, medicine and natural philosophy, the universitytrained savour found himself in competition with members of newly

established academies, salon philosopher and tree-lance authors, and rival medical practitioners. The wane of university authority and the growing influence of printed works on elite audiences opened up unprecedented cp-

portunities for intellectual participation in eighteenth-century European urban centers: provincial autodidacts like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and women like Laura Bassi or Emilie du Chetelet were still rare among intellectuals of interll

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national reputation, but no longer unthinkable. Closely comiected to the question of who could speak for nature was the question of how: the laboratory

replaced the lecture hall in the academies; naturalists worked as closely with collections of objects as with books. The architectural spaces in which nature's utterances were staged in part determined who could interpret them: a woman might decorously discuss the latest theories of luminescence in the private sphere of the salon, but could she lecture in the public setting of a university aula, or perform esperiments with a colleague in the all-too-private venue of a darkened laboratory? The essays of Paula Findlen and Marta Cavazza provide an answer to

these questions for one specific contest, eighteenth-century Bologna - definitely an ertceptional case because of the extraordinary chance it gave women of pursuing an academic career, starting with Laura Bassi's graduation in 1732.

Findlen‘s essay focuses on Laura Bassi‘s predicament in devising for herself an identity that combined a scientific persona with a conventional female role as wife and mother. Cavazza describes the aftermath of Bassi‘s case, when some Bolognese male intellectuals debated the limits set by nature to women's

mental capabilities, and the scope and purpose of their education. These essays errplore the meaning of body and gender as sensitive markers of the shifting balance between natine and education, indicating a new awareness of the limits to the perfectibility of nature and to the co-operation of nature and £111.

Paula Findlen describes how the Bolognese reacted to the marriage of Lama Bassi, the femme-prodige who at age twenty in 1732 had managed to graduate in philosophy and to be appointed to a paid post as Lmiversity lecturer. The Bolognese were mostly disappointed and disconcerted by her decision to get married: they had expected Laura to "remain a virgin in some religious retreat", following a long tradition of Italian female worthies whose public identity had combined learning and piety with the unimpeachable credential of a virginal body. Virginity, with its ancient religious aura as a condition transcending gender, had been a prop of the pedestal on which Italian learned women had been placed for centuries. Convents were the traditional seat of female education, but in eighteenth-century Italy, aristocratic sociability provided a new locus for the cultivation of female learning, the salon after the French model — and it was this alternative path that Laura had in mind. After her graduation, she used her academic prestige to gain admittance, in spite of her middle-class background, to the intellectual salons of the Bolognese patriciate, which seemed to be granting women new intellectual and social freedom."“ But Laura Bassi seems to have soon realized that the aristo-

cratic model of sociability had some drawbacks for the scientific career she 13 Un women and the salons in Bologna see Elisabetta Graaiosi, "Arcadia fenuuinile: presence e modelli", in: Filologro e critics, 1?, 3 (I992), pp. 32]-353; on Rome see Maria Pia Donato, Aeerrrremie romone. Una srorirr socirnle, Napoli 2000.

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had set her heart on. Aristocratic circles (including some saionrriéres) would welcome a studious woman in the informal milieu of the salon, but rejected as

indecorous her teaching in a public institutional setting, as Laura did and wanted to keep doing. Another problem was the salons‘ association with sexual libertinism: surrounded by male mentors who seemed unable to draw the dividing line between intellectual co-operation and erotic involvement, Laiua realized that both her personal honour and her scientific reputation were at great risk. The last straw might have been Algarotti's joking allusion, in his Newronionesimo per re dame (1737), to Bassi's and her mentor Beccari's elec-

trical experiments in darkened alcoves. Laura decided to get married, choosing among her suitors, as she herself said with quiet assurance, one "who walks the same path of leaming and who, from long experience, I was certain would not dissuade me from it". Marriage seemed to her what the convent had previously seemed to many women intellectuals: "a way to pursue her studies quietly with greater fl'eedom"."" Laura Bassi succeeded in combining matrimony (and eight children) with a successful scientific career as teacher and experimenter. Far from being conventional, her choice went counter the traditional model of the learned maid,

showing that wifehood and motherhood were compatible with intellectual achievement. In her mature years she enjoyed a solid reputation as a skilled, trustworthy experimenter, and the admiration and respect of the pupils she had trained i.n experimental practices, including Spallanz.arii.i“ Her life ran counter old and new stereotypes about women intellectuals: for instance, her extensive use of vivisection in physiological experiments disproved the Abbe Nollet's view that women's sensibility made them unfit for the experimental life. She succeeded in proving that it was possible to be an expert investigator of nature while inhabiting a woman's body. The fortunate career of Lama Bassi seems to have opened, at least for a while, a niche of academic opportunity for women in eighteenth-century Bologna. Maria Gaetana Agnesi was given the honorary chair of analytic geometry in 1750 , Cristina Roccati graduated in philosophy 1751, and Anna Morandi lvlanaolini was appointed public demonstrator of anatomy in 1755. What did the Bolognese university men make of this series of female academic achievements? In 1771-T2, when Lama Bassi was an old woman, a war of pamphlets was waged in Bologna over the vexatrr qaaesrio of women's alleged intellectual inferiority and the causes thereof. lvlarta Cavaaza's essay reviews this controversy. On one side was Petronio Zecchini, a young and ambitious l9 Even by the mid-eighteenth century the traditional model of pursuing learning in a religious retreat appealed to some women. For instance the mathematician Maria Gacmna Agnesi (l?l3-l?99) wished to withdraw to a convent to better pursue her mathematical studies, eschewing the distractions of the Milanese salons, where she had been feted as a prodigy since early age. On Agnesi see M.L. Altieri Biagi and B. Basile, (eds.), Scienaiart def Setrecento, Milano-Napoli 1933, pp. "T5? ff.

20 Marta Cavaaaa, "Larua Bassi maestra di Spallanaani", in: Walter Bemardi and Paola Mancini (eds.), H cerchio delta virrr, Florence 1999, pp. I35-202.

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lecturer in medicine who fired the opening shot attacking the culture of the salons and especially those obnoxious women who "take up (university) chairs". On the other side were another professor of medicine, Germano Azzoguidi, and the well-known adventurer Giacomo Casanova. Was women's intellectual inferiority due to their bodily frame, as argued by the conservative Zecchini? Or was it rather due to women's "dducatr'oa fimesre", as claimed by the enlightened Azzoguidi, and, with even stronger conviction and better arguments, by Casanova? As Cavazza shows, the terms of the debate were far from original. The traditional argument for women's mental inferiority had

been materialistic: women's intellectual flaws were grounded in their bodily complexion. On the other hand, the argument for women's equality or excellence, from Agrippa to Poullain dc la Barre, had been spiritualistic: between the soul (and brain) of male and female there is no difference on account of sex. Though insisting he was not a materialist, Zecchini rehashed the traditional argument based on the body's influence over mind: women's thinking, in his view, is hopelessly inferior because conditioned by a "dominant viscera", the uterus. Both Aazoguidi and Casanova rejected this deterministic argument (while poking fun at its proponent), arguing that gender differences, including male and female mental traits, are mostly due to education, although on a (tmclear) basis of physiological difference. It would be wrong to assume that this late eighteenth-century debate on the respective role of physiology and education as determinants of women's mental qualities implied a clear differentiation of the nattual, on one side, from the conventional, the artificial, the social on the other. On the contrary, the debate shows that the distinction had not yet crystallized into a clear-cut opposition. Nattue and education, though increasingly distinct, were not yet seen as mutually exclusive. The boundary between them remained elusive because nature was still understood pre-eminently as a prescriptive, not a descriptive concept. Nature still meant a telos, an intention never fully realised in actuality. Such teleological view of nature was at the core of the cooperative model of nature and art: art could improve on nature by seconding

and furthering nature's own goal. Thus for Enlightemnent intellectuals like Azzoguidi and Casanova women's nature was not fixed once and for all. It was improvable by education, but on the condition that education strive to reach nature's telos for women motherhood. Educating women meant fulfilling nature's intention by forming better mothers. This also explains why Zecchini's medical determinism seemed such a bad argument to Asaoguidi and Casanova, who ridiculed it as flawed reasoning. The body could not be seen as the causal substratum of mental qualities because the body also, like na-

ture, was still understood as a pliable set of potentialities, not as a reality inexorably, unalterably fixed. Medical determinism would become a much stronger argument for women's mental inferiority in the nineteenth century,

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when nattn'e tumed from a benevolent purposeful entity to assume the stern face of physical necessity.“ Some premonitory signs of this hardening of the face of nature are

discemible at the turn of the eighteenth century. We can see them very clearly in the case discussed in Nadia Filippini's essay. Filippini unravels the different metaphors of nature involved in the debate on caesarean section in revolutionary Paris. The contestants are on one side the powerful and upwardly mobile group of the Paris surgeons, led by Jean-Louis Baudelocque, and on the other a Montpellier physician, Jean-Francois Sacombe, who

opened a new School of Obstetrics challenging the surgeons' view of childbirth. Sacombe revived the time-honoured doctrine of the healing power of nature“ to advocate an expectant obstetrics against the interventionist obstetrics of the surgeons. Childbirth, he insisted, should be left as much as possible to nature. Even in difficult deliveries the medical art should only

second nature, never hiury or force her with the use of surgical instruments. For Sacombe, nature's face is always benevolent: he denies the existence of pelvis malfonnations that could hinder spontaneous delivery, arguing that those exhibited in anatomical cabinets are counterfeited. All obstacles to a natural childbirth, in his opinion, are due to social problems, such as malnutrition. Limits and vices are located in society, not in nature. Sacombe's view of the obstetrical art is entirely within the co-operative model of art and nature. To the surgeons, the cormtenance of nature appeared strikingly different. Baudelocque, the founder of pelvimetry, had demonstrated scientifically that some deliveries are impossible the natural way. The malformed pelvis, a "prison" out of which the foetus can be rescued only with the obstetrician's intervention, became in his eyes the tangible image of the limits, the faults of nature. Nature is not always benign: it can be violent, as witnessed by the foetus's experience at birth. Her healing force is limited, her efforts not necessarily positive and effective. Leaving the patient to nature is dangerous: in

some cases the Caesarean section is necessary in order to save the child's life. The obstetrician's task is not seconding nature, but overcoming nature's limits and lapses. If Sacombe's argument shows how strong the old benevolent image of nature as an artisan of infinite skill and virtuosity could still be at the dawn of the nineteenth century, the surgeons' views present ample evidence that the face of nature was drastically changing its linearnents: a nature violent rather than benign, shiftless rather than purposeful, ineffectual rather than capable of virtuoso performance. 21 Sec Lorraine Daston, "The hlaturaliaed Female lntellect", in: Science in Context, 5, 2 (I992), pp. 222-25. 22 On the Montpellier Vitalists and their version of the deeply entrenched medical belief in nature's healing power see Max Neuburger, The Doctrine of the Heeling Power of Nntnre Throughout the Course of Tinre, Eng. transl., New York, s.d. (19329), pp. 959?.

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At the threshold of the nineteenth century nature was arguably more powerful than ever before: in the next decades scientists would seek and advance

explanations of the human body and psyche, the frame of the earth, and the origin of organic species that were relentlessly naturalistic. Yet nature itself seems to have retreated from htmran affairs. No longer did a personified na-

ture exhort hrurrans to follow her ends in poems, political constitutions, philosophical systems, and revolutionary pageants. If she had ends, they were inscrutable. Both her benevolence and her skill were increasingly challenged. Some went so far as to doubt whether nature had ends of her own. In his

poem "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" (1798), William Wordsworth professed himself still a "worshipper of Nature", as in his youth, but now recognized that the nature who was "the guardian of my heart, and soult‘ Of all my moral being" was in part his own creation: Therefore I am stilli A lover of the meadows and the woods,/ And mountains; and of all that we beholdr'From this green earth; of all the might worldi Of eye and ear, both what they half create,t' and what perceive; [...].

Nature remained mighty, but she was no longer an authority with a human face and voice.

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The Environment and the Enlightenment:

The English Experience Roy Porter

Environment is a tenn we owe to Thomas Carlyle, but enviromnental anxieties are nothing new. My aim here is to explore attitudes in eighteenth-century Britain, concentrating on the mainstream but glancing at cross-currents. "It is with much regret", bemoaned the Bath Chronicle on 30 May 1799, that for some years past we have remarked considerable injury to have been suffered by the woods and young timber around this city in consequence of wearing oaken sprigs in the hat, and the decorating of shop-windows and apartments of houses with oal-ten branches, on the 29 of May [i.e., the anniversary of the Restoration of Charles II]. If the practice alluded to be meant as an expression of Loyalty, we would just suggest that this is a very improper display of it: since it would never sanction that injury to individuals and loss to the public, which are produced by these annual depredations on private property.'

As this editorial hints, then as now Nature as public patrimony or even patriotism, and Natiue as private property, could easily be at odds.

Of course the word these days from cultural studies and the history of science is that Nature is a social category. "For although we are accustomed",

writes Simon Schama, to separate nature and fact, indivisible. Before the work of the mind. memory as from layers

human perception into two realms, they are, in it can ever be a repose for the senses, landscape is Its scenery is built up as much from strata of of rocl-1.2

‘l7v'l1at passes today in England for "Nature" — the chequer-board fields, hawthom hedgerows and tidy coppices which conservationists defend against developers - such is the product of Georgian agri-business, landscape gardening and peasant-cleansi:|:ig. In declaring "All Nature is but Art unknown to

l

Trevor Fawcett (ed.), Voices ofEighteentir-Century Bath. An Anthology of Contetnporary Texts iiirrstrating Events, Daily Life and Attitudes at Britainis leading Georgian Spa, Bath I995, p. l9l. A slightly different version of this paper has been published as "ln

England's Green and Pleasant Land: The English Enlightenment and the Environment", in: Kate Flint and Howard Morphy (eds.), Culture. Landscape and the Environment.‘ The Linacre Lectures I 99?, Oxford 2tltlt], pp. 15-43.

2

Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, London 1995, pp. 6-“t. l7

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Thee", Alexander Pope meant to be pious, but he was also providing the code-breaker to enviromnental history.3 What framed the Georgian mental landscape‘? Vistas of Nature were wid-

ening: the Ptolemaic closed world had yielded to the infinite Newtonian Universe, while circiunnavigators like Captain Cook encotuaged poets and philosophers alike to portray the Earth as an organic whole, pointing to Alexander von Hurnboldt's lofty vision of Cosmos and perhaps, in due course, towards James Lovelock‘s Gaia. This terraqueous globe was Nature's backdrop to Enlightemrrent cosmopolitanism." Yet horizons, we must not forget, were also spectacularly shrinking. ‘When visualizing the Universe, our eighteenth-century FRS, imlike his Restoration precursors, had probably excluded from his sights Heaven, Hell and all the Satanic squadrons of daemons and witches that suffused eschatologies from Calvin to Milton. 5 "The truth is", reflected Carlyle in 1329: men have lost their belief in the Invisible, and believe and hope and work only in the Visible [...] Only the material, the immediate practical, not the divine and spiritual, is important to us."

But though we here catch anticipations of the Weberian disenchantment of the world, the planet had not yet been reduced to the meaningless mass of

congealing magma that filled Tennyson and other Victorian honest doubters with dread; with Pope as their spokesman, the Georgians unfailingly read Nature as a masterwork of Divine artistry — one looked "fiom Nature up to Nature's God". Filing out of church of a Sunday, the devout gazed up in awe: 3

Alexander Pope, "Essay on Man", in: J. Butt (ed.), The Poems of Alexander Pope, London l9t55, p. 515. For "thinking the environment", see Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels (eds.), The iconography of Landscape." Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use ofPast Environments, Cambridge 1933; 1939; Yi-fu Tuan, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values, Englewood Cliffs l9'l4; Derek Wall, A Reader in Environmental Literature. Philosophy and Politics, London

I994; [Ilavid Pepper, The roots of Modern Environmentalism, London I934; Clive Ponting, .4 Green Historjv of the World, London 199]. The fmest historian of the environment is Donald Worster; see his The Wealth of Nature. Environmental History and the Ecological imagination, New York 1993; idem, Nature's Economy." A History of Ecological ideas, new ed., Cambridge i935.

4 Alexander von Humboldt, Cosmos, 4 vols., London 1346; James Loveloclt, Gala: A New Looit at Life on Earth, Oxford 1999; Roy Porter, "The Terraqueous Globe", in: G. S. Rousseau and R. S. Porter (eds.), The Ferment of Knowledge, Cambridge I930, pp. 235-324,", B. Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, i ?d8-i85ll: A Study in the History ofArt and ideas, Oxford 1960; Barbara lvlaria Stafford, Voyage into Substance.‘ Art. Science. Nature, and the illrrstrated Travel Account i?dti-llidtl, Cambridge, M.A. 1934; Neil Hermie, Far-fetched Facts: The Literature of Travel and the idea of the

South Seas, Oxford 1995. 5 See Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, Brian Levack and Roy Porter, History of Witchcraft and Magic, vol. V, London 1998. b [T. Carlyle], "Signs of the Times", in: Edinburgh Review, lix (1829), pp. 439-59, here pp. 452-453.

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The Spacious Firmament on high With all the blue Etherial sky And spangled I-leav‘ns, a Shining Frame Their great Original proclaim.7 — Psalm ll l rhymed and regularized by Joseph Addison.

In that confident Christian worldview, there could be no such thing as mere Nature; there was Creation, and that remained, as ever, a sacred amphitheatre with designated roles, costumes and scripts for all creatures great and small, from stones, herbs and beasts, up through the Chain of Being, to Addison's great Original. The perception of the terrestrial economy as a drama or, equally, as an estate, matched the daily material realities of the interlocking of

the human with the natural world, so superbly delineated by Keith Thomas.“ Most people still lived on the land — in 1700 only 13 percent of England's population resided in towns of over 5000; sheep outnumbered people. There was an overwhelming proximity, physical, mental and emotional — sometimes friendly, sometimes frightening —- between humans, flocks and fields. The sense that everything had its rank and station in Creation was enrolled in a popular mentality whose folk-tales mingled children, wolves, giants and monsters; in an elite culture exemplified by Gilbert W'hite‘s Nuturoi History of Seiborne, where swallows and hedgehogs were humanized into honorary parishioners;9 and not least in a faith that was breathtakingly anthropocentric. Unlike many other world religions, Christian theology affn-med that all had been divinely adapted for mankind, because humans alone had immortal souls

and so could be saved. Genesis had granted man "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that ereepeth upon the earth". And even after the Fall and Flood, had not the Lord reissued His mandate: "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it"‘?'° Nature, in other words, was not some disputed territory occupied by Satan; nor was it intrinsically holy — the Churches had always battled to quash stubbom paganism or budding pantheism. Rather Nature was a resource, "principally designed", asserted Richard Bentley, Anglican divine and New-

? The Pope quotation is in: ibid. (ref. 3), p. 546,", for Addison see Basil Willey, The Eighteenth Century Boohground: Studies on the hieo of Nuture in the Thought of the Period, London 1962, p. 51. B Keith Thomas, Mun one‘ the Nuturui World, London I983. 9 Marina Wamer, Frorn the Beust to the Blonds." On Fuiry Totes und Their Teiiers, London 1994; Gilbert White, The Nuturui History unti Antiquities of Seihorne, ed. by Richard Mabey, Harmondsworth l9'??; first published, ITB9. ll] See C. Glaclcen, Truees on the Rhodiun Shore: Nuture und Culture in Western Thought fiorn Ancient Tirnes to the End‘ of the Eighteenth Century, Berkeley 196?; John Passmore, The Perjfectihiiity of Mun, London 1963; 1972; idem, Men's Responsibility

for Nature, London 1930.

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tonian popularizer, "for the being and service and contemplation of man".'l "We can, if need be, ransack the whole globe", maintained his fellow physicotheologian, the Revd William Derham, penetrate into the bowels of the earth, descend to the bottom of the deep, travel to the farthest regions of this world, to acquire wealth, to increase our knowledge, or even only to please our eye and fancy.

And so providently benevolent was the Creator that, no matter how acquisitive man might be, still the Creation would not be exhausted, still nothing would be wanting for food, nothing for physic, nothing for building and habitation, nothing for cleanliness and refreshment, yea even for recreation and pleasure.”

Even at the dawn of the nineteenth century, the geologist Williarn Phillips could reassure his readers that "everything [was] intendedfor the advantage of Man", the "Lord of Creation", a sentiment mirrored in Paley's Natural Theologt and in the Bridgewater Treatises. [3

Scripnu-e-religion sustained an ingrained sense of a milieu adapted to the needs of the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate in pursuit of their daily business.“ There were sermons in stones and the writing was on

the trees. The trunk was a tree of life, carrying echoes of Calvary; but timber had social morals to point too: Hail, old Patrician Trees, so great and good! Hail, ye Piebeian underwood! sang Abraham Cowley in l663, anticipating Bm'ke's paean to the "gr'eat oaks which shade a country H . l5 Just as in the body politic, everything had its place and purpose in Nature, its meanings and morals. Vfllere diseases were enll Richard Bentley, "Eight Sermons Preached at the Hon. Robert Boyle's Lecture in the Year MBCXCII", in: A. Dyce (ed.), The Works of Richard Bentiey, London I333, vol. III, p. 1T5. I2 William Derham, Physico~Theot'ogy.' or a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, front His works of Creation, London l'?'l3, pp. 112, 54-55. I3 William Phillips, An Outiine ofhfineraiogy and Geology, London I315, p. 193, 191; William Paley, Natural Theology", London 1302. The Bria'gewater Treatises formed a

series of naniral theological works produced during the lB3Us, in according with the will of the Earl of Bridgewater, the aim being to illusnate the argument of Divine Design. I4 See Charles C. Gillispie, Genesis and Geoiogr: A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Naturat Theotogy, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, IFPB-I350, Cambridge, Mass. 1951; John Hedley Brooke, Science anti Reh'gion.' Sorne Historical Perspectives, Cambridge I991 . l5 Edmund Burl-re, Reflections on the Revoiution in France, London, p. '?ti; Abraham Cowley, "Of Solitude" (I663), in: John Sparrow {ed.), The Mistress with Other Select Poenis of Ahraharn Cowiey, London 1926, p. I178. The metaphor of the "great oaks" occurs in: Edmund Burke, Reflections.

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demic, God had surely planted natural remedies. The Rev. Edward Stone's discovery in the 1760s of the therapeutic properties of another tree, willow bark — the first stage on the road to aspirin — arose in part because he was piously confident that wetlands would yield cures for, as well as causing, rheumatism; a vindication of all-is-for-the-best Optimism of which Dr Pangloss might have been proud. "5 All the enviromnent was thus a stage — in his popular natural history Oliver Goldsmith extolled the "great theatre of His glory" - and, if God was the Celestial Artist, Nature was properly to be appreciated through painterly

eyes, as a backdrop designed to elicit seemly responses.” "After tea we rambled about for an hour, seeing several views", recorded the blue-stocking Elizabeth Montagu in I75 3, "some wild as Salvator Rosa". Where did this tea

party experience their Rosian tersribilitd? Just outside Ttuihridge Wells. '3

This representation of Nature as an ideal habitat arose in part because Addison's generation, that class of '38 which gloried in the Glorious Revolution, had inherited a profound environmental crisis which it zealously combatted. "The opinion of the World's Decay is so generally received", George Hakewill had observed in 1630, "not onely among the Vulgar, but of the Leamed, both Divines and othets".“i' Reformation commentators had affirmed the old Classical tropes and Biblical prophecies: this vale of tears was a wreck, old and decrepit; the end of the enviromnent was nigh?“ Everywhere, champions of rnundus senescens had declared, the climate was deteriorating, the soil was growing exhausted, and pestilences were multiplying. Originally, insisted Thomas Burnet in his Sacred Theory ofthe Earth (1684), the face of the Earth had been as smooth as an egg-shell; but the very existence of mountains, and, ftuthennore, their perpetual denudation, showed that all was cracking up, becoming reduced to a pile of "Ruines and Rubbish"; nowadays what man inhabited was a "iitrte dirty Planet", a superannuated sphere, punishment for original sin.“ If Burnet's prose resonated with Baroque oratory, rhetorically trilling on the motif of mutability, others could point to enviromnental decay of a

wholly tangible kind: collapsing cliffs, landslips, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, silting estuaries and the like. At home John Evelyn deplored smoke pollution and deforestation, while abroad, as Richard Grove has brilliantly 16 Miles Weatherall, in Search of a Cure: A History of the Pharrnaceuticai industry,

Onford, New York 1990, p. I0. 1'? Oliver Goldsmith, A History of the Earth and Anirnated Nature,London I774, 1, p. -=lt]l.

13 Charlotte Klonk, Science and the Perception of Nature: British Landscape Art in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, New I-laven and London 1996, p. 9. l9 George Hakewill, An Apoiogie, End ed., Oxford lti3U; first published I627‘, Preface. 2t] Gordon Davies, The Earth in Decay, London 1969; "ti-fu Tuan, The Hydroiogic Cycle and the Wisdorn ofGod: A Theme in Geoteieotogr, Toronto 1968. 21 Thomas Burnet, Sacred Theory of the Earth, translated from the I631 Latin original, London 1634-1690, quoted in: Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, Berkeley 196?,

p. 411.

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showed i.rr his Green lrnperialisrn, observers on Barbados and other new colonies were alarmed at how rapidly slash-and-bum deforestation and plantation monocultures like sugar-cane brought on droughts, flash-floods and devastating soil erosion, turning once fertile terrains aridtfi Original sin and modem greed together explained what many diagnosed as the symptoms of a planet terminally sick. But such theological eco-pessimism came under challenge. The Glorious Revolution enthroned a new regime which professed to stand for freedom, order, prosperity and progress; and its apologists, for instance the Boyle Lecturers, provided enviromnental visions that vindicated the new govemmental

order by naturalizing it. Like the political settlement of 1688, and all the more so the Hanoverian succession of 1714, the natural order now became praised for its stability: the "grand design of Providence", deemed the Newtonian geologist and physician, John Woodwmd, was thus the "Conservation of the Globe" in a "just aequilibriurn".f3 In his An Essay Towards a Natural History of the Earth (1695), Woodward fiankly admitted that events like the Deluge prirna facie suggested "nothing but tumult and disorder": yet if we draw somewhat nearer, and take a closer prospect of it [...] we may there trace out a steady hand producing [...] the most consummate order and beauty out of confusion and deformity [...] and directing all the several steps and periods to an end, and that a most noble and excellent one, no less than the happiness of the whole race of mankind.“

As with England, the Earth's turbulent revolutionary career was over; all was now equilibrium, the body terrestrial was healthily balanced; and the final global revolution — the Deluge — had been constructive not punitive, a "Reformation" introducing a new "constitution" "into the Government of the Natural World". Through that revolution the Lord had transformed mankind

"from the most deplorable Misery and Slavery, to a Capacity of being Happy", by rendering the post-diluvial Earth niggardly, thereby forcing man to labour by the sweat of his brow, and compelling industry.” Eighteentlr-century geological theorists further insisted that the laws of Nature goveming the globe were "inmrutable" and "progressive", and familiar

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22 John Evelyn, Silva, or a Discourse ofForest Trees,York l'l?6, first published I662; see also Richard Grove, Green lrnperialisrn. Colonial Expansion, Tropical lsland Edens and the Origins ofEnvironrnentalisrn ldllll-lli'O0, Cambridge I995. 23 John Woodward, An Essay Towards a Natural History of the Earth, London I695, p. 30, 32. See the discussion in: M. C. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, I689-l?'2t?, Ithaca, NY. I9?6. 24 John Woodward, An Essay Towards a Natural History of the Earth, London I695, p. 35. 25 Ibid., p. 61, 94.

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phenomena were reinterpreted in the light of designi" Decomposing mountains had fonnerly been taken as dysfunctional, betokening enviromnental catastrophe; now their positive uses were stressed — "the plains become richer, in proportion as the mountains decay", explained Goldsmith.” No mountains, no rainfall, no fertility, argued a new generation of physical geographers, dishing the ecological doomsters. The Scottish physician and geologist, James Hutton, showed in his Theory of the Earth (1795) how decomposition of mountains produced the detritus which, flowing down the rivers to form the seabed, would, millions of years hence, become the basis of new strata, whose ultimate decay would once again form rich soil, and so on, in endless cycles. Likewise with volcanoes and earthquakes, a sore topic after the calarnitous Lisbon earthquake of 1755: all such apparently destructive processes were actually integral to the operation of Nature. Hutton insisted

that the globe was self-sustaining and self-repairing, fanning an endtuing habitat, perfect for mania Praising him, a reviewer observed the switch from ecogloom to eco-glory: the dreary and dismal view of waste and universal ruin is removed, and the mind is presented with the pleasing prospect of a wise and lasting provision for the economy of namre.'ii'

The Enlightern:nent's new environmental vision married Newton and Locke. Along with this law-govemed Earth-machine went a Lockean possessive individualism that rationalized the Divine donation of dominion through a labotu

theory of property and value: man had the right, divine and nantral, to appropriate the Earth and its fi'uits.3" The Biblical mandate to man to master the Earth and multiply was thereby given rational sanction. The age of Donne had seen mutability — "tis all in pieces" — and the Puritan Saints had anticipated the apocalyptic overthrow of Anti-Christ in fire and floods; but from the 1690s the enviromnent was philosophically stabilized.“ Both pious Christians like John Ray and later Deists like Hutton portrayed a steady-state ter26 Roy Porter, "Creation and Credence: the Career of Theories of the Earth in Britain, 16661320", in: B. Barnes and S. Shapin (eds.), Natural Order, Beverly Hills I97'9, pp. 97I23. 2'? Oliver Goldsmith, A History of the Earth and Animated Nature, London lTi'4, I, p. I63. 23 See James I-lutton, Theory of the Earth, 2 vols., Edinburgh l'i'95. T. D. Kendrick, The Lisbon Earthquake, London I956. 29 Jean Jones, "James Hutton's Agricultural Research and his Life as a Farmer", in: Annals ofScience, xlii (I985), pp. 573-6lJI. 3D C. B. MaePherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism." Hobbes to Locke,

Oxford I964; I933; Anthony Pagden, Lords of all the World.- ldeologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. l5i.l6l-c. lSlitIl, New Haven I995. 31 G. Williamson, "lvlutability, Decay and Seventeenth Century lvlelancholy", in: idem, Seventeenth Century Contests, London I961, pp. T3-I01; ‘ll. I. Harris, All Coherence Gone, London I966; Christopher Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth Century England, London 19?].

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restrial economy, rather as Adam Smith would deem the fr'ee-market economy optimal. Illustrating these views, Goldsmith depicted the Earth as a godsent "habitation", a mansion for the Lord's tenant to enjoy - on condition he toiled to improve his estate, for: while many of his wants are thus kindly furnished, on the one hand, there are numberless inconveniences to excite his industry on the other. This habitation, though provided with all the conveniences of air, pasturage, and water, is but a desert place, without human cultivation. A world thus furnished with advantages on the one side and inconveniences on the other, is the proper abode of reason, is the fittest to exercise the

industry of a free and a thinking creanrred"

So: the Earth was not in crisis, it was a self-adjusting system, govemed by universal laws and made for man. Latitudinarian Anglicanism backed such thinking: God was Benevolent, the Devil was defacto discredited (there might be a ghost, but there certainly were no gremlins, in the machine). And this enviromnental philosophy propped the politics of the Hanoverians: God was the architect of natural order rather as Walpole was the manager of political stability.“ And more than stability, improvement. As was long ago maintained by Weber and Tawney, Protestant theology highlighted the individual's duty of self-realization; cultivating Nature promised spiritual improvement no less than daily bread. Authors had few qualms about man's right - his duty even to harness Nature, "bringing all the headlong tribes of nature into subjection to his wiIl", according to Goldsmith, "and producing [...] order and uniformity

upon earth"."" Had not the noble Lord Verularn proclaimed Knowledge itself is power" and that "the end of our foundation is [...] the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possib1e." Through natural philosophy, maintained Joseph Glanvill, reiterating Bacon, "nature being known [...] may be mastered, managed, and used in the services of humane 1ife".35 Such views, of course, underwrote what Europeans had anyway been doing to the enviromnent for centuries, clearing the forest, embanking, ploughing, planting, mining. Draining and deforestation were praised for freeing the land fi'om dankness and disease, and so tuming wasteland into i—i

32 Oliver Goldsmith, A History of the Earth and Animated Nature, London lT?4, I, p.

400. 33 See IN. lvt. Spellman, The Latitudinarians and the Church of England, Athens, GA. I993). 34 Oliver Goldsmith, A History of the Earth and Animated Nature, London ITT4, I, p. 401; Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London I930; Richard Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, New York I926. 35 Francis Bacon, "Ofl-leresies", in: J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis and D. D. Heath (eds.), The Works of Francis Bacon, I4 vols., London I35?-I374, VII, p. 253; idem, "New Atlantis", in: ibid., Ill, p. 156. Joseph Glanvill, Plus Ultra, London I663, p. 3?.

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wealth. But radical and feminist historians have recently reproved the aggressive, macho element in Bacorrian thinking, for replacing notions of lvlother Earth with a new vision of Nature exploited, raped and forced to yield up her fruits. Human Dominion must not be hindered by sentimentality: "Know that by nature", Descartes wrote, "I do not rmderstand some goddess or some sort of imaginary power. I employ this word to signify matter itself". "The veneration wherewith men are imbued for what they call nature", grumbled Robert Boyle in a similar anti-super"stitious vein, "has been a discouraging impediment to the empire of man over the inferior creanrres of God: for many have not only looked upon it, as an impossible thing to compass, but as something of impious to attempt". An end to such

scrup1es!"" It is right to note these strains of environmental violence, but they must be kept in perspective. For the key paradigm of man's relation to the environment in the Georgian age was not eonflictual but cooperative, indeed georgic. "I have new placed thee in a spacious and well-furnish'd World", the botanist John Ray imagined God informing mankind: I have provided thee with Materials whereon to exercise and employ thy Art and Strength [...] I have distinguished the Earth into Hills and ‘tallies, and Plains, and Meadows, and Woods; all these Parts, capable of Culture and Improvement by Plowing, and Carrying, and Drawing, and Travel, the laborious Ox, the patient Ass, and the sn-ong and serviceable Horse [...]."' Once the Deity had explained to man his place in the divine scheme of things,

Ray reflected upon God's assessment of what might be called the Divine Assessment Exercise: I persuade myself that the bountiful and gracious Author of IvIan's Being [...] is well pleased with the Industry of lvlan, in adoming the Earth with beautiful Cities and Castles; with pleasant Villages and Country-Houses; with regular Gardens and Orchards, and Plantations of all Sorts of Shrubs and Herbs, and Fruits, for Meat, Medicine, or Moderate Delight [...] and

36 Réné Descartes, "Le I‘v'Ionde", in: F. Alquib (ed.), CEuvres Philosophiques de Descartes, Paris I9'?3, vol. I, p. 349, quoted in: Brian Easlea, Science and Sexual Oppression." Patriarchyis Confrontation with Woman and Nature, London I931, p. T2; Robert

Boyle "A Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nanrre", in: The Worlrs of the Honourable Robert Boyle, London H44, IV, p. 363; for the critique see, for instance, C. Merchant, The Death of Nature." Women, Ecology and the Scientific

Revolution, San Francisco I930; London I930); A. Kolodny, The Lay of the Land." Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters, Chapel Hill I9?5; Brian Easlea, Science and Sexual Dppression." Patriarchy's Confirontation with Woman and Nature, London I931. 3'? Jolm Ray, The Wisdom Cfflod Mangfested in the Worlts of the Creation, London I691, pp. I13-I14.

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whatever differencth a civil and well-cultivated Regien, frem a barren and deselate Wildemessii E

The medel typically defining the preper relatiens between man and Nature was thus the farm. Accerding te Ray's centemperary, Sir Matthew I-Iale, Ged was the great freehelder, the werld his estate, and man his tenant. "The end ef man's creatien", the Chief Justice explained in legal tenninelegy, "was te be Ged‘s steward, viificns, bailiff er farmer ef this geedly farm ef the lewer werld". Fer this reasen was man invested with pewer, autherity, right, deminien, tiust and care, te cerrect and abridge the excesses and cruelties ef the fiercer animals, te give pretectien and defence te the mansuete and useful — in shert, "te preserve the face ef the earth in beauty, usefulness and fruitfulness".i'9 Everyene weuld have tmdersteed Hale's patemalistic metapher ef the geed steward, be he in the Bible er in Bedferdshire. Nature weuld yield and yield well, but enly if the principles ef geed husbandry were upheld: matching steck and creps te seils, adepting seund retatiens, planning fer leng-tenn sustainability — quite literally, te use the Weberian metapher, pleughing back the prefitsfm Such images ef stewardship — paternal rather than pltmderittg — sanctiened actien and erdained envirenmental ethics and aesthetics. Pieneering in this respect was the werk ef Jehn Evelyn, whese Silva, A Discanrse af Fares! Trees and the Prapagarian cf Timber in His Majestfybr Darninians (1662), cendenmed wasteful land practices, eitpesiiig hew, se as te previde charceal and pasture, "predigieus havec" had been wreaked threugh the tendency "te entirpate, demelish, and raae [...] all these many geedly weeds and ferests, which eur mere prudent ancesters left standing".‘“ Evelyn's belief that eccnemic grewth depended en seund censervatien practices set the tene fer the new managerial appreach te Nature widely advecated in the eighteenth cen-

tury. In such premetien ne ene was mere tireless than Arthur Yetmg, farmer, traveller, auther, editer ef the Annais afAg'ricaiiure and finally Secretary ef the new Beard ef Agricultureflz "Agriculture", he preclaimed, "is beyend all deubt the feundatien ef every ether art, business, er prefessien", and he eutlined the great cenmiandment ef agricultural imprevement: "Make twe blades ef grass grew where ene grew befere". The femiula? "Te cultivate THAT crep, whatever it be, which preduces the greatest prefit VALUED IN I

I

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33 Ibid., p. 434. 39 lvlatthew Hale, The Primitive {Jriginaiian af Mankind, Lenden lI5?"?, Sect. 4, Ch. 3, 3110. 40 Fer an acceunt ef eighteenth century agriculture sec G. E. Mingay, A Saciai Hisiarfv af the English Caanafvside, Lenden 1990. 41 lehn Evelyn, Siiva, ar a Discaarse af Fares! Trees, Yerk l?Ti5, first published 1662, p. l. 42 J. G. Gaaley, The Life afrirthar Yaang, Philadelphia l9'i3; G. E. Mingay (ed.), Arthur Yaang and his Tirnes, Lenden l'§l?5.

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MONEY". The ebstacle? "The vicieus circle ef agricultural peverty with all its dire censequences: put little in and yeu weuld get little eut"."3 Fer Yeung and his supperters, the new agriculture premised a mere efficient envirenmentalism than eld famiing. Cemmen fields spelt waste — they were, he argued, a waste ef Nature and hence ef Ged's largesse, they were wasteful te individuals and the natien alike. Was it net revealing that the baulks and margins en the epen fields were actually kuewn as the "waste"'?"" Se the shift frem what E. P. Thempsen has called "meral ecenemy" te petitical ecenemy, frem partial usufruct te cetnplete privatizatien, weuld end the waste ef Nature and ensure the gain ef all: "The universal benefit resulting frem enclesures, I censider as fully preved"."5 The capitalist farm and the cennnen fields thereby became parables ef industry and idleness respectively. Yeung rede the natien, raising hymns te enviremnental betterment: All the ceuntry frem Helkham te Heughten was a wild sheepwalk befere the spirit ef imprevement seized the inhabitants, and this glerieus spirit has wreught amazing effects: fer instead ef beundless wilds and uncultivated wastes inhabited by scarce anything but sheep, the ceuntry is all cut

inte enclesures, cultivated in a mest husbandlilte manner, richly mantued, well peepled, and yielding a hundred times the preduce that it did in its fermer state.""

Wherever enclesure went, it didn't merely impreve the land. Theugh "the Geths and Vandals ef epen fields" still teuched "the civilieatien ef enclesures", enclesing had "changed the men as much as it has impreved the ceuntry": When I passed frem the cenversatien ef the farmers I was recemmended te call en te that ef men whem chance threw in my way, I seemed te have

lest a century in time, er te have meved 1,000 miles in a day.“ In this natienal drive, the captains ef agriculture sheuld rightly be the nebilily, theugh they tee must abanden neterieus aristecratic waste:

43 Fer the quetatiens see Arthur ‘feung, The Fartneris Letters ta the Peapie af Engiand, Lenden l7'6?, pp. B4, 3. 44 J. M. Neesen, Catnrnaners: Cantntan Right, Enciasure and Saciai Change in England,

J ?fl0-I820, Cambridge 1993. 45 Arthur Yeung, The Farnterls Letters ta the Peapie afflngianti, Lenden l'i6?, p. 91. Fer "meral ecenemy", see E. P. Thempsen, Custarns in Cantntan, Lenden I991. Fer the histery ef enclesure, see M. Turner, English Pariiantentatjr Enciasure: its Histaricai Geagraphy and Ecanarnic Histary, Fell-testene 1930,: idem, Enciasures in Britain, H56‘i'33t?, Lenden 1984. 46 Al11htJI Yeung, A Six Weeks’ Taur Thraugh the Sauthern Caunties af England and

Waies, Lenden H68, p. 21. 4? Arthtu Yeung, View af the Agriculture cf Clrfardshire, Lenden l3{l9, p. 36.

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never ferget that there is fifty times mere lustre in the waving ears ef cern, which cever a fermerly waste acre, than in the mest glittering star that shines at Alntaclr's.""

Yet the basic message was simplicity itself: "He, whe is the BEST FARMER, is with me the GREATEST MAN": presumably Farmer Geerge was meant te read that.""

Many echeed Yeung‘s sentiments. James Hutten was cencerned net just with geelegy but with agriculttue tee: indeed he saw these twin disciplines as land ecenemy in its natural and human dimensiens respectively. Likening a well-run farm te the cycles ef Nature, Hutten saluted agriculture as the para-

gen cf the relatienship between htnnanity and nature, and science as the key te its perfectien: fer threugh agrenemy man becemes " like a Ged en earth [...] and cemrnands this species ef animal te live, and that te die, this species ef plant te grew, and that te perish".5" With ever twe theusand enclesure Acts and mere than sis: rnillien acres ef

land affected, enclesure and pregressive agriculture in general presented a medel ef preper enviremnental superintendence, wedding prefit te patemalism, yet alse incerperating cherished values. Traditienal arcadian, pasteral myths ceuld be accennnedated — Nature as spentaneeus beunty and harmeny: O the Pleasure ef the Plains, Happy Nymphs and happy Swains,

Harmless, Ivlerry, Free, and Gay, Dance and spert the Heurs away. Fer us the Zephyr blews, Fer us distils the Dew,

Fer us unfelds the Rese, And Flewets display their Hue, Fer us the Winters rain,

Fer us the Stunmers shine, Spring swells fer us the Grain, And Autumn bleeds the Vine.“

A

43 Arthur Yetmg, The Partner's Letters ta the Peaple cf England, Lenden l'l6?', p. 306. Fer the invelvement ef the nebility in pregressive agriculttue, see G. E. lvlingay, English Landed Saciety in the Eighteenth Centttrjv, Lenden 1963. 49 Arthur Yeung, A Six Manths’ Taur Thraugh the Ncrth cf England, 4 vels, 2nd ed., Lenden l'l?l, I, l, itiv. 50 James Hutten, An lnvestigatian cf the Principles cf Knawledge, and cf the Pragress cf Reasan, fratn Sense ta Science and Philasaphy, 3 vcls., Edinburgh H94, II, p. 483. 51 Fer the peetics ef the bucelic, see Raymund Williams, The Cauntry and the City, Lenden 1'1-W3; fer pasteral painting see Ann Bertningham, Landscape and ldealagv: The English Rustic Traditian l F40-i860, Berkeley 1936; Christiana Pane, Tail and Plenty. ltnages cf the Agricultural Landscape in England l?8-0-l39tl, Lenden 1993; Nigel Everett, The Tary View afLand.scape, New Haven, Cenn 1994.

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Thus the chorus in Handel's Acis and Galatea. A quasi-physiocratic doctrine

could also be grafted on - Nature as the root of all value, or, in Adam Smith's dictmn, "the land constitutes by far the greatest, the most important, and the

most durable part of the wealth of every extensive country".5i And finally the Protestant ethic would serve as fertiliser: labour consecrated private gain

into a public and ecological good. Hence it became the received wisdom under Farmer George that what was good fer farming was good fer the nation; a fi'iend of England was a friend of the Earth. Robert Andrews, Esquire, and his

new bride, Frances, surely agreed: ownership, affluence and aesthetics clearly coalesced in their politics of landscape, as famously painted by Gainsborough. Lords of all they surveyed, no waste ground, no wretched paupers and poachers, and net even any happy Nymphs encreached upon their power and privacy.5"

Yet this vision of enviromnental bounty, if primarily Whig and patrician, was not exclusive to the privileged. It could equally serve the programmes of

progressives who saw the economy of Nature supporting the march of mankind. "Three-fourths of the habitable globe, are now uncultivated", commented the scandalized William Godwin, rationalizing the Biblical "go forth and multiply" into a political programme for radical advance. Properly matiaged, Nature would sustain boundless human improvement: "lvflyriads of centuries of still increasing population may pass away, and the earth be yet fotmd sufficient for the support of its inhabitants".i'" Not just that, but for Godwin and many others whose thinking had been touched by Montesquieu's environmentalism, the domestication of Nature furthered the civilizing process — for wild enviromnents bred uncouth people. ‘While Addison and Steele's Spectator was polishing the urban bourgeoisie, agriculture was sowing civility

in the shit-es.“ This formed a cosy consensus that remained in place until dynamited by Malthus‘s Essay on Population (1798). Parson Malthus's version of the ece-system as a zero-sum game did not only deflate revolutionary

utopians; it amounted to an abandonment of entrenched broad-church as-

52 Adam Smith, An lnquiry into the Nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations, London

ITT6, I, p. 304; Stephen Copley and Kathryn Sutherland (eds.), Adam Smith: The Wealth ofltlations, Manchester I995. 53 For discussion of Gainsborough's painting, see Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels (eds.), The lconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments, Cambridge 1933,: 1939; Jolm Berger et al., Ways of

Seeing, London 1'.il'l2,', Andrew Graham-Dison, A History ofBritish Art, London 1996. 54 William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, London U93, quoted in: Clive Ponting, A Green History of the World, London 1991, p. I50. 55 Roy Porter, "Medical Science and Human Science in the Enlightemnent", in: C. Fort, R. Porter and R. Welder (eds.), Inventing Human Science: Eighteenth Century Domains, Berkeley 1995, pp. 53-3?; Norbert Elias, The Civilieing Process, vol. l, The History of

Manners, New York 19TH: vol. 2, Power and Civility, New Yorl-t 1982; vol. 3, The Court Society, New York 1933; James Dunbar, Essays on the History of Manltind in Rude and Cultivated Ages, London ITSG.

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sumptions about how enviromnental management guaranteed human pro-

gees?" I have been arguing that the Georgian apologists represented the environment as a farm, promoting policies for the responsible management of natural resources for private profit and long-term public benefit. The mastering of the wild was a source of pride: I sing Floods muzled, and the Ocean tam'd, Lurturious Rivers govem‘d, and reclam‘d Waters with Banks confin'd, as in Gaol, Till Kinder Sluces let them go on Bail; Streams curb'd with Dammes like Bridles, taught tlobey, And run as strait, as if they saw their way.“

— a verse celebration of the draining of the Fens, petmed by Sir Jonas Moore, Charles lI's Surveyor-General of the Ordnance: and one need not be a devout Foucaultian to catch the tenor of this fantasy of the great confinement of Nature."" Taming the wildemess remained a favourite theme. "When we behold

rich improvements of a wild and uncultivated soi1", enthused the Cumbrian chauvinist Jolm Dalton: we are struck with wonder and astonishment, to see the face of Nature to-

tally changed. It carries an air of enchantment and romance: and the fabulous and lurturiant description, given us by the Poet, of yellow harvest rising up instantaneously under the wheels of the chariot of Ceres, as it passed over the barren deserts, hardly seems [...] too extravagant an image to represent the greatness and seeming suddemless of such a change.“

But as the wild was being rendered both profitable and pleasing, a questionmark arose against another aspect of the enviromnent: the garden, traditionally a rather formal and often walled appendage to the country seat."" Growing affluence and ambition promised to change that: why think small in an age of aristocratic aggrandizement marked by ever statelier homes‘? "May not a whole Estate", suggested Addison, "be thrown ittto a kind of garden by 56 Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Aflects the Future improvement of Society, With Remarks on the Speculations of Mr Godwin, M. Condorcet, And Other Writers, London I793: M. Turner (ed.), Malthus and his Times, Basingstoke 1936. 5? Jonas Moore, The History of Narrative of the Great level of the Fenns, called Redford Level, London 1685, p. ".72. 53 Colin Jones and Roy Porter (eds.), Reassessing Foucault: Power, Medicine and the

Body, London 1994. 59 John Dalton, A Descriptive Poem Addressed to Two Ladies at Their Return From Viewing the Mines at Wliitehaven, London l'l55, lll. so On English gardening and landscaping, see Christopher Hussey, English Gardens and Landscapes, l?0tl-llitl, London 1967'; C. Thacker, The Wildness Pleases: the origins of Romanticism, London 1983,: Tom Williamson, Polite Landscapes: Gardens and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, Stroud 1996.

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frequent Plantations [...] A man might make a pretty Landskip of his own Possessions", that is, create the impression that one's property stretched boundlessly throughout Nature, an illusion enhanced by Williarn Kent's invention of the ha-ha."' But that modest proposal merely compounded the problem of the garden, since it seemed to muddle or destabilize the distinctive elements of the estate.

So long as Nattue had wom a wild air, its antonym, the garden, was bound to be orderly, hence the classical fonnal gardens of the Renaissance with their Euclidean plans, mazes, hedges, alleys and statuary, seemingly ecltohig model cities, and serving as citadels, protecting civilization against the horrid wilder-

ness. But as Nature itself became regularized into a farm, geometrlzed by the parliamentary surveyors‘ charts and chains, the artificial garden inevitably lost its compelling rationale. Yet with Nature tamed, wildness itself could at last become aesthetically prized, rather as, once Enlightened elites had divested themselves of belief in witchcraft and diabolical possession, the supernatural was ripe for repackaging in Gothic novels and ghost stories. Repudiating what were increasingly denounced as the claustrophobic regimentation of the Italian garden or the barren symmetries of La Notre's Ver-

sailles, the English garden was refashioned to follow Nature, abandoning its overt artifice and manicured paraphemalia. The great house would abandon the formal garden and would hide the home farm and kitchen garden out of sight. Inspired by Capability Brown, a generation of gardeners fostered a new arcadian escapism by turning the great house into an island lapped by a sea of parkland, whose austere simplicity - mere turf, tree clumps and sheets of water — could pass for Nature thanks to the art that conceals art."2 The cultural psychology underlying this new departure was perfectly understood by that great Victorian gardener, John Claudius Loudon: As the lands devoted to agriculture in England were, sooner than in any other country in Europe, generally enclosed with hedges and hedgerow trees, so the face of the country in England [...] produced an appearance which bore a closer resemblance to country seats laid out in the geometrical style; and, for this reason, an attempt to imitate the irregularity of nature in laying out pleasure grotmds was made in England [...] sooner than in

any other part of the world.“

Tastes never stand still; Brown was soon being mocked in his turn as one obsessed with shaving, trirmning and cropping, and his successors, notably Humphry Repton and Richard Payne Knight, while upholding his touchstone 61 Joseph Addison, "The Spectator" 414, in: D. F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator, 5 vols., Oxford l965, Ill, pp. 55l-552: for the ha-ha, see C. Thacker, The Wildness Pleases: the Origins of Romanticism, London 1983, pp. 32-33. 62 For Capability Brown, see Tom Williamson, Polite Landscapes: Gardens and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, Stroud 1996, pp. 7?-99. 63 J. C. Loudon, The Suburban Gardener and Villa Companion, London 1333, p. I62.

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of artless nature, took it to its logical conclusion; paying court to fancy, they unashamedly brought wildness right up to the house itself by waving "the

wand of enchantment" over the estate, as is urged by Marmaduke Milestone, the Reptonian landscaper in Peacock's Heatilong Hall, who premised to impart "a new outline to the physiognomy of the tmiverse"."" Some predictably found this new proximity of naked Nature threatening. "Knight's system appears tn me the jacobinism of taste“, muttered Anna Seward, deploring the "micurbed and wild luiruriance, which must soon render our landscape-island as rank, weedy, damp and unwholesome as the incultivate savamras of America"."" Yet this new noble savagery in landscaping was hard to resist completely,

since it was sanctioned by a sea-change in taste. "The wildness pleases", Lord Shaftesbury had declared at the beginning of the century, "We [...] contemplate her with more delight in these original wilds than in the artificial labyrinths and feigned wildemesses of the palace"."" And such judgements, with their plausible, ‘Whiggish, liberty-loving credentials, "wrought great change in the aesthetics of the enviromnent.

Take mountains. The muntlus seneseens trope had regarded them as pathological, Nature's pimples. Joshua Poole's poet's handbook, Englilrh Parnassus (I657), commended some sixty epithets for motmtains, many BIpressing distaste — "insolent, surly, ambitious, barren, [...] unfrequented, forsaken, melancholy, pathless", and so forth. What Marjorie Hope Nicolson

has dubbed "mountain gloom" lingered long: as late as 1747 the Gentiemants Magazine judged Wales "a dismal region, generally ten months buried in snow and eleven in clouds"."7 The aesthetic elevation of moimtains owed something to the much-mocked critic John Demiis, who championed Longinus. While describing the Alps as "Ruins upon Ruins", he could relish their "tremendous" and "dreadful" qualities."" ‘Within a generation, responses had turned to awe-struck admiration. "Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff but is pregnant with religion and poetry", fluttered Thomas Gray, crossing the Alps in 1'.739."" Such an em1o64 For Payne Knight see Marilyn Butler, Peacock Displayed, London l9'?9, pp. 30f. 6; sec also Richard Payne Knight, The Progress of Civil Society: ln Six Books, London I796; David Garnett (ed.), The Novels of Thomas Love Peacoclt, London i943, "Headlong Hall", p. 22. I55 A. Constable (erl.), The Letters of Anna Seward, ITBA-130?, 6 vo|s., Edinburgh I311, IV, ll). 66 Shaftesbury, The Moralists {l'iCl9), quoted in: C. Thacker, The Wiltiness Pleases: the [Jrigins of Romanticism, London 1933, p. I2. 6'? See Joshua Poole, English Parnassus, London 165?, pp. I3?-I38; The G'entleman's Magazine (1?-4?), quoted in: David Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism,

London I984, p. 80; Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Mountain Gianni anti Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite, Ithaca, N.Y. 1959.

63 John Demiis, cited in: C. Hussey, The Picturesque, London 1967, p. 3?. 59 Paget Toynbee and L. Whibley (eds.), The Corespontlence of Thomas Gray 3 vo|s., Cbrford 1935, I, p. 128.

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blement was possible because momrtains could be validated through the lenses of art, perceived rather as paintings than as mere natural objects: thus

Horace Walpole: "Precipices, mountains, torrents, wolves, rumblings, Salvator Rosa"."" Indeed, the very essence of the Picturesque creed, theorized in the 1780s by William Gilpin, was that the test of a scene lay in how well it actualized the qualities constituting a fme painting.“ The true challenge, how-

ever, to the entrenched aesthetics of civilized order came with Edmrmd Burl-;e‘s Philosophical Enquiry into our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautifizl

(1757), which errtolled the stupendous, rugged and bleak and all else productive of "ideas elevating, awful and of a magnificent kind". Crags, precipices and torrents, windswept ridges, tmploughed uplands — all now became the acme of taste, precisely because they had not been ruled and refmed by hu-

man hand.” "Compared to this what are the cathedrals or palaces built by men!", rhapsodized Sir Joseph Banks on seeing Fingal's Cave; and he supplied the answer to his own question: mere models or playthings, imitations as diminutive as his works will always be when compared with those of nature. What is now the boast of the architect! regularity the only part in which he fancied himself to err-

ceed his mistress, Nature, is here found in her possession, and here it has been for ages undescribed.H

Through suchlike sentiments there emerged what has been called natural supematuralism, the Romantic and neo-pagan notion that Nature is sacred and not "measureless to man", feelings perhaps mirrored in Goethe's use of the term "a friend of the earth", and the new respect for living beings evident, say, in the vegetarianism of Shelley's Vindication ofNatural Diet (I3 13).?" The cult of the sublime threatened aesthetic disorientation; and what constituted choice scenery was being ealled into question at precisely the moment when the countryside itself was experiencing a disturbing intrusion: heavy industry. If caves, crags and chasms could be sublime and hence objects TD Horace Walpole (letter to Richard ‘West, 23 September l'i'39), in: W. S. Lewis (ed.), The Yale Edition ofHorace Walpoie"s Correspondence, New Haven 1943, XIII, p. I3]. 7'] For William Gilpin, see Malcolm Andrews, T.he Search for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain. l Trill-l-Still, Stanford, CA. 1989; Stephen Copley (ed.), The Politics ofthe Picturesque: Literature, Landscape and Aesthetics since i Tilt}, Cambridge I994; Walter John Hippie, The Beautiful. the Suhlime. and the Picturesque in Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Theory, Carl:-ontlale 195?. ‘T2 Edmund Burke, Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful (sl: sn, I757), 52. For Burke see Tom Furniss, Edmund Eurlte's Aesthetic ldeologjc Language, Gender and Political Economy in Revolution, Cambridge 1993; Samuel H. Monk, The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories in Eighteenth Century England. Ann Arbor 1960. TF3 Joseph Banks in: T. Pennant, A Tour in Scotland. and Voyages to the l-iehrides, 2 vols.

(vol.l, Chester: printed for J. Monk; vol. 2, London: B. White, ITT4-ITTIS), ll, p. 262. For Banks, see John Gascoigne, Joseph Banlrs and the English Enlightenment: Useful Knowledge and Polite Culture. Cambridge and New York 1994. 1'4 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vindication of Natural Diet, London ISI 3.

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of taste, what about fumaces and factories‘? Two sites in particular became laboratories for this aesthetic experiment: Shropshire and Derbyshire. "Coalbrookdale itself is a very romantic spot", commented Arthur Young, still on his travels, in 1735: it is a winding glen between two immense hills [...] all thickly covered with wood, forming the most beautiful sheets of hanging wood. Indeed too beautiful to be much in unison with that variety of horrors art has spread at the bottom: the noise of the forges, mills, Etc. with all their vast machinery, the flames bursting from the fumaces with the burning of the coal and the smoak of the lime kilns, are altogether sublime.”

The agronomist‘s aesthetic bafflement is what we might ertpect. Anna Seward, being a poet, had more definite ideas. She was no enemy to industry, enthusing about Birmingham, where "Hedges, thickets, trees, upt1u11'd, disrooted" had been improved into "mortar'd piles, the streets elongated, and the statelier square" - i.e., tubanization and industry created civilization. But the right place for industry was in town, and her tone changed when she turned to

once-lovely Shropshire: D, violated CDLEBROOK! [...]

- Now we view Their fresh, their fragrant, and their silent reign Usurpt by Cyclops; — hear, in mingled tones, Shout their throng‘d barge, their pondr'ous engines clang Through thy coy dales; while red the countless fires, With umber'd flames, bicker on all thy hills, Darl-:‘ning the Summer*s sun with columns large Of thick, sulphureous smoke.“

John Sell Cotman‘s 1802 watercolour, Bedlam Furnace, near Madeley, suggests a similarly disapproving judgment on a nearby industrial site. Here industry clearly ravaged nature — indeed forged Bedlam. The Romantic conviction was gaining ground that industry wrecked the enviromnent, both in actuality and in its aesthetic capabilities.” '

75 For Yomrg see Annals of Agriculture and Other Usefiil Arts 46 vols., London l'?S4lSl5, IV, (USS), 166-163; Barry Trinder, The industrial Revolution in Shropshire, Chichester 1973; Francis D. Klingender, Art and the industrial Revolution, ed. by A. Elton, London I9?5, lst ed. 194?; Ann Bermingham, Landscape and ldeolog»: The English Rustic Tradition l?4t}‘-ldtitl, Berkeley I936, p. T9; Humphrey Jermings, Pandaemonium: the Coming of the Machine as Seen by Contemporary Ghsenters i660l886, ed. by Mary-Lou Jermings and Charles Madge, New York: The Free Press; London 1985. T6 Sir Walter Scott (ed.), The Poetical Works of Anna Seward, Edinburgh I310, ll, pp. 314-315. T? Arm Bermingham, Landscape and ideology, p. Ell; see also Stephen Daniels, Fields of Vision: Landscape imagery and National identity in England and the United States, Cambridge I993.

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Industrial Derbyshire too became a spot of aesthetic controversy. Its economy and beauties fotmd many champions, notably Joseph Wright, who painted vocal worthies like the cotton spinner Richard Arkwright, and also renowned locations: Dovedale, Matlock High Tor, and the Derwent valley with its caves, castles, mines, mineral springs and factories. Praising Wright's "sweet and magic pencil", James Pill-;ington‘s View ofthe Present State of Derbyshire (1739) declared: "Perhaps no country [...] can boast of finer scenes". Wright's Arltwrightls Mill. View ofCromford, near Matlach, shows nature and

industry as twin sources of delight, complementing each other. The painter and theatre-designer, Philip James de Loutherberg, in his sets for The Wonders offlerbyshire, staged in 1779 at Drury Lane, likewise sought to show how industry and dramatic scenery both partook of the sublime?" Not everyone was convinced. "Speaking as a tourist , remarked the crusty traveller John Byng in 1790: these vales have lost their beauty; the rural cot has given way to the lofty red mill [...] the simple peasant [...] is changed to an impudent mechanic [...] the stream perverted from its course by sluices and aqueductsl"

His indignation was equally great when he lighted upon "a great flaring mill" in the "pastoral vale" of Aysgarth: All the vale is disturb'd; treason and levelling systems are the discourse; the rebellion may be near at hand [...] Sir Rd. Arkwright may have introduced much wealth into his family and into the country, but as a tourist I execrate his schemes.""

As is evident, for Byng, as for Anna Seward in her corrmrents on picturesque landscaping, the creation of natural disorder was bound to be a licence for social disorder. Byng‘s condenmations were endorsed by experts in the aesthetic. The landscape theorist, Uvedale Price, loved the "striking natural beauties" of the River Derwent, and so deplored the factories erected on its banks near Matlock: "nothing can equal them for the purpose of disbeautifying an enchanting piece of scenery"; "if a prize were given for ugliness", he quipped, those factories would win."'

TS James Pilkington, View of the Present State of Derhyshire, Derby ITB9, p. 49. For a major discussion of the above see Stephen Daniels, Fields of Vision: Landscape imagery and National identity in England and the United States, Cambridge I993, pp. 6llf.; Charlotte Klonk, Science and the Perception of lllature: British Landscape Art in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, New Haven and London I996. T9 John Byng, The Torrington Diaries, ed. by C. Bruyrt Andrews, 4 vols., London I93433, ll, p. 194. Si] ll.rid., III, p. ill. Si Uvedale Price, Essays on the Picturesque, 3 vols., London, l, p. I93.

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More tellingly still, it even came to be argued that what had long been championed as ag1'icultural improvement actually spelt enviromnental degradation and aesthetic impoverishment. Capitalist agriculture had always, of course, had its critics. Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village damned the depopulating effects of enclosure; Williarn Cowper censured the rural asset-stripping

that enclosure unleashed: "Estates are landscapes [...] ga.r_:'d upon awhile and auctioneer'd away"; and John Clare later took up the charge": But what is remarkable is that fonner enthusiasts also grew disgruntled. Even Arthur Young came to question his sacred cow, recognizing how improvement had made things worse for rural labourers: I had rather that all the commons of England were sunk in the sea, than that the poor should in future be treated on enclosing as they have been

hitherto. i

It is a crisis reflected in the career of Humphry Repton, after Brown's death the leading designer of landscape parks. By 1800 embittered by difficulties and debts, his last work includes a homily on the irresponsibility of the landed interest. "I have frequently been asked", he reflected: whether the Improvement of the Country in beauty has not kept pace with the increase of its wealth [...] I now may speak the truth [...] The taste of the country has bowed to the shrine which all worship; and the riches of individuals have changed the face of the country.""

Repton illustrated these distasteful changes by coming up with a parody of his own technique. He had won fame through his "Red Book", presenting clients and the public with "Before" and "After" scenes that showed the merits of landscaping. But now he contrasted the horrors of a recently "improved" estate with the original, before it had been sold by its "ancient proprietor" to one of the nouveaux riches. The unimproved view was handsome. In the foreground an "aged beech" shading the road, its branches pointing to a family reposing on a bench. A

stile marks a public footpath through a park full of "venerable trees"; on the S2 Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, London lTi'lJ; William Cowper, "The Task" (H85), Book Ill, Lines T55-T56 in: James Sambrook (ed.), W. Cowper. The Taslr and Selected Other Poems, London I994, p. I36; Roger Sales, English Literature in History. l?8fl-l83il.' Pastoral and Politics. London I933; John Barrel], The idea of Landscape and the Sense of Place. l?3l_'l-i84tJ.' An Approach to the Poetry of John Clare, Cambridge 1992; idem, The Darlr Side of the Landscape: The Rural Poor in English Painting, l T36‘-i340, Cambridge 1983. 33 Arthur Yomrg, Annals of Agriculture and Other Useful Arts, 46 vols., London I784ISIS, XXVI, p. 214. 34 Humphry Repton, Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening,

London I816, p. I91. There is a delightful spoof on Repton in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, in which the landscape gardener, bioakes, insists that "irregularity" is "one of the chiefest principles of the Picturesque style": Arcadia, London 1993, p. I 1.

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right there is a wooded common. The impression is one of landed benevolence.

All has been wrecked by the new owner, for whom "money supersedes every other consideration": By cutting down the timber and getting an act to enclose the common,

[he] had doubled all the rents. The old mossy and ivy-covered pale was replaced by a new and lofty close paling; not to confine the deer, but to exclude mankind, and to protect a miserable narrow belt of firs and Lombardy poplars: the bench was gone, the ladder-stile was changed to a caution about man-traps and spring-guns, and a notice that the footpath was stopped by order of the commissioners.“

This nouveau riche was perhaps the model for Sir Simon Steeltrap in Peacock's Crotchet Castle, who, as "a great presenter of game and public morals" had enclosed commons and woodlands; abolished cottage-gardens; taken the village cricket-ground into his own park, out of pure regard to the sanctity of Sunday; shut up footpaths and alehouses.""

The enviromnent has thus been mined, both for the villagers and also for the spectator. Small wonder perhaps that Jolm Constable was to declare, "a gentleman's park is my aversion. It is not beauty because it is not nauu'e"."l ‘llllilliarn Blake too hated oormnercial capitalism, its metaphysical foundations (the evil trinity of Bacon, Locke, Newton) and its artistic toadies (Reynolds), its inhumanity and its ugliness. The poem popularly known as his "Jerusalem" — actually the prefatory verses to his epic, Milton - looks back to

England's green and pleasant land, contrasting it with the modem "dark satanic mills". But if that makes him sound like one of the aesthetic tourists I've just been mentioning, scouting round Coalbrookdale or Derwentdale, nothing could be hrrther from the truth. Blake was a Londoner through and through, bom in Soho, resident in Lambeth; indeed, as Peter Ackroyd has suggested, those dark satanic mills may well have been not Arkwrightian cotton factories

but the steam-powered Albion flour mills, on the south bank opposite Blackfriars. And when Blake writes about the New Jerusalem, where in the green and pleasant land does he imagine it?

35 Humphry Repton, Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening,

London 1816, p. 193. 86 David Crarnett (ed), The Novels of Thomas Love Peacock, London I948, "Crochet Castle", p. 35. 37 C. R. Leslie, Memoirs of the Life ofdohn Constable, London 1949, p. I 1 l.

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The fields from Islington to Marybone, To Primrose Hill and Saint John's Wood, Were builded over with pillars of gold; And there Jen1salem's pillars stood.

Enviromnents, as this Blakean coda shows, are imagined landscapes; ecology lies in the eye of the beholder. Eighteenth century elite culture, I have tried to suggest, created environments of the mi.nd and the soil that fantasized the harmony of human production and natural sustainability. Contmdictions ap-

peared, yet such a quest is one from which we cannot shirk. With Blake's call for "Mental Fight" in mind, however, we must always remember that green issues — past, present and future — may have more to do with crises of consciousness than with the countryside.33

BE Peter Ackroyd, Blake, New York I995; Jon Moe, Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicaiism in the l790s, Oxford I992; William Blake, Blake's

Complete Writings, ed. by G. Keynes, London 1966, p. 649, pp. 430-48].

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Mapping and Displaying an English Marshland Landscape in the Mid-Eighteenth Century Sarah Bendall

Introduction Two mid-eighteenth century paintings of the Drake Brockman family show them enjoying the grounds of their family home at Beachborough in Kent and give the impression of a wealthy landed family, owners of a well-ordered

estate. In one, they are in a rotunda with telescope to hand to gaze over the view; the other picture has scenes of walking, painting and fishing in the park.‘ This image is reinforced by the map that the Reverend Ralph Drake Brockrnan commissioned from a local land surveyor, Thomas Hogben and his son, Henry, in 1769. It shows over 870 acres extending into five parishes, together with the house, park, garden and orchard at Beachborough, an accurate perspective drawing of Newington Church nearby, the smrounding fields

and woods, and roads and paths through them. A beautifully decorated parchment map was made, which was nearly four feet high and over sis feet wide. The title is surrounded by a rococo cartouche, decorated with leaves and flowers, the map has an elaborate compass rose and includes the family's coat of arms.2 The date of the map is note-worthy, for it was drawn two years after Ralph Drake Brockman had inherited the estate, and both it and the

paintings show some of the improvements to the house and grounds that he carried out during his lordship. Not only, therefore, was the plan a tool used for estate management — as seen from later notes on the map and from the inclusion of such features as the responsibility for the maintenance of boundaries — but it was also a statement of the position in society of a considerable landowner whose family had long served the local community.

English eighteenth-century society contained many families like the Drake Brockrnans. This was a time when many landed families enjoyed increasing wealth, from their estates, investments, trade both at home and overseas, poAcknowledgements Grants from the Ronmey Marsh Research Trust and Merton College Oxford have helped to fund the research presented here, and I am most grateful for this help. 1

Marl-L Girouard, Life in the Engiisiw Country Hearse: A Socini end Architectural History, Harmondsworth 1930, Cover, coloured plate XIX and plate 123. 2 Centre for Kentish Studies (CKS) U3259. 3 D.H. Drake-Broclcman, Record of the Brocizmen and Drake-Brocirmnn Family (s.l., s.n., 1936), pp. lT—l9, 32; E.W. Parl-tin, “Newington, near Hythe: the threatened village", in: Arciteeoiogie Continue 103 (1986), pp. lo?-89. The Hrockman papers are to he found in the British Library, Add. 4253fi—42?ltl, 45193-45220.

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litical offices and industrial developments. Nature — the material world and

features and products of the earth itself — played an important part in the life of landowners as their tracts of the countryside were areas to be lived in, profited from and displayed. Country estates were enjoyed to the full, new houses built and existing ones remodelled according to the fashion of the

times, landscaped parks and gardens were designed, new agricultural methods developed, sports played and neighbours visited. Institutional owners

tended to hold their investments in land, too, and these bodies also increasingly saw their estates as assets to be valued and developed. Paintings and maps were thus part of a complex display of a family or institution's status

and wealth.‘ Large-scale manuscript maps were made in increasing numbers throughout the eighteenth century, and questions arise about how the decoration and colotning of the plans, their hanging and the representation of features on them, contributed to their function as objects for display. A start has been

made to answering this question: Brian Harley has addressed theoretical issues about the iconology of maps and their symbolisation of powers and analysis of estate maps has looked at them as decorative objects, drawn to impress a landowner's visitors.'i' However, further studies are needed for a

more detailed picture of the ways in which maps were perceived and used as items of display.

An investigation of a body of maps of a distinctive geographical area opens up avenues for exploration of how maps depict landscapes and reflect characteristics of map conmiissioners, map makers and the land itself. The Drake Brockman family were lords of Newington Fee, a position that carried with it the right of representation on the body that administered the drainage

of Romney Marsh, a tract of land just a few miles to the south-west of the family seat. In the middle years of the eighteenth century, the surveyor who a few years later mapped Beachborough for Ralph Drake Brockman, made a series of plans of this marshland region for the drainage body. These maps formed the basis of the present study.

4

Stephen Daniels, "fioodly prospects: English estate portraiture, 16'?tl—1'i'3l1", in: Nicholas Alfrey and Stephen Daniels (eds.), Mapping the Landscape: Essays on Art and Cartography, Nottingham 1990, pp. 9-12. 5 For example, in 1.13. Harley, "Maps, knowledge, and power", in: Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels (eds.), The iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use ofPast Environments, Cambridge 1983, pp. 2?7—3 12. 5 Sarah Bendall, Maps. Land and Society." A History, with a Carto . Bibliography of Cambridgeshire Estate Maps c.i60i3—i836, Cambridge 1992, especially pp. 172-134,

and "Estate maps of an English county: Cambridgeshire, 16011-1336", in: David Buisseret |[ed.}, Rarai images: Estate Maps in the Did and New Worlds, Chicago 1996, pp. I53-90; David H. Fletcher, The Emergence offisiaie Maps.‘ Christ Church, Oxford,

I600 to iddfl, Oxford, 1995, pp. 66—67', and “The Careswell atlas: working tool and work of art“, in: The Map Collector 1'3 (1995), pp. 34—37.

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.._

flw l

:

aorvrusv uutasu Dymchurch

*5» New Ronurey

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Figure 1: The location of Ronurey Marsh

The historical geography of Romney Marsh and its maps Rorrmey Marsh was chosen for studying maps, landscape and display for

many reasons. First, it is a distinctive geographical region, one of the three great coastal marshlands of southern England with a long history of human occupation and struggles with the natural envirorunent as tracts of land were

reclaimed and farmed. The area still lies below the high-tide mark today and is protected from the sea by man-made walls linking sea banks of sand and shingle. The Marsh lies in south-eastem England and is one of a series of

coastal marshes from Hythe (Kent) to Rye (Sussex). Ronmey Marsh itself (Fig. 1) consists of about 24,000 acres in Kent, bounded to the north and north-west by a range of hills that mark the ancient coastline. The boundary to the south-west is the Rhee Wall, which was by the mid-thirteenth century an embanked drainage channel, much of it man-made? Reclamation started

in early medieval times: by the Domesday Survey of 1086 most of the church sites were already occupied, and the area was well settled with an economy based on ploughland, meadow, fishing, and a coastal salt industry. Storms

during the thirteenth century led to severe flooding of the area, but reclamation and drainage continued in the later Middle Ages, by both monastic and —$

?

Eleanor Vollans, "New Ronmey and the ‘river of Newenden' in the later Middle Ages", in: Jill Eddison and Christopher Green (eds.), Romney Marsh: Evolution, Occupation, Reclamation, Oxford 1933, pp. 123-141.

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lay landlords. Drainage and protection from the sea remained the prime concerns, and the area became well known for sheep-fattening and, on less good

pasture, for sheep-breeding and wool productions The second reason for studying Rormrey Marsh is that the drainage of the area was administered by the Level of Romney Marsh, a corporate body con-

sisting of the Lords, Bailiff and Jurats of Romney Marsh, many of whose records and maps survive from the sixteenth century and are available for study.9 The maps mainly survive in two great series of maps of the 16 waterings into which the Marsh was divided for drainage and administrative purposes. The first was drawn by John Beale, Thomas Boycot and Thomas Ramsden from 1652 to 1654 (Plate l),m the second by Thomas Hogben be-

tween 1759 and nee (Plate 2)." A few maps were drawn between the two complete series, as the maps by John Beale and Thomas Ramsden were re-

newed in the early eighteenth century. Samuel Newman and Francis Hill re-

mapped Yoakes, Sedbrook and Speringbrook waterings in 1205;‘: Jared Hill produced new maps of Brenzett and Abbotridge waterings in l22l.l3 These maps can be compared with those drawn of the Rather Levels, marshes adja-

cent to Romney Marsh. Thomas Hill mapped about 234 acres in lden Level in 1688-9 at 20 rods to the inch (1 :3960); Wittersham Level was mapped by

Richard Browne in 1690 at l:42l8; and Thomas Hogben mapped Beckett

Salts in ms at 1;-4374.“

The third reason for studying Romney Marsh is that it was mapped extensively for private owners. Many of the surveyors also worked for the drain-

age body, so comparisons can be made between estate and watering maps drawn by the same surveyor, to see how the landscape was displayed in each type of map.“ Thomas Hogben worked on eight of the surveys, Samuel

8 9

10 ll

12 13 14

Eddison and Green, Romney Marsh, (see note 2), pp. 90-122; Jill Eddison, "The Making of Romney Marsh" (in preparation). These records are now to be found in the Centre for Kentish Studies at Maidstone, together with those of the Corporation of the Liberty of Ronmey Marsh - the Bailiff, Jurats and Commonalty — which administered local govemment and justice. See M. Teichman Derville, The Level’ and Liberty of Romney Marsh in the County of Kent, Ashford 1936, for a history of the corporations. CKS SfRm Plt2-8, P221-5. CKS StRm P4t'l-6, P521-4, P6-tl-5. The original map of Sedbrook Watering, commissioned in 1265 (St'Rm SM4) has been lost and only survives in a volume of copies of the entire set of maps (Sr'Rm SM2), possibly made at the same time as the scot book of 1268, finished 1269 {StRn'r FSal0). CKS SfRm P3tl-3. CKS St'Rrn P3t4—5. CKS SiRo P2-3 and P6.

15 Fourteen maps, drawn between 1204 and 1262, were looked at, made by ten different surveyors. Brasenose College, Oxford B14.lt3; CKS Ch40tl0, U42tl P13, l.l42t55 P40, U42t55 P45—6, U42f55 P51, U42255 P58, U86 P15, U409 P5, U898 Pl, U1566 Pl, 1.12315 P6; map in private collection.

42

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PR

J‘

Plate l: Part of map of Little Bilsington, Great Bilsington, Wallsfoot and part of Sheaty waterings by Thomas Boycott, 1653 (CKS S/Rm P2/1, courtesy of the Centre for Kentish Studies).

l l l

l

Plate 2: Part of map of Jefferstone watering by Thomas Hogben, 1759 (CKS S/Rm P4/2, courtesy of the Centre for Kentish Studies).

43

mglilzed “Y GO08le

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UN|VERS|n‘I9YmE)Frl\lIlCH|GAN

-

Newman and Francis Hill on one and Jared Hill on another. As some landowners commissioned more than one map, the plans can be compared to assess owners’ influence on map styles and display of the landscape. George Carter cormnissioned four maps; among the other eleven landowners were the Knatchbull family and Brasenose College, Oxford. Six of them appear as landowners on Hogben's watering maps. Finally, Romney Marsh was chosen for study as the surveyor who made the mid-eighteenth-century drainage maps, Thomas Hogben, made many others of the area. Ninety-two maps by him are known to survive today. Most of those that were studied were drawn for the Lords of Romney Marsh or the deputies who attended for them the annual meeting of the lathe (which ad-

ministered the Level) (Plate 3).'° Apart from the watering maps and those

drawn in 1720 for the Commission of Sewers for East Kent, almost all the known plans by Thomas Hogben are estate maps. Most were drawn for private owners; the Dover Harbour Commissioners, St Bartholomew's Hospital in London and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, were amongst the corporate owners. Thus, the common threads and changes in Hogben's style can be studied in relation to the person who connnissioned the map.

.. _ ;,_,____ tt ti,.e.___ fir-¢-var 7**~—- \',f

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Plate 3: Map of marshland in Old Romney and Midley belonging to George Carter, by Thomas Hogben, I749 (CKS U47/55 P40, courtesy of the Centre for Kentish Studies).

I6 In addition to 24 maps seen under previous categories, the following were examined: CKS Q/Z P2. S/EK Pl, S/EK P76, U3 Pl, U47/55 P43—4, U47/55 P57, U28 P25, U409 P22, U523 Pl, Ul054 P5, U1 127 Pl, U3259; 2 maps in private collection. 44 t

Digiiiieii iii’ GOU8l3

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UNlVERSIr‘l'gYlllOFKi\»illlCHlGAN

Such a well-mapped and -docmnented area thus enables investigation of such questions as the representation of drainage features on maps; the importance of maps to a corporate body, how these maps were used and how they compare with those drawn for private individuals; and how a particular surveyor's work was affected by his employers‘ values and requirements. Display of the

landscape, of the landowners‘ attitude to their possessions and of the surveyors aims and objectives can all be examined. The Lords, Bailiff and Jurats of Romney Marsh and their maps

The Level of Romney Marsh and its administration The need for constant attention to sea defences and fresh water drainage led to the evolution of an administrative system peculiar to Ronmey Marsh, though it was in many ways similar to the sewer cormnissions of north and east Kent.“ By the sixteenth century, the practices had become well estab-

lished.'E An amrual meeting of the General Lathe (from 1611, held on the Thursday of Whitsunweek) was held at the New Hall, Dymchurch and attended by the Lords of the 23 manors that carried rights of representation, Bailiff and Jurats (by the eighteenth century, normally four). The main business was to confirm the accounts of Petty Lathes and to promulgate orders

for general drainage and sea defence works. The detailed administration of drainage and sea defences was increasingly conducted at monthly, meetings attended by the Bailiff, Jurats and the two Lords currently serving as Survey-

ors. The office of Surveyor was held for two years and rotated amongst the Lords in alphabetical order of the manor. The Lords, Bailiff and Jurats depended almost entirely upon occasional scots — taxes - for their income: the sale of scrap wood and fines yielded irregular and small supplements that had little overall impact on the fmances of the Level. Only a halfiremry scot was normally levied at once, which brought in under £50, so many scots had to be raised each year, perhaps as many as 50. Analysis of the armual income and expenditure in the mid-eighteenth

century (Fig. 2) shows how closely expenditure mirrored the income received. The Marsh was subdivided into sixteen waterings to facilitate

12 Eileen Bowler, "‘For the better defence of low and marshy grounds’: a sruvey of the work of the sewer commissions for north and east Kent, 1531-1930," in: Alec Detsicas and Nigel Yates (eds.), Studies in Modern Kentish History. Maidstone 1983, pp. 29-48. 18 For a detailed history of the administration of the Level, see Teichman Derville, The

Level and Liberty of Romney Marsh {see note 9). An account of the drainage arrangements for Ronmey Marsh and for the upkeep of Dymchurch Wall is published by Dorothy Beck, "The drainage of Romney Marsh and maintenance of the Dymchurch Wall in the early seventeenth ceuntry," in: Jill Eddison (ed.), Romney Marsh: the Debatabie Ground, Oxford 1995, pp. 164-168.

45

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administration nf the drainage (Fig. 3). Five nf these — Sedbrnnk, Speringbrnek, Brenzett, Ynakes and Abbetridge — drained te the west and shared a ennirnen eitpenditnr; the ether waterings drained tn the east threugh

Dyrnehureh gutt. In additien te the general rnarshland, er wall, sent, watering er sewer seets were levied tn tnaintain the leeal drainage.

46 t‘ "-' I I"'1 - GQ 813

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Watering maps fnr the Level nf Rnmney Marsh Maps nf the waterings were enmmissinned as part nf this administrative sys-

tem. Demands fnr a enmprehensive survey nf the Marsh neeurred in the early seventeenth eentury, when varinus landnwners enmplained that they were

taxed fnr mere land than they aetually pnssessed. Althnugh the General Lathe nrdered a general measurement tn be made and sent banks drawn up nn 28 May 1608 (unless gnnd reasnn be shnwn tn the enntrary at the meeting in 1609), nnthing further appears tn have happened until 1645, when enmplaints ahnnt nver-sentting were again reeeived. Land surveynrs were emplnyed frnm 1649 tn measure the land nf partieular enmplainants ahnut levels nf sent.

Then, nn 10 June 1652, it was agreed tn emplny fnrthwith fnur able land measurers tn survey and map the level. In the event, three men earried nut the wnrk: Thnmas Bnyent, Jnhn Beale and The-mas Ramsden. They presented their maps tn the General Lathe nn 1 May l654 and it was agreed that new sent bnnl-as shnuld be made up aeenrdinglydg These maps are drawn nn parehment at seales nf abnut l:5000 and shnw ehurehes, hnuses, enttages, 19 CKS S:'Rtn SD2, meetings held 23 May 1603, 29 May 1645, 17 May I649, 6 June I650, 22 May 1651, 10 June 1652, 2 June I653, 13 May 1654.

47

C-0 gle

barns, windmills and nther buildings by perspeetive drawings. Tnpegraphieal features are drawn, ineluding fields, warren, greens, trees, thern bushes, fenees, pnunds, banks, walls, gates, reads, waterenurses, pends, gutts (drain-

age features), bridges and shingle. Aereages ef fields are given. The style ef the maps va1'ies between the surveyers: Thnmas Beyeet's are eeleurful and deeerative (Plate 1), Jehn Beale alse uses eelnur but far less ernament, and Thnmas Ramsden's maps are nnt eeleured at all. By 1703, seme ef the maps were preving unsatisfaetery and the Survey-

ers, Bailiff and Jurats were asked tn inspeet the sheets. As a result, in 1704 feur ef the Five Waterings were nrdered tn be remapped. It seems that Samuel Newman and Franeis Hill did nnt enmplete the enmmissinn, fnr at

the meeting ef the General Lathe in 1719 the Lerd ef the Maner ef Snave prepesed that Abbetridge and the remaining watering frem the Five, Brenzett, be remapped, as the sheets were sn nld and wnrn that the sewers and

landewnership enuld net be well distinguished. The ether maps ef the Level were alse tn be inspeeted, but nene ean have been tee defeetive as enly these five waterings were remapped in the early eighteenth eentury.2ll These maps are all deeerative; striking features inelude the use ef geld leaf in the 1705 plans and the absenee ef the them bush stipple frnm the 1721 sheets.

Thnmas Beyeefs maps lasted until the mid-eighteenth eentury. During the 1750s, the aeeuraey ef the seet beek was questiened nnee mere.“ Then, in 1759 the Surveyers (Rebert Staee and Geerge Carter) reported that the maps ef Jefferstene, Great Bilsingtnn, Little Bilsingtnn, Wallsfeet, Sheaty, Paternnsterferd and Wallingharn waterings were imperfect and asked fer them tn

be renewed? It was agreed tn make a start with Jefferstene and Patemesterferd waterings, eaeh being mapped en a separate skin nf vellum. A lneal land surveyer, Thnmas Hegben, was emplnyed (Plate 2) and in the fellewing twe years he mapped the remaining waterings that had been identified as having partieularly peer maps. He then replaced the remaining maps by Thnmas Bnyent, and frem 1764 tn 1766 remade the maps nf the Five Waterings.23 When the maps were all enmplete, a new sent beek was made nut in 1769.24 These maps are alse drawn en parehment, at a seale ef 24 rnds tn the ineh (l:4752). They shnw the same range nf tepegraphieal features as the earlier

maps, but add distinetiens between feet and read bridges, and shew pinneeks (weeden drains thrnugh gateways) and pensteeks (sluiees). Them bushes

have disappeared. The maps are eelnurfulr eaeh ewner‘s land is distinguished by eeletn and letter, the tepegraphieal features are eeleured and there are deeerative title earteuehes, berders, and enmpass reses. 211 21 22 23

CKS Si’Rm S03, meetings held 211 May 12113, 3 Jtme 1204, 21 May 1719. CKS SfRn'1 S04, meetings held 14 Jtme 1753, 6 June 1754, 2 Ju.ne 1257. CKS SfRrn ARM. CKS Sl'Rm SM4, meetings held T June 1259, 29 May I260, 14 May 1261, 3 June 1262, 26 May 1763, 14 June 1264, 311 May 1265, 22 May 1766. 24 CKS S% FSa1(1, Sfllm SM4, meetings held ll June 126?, 26 May 1263, 13 May 1269, '1' June 1'1"1'lII.

43

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Use nf the maps A majer reasnn fnr eemrnissinning maps nf Renmey Marsh was, therefnre, tn assist in running the tar-zatinn system that finaneed the Level, and it is elear that this nbjeetive was aehieved. Afler the mid-seventeenth eentury surveys,

the lands nf nne ewner had te be remeasured after a enmplaint had been reeeived.25 Thereafter, the rateable value ef the lands as established by the sur-

veys appears tn have been largely uneentested. The maps nf the 1760s led tn readjustments in levels nf sent, as agreed, fnr ertample, at meetings nf the General Lathe in 1763 and 1763.25 The maps appear tn have been fairly readily affnrdable: Figs 4a—e shnw hnw small a prnpnrtien nf armual ertpenditure

the mapping tenk up, and this ean be enmpared with the high enst nf drainage and repairs in the mid-eighteenth eentury (Fig. 4e). Se fnr a relatively lnw eest, administratinn nf the sents was made easier.

The maps refleet enneern tn elarify the sents. The desired enntent was set

nut in seme detail by the General Lathe in 1652.“ Highways within the Level

were nnt tn be measured but the ditehes rurming alnngside were, tegether with half ditehes between ewners. Waterenurses and eenunen sewers fnr general use, hewever, were nnly tn be measured tn the brink nf the sewer. Thnmas Ramsden made it elear en his maps nf Speringbreek, .1-ltbbntridge and Sedbrnnk waterings that his measurements aeeerded with this deeree;2E

Thnmas Hngben still fnllnwed these direetinns in the mid-eighteenth eentury and stated en his maps that measurements were e:-telusive ef sewers and half

131165.29 The 1652 meeting ef the Lathe alsn nrdained that the Marsh was tn

be divided intn waterings and parishes, and that eaeh nwner's and tenant's name was tn be given. ‘Whilst Thnmas Ramsden and Jnhn Beale identified tenants, Thnmas Bnyent was less ennsistent. The early eighteenth eentury maps nf the Five waterings had a enlumn fnr tenants that was nnt filled in, and Thnmas Hngben eenfined his attentinn tn nwners. Nevertheless, the maps fermed an essential part nf the alleeatien nf sents and aeenrdingly were kept up te date, as seen by a nete, added in 1772 tn the 1759 map nf Jefferstene watering, nf an area nn lnnger tn be seetted.3ll Display ef the taxatinn system was thus ene aim; demnnstratinn nf the Level's respnnsibilities was annther. Ineeme frnm the sents was largely spent nn drainage and defenees. In 1702,

the Lathe deereed that nnly sewers shnwn en the watering maps were tn be maintained by the whnle Level, and that the maps were tn be the nnly snuree that identified sueh eenunen sewers.“ This led tn revising the maps ef the Five waterings and eheeking that the eemmnn sewers en the grnund itself

25 26 2? 23 29 311 31

CKS S.t'Rm SE12, meeting held 14 June 1661.1. CKS Si'Rm SM-4, meetings held 26 May 1763, 26 May 1263. CKS Sl'Rn1 SD2, meeting held ll] June 1652. CKS SfR.rn P1r’5,7-3. CKS Sflitni P4r’4. CKS Si'Rm P412. CKS Si'Rrn S03, meeting held 28 May 1202.

49

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were adequately distinguished. As a ennsequenee, Samuel Newman and Franeis Hill used a red line nn eaeh side nf the enmrnnn sewers tn mark them

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nut nn their maps, and Jared Hill fnllnwed their e:t.ample.32 Thnmas Hngben went further, and deelared that: The sewers and Water Ceurses are Celeured Blue: and nn mere Bridges, Pirmneks, nnr nther Remarks are inserted in these Maps than what enneem the Lerds, Bailiff and Jurats nf Rnmney Marsh, erteept ehureh's, Tnwns, Hnuses

Ste; tn make them the mnre 1ntelligihle.33 32 CKS Si"Rm P3fl—5. 33 CKS Si"R1n P412.

51

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The treatment nf them bushes en the watering maps alsn refleets the enneenis ef the Level. Faggnts nf them, seeured with piles and nverlaths, were used tn prnteet the seaward slnpe ef the Dymehureh Wall. In the sixteenth and seventeenth eenturies, thnrn bushes were speeially mnwn fnr this purpese and extensive regulatinns existed tn enntrnl grnwing and eutting the weed, and

making and delivering the faggnts. The mid-seventeenth eentury watering 52

G0 316

maps and these by Newman and Hill in 1705 shew areas ef them bushes. In the eighteenth century, hewever, lecal faggnts were nnt used se much and the mles were rescinded in 1713.34 Thus it is net surprising that the 1721 maps by Jared Hill nn lnnger shew areas ef them. The watering maps, therefnre, display a marshland landscape as seen thrnugh the eyes ef the administratnrs. They shnw the divisinn ef land inte senttable areas and the features that the Level was respensible fer. Drainage channels, bridges, pinnncks and penstncks that the cnrpnratien did net have tn maintain were simply net shewn. The Lerds, Bailiff and Jtu'ats saw a flat marshland landscape and indeed the eppertunity tn shnw relief was rare. Hewever, frem time tn time seme idea nf elevatien was given. Banks were indicated, nften by hachures, as en Abbetridge watering by Thnmas Ramsden (1653);?5 banks en which windmills were placed appear as mnunds, fnr instance en Jared Hill's map nf Brenxett watering (1721) and Heemes watering by Thnmas Hngben (l762);3'5 and Mark Hill was represented by a mnund by Samuel Newman and Francis Hill in 1205.3? The Lerds, Bailiff and Jurats alsn used the maps tn demenstrate their rnle as centrnllers nf the running ef the reginn. The maps drawn in the 1650s were framed and hung in the parleiir at the Level‘s headquarters in Dymchurch.3E I-leles where each nf the three series nf maps were pinned tn frarnes can still be seen teday. Hngben's set ef maps was pnssibly fnllewed by a summary map nf the area, fer in 1733 a carpenter was paid "fnr frarneing a Map nf the several waterings with a Wnnden Back tn the same and Mnuldings tn rest en, Egliryingg and putting up", and it was glazed with "bestWl1ite Gemian picture ass". Mest ef the maps were drawn in a way that made them suitable fer display and the least decnrative, by Jnhn Beale and Thnmas Ramsden, were these that were replaced, with lavish deceratien, in the early eighteenth century. Thnmas Beycet even included ceats nf arms nf twe prnminent landnwners Sir Edward Hales, Bart, lerd ef the maner ef Blackmanstnne, and Rnbert Barnham Esq, lerd nf the mannrs ef Great and Little Bilsingtnn and Ruckinge - en his map nf Wallsfnet, Great and Little Bilsingtnn and part nf Sheaty .

34 35 36 3? 33

Teichman Derville, The Levee‘ ene’ Liberty nffleeiney Marsh (see nete 9), pp. 25w26. CKS Sfllni P112. CKS Si'Rm P315, P611. CKS Si'R1n P312. CKS Si'Rni S02, meeting held 13 May 1654; fnr payment see Si"Rm FAe23, 2'? June 1656. 39 CKS Si‘Rm FAe3’i', payments 11-'3'1'—3. An undated map by Henry Hngben nf the waterings might pessibly be this item (CKS U47i’S5 P62). Hewever, this sheet might alse have been drawn in cnnnectinn with a plan by Henry Hngben tn publish a map nf Rnmney Marsh, based en his father's survey, distinguishing the several waterings and accnmpanied by a beck ef reference. Subscriptinns were invited in 1313, with nne guinea tn be paid immediately and annther nn receipt, but nnthing mere has been discnvered abeut the enterprise (Kentish Gererte, 6 January 1313).

53

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waterings in 1653;” Thnmas Hngben drew a very elabnrate cempass rnse en his map nf Heemes watering (1762), shnwing the principal winds accnrding tn Andrnnicus, Aristntle and Pliny, “v'itruvius, and me-dem sailnrs.“

The cheice ef land surveynr was crucial, as a cempetent persen, skilled tn make an accurate and beautiful map, was seught. All nf these emplnyed tn make watering maps were lncal men.42 Thnmas Hngben werked fnr several nf the marshland Lerds nr their deputies, including Rnbert Stace, whnse es-

tate in Headcnm Hngben had mapped in 1740, and Genrge Carter, fnr whem Hngben had made several maps frnm 1749 tn 1753 (Plate 3).“ It is surely nn

cnincidence that Stace and Carter were the twe Lerds appninted as Surveyer whe repnrted en the need fnr new maps in 1759, which led tn Hngben's empleyment en the preject. Hngben is thus likely tn have been emplnyed thrnugh persnnal recnnunendatinns, but he alsn had relevant experience, fnr

at the start nf his career in 1720 he mapped six valleys arnund Ashferd fer the drainage ceuunissieners, which weuld have been a valuable start tn his career.“ His werk in the Marsh led tn further cnmmissinus frem the Lerds: Ralph Drake Brnckman emplnyed him in 1769 and 1770, Jnsias Pattensnn did sn in 1763, and Geerge Carter and Peter Gndfrey hi 1766.45 By enmmissinning him tn carry nut the werk, these Lerds cnuld shnw their cencem and

ability tn emplny a fust-class land surveynr with a geed reputatien. The watering maps can be cnmpared with estate maps ef the area, drawn fnr private landewiiers. These have varying styles, but all are cnlnured, drawn en parchment and decerated. The tepegraphieal detail tends tn cnncentrate,

usually exclusively, nn the nwner's laud, and indicates whn was respensible fer maintaining each bnundary. Thus the maps reflect the nwner's interest in establishing his areas nf respnnsibility. Altheugh ne evidence has been fetmd abeut hnw the Rnniney Marsh maps were displayed, studies nf nther areas suggest that they cnuld have been flamed, hung nn rnllers nr bnund intn vnl-

turies tn be available in public and private parts nf the landnwners seat. Careful drawings nf the mansinn hnuse, nmaments, and inclusinn nf the landnwner‘s ceat ef airns weuld have demnnstrated his secial standing amnngst

his peers, his authnrity ever his suberdinates and his awareness nf the use nf

maps in establishing his place in snciety.'l'5

40 CKS Si"Rn'1 P211, S1'Rni S1112, meeting held 2 June 1653. 41 CKS Sfllrn P611. 42 Sarah Bendall (ed.), Dictinnnry nf Lend Surveynrs nrid Lncnl Mep-Makers nf Greer Britain end {refund 1530-1350. Lenden 1997; F. Hull, "Kentish map-makers nf the

seventeenth century," in: Archnenlngin Ceeriene 109 (I991), pp. 63-33. 43 44 45 46

CKS U523 P1, U47f55 P40, 43-45. CRIS S11-11¢ S06, meeting held 5 April 1722, SIEK P1, P76. CKS U3259, U3 Pl, U47f55 P57, Ul566 Pl. Bendall, Maps. Lend end’ Sneiety (see nete 6), pp. l77—l 34.

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Thnmas Hngben and his maps

Fer the siirveynr whe depended en his cartegraphic skills fer at least part nf his livelihnnd, maps were an nppertunity tn display his abilities. Cnnnnissinns by prnminent members nf snciety were wnrth publicising, in the hnpe

that nther landnwners might be encnuraged tn empley the map-maker in a similar way. The extent tn which a surveynr's maps reflect his nwii agenda

cnmpared with the aims nf the emplnyer, can be seen frnm examining the maps by Thnmas Hngben. Sen ef a land surveynr, Thnmas Hngben was christened with his father's name en 14 August 1702 at St Mary‘s Church, Ashfnrdffi The father died in

the fellnwing year“ and his snn grew tn take up his father's skills. By the age ef 20, he had mapped valleys near his heme tnwn fer the Cninmissinners nf

Sewers thei-e3“ By 1730 he had meved 312101.11 eight miles westwards tn

Smarden, where he was tn remain fer the rest nf his life and where he was buried in 1774.51} He became the master nf the village schnnl, fnunded in 1716 and endnwed with a hnuse, bam and fifteen-and-a-half acres in

Bethersden and a hnuse in Smarden. At the end ef the century, 40 beys and girls were taught there.“ As a litemte lncal, varinus tasks fell Hngben's way:

fnr instance, he prnduced texts fnr the church in 1733.52 He alsn made sundials and at least feur are recerded in the lecality.53 Part nf Hngben's incnme was derived frnm his surveying practice. Surviving maps give a very pnnr picture ef his wnrk as it is nnt knnwn hnw many maps have been lest, and cnnsiderable amnunts nf his wnrk prnbably did nnt result in plans. Fer instance, in 1755 he surveyed, but did net map,

famis belnnging tn Charles Pnlhill and Lnrd Cnwper in ceimectinn with a land dispute.“ Hewever, it seems as theugh he mapped en average a few hundred acres a year between his meve tn Smarden and his emplnyment by the Level nf Rnmney Marsh in 1759; thence until 1766 the figure rises tn a few theusand acres a year (when an emplnyee nf the Level nf Rnmney

Marsh, Thnmas Maylam, helped him en many eccasiens). Even at this higher level, he weuld rarely have made ever ene hundred pnuiids per aimum as he

charged six pence an acre.” His eaniings weuld have been less than that cf 47 43 41.5.1 50

C1413 Parish register fnr St Mary, Ashfnrd. CKS Parish register fnr St Mary, Ashferd, 7 July 1703. CKS SEEK Pl, P76, S06 meeting held 5 April 1722. He described himself as ‘cf Smarden‘ nn a map dated 1730 and new in private hands. He was buried en 13 January 1774 (CKS, Parish register fnr Smarden). 51 Edward Hasted, The Histnry nne‘ Tnpngrnphicni Survey nf the Cnunty nf Kent. ‘Jnl. 7, Canterbury 1793, p. 432. 52 Francis Haslewnnd, Mernnrinls nf.5'ninrden, Kent, Ipswich 1336, p. 255. 53 CKS Manuscript intrnductinn tn Smarden, which nntes that the parish cnuncil diary fnr 1394 states that Hngben's sundials cnuld be seen in Headcnm and Ulcnmbe churchyards. The sundial at Lel-Eds Castle and a fnurth in private hands are still extant.

54 CKS 1.11007 E33. 55 CKS Si’B.in F‘V36—41, pp. l60—l62.

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Figure 5: Estates mapped by Thnmas Hngben 1720-1774.

many merchants and majnr manufacturers, tradesmen and farmers, and abeut equal tn that nf lawyers and inr1keepers.55 Frem the mid-1760s, Hngben

regularly mapped tngether with his sen, Henry. Figure 5 shnws that Thnmas did nnt nften travel great distances: he was a Kentish surveynr, fer whem lncal rennwn and receimnendatinns must have been ef the utmnst impertance. Hngben's maps shew that he was an accemplished and careful practitinner. Well ever three-quarters ef the churches en his watering maps are accurate depictinns ef the buildings. The distributinn ef heuses is, perhaps, a little mere haphazard: the maps ef Breiizett and Yeakes waterings shew different arrangements ef heuses arnund Brerizett Place, fnr instance,“ but heuses in New Rnmney appear almnst the same en maps nf Jefferstnne and Wallingham waterings.5 Many ef Hngben's estate maps centain careful drawings ef

buildings that can be identified teday, such as Tucker Fann en a map ef 1770, Newingten Church en ene ef 1769 and the New Hall and Church at Dymchurch en a map ef 1766. This last plan, hewever, mistakenly draws

56 Rey Pnrter, Engiish Sneiety in the Eighteenth Century. Hannnndswnrth 1932, pp. 336337. 57 CKS Silhn P672 and 4. 53 CKS Si"R.m P412 and 4.

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Kenardington Church in place of Boningtondq The comments — or lack of them — in the scot book drawn up after the watering maps similarly testify to

Hogben's care. Occasional notes of inaccuracies in the maps refer to under 100 acres in total which, out of 24,000 acres mapped, gives an inaccuracy level of less than 1%.

The style of Hogben's maps adds to the impression that he was a competent land surveyor. Both his estate and watering maps are colourful and have decorative borders, title cartouches and compass roses. Many of the maps have keys to the symbols that were used. Scale bars are less commonly decorated but ornament of them occurs on maps of the Ashford drainage and Rother Levels as well as some of the estate maps?“ The main difference between the style of Hogben's estate and watering maps is that some of the maps drawn for private landowners include their coats of arms, displaying the

status of the landlord as well as the draughting skill of the map-maker. Hogben's style is not consistent: seven different types of border and scale bar, four styles of compass rose and eleven of title cartouche have been

identified.“ In general, the earlier maps tend to have the most elaborate decoration. This can be seen in cartouches surrounding notes stating the sm'veyor. The Ashford valley maps of 1720 have notes of the surveyor, in a

cartouche with two putti holding trumpets, a scroll with geometrical calculations and fruit and leaves. This decorative device was used in maps drawn for both corporate and private owners, and is also found on estate maps of 1720 and 1743, and on the 1738 map of the Rother Levels.'i2 After 1748, the decoration surrounding any note of the surveyor was more restrained, often in a cartouche similar to that of the title.'5i' Changes in style over time can also be seen in the representation of buildings. In 1737, Hogben mapped an estate and drew the landowner‘s seat in plan form and the

other buildings in perspective.“ This brief trial with a new way of showing buildings — in plan — does not seem to have been continued; in 1753, however, Hogben used plan to show the owner's buildings and perspective to show those of neighbours.'i'5 Depiction of buildings in plan became more common thereafter, but perspective continued to be used and the watering

maps all have perspective drawings.

59 CKS U105-4 P5, U32S9, LH566 Pl. 60 CKS S./Ro P6, SEEK P76, compared with, for example, U4T./’55 P40, QIZ P2, U523 Pl,

U231S P6 and maps in private hands. til On CKS U21-H5 P6 a printed title cartouche is used, rare both for Hogben and his English

contemporaries though much more common in Ireland (.I.I-I. Andrews, Plenrorion Acres: An Historical Study ofthe Irish Lone‘ Snnaryor ond his Mops. Belfast 1935, p. 153). 62 CKS SEEK Pl, P76, U112‘? Pl, U325 PT, Sfllo P6. 63 For example, the map of land in High Halden and Bethersden belonging to George Carter, H53, [IRS U4'H55 P44.

64 Map in private hands. 65 CKS U4?r'55 P43.

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Hogben changed his style within sets of maps drawn for a particular owner or body. For instance, his maps drawn for George Carter between 1749 and 1766 have two different types of border, four types of title cartouche, two styles of scale and two of compass. His watering maps, drawn late in his career, tend to be fairly restrained in style but use five different styles of border, five of title cartouche, two of scale and four of compass. For example, the map of Sheaty watering (1760) has a simple border of a narrow brown band, a title cartouche with two colours, and orientation indicated by cardinal

points.65 On the other hand, the map of Yoakes watering (1 res) has a border of a brown band with a red band on the inside, a four-colour title cartouche and a compass rose showing 32 red, blue, green and yellow points.“ Despite these stylistic changes, Hogben's maps can be recognised and so too can those of other surveyors. Samuel Nowrnan and Francis Hill's maps of three waterings in 1705 have a similar style to the map of the estate of the poor of Tenterden, drawn in the previous yeanfig Likewise, Jared Hill's maps for the Level of Romney Marsh in 1721 are of a similar style to that of a map

of an estate in Ivychurch drawn in 1714.59 The ways in which Hogben changed his style thus seem to be more closely

related to the date of the map than to the type of landowner who cormnissioned it. Records are silent about agreements as to style of decoration. His charge of six pence an acre for the watering maps was, therefore, probably irrespective of the style of plan that was produced: for this sum the commissioner was provided with plans displaying the stn'veyor's talent and ability to produce an attractive plan. Hogben seems to have taken advantage of opportunities to demonstrate that he had a range of decorative devices. He was successful, for personal experience of his map-making skills must have confirmed a good reputation and contributed to his employment by the Lords, Bailiff and Jurats of Romney Marsh and to cormnissions from individual

members of the drainage body and their associates. Maps and display Maps of a distinctive geographical region thus depict it in a particular way. Those who cormnissioned maps of Romney Marsh displayed their concems cartographically. The watering maps, drawn for the Level of Rorrmey Marsh, show the way the drainage was administered, the Lords’ perception of the marshland landscape, and their sense of their own importance. The choice of

features to be mapped and the style of their representation depended partly on the requirements of the Lords, Bailiff and Jurats. They were only interested in 66 CKS Sr’Rm P4f3. 67 CKS Sr'R.rn FEM. 63 CKS Sr'Rm P3r’l—3, Ch 40fl0.

69 CKS Sr’l§l.rr1 P3!-=l—5, map in private hands.

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the features for which they were responsible; so far as they were concemed, other aspects of the landscape were unimportant and did not exist. Boundaries were of great importance to owners of particular pieces of land and this is reflected in the content of estate maps. The wider interests of the map owners were also displayed and their power, social standing and authority was dem-

onstrated. Maps were drawn for political reasons: the watering maps aimed to impress the Lords, Bailiff and Jurats, those subject to their decrees, and visi-

tors who came to the New Hall at Dymchurch; estate maps would have played a part in establishing a landowner's authority amongst his peers and over his subordinates. Map-makers used plans to show off their skills and abilities. Surveyors appear to have had much latitude in deciding about the appearance of the final product, and one can imagine that their expectations of how the plan

would be used and how public the map would be, affected the end result. The example of Thomas Hogben illustrates the ways in which land surveyors could use their maps for display. The plans demonstrated his awareness of current fashions, his ability to produce an accurate plan and his skill in making a beautiful object. Hogben's charge for making the more simply decorated watering maps was the same as that for the most heavily ornamented. Thus

he was using maps for his own purposes; there is no evidence that the commissioner dictated to him what style of map should be made for a particular fee.

So it is clear that maps were used by the Reverend Ralph Drake Brockman, his fellow Lords of Rorrmey Marsh and Thomas Hogben their surveyor to display their perceptions of the landscape in the parlour at New

Hall, Dymchurch and elsewhere. The style and content of the maps depended very much on the choices of the landowner and surveyor and their evalua-

tions of what was important. Maps were tools for displaying the natural world, man's authority and control over it, his measurement of it and his enjoyment and life in it, in eighteenth-century England.

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E"@‘l‘lE‘l “Y GQQSIQ

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Extraordinary Bodies and the Physicotheological Imagination Femando ‘Vidal A denronstration of the being and attributes of Goa‘. from his works of creation. Such is the definition of "physicotheology" given in the subtitle of ‘William Derha.m's Boyle Lectures for the years 1711 and 1712.‘ In that sense,

physiaatbeoiagy is synonymous with natural theology — "the knowledge we have of God from his works, by the light of nature, and reason. "1 The very idea that there can be knowledge of God without revelation, and the ensuing

distinction between natural and supernatural or revealed theology, have scholastic roots. The novelty of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century physicotheology was its dependence on the scientific knowledge of nature and its focus on the "cosmological" proof (concerning the necessity of God as first cause), and especially on the "teleological" proof (based on the existence of

order and purpose in the universe), at the expense of the "ontological" proof (which is derived a priori from the idea of God). Its assumptions are that everything has been created, and designed exactly as it is, for a purpose; and that the harmony and adaptiveness observed in the whole of Creation, as well as

in each of its parts, manifest the goodness, wisdom, and indeed existence of God. For all its marvelling before the " spectacle of nature" (as reads the title

of abbé Pluche‘s l'?32-1742 best seller), physicotheology implied active research into the things of God by means of collection, description, classification, experimentation, and exposition. These postulates and methods apply to both nature and culture. As Derham noted, no "mechanical Hypothesis" accounts for "Discoveries and

Improvements in all curious Arts and Businesses;" the invention of printing or the progress of Christianity were for him instances of Providence."

1

William Derham, Physico-Theoiog3r.' Or, A Denronstration ofthe Being and Attributes of God, frorn his Works of Creation, London l'l"l3. In his last will, the English natural philosopher Robert Boyle, a founding member of the Royal Society, endowed an annual se-

ries of eight sermons to prove the Christian religion "against Infidels," without entering into conn-oversies among Christians themselves. Of the lectures preached between I692

2

and l'?93, the most famous and popular ones ("natural theologies" by Derham, Bentley, and Clarke, mentioned below) followed Boyle's own example of incorporating new scientific developments into apologetics. See Jolm J. Dahm, "Science and Apologetics in the Early Boyle Lecttues", in: Church History 39 (l9?0), pp. l'i'2-136. Ephraim Chambers, Cyciopaea‘ia: or, an universal‘ dictionary of arts and sciences..., 4th

ed., London 1'?-41, vol. 2, s.v. "Theology, natural." 3 Derham, Physics-Tireotogr (note l above) pp. 313-3 I9.

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Historians have come to consider that natural theology helped, rather than hindered science." They have charted the success and impact of physicotheology, and inventoried its many varieties, from akridotheology (locusts), astrotheology and bombychotheology (silk-worms), through lithotheology (stones), melittotheology (bees) and sismotheology, to phytotheology (plants), pyrotheology (fire) and testaceotheology (conchylia) — to mention

only one, particularly popular, title-formula. The objects of these, and numerous other physicotheological treatises were firmly rooted in the realm of the natural and the ordinary. The movements of the planets or those of the

silk-worm, the structure of plants or that of the bee-hive were studied so as to reveal universal laws." Nothing in those laws, except their origin, and sometimes also their con-

tinuation by an act of God's will, was supposed to stand outside nature. Some room was given to the pretematural, i.e. to events that, though abnormal, ex-

4 John Hedley Brooke, "Science and the fortunes of natural theology: some historical perspectives", in: Zygon 24 (I939), pp. 3-22; Science and religion. Sonie historicai perspectives, Cambridge l99l, chs. 4 and 6. See also Udo Krolxik, "Das physikotheologische Naturverstiindnis und sein Einfluli auf das naturwissenschafiliche Denken im I3. Jahrhtmdert", in: Medirinhistoidsches Journal’ I5 (I930), pp. 90-I02. 5 As far as l can tell, the most complete overviews of eighteenth-century physicotheology

are Wolfgang Philipp's chapter "Der Traditionsstrom der Physikotheologischen Beweg1.tng" in his Das Worden der Aufldiiriing in theoiogiegesciiiciitliciier Sicht, Ci6ttin-

gen 195?; and Phllipp, "Physicotheology in the age of Enlightenment: appearance and history", in: Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 5? (1962), pp. I233-126?. Useful sketches are given by Jacques Roger, Les sciences de la vie dans i'a penseie francaise du XVi'He siecie (I963), Paris 1993, pp. 224-249; and, with emphasis on other materials, by Udo Krolsik, "Physikotheologie", in: Gerhard Miiller et al. (eds.), Tlieoiogische Reaiensykiopiiidie, Berlini'New York I996, vol. 26, pp. 590-596. To my

lmowledge, the most extended study of Enlightenment (Gennan) physicotheology is Sara Stebbins, Maximo in ininiinis. Zuin Einpirie- und Autorittitsverstiindnis in der ph,vsiitotiieoiogisciien Literatur der Friiiiouflziiirung, Frankfurt am Main 1930. There seems to be no equivalent for other linguistic areas. For an instructive study that includes, but does not focus on physicotheology, see Charles Coulston Giilispie, Genesis and Geoiogi. A Study in the Reiations of Scientific Thought, Natural Tiieoiogr, and Social’ Opinion in Great Britain, i290-I850 (1951), Cambridge, Mass. I996. Relevant elements concerning France are included in Albert Monod, De Pascal ti Chateaubriand. Les defenseurs fiancais du christianisrne de I620 ii I802 (1916), Geneva I970. Didier Masseau briefly sitti-

ates natural theology in the larger apologetic context of the first half of the eighteenth century in Les ennenries des phiiosophes. L 'antipbii'osopiiiie au temps des Lurnitires, Paris

2000. Df considerable historical interest are two eighteenth-century bibliographies (both covering a long time-span): Johaim Georg Walch, Bibiiotheco tiieoiogica seiecto litteroriis adnotationibus instrucia, t. I, cap. V (De scriptis theologiae polemicae), sectio V (De scriptis controversiarum cum atheis), §§ III-IV (pp. 690-T04), (Jena: sumtu viduae Croeckerianae, I752); and especially Johann Albert Fabricius, "‘v'erseichnil3 der Alton und Neuen Scribenten die sich haben lassen angelegen seyn durch Betrachtung der Natur, und der Geschiipffe die Menschen an Gott an filhren", in: William Derham, Astrotilieoiogie, oder Hininiiiscilies Vergniigen in Gott..., trans. by Fabricius fi'om the Sth English edition, Hamburg, bey Theodor Christoph Felginers Wittwe, I232, pp. xlii-Lxxx.

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ceptional and extraordinary, can be explained by the usual laws of nature." In the voluminous footnotes of his Pbysico- Theoiogi, Derham often reports unusual phenomena: frozen bodies, whispering places, feats of memory or

strength, a tongueless boy who speaks, people who distinguish colors by touch... Since men of gigantic size have existed only as "Rarities, and Wonders," the story of Goliath is credible, but Biblical relations about races of giants are not." Bloody and other prodigious rains are "praeternatural and ominous Accidents" that, "if strictly pried into, will be found owing to natural Causes."3 The same applies to the reanimation of persons drowned or

hanged." At the beginning of history, a longevity of 900 years and more was necessary to populate rapidly the newly-created Earth. It decreased with population growth, reaching the eonnnon maximum of 7'0 or 30 years "when the World was frilly peopled after the Flood." Methuselah, Abraham, and more recent instances of great age are exceptions; the story of the Wandering Jew, or Roger Bacon's "of one that lived 900 Years by the help of a certain Medicine", are "fabulous."m

The reasoning illustrated by Derham combined a focus on the natural and the naturalistic explanation of unusual phenomena with confidence in Scripture and scepticism about stories (even Biblical) that did not seem to evince natural laws. It thus tended to exclude the supematural and the miraculous. The physicotheological approach and sensibility as they developed in seven-

teenth-century England fit in the metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological framework of what members of the Royal Society called new philosophy, and shared its emphasis on the invariability, universality and simplicity of the laws of nature. Throughout the eighteenth century, natural theology remained particularly strong in England and Germany. In the British context, it culminated in the eight Bridgewater Treatises (I833-l 340), funded by the Reverend Francis Henry Egerton, last Earl of Bridgewater, for writing and publishing works "On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as manifested in the Creation."

In Germany, physicotheology was a popular and academically respectable genre at least until Immanuel Kant‘s radical critique in the 1730s. Kant ex-

plained that the argument from design concerns only the form, not the substance of the universe. Consequently, it can "establish a highest architect of the world, who would always be limited by the suitability of the material on 6 On naturalipreternatural, see Lorraine Daston, "The nature of nature in early modern Europe", in: Configurations 6 (I993), pp. 149-I72; "Preternatural philosophy," in L. Daston (ed.), Biographies ofScienti)‘ic Objects, Chicago 2000. T Derham, Pbysico-Theology {note I above), pp. 330-331. Derham suggests that the word nephiiiin, or "giants," can be interpreted metaphorically (as designating monsters of impiety and wickedness), and that the perception of gigantic sixe might have been partly determined by the fear of those who observed them. 3 Derham, Piiysica- Theology, p. 23. The raining blood turned out to be insect excrement. 9 Derham, Physico- Theoiogv, pp. I56-15?. 10 Derham, PFiysico- Tlieoiogr, pp. l?2-174.

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which he works, but not a creator of the world."“ Physicotheology, he explained in his I290 Critique ofjudgment (§ 35), can be no more than a physical teleology, arrd reveal nothing about an ultimate purpose of creation. He

nevertheless encouraged it as a useful and rational way of elevating the mind "from the conditioned to the condition, up to the supreme and unconditioned author;“ it would therefore be, he added, "not only discomfiting but also quite pointless to try to remove anything from the reputation“ of the physicotheological proof, as it "is the oldest, clearest and the most appropriate to common human reason," and "always deserves to be named with respect.""-i Natural theology was then understood to demonstrate the existence and attributes of God only with "moral certainty." This category, originally fo-

cused on testimony, was distinct from mathematical and physical certitude. As John Wilkins explained in Of the Principles and Duties ofNatural Religion (l6'?5), the objects of moral certainty are not capable of the same kind of Evidence [. . .] so as to necessitate every man's assent, [...] yet they may be so plain, that every man whose judgment is fi'ee from prejudice will consent to them. And though there be no natural necessity, that such things must be so, and they cannot possibly be otherwise, [...] yet may tllgey be so certain as not to admit of any reasonable doubt concerning them.

Moral certainty covered “the everyday conclusions of a reasonable and impartial man considering the relevant data," as well as "the kind of knowledge employed in the law courts, in history, in merchants‘ decisions, and in religion."H There existed a second realm of physicotheology. It does not, however,

seem to have been treated as a separate genre in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries;'5 nor have later historians recognized it as such. The reason might be that its function was not to know God "from his works," but to elucidate a particular category of events, situated at the crossroads of the supernatural, the pretematural, and the natural. Its purpose was to render the event — whether past (such as the virginal conception of Jesus) or future (such as the general resurrection) — more plausible, acceptable, believable. Hypothetical explanations were sufficient for that purpose; as the Dutch naturalist,

philosopher and mathematician Bemard Nieuwentijt pointed out in connecll Immanuel Kant, Critique ofpure reason (l?3|), trans. and ed. by Paul Gnyer and Paul Wood, Cambridge I993, A626-62?, p. 531. I2 Kant, Critique, A623-624, pp. 529-530. l3 Quoted in Barbara J. Shapiro, Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England A Study of the Relationships Between Natural Science, Religion, History, Law, and Literature, Princeton l933, p. 35-36. Ch. 3 is especially relevant for our topic. l4 Shapiro, Probability, p. 31 . I5 There is no special rubric for it in eighteenth-century bibliographies: sec Walch, Bibliotheca; Fabricius, "‘ileraeichnii.'l" {note 5 above).

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tion with the resurrection, “A bare Hypothesis is sufficient to shew the Possi-

bility of any Thing."'" Thus, the goal of physicotheology (in this sense) was not to demonstrate that anything had or will occur, but merely to increase the

moral certainty attached to a past or future occurrence.” The ultimate subject-matter of this physicotheological genre was supernatrual. Nevertheless, with respect to the kind of phenomena it considered, it was closest to pretematural philosophy. By the late seventeenth century, not only did it appeal to the usual laws of nature, but also emphasized the universality of the mechanisms at work in the preternatural phenomena through

which the supematural was realized. The resurrection of the body, for example, is unequivocally supematural, and a "mystery of the faith," i.e. a revealed truth unknowable by reason alone. It will eventually take place thanks to the intervention of God. But it is also a pretematural event, something that will

happen "extraordinarily (as to the ordinary cornse of nature) though no lesse naturally."]3 To the extent that natural laws will participate in the production

of resrurected bodies, the supematural fact involves a preternatural dimension that must be analyzed within the framework of natural philosophy. I shall here try to describe how such amalgamation and interfusion work in the

physicotheology of extraordinary bodies, and to suggest their significance for understanding Enlightenment changes in the relations between knowledge and belief, and bodily and personal identity. Anatomy and the Incarnation

By virtue of the foundational doctrine of the Incamation, the human body plays a major role in the Christian economy of salvation.'9 First, the Christ is

16 Bernard Nieuwentijt, The Religious Philosopher, or the Bight Use of Contemplating the Worlrs of the Creator (I214), trans. by J. Chamberlayne, London l'll3, vol. 3, Contemplation XXVIII (Of the Possibility of the Resurrection), p. I049. I7 I will reserve natural theologv to works such as Derham*s, and will generally use physicotheology for the other genre (it will be clear when I don't). I agree with lringard lvliisch‘s criticism of authors who extend the notion of physicotheology to almost any connection between science and religion; see the discussion in: I. Miisch, Geheiligte Naturwissenschajl. Die Kupfer-Bibel des Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Giiuingen 2000, pp. 2|-30. Nevertheless, Mfisch's identification of physicotheology with natural theology seems unduly restrictive. It excludes materials, such as those examined here, which in the seventeenth and eighteenth century were clearly recognized as physicotheological. I3 Meric Casaubon‘s characterization of the preternatinal in A Treatise concerning enthusiasin (I655), quoted in Daston, "Pretematural philosophy" (note 6 above), p. 17. 19 I am not concerned here with theological controversies. Largely because it represents the most "embodied" version of Christian theology and anthropology, I will stick to the Cluistian tradition as most recently illustrated in the Catholic Catechism of I992. The Roman Catholic Church considers that certain revealed truths are not (or at least not clearly or fiilly) contained in the Bible, but that they are fomrulated and elucidated in oral traditions and theological writings. As highlighted by the scholarly apparatus characteristic of official Church documents, the authority of the Church is legitimized on the basis

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the Word made flesh (John 1.14) — not simply a god in human form, but a being endowed with two natures, and one, totally human camal body. The Incarnation is precisely this "hypostatic" union of two substances or natures (each retaining its own properties) so as to make one Person. As the Council

of Chalcedon decreed in 451, Jesus Christ is consubstantial with humans according to his humanity, and consubstantial with God according to his divinity. The Incarnation determines the dignity and anthropological significance of the body, a "temple of the Holy Spirit" (I Cor. 6.15) to be respected and cared for. This applies, in life and death, to ordinary human bodies, whose "incomparable Contrivance and curious Structure" thus became one of the principal things of nature whose eaamination should lead humans "to magnify the greatofs Goodness, and with suitable ardent Affection to be thankful to him." Following Cicero and the Stoic tradition, natural theologians elaborated analogies for the providential ends they perceived in the universe."' The most popular one is probably that of the watchmaker. In his 1302 Natural Theatogt: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes cf the Deity, Collected from the Appearances cf Nature, the English theologian William Paley claimed that the study of the mechanism of a watch would lead to the "inevitable" inference "that the watch must have had a maker." (The comparison was commonplace, but Paley’s late and widely-read treatise gave it its most sustained development.) Discovering that the watch was not made in:m1ediately by an artifieer, but somehow generated by another watch, would not account for the marks of "design and contrivance." Only the e:-ristence of a "contriver" could do that. Now, Paley believed that his reasoning about the watch could "be repeated with strict propriety conceming the eye, concerning animals, conceming plants, concerning, indeed, all the organized parts of the works of nature.""" The argument from design therefore applied to each organ and organism considered by and for itself, in the perspective of a resolutely anthropocentrie and optimistic teleology. As enplained in a widely-used eighteenth-century teirtbook, the primary goal of anatomy, is the glory of God - its purpose, to contemplate and admire in the human and animal body the wonderful works of the Supreme Deity; to prove against Atheists the en—

of past tests, treated so as to bring about a "tradition," a continuity of content and inter-

pretation. 20 Derham, Physics-Theology {note 1 above), p. 4?}. See Andreas~Holger lvlaehle, "'Est Deus ossa probant‘ - Human Anatomy and Physicotheology in 17th and 13th Century Germany", in: Anne Baumer and Manfred Biittner (eds.), Science and Religion .1’ Wissenschafl und Religion, Bochum I939.

21 Cicero, De nature deoruni, Book ll. See also David Foster, "'In every drop of dew‘: Imagination and the rhetoric of assent in English natural religion", in; Rhetorica 23 (I994), pp. 293-325; the discussion of natural theology and the classical tradition starts on p. 31 l. 22 William Paley, Natural Theoiogy.' or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes cf the Deity, Collectedfrom the Appearances cfNature (1302), ch. 5.

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istence and wisdom of the Creator; and to encotuage our veneration towards Him. Descriptive anatomy could be therefore justly called "theological.""" Whether Galenic or not in their theories and practices, anatomists adhered to Galen's claim that the usefulness of the parts of the body revealed the wisdom and skill of an intelligent creator, and that anatomy was the source of a "per-

fect theology.""" Thus, in his influential The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the

Creation, the Anglican priest and naturalist John Ray emphasized the fomi and disposition of the members and organs of the body for use, ornament and mutual assistance. The human body, he explained, is "the effect of Wisdom, because there is nothing in it deficient, nothing superfluous, nothing but hath its End and Use.""5 Imagine the confusion in human affairs that would follow if men's faces were "as Eggs laid by the same Hen"l"" In 1692, the year following the publication of Ray's Wisdom, Richard Bentley inaugurated the Boyle Lectures, devoting three of his eight sermons to a "confutation of atheism from the structure and origin of the human bodies." That they in-

cluded more teleology and metaphysics than anatomy did not prevent him from tautologically concluding that "these admirable fabrics of our bodies" catmot be ascribed to the "fatal motions of fortuitous shufflings of blind matter," but, "beyond controversy, to the wisdom and contrivance of the almighty Author of all things."" As Christian Wolff emphasized in a treatise

whose title echoed Galen's "on the usefulness of the parts of the body," God's

23 "Finis anatomes multiple":-t est: primarius tamen est operum mirabilium Suprerni Numinis in corpore humano aliorumque animalium cognitio ct admiratio: cum artiticiosissimae

fahricae contemplatio, partium admiranda figura, connesio, cornrnunicatio, actio et usus, Creatoris non solum esistentiam, sed et immensam et stupendam sapientiam manifestissime, contra Atheos, demonstrent, et ad cultum ac venerationem ejus invitent; ideoque finis primarius Anatomiae gloria Deo esto. Atque hoe sensu Anatomia philosophica, aut physica, imo theologica vocari potest, omnibus verae sapientiae ac theologiae cultoribus utilissima." Lorena Heister, Compendium anatomicum, Totam rem Anatomicam hrevissime Complectens, Edinburgh I??? (lst ed. W17}, p. 3 {§ E}. 24 On the usefuiness of the parts of the body {De usu partium), especially Book XVII. That anatomy in the Renaissance was intended to show God's providence and action, and should not be considered a secular activity or seculariaing discipline is a recurrent theme in Andrew Cunningham, The Anatomical Renaissance. The Resurrection of the Anatomicat Projects ofthe Ancients, Aldershot I‘-99?. 25 John Ray, The Wisdom of God Mantfested in the Works of the Creation (I691), Hildesheim l9?4, p. I55. See Lisa M. Zeitz, "Natural Theology, Rhetoric, and Revolution: John Ray's Wisdom ofGod, 169]-I TU-4", in: Eighteenth-Century Life I3 (1994), pp. I20-133. 26 Ray, Wisdom, pp. I63-169.

2? Richard Bentley, The Foiiy and Unreasonahieness of Atheism demonstrated from the Advantage and Pleasure of a Religious Life, The Faculties of Human Souis, The Structure of Animate Bodies, and the Urigin and Frame of the Worid (I693), in Bentley, The

Works, ed. Alexander Byce {I836-1333), vol. 3 (Theological Writings), Hildesheim l9?l,p.llB.

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Lrggntzipns show everywhere in the functioning of all and every part of the y. One advantage of such treatises might have been that they did not call for the visualization of bloody, confusing and unsavory open corpses."" Conversely, for physicians, physicotheology had the virtue of justifying dissec-

tion. Lorenz Heister, the Leipzig professor of anatomy, surgery and medicine whose textbook was mentioned above, expanded the sources for the knowledge of God to such organs as the intestines, the male and female genitals, and the female mammary glands. His invitations to public anatomies typically spoke de cognitione Dei ex... followed by the names of the organs to be examined."" Healthy or diseased, these organs, and the bodies from which they were extracted, illustrated the ordinary structure and functions of the human organism. The history of salvation, however, depends largely on extraordinary bodies. Jesus, to begin with, was a woman's son, but he was also God, and was conceived by the Holy Ghost. Mary his mother stayed a virgin through conception and birth. By virtue of his humanity, the Christ was subjected to the natural necessity of death and bodily defects. He therefore suffered and died like a man; but he then resurrected with his own physical body, and his resurrection announced and prefigr.u'ed the general resurrection of embodied humans at the end of time. Finally, etemal life according to Christianity is neither a transmigration and reincamation of souls, nor a disembodied persistence of spiritual substances, but a life in bodies said to be "spiritual" (because absolutely govemed by the soul and free from the desires of the flesh), yet materially identical to the corresponding terrestrial bodies. These extraordinary bodies have been a rich source of physicotheological wonder and inquiry. Given the nature of its objects, such inquiry operated on boundaries it constantly straddled and crossed. A mother who is a virgin, a god who is a man, dead who are alive, and spiritual bodies made of flesh do not exactly define clear-cut conceptual domains, but, on the contrary, map territories characterized by ambiguity, paradox, and, especially, oxymoron.

23 Christian Wolff, l*’erniin_,§tlfige Gedaniten von dem Gehrauche der Theiie in Menschen, Thieren und Fflantzen (l'i'25; known as Deutsche Physiologic), Hildesheim 1930 (= Wolff, Gesammeitc Wei-ire, I. Aht., Bd. 8), ‘Vorrede {pp. 3-4) and part l, ch. 1 {Von Gottes Absichten beym Leibe der lvlenschen und der Thiere). 29 Presenting his physicotheologically motivated treatise of human anatomy, the leamed Jesuit Hervas was on this point explicit; "Su lectura no necesita que el lector forme en su imaginacion aquella espantosa idea del cadaver humarro, que suele excitar el nombre de anatomia. Destierre de su fantasia toda imagen cadaverica [...] y convierta su atencion solamente a si mismo, h s su cuerpo viviente [...]", Lorenzo Hervas [y Panduro], Er’ homhrejisico, cl Anatomic humanafisico-fifosdfica, Madrid 1300, vol. I, p. 2. 30 Du Heister and others who promoted the theological value of anatomy and justified dissections on physicotheological grounds, see lvlaelhe, "Est Deus" (note 20 above). For a list of Heister's writings, see Christian-Gottlieb Jiircher, Ailgemeines Geiehrten-Lexiiron, 2. Erganzungsband (W37), Hildesheim 1993, s.v. "Heister (Laurentius)."

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Mother and Virgin [...] is it not, in fact, just as humiliating to have a mother, as it is to have afather; for it is nothing more than the body that is conccmcd in the question‘? Joseph Priestley, I736

In the late eighteenth century, Unitarian Joseph Priestley thought it both purposeless and unsupported by evidenee, and Thomas Paine characterized it as a "blasphemously obscene" story.“ In the twentieth, anthropologist Edmund Leach related it to a transcultural structure, "the metaphysical topography of the relationship between gods and men.""" Be that as it may, the virginal conception and birth of Christ is a major element of Christian doctrine as it evolved in the first four centuries of the Church. Mary, the mother of Christ, was virgin ante partutn, in partu, and post partum. The doctrine soon revealed acute physicotheological quandarics. By the thirteenth century,

Thomas Aquinas dealt with them through the lens of Aristotelian physiology. To the objections against the belief that the flesh of Christ was conceived "of the Virgin's pru'est blood," he replied that males furnish the active principle of generation, and females the matter (a refined blood in Aristotle's view). Jesus‘ being bom of a woman was natural, but his being bom of a virgin was "above the laws of nature." It therefore belongs to the "supematural mode" of his

generation that its active principle was God's power, and to its "natural mode" that the matter from which his body was conceived "is similar to the matter which other women supply for the conception of their offspring.""" In other words, the Christ's conception was natural with respect to the matter of his body, and "entirely miraculous" with respect to the active generating power. "And since judgment of a thing should be pronounced in respect of its fomr rather than of its matter: and likewise in respect of its activity rather than of its passiveness: therefore is it that Christ's conception should be described

simply as miraculous and supematural, although in a certain respect it was natural" (Summa, 3a, 33, 4). This of course does not exhaust Aquinas‘ discussion. Suffice it to say that the essential of the physicotheological problematique as it still appears in the 3] Joseph Priestley, An History of Early Upinions Concerning Jesus Christ {I736}, book III,

ch. 20, section I, in: John T. Rutt {ed.), The Theological and Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Priestley [l3l?-133]), vol. 'l', New York l9?2. Thomas Paine, The Age ofReason: being an investigation of true andfabulous theology {l’i'95}, part II, ch. 2, "The New

Testament." 32 Edmund Leach, "Virgin Birth," in: Genesis as Myth and Other Essays, London I969, p. B6. 33 Summa Theologica, 3rd part, question 34, article 5. I have used the online edition of St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theoiogica, "literally translated" by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2nd ed. (I920), eihttpztiwww.newadvcnt.orgtsummaI=-. Further references (including part, question, and article) will be given in the text.

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Enlightemnent lies at the same intersection of the natural and the supematural. Although Christ's birth from a woman was in accordance to the laws of nature, his being bom of a virgin was above them; the preparation of the matter and Jesus‘ stay in Mary womb‘s followed natural laws, yet the instantaneous formation of His body was a supematural manifestation of the active power of the Holy Ghost. The Virgin was therefore a man's mother, but since the Divine Person assumed a human nature at the very beginning of the conception, she also was the lvlother of God. By the eighteenth century, Aristotelian hylomorphism had been generally abandoned. Nevertheless, in some versions of ovism, the male remained the active being that engenders and the female, the passive one out of whom the active generatesf" The role of the male semen was now to stimulate the development of a preformed organism in the female egg. For the purposes of understanding the virginal conception, such a theory was equivalent to, and just as practical as Aquinas‘. In 1742 appeared in Amsterdam (in fact, Paris) a Physicotheological dissertation concerning the virginai conception ofJ‘esus Christ in the bosom of the Virgin Mary, his mother. s Its author, one abbh Jean Pierquin (1672-1742) had already published memoirs about questions of astronomy, hydrology, geology and botany, as well as on such topics as the color of Blacks, birth marks, the song of the cock, the weight of the flame, the causes of incubi, legal proof by immersion in water, the swinmring of the drowned, amphibious men, ghosts and goblins, the summoning of the dead, the witches‘ sabbath... These memoirs were said to constitute fragments of a treatise on invisible and aerial creatures, the manuscript of which disappeared after the abbe‘s death, together with an equally unpublished book about necromancy. Pierquin, therefore, approached the problem of the virginal conception as an

experienced amateur of natural and pretematural philosophy. The scientific basis of the Dissertation is the theory, current in the eighteenth century, that postulates both the preformation and the “encapsulation“ (emboiternent) of germs in the female‘s eggs."" On the one hand, the organ‘I$—

I

I

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:

34 See especially Aristotle, Generation of animals, I, XX. Du the late seventeenth-century renewal of the Aristotelian influence, see Roger, Les sciences de la vie {note 5 above), p. 23?. 35 Jean Pierquin, Dissertation physico-theologioue touchant la conception virginaie de Jesus-Christ dons ie sein dc la Vierge Marie so mere (I?-42), preceded by Claude LouisCombet, “L'homme qui a v|.r l‘ccuf“, Grenoble 1996. lnfomration about Pierquin is taken from Louis-Combet. Page numbers will be given in the text. 36 Pierquin could not have been aware of Charles Bonnet‘s discovery of parthenogenesis ("virgin birth“) in the flea, made in I740 and reported by Reaumur in I242 at the end of his Memoires pour servir ti l‘histoire des insectes. He was, however, likely to be familiar with stories about solitary conception. ‘v"irgil‘s superb depiction of fiery mtting mares fecundated by the zephyr (Georgics, Ill, 266-226) somehow extended to the idea that gemrfrlled winds are capable of impregnating women. But this belief, which still had adherents in the Enlightenment, was irrelevant to explain how Jesus was conceived by the Holy Ghost. On solitary conception, see Pierre Darrnon, Le myrhe de la procreation ti l‘r.i‘ge baroque (I977), Paris I931, ch. T. For a mid-eighteenth-century satire and its con-

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isms to be bom are, since Eve, preformed in miniature in their potential

mother's eggs. On the other hand, the eggs of the female preformed organisms enclose further prefomred organisms, in principle without a limit towards the infinitely small. The “evident and mathematical proofs“ of the infinite divisibility of matter seem to Pierquin to compensate for the limits of the senses, the imagination, and microscopes, and enough to demonstrate that the germ enclosed in a woman's ovaries contains not merely one child, but infi-

nite ones (p. 60). In conception, the abbe explains, the mother provides the egg, while the man furnishes the "extremely subtile spirit" (i.e. fluid) that occasions embryological growth (p. 65). And since there are no reasons to think that Mary lacked normal organs of generation, Jesus obviously devel-

oped from one of the prefomred embryos contained in her body. This having been established, the step is easily taken from the male seminal "spirit" to the

Holy Spirit. In order to fomr "the sacred Body of Christ,“ Mary gave the Holy Ghost “what mothers usually fumish for the generation of their children" - a “chosen germ that contained in miniature the delicate body of the divine Child“ (p. 76). Once Mary consented to the Incamation, all the parts of

Jesus‘ body preformed in the chosen genn developed in her womb according to natural laws. Where does this leave the Christ's double nature‘? In the first four centuries of Christianity, the problem of the hypostatic union gave rise to violent and divisive disputes. Arians denied the union of two natures in Jesus; Nestorians believed the Word was "indwelling" in Jesus (and so Jesus turned out to be two distinct Persons, and Mary, no longer the

Mother of God); Monophysites postulated in Jesus only one Person, the divine; as late as the seventh century, Monothelites accepted the union of two natures in one Person, but denied that this Person had two wills."" Pierquin alludes to very early heresies according to which Jesus‘ flesh was imaginary, or composed of an ethereal matter derived from the stars."" He considers

them as reckless attempts to unravel the mystery of the Incamation and, as he memorably puts it, to "find for the Messiah an origin nobler than a virgin‘s egg“ (trouver au Messie une origine plus noble que l‘ceufd‘une vierge, p. 33).

True, he acknowledges, a woman both virgin and pregnant “is a singular prodigy, well above nanrre" (p. 89). But the virginal conception itself is not. text, see Lynn Salkin Sbiroli, Libertine o madri iliibate. Lucina sine concubinr e Concubitus sine Lucina. Una discussions settecentesca su sesso efecondazione, Venice I989. 37 For a usefill overview of early debates, see Richard A. Norris, Jr. (ed. and trans), The Christologicai Controversy, Philadelphia 1930.

33 Pierquin‘s allusion is extremely rapid and includes no names. He might have been thinking about Marciou (for whom Christ did not have a real body), Apelles (who thought

Christ took his flesh from the stars), ltalentinus and others (who believed Chrisrs flesh was spiritual or made of soul). These doctrines are known through the works of their opponents, especially Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses), Hippolytus (A Refutation of all heresies}, and Tertullian. Tertullian wrote separate treatises against Mareion, ‘Valentinus and Apelles (only the first two are extant), referred to them in several others, and confuted

them together in De carne Christi, which is therefore the best starting point for the question that concems us here.

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Obviously, the Holy Ghost, being spiritual, could not have materially contributed to the body of Jesus. It must have therefore "acted on Mary's egg so

as to make it fecund, as a man could have done it" (p. 94). In Pierquin's view, there is nothing impossible or uimatnral involved in the process - provided, of eourse, we accept that the Holy Spirit was indeed capable of activating

embryonic growth in the same way as male semen usually does (p. 99). The abbe hoped his "proofs" would satisfy not only theologians, but also

physicians and philosophers, "who only want systems founded on nature" (p. 97). What about their confomiity to Scripture? Well, as Pierquin notes, embryological vocabulary is as absent f1'om the sacred texts as the words "con-

substantiality" or "transubstantiation." But the important thing is that their sense be there (p. 101). Thus, the rod of Aaron deposed in the tabemacle, which was found "budded, and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms,

and yielded almonds" (Numbers 17.8), is for Pierquin a "sensible image of the sacred Body of Jesus Christ which, originating in the Virgin Mary's sacred ovary, develops in her chaste womb by the power of the Holy Ghost." Similarly, the lilies of the Shulamite‘s closed garden (Song of Songs 4 and 6) become "natural figures of the holy germ that blossoms and grows in Mary's closed womb" (p. 107).

Pierquin's reasoning worked within the bounds of specific constraints. In the first place, it had to assume the truth of whatever is proclaimed as true within the Christian tradition. This applied especially to the supematural, in this case to the fecundation of Mary by the Holy Spirit (dismissed by Paine as the story of a young woman "debauched by a ghost").3g The supematural postulate is neither explnnnns nor cxplonondnm; rather, it constitutes an ines-

capable fact that defines the limits and possibilities of the entire physicotheological investigation. Insofar as it is revealed, the event itself concems faith

and is a mystery. Roman Catholics cannot doubt that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary. But the physicotheological argument transforms the supematural event into a pretematural phenomenon. As such, to put it in terms other than Pierquin's, the virginal conception can be at best morally certain. To increase the moral certitude attached to the event, physicotheology must explain it in a manner that is consistent with

both the Bible and accepted scientific knowledge. This is accomplished by means of two complementary operations that move in opposite hermeneutical directions. While the results of natural philosophy are applied as strictly a.nd

as literally as possible to the problem under examination, the scriptural passages supposed to bolster the physicotheological interpretation are read in a

most figurative manner. An enclosed garden sung by Solomon is explicitly said to prefigure Mary's closed virginal womb. Other connections are implicit. Semen, in the words of the seventeenth-century Dutch physician

Reinier de Graaf, was "seminal air" (aura seminelis), an almost ethereal fluid

39 Paine, Age ofReoson, part II, ch. 2.

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- an esprit that irresistibly evokes the Saint Esprit. -1-1} Moreover, the religious fervor that suffuses Pierquin's argument comrects it affectively and rhetori-

cally to the larger universe of natural theological literature. The chief relay is perhaps the emotional and cognitive state of wonder before the perfection of the miniature, the bewildered yet reassuring vision of the almost inconceivable minuteness of an infinite number of encapsulated embryos - in short, the topos of mrrrimc in minimis.

Embodied Revenants

The New Testament speaks of three kinds of resurrections: Jesus resurrected some individuals; the Christ rose from his tomb three days after his death; all

human beings will resurrect at the end of time. The resurrection of Lazarus or Jairus' daughter were miracles performed by Jesus, and thus considered demonstrative of his divinity and the truth of Christianity. These miracles in particular were not disputed, but were considered genuine and authoritative by Protestants and Catholics alike. The debate

about later miracles that raged between Catholics and Protestants (and especially in England during the first half of the eighteenth century), as well as the strict criteria the Catholic Church formulated for their evaluation, focused on problems of evidenee, not physicotheology.“ As far as resru-rections were concemed, the point was to determine whether or not they could be medically explained. Distinctions here were elear: the Biblical cases were considered genuine miracles; most others were cleared up as eases of apparent death. For example, in his Physics sccrc, the Zurich naturalist Johann Jacob Scheuchzer proclaimed the miraculous nature of the resurrections of Lazarus and Jairus' daughter, emphasized that medicine can never bring about true resurrections, and Egok the occasion to discuss putrefaction, apparent death and resuscita-

tion.

40 Roger, Les sciences tie in vie (note 5 above), p. 290, mentions Denis van der Sterre (Trocreirrs novus de generciione ex ovo, 1637), "qui adopte la theorie de 1'crrro seminciis

entre aurres raisons parce qu'e]1e pemret de comprendre comment la Vierge Marie a pu concevoir oirumbrcrione Spiriius Sorrcii."‘ For a more detailed discussion of the theory of semen as spiritual substance and its convergence with seventeenth-century ovism, see Gianna Pomata, "Vo11konm1en oder verdorben? Der miinnliche Samen im fn'ihneuzeit1ichen Europa", in: L’ hornrne. Zeirschrifi‘ fiir feminisiische Geschichrswissenschofi 6 (1995), pp, S9-35, section 4. 41 R. M. Bums, The Greet Deboie on Mirccies. From Joseph Gicnviii to David Hume, Lewisburg 1931. 42 Johaim Jakob Scheuehzer, Krrpfer-Biirei. in weicher die Physics sccrc, oder Geireiiigie Noiur-Wissenschcfli rierer in Heiifigerj Schrifli? vorkonrmenden Ncrfiriichen Sociren, denriicir erkirirr and irewiiirrr, Augshurgrlllm 11131-1735. Commentary to plates DCLXXV (Jairns' daughter, vol. 6, pp. 1136-1133; opposes true resurrection to apparent death and resuscitation), and DCCXXIV (Lazams; vol. 6, pp. 13115-131'.-'; discusses pu-

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Another class of New Testament resurrections consists of a single case: that

of Jesus. As far as 1 know, controversies about it did not broach physicotheological questions. Rather, as for miracles, they concemed evidentiary matters, especially the (in)consistency of the Gospel narratives and the (rm)reliability and (in)sufficiency of the witnesses. As Thomas Paine emphasized, while the virginal conception does not lend itself to proof, the resurrection (and ascension) of Jesus admit of public and ocular testimony. Like 43

other critics of Christianity, he found the evidence wanting. In The Age of Resson (part 1, ch. 3), he concluded that the resurrection story, "so far as relates to the supematural part, has every mark of fraud and imposition

stamped upon the face of it." If accepted, but refused as miraculous, the reappearance of Jesus in a carnal body was explained as a case of apparent death followed by resuscitation (both sometimes described as part of an Essenian secret plan).44

Before dealing with the general resurrection of the dead at the end of time (the third kind spoken of in Scripture), let us look at the problem of the un-

dead. Strictly speaking, it does not belong in the physicotheological genre we are examining. But the strategies to differentiate it from the problem of the resurrection throw light on the boundaries and operations of physicotheology.

For Christian apologists, genuine resurrections were (like all legitimate miracles) the work of the divine will, and manifested and served both the glory of God and the truth of Christianity. It was therefore essential to de-

marcate the resurrected, who miraculously rise with their own bodies of flesh, alive, and destined to die a second time, from the undead, generally ghostly though sometimes carnal, who do not fully return to the life of the living. Scheuchzer‘s work fumishes a graphic illustration of these strategies.“

Saint Paul spoke of the seed that grows into a plant as a metaphor for the resurrection of the body. Scheuchzer, instead of including a resurrection scene among the splendid engravings of his Physics sscrs, merely expounded the figurative term of Paul's metaphor. Under their outer membranes, he ex-

plained, seeds enclose the principle of life out of which new plants develop. God gave each plant its particular structure, and insured its perpetuation by trefaction). On the context and program of Scbeuchzers enterprise, see Miisch, Geireiiigte Nstunvissenschsfi (note 1? above). 43 D'Holbach put the standard criticism in a nutshell when he wrote: "Jesus-Christ est ressuscité, nous en avons pour garants quelques apirtres eclaires et quelques saintes comméres qui n'ont pas pu s‘y tromper; sans compter sur tout Jerusalem, qui n'en a jamais rien vu." Paul-Henri Thiry d‘Holbach, Thesiogie portstive (H53), s.v. "Resurrection," in: d‘I-lolbach, {Euvres phiiosopizisues, ed. Jean-Pierre Jackson, Paris 1998. 44 For an extensive presentation of English, French and Gennan debates, see William Lane Craig, The Historicsi Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus during the Deist Controversy, Lewiston 1935. 45 Scheuchzer, Kupfer-Bibei (note 42 above), plate DCCXLI and comentary on 1 Cor. 15.36-38 (vol. I5, pp. 1336-1333}.

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incorporating all filture plants of a species in the first He created. The accompanying plate (Figure l) represents an almond, its skin, its seed before and

after fecundation, and different moments of its growth. Perhaps Scheuchzer wished to suggest that the physical possibility of restnrection could gain support from the preformation theory of embryology (as we shall see it did).

Still, as implied by his choice of commentary and illustration, the general resurrection clearly did not belong among the phenomena whose contempla-

tion continued and inspired belief in the Creator. Nor was its possibility to be doubted, as that of other rising dead could be. ‘Vampires were the favorite Enlightenment undead?" Phlegon's first-century Book of Msrveis told the story of Philimrion, a dead maiden who visits

by night a guest staying in his parents‘ home and who dies again definitively when she is discovered by her parents.“ By the end of the eighteenth ceuntry,

Goethe had transformed the young woman into the famously blood-sucking “bride of Corinth.""" Between the 1710s and the 1770s, with a peak around 1730-1735, Central Europe was affected by epidemic waves of vampirism, in

which embodied revenants were time and again reported to have caused troubles and deaths. As the Benedictine Feijoo, great demystifier of portents, noted in 1753, were the reports true, it would mean that more resurrections

took place in Central Europe since the late seventeenth century than in the whole of Christendom since the birth of Cl1rist.4i' These vampires were not

the lascivious aristocrats equipped with conspicuous fangs that literature and cinema would make familiar, but humbler (and not always blood-sucking) inhabitants of rural villages. The remedy against their deeds was to pierce the living corpse's heart, behead it, and burn it. By mid-century, several reports, memoirs and treatises had discussed the

cases. The theological stakes of vampirism were high. Contrary to most earlier apparitions, vampires were embodied; they were, as Calmet put it, reve-

—

4t5 Most useful for the eighteenth eentury are the armotated anthology of sources by Klaus Hamberger, Mortuus non rnsrdet. Dokurnente aunt Vsrnpirisrnus i689-i ?'9i, Vienna 1992; and Antoine Faivre, "Du vampire villageois aux discours des clercs (Genese d'un imaginaire a l'aube des Lumieres)", in: Les vsrnpires, Colloque de Cerisy, Paris 1993. 4? Pniegon of Trsiies' Book of Msrveis, trans. with an introduction and commentary by

Williarn Hansen, Exeter 1996, pp. 25-28. 43 Says the bride: "Ans dem Grabe werd ich ausgenieben, i Noch zu snchen das vermilite Gut, i Noch den schon verlomen lvlamr zu lieben i Und zu saugen seines Herzens Hlut." Johann Wolfgang Goethe, "Die Brant von Korinth" (1393), lines 136-1T9. 49 Benito Jeronimo Feijoo, Csrtss eruriitss y curiosss en sue, por is rnsyor psrte, se continris ei designio del’ Testro Critics Universsi, inrpugnsnrio, o reducienss s dusosss, vsriss opiniones csruunes, Madrid ITF4 (lst printing 1353), vol. 4, Carta XX (Reflexiones criticas sobre las dos Disertaciones, que en orden a Apariciones de Espiritus, y los llamados Vampires, dio a luz poco ha el celebre Benedictino, y famoso Expositor de la Biblia D. Agustin Calmet), p. 273.

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