Authors: Stephen Jay Gould
I Have Landed (17 page)
Romantic nonsense might proclaim a superiority of untrammeled feeling over the dryness of accurate observation and measurement, but the Enlightenment's faith in rationality located highest truth in the mutual reinforcement of feeling and intellect:
It is almost with reluctance that I am about to speak of a sentiment, which appears to arise from narrow-minded views, or from a certain weak and morbid sentimentalityâI allude to the fear entertained by some persons, that nature may by degrees lose a portion of the charm and magic of her power, as we learn more and more how to unveil her secrets, comprehend the mechanism of the movements of the heavenly bodies, and estimate numerically the intensity of natural forces. . . . Those who still cherish such erroneous views in the present age, and amid the progress of public opinion, and the advancement of all branches of knowledge, fail in duly appreciating the value of every enlargement of the sphere of intellect, and the importance of the detail of isolated facts in leading us on to general results.
Humboldt viewed the interaction of feeling and intellect as an upwardly spiraling system, moving progressively toward deep understanding. Feeling excites our interest and leads us to a passionate desire for scientific knowledge of details and causes. This knowledge in turn enhances our appreciation of natural beauty. Feeling and intellect become complementary sources of understanding; knowing the causes of natural phenomena leads us to even greater awe and wonder.
Thus do the spontaneous impressions of the untutored mind lead, like the laborious deductions of cultivated intellect, to the same intimate persuasion, that one sole and indissoluble chain binds together all nature. . . . Every imposing scene in nature depends so materially upon the mutual relation of the ideas and sentiments simultaneously excited in the mind of the observer.
Humboldt rooted his theory of aesthetics in this idea of mutual reinforcement. A great painter must also be a scientist, or at least committed to the detailed and accurate observation, and to the knowledge of causes, that motivate a professional scientist. For the visual arts, landscape painting becomes the principal mode of expressing the unity of knowledge (as poetry serves the literary arts and cultivation of exotic plants the practical arts). A great landscape painter is the highest servant of both nature and the human mind.
Church accepted Humboldt's aesthetic theory as his own guide (and why not, for I think that no one has ever improved upon this primary statement of humanism). Church achieved primary recognition and respect as the most scientific of painters (when such a designation implied admiration, not belittlement). Critics and connoisseurs viewed his penchant for accuracy in observation and rendering, both for intricate botanical details in his foregrounds and for geological forms in his backgrounds, as a primary source of quality in his art and as a key to his success in awakening feelings of awe and sublimity in his viewers.
I do not, of course, say that Church attempted, or that Humboldt advocated, a slavish rendering of particular places with snapshot accuracy. Humboldt did stress the value of colored sketches from nature, even of photographs (though he felt, in the nascent years of this art, that photography could only capture the basic forms of a landscape, not the important details). But Humboldt realized that any fine canvas must be conceived and executed as an imaginative reconstruction, accurate in all details of geology and vegetation, but not a re-creation of a particular spot:
A distinction must be made in landscape painting, as in every other branch of art, between the elements generated by the more limited field of contemplation and direct observation, and those which spring from the boundless depth and feeling and from the force of idealizing mental power.
None of Church's great tropical paintings represent particular places. He often constructed idealized vantage points so that he could encompass all life
zones, from the vegetation of lush lowlands to the snow-clad Andean peaks, in a single composition. (For example, although Church's most famous painting of Cotopaxi includes no lowland plants, most of his other canvases of this great volcano feature palm trees and other luxuriant plants that do not grow in such proximity to the mountain.) Moreover, though likely with no conscious intent, Church did not always depict his geological background accurately. Volcanologist Richard S. Fiske discovered that Church painted the symmetrical cone of Cotopaxi with steeper sides than the actual mountain possesses. We may, however, view this “license” as a veering toward accuracy, for Humboldt himself had drawn Cotopaxi with even steeper slopes!
Humboldt's influence over Church extended well beyond general aesthetic philosophy and the value of science and accurate observation. One may identify landscape painting as the principal mode of glorifying nature in the visual arts, but which among the infinitude of earthly landscapes best captures the essence of wonder? Humboldt replied with the aesthetic conviction that still motivates such modern ecological movements as the battle to save the rain forests of the Amazon. Maximal diversity of life and landscape defines the
summum bonum
of aesthetic joy and intellectual wonder. This maximal diversity thrives in two circumstances that enjoy their greatest confluence in the High Andes of South America. First, the vastly greater diversity of vegetation in tropical regions marks the equatorial zone as immensely more varied than temperate areas inhabited by most Western peoples. Second, diversity will be greatly enhanced by a range of altitudes, for the sequence of lowland to mountaintop in a single district may span the entire panoply of lowland environments from equator to pole, with an equatorial mountaintop acting as a surrogate for the Arctic. Thus, the higher the mountains, the wider the range of diversity. The Himalayas might win our preference, but they lie too far north of the equator and do not include zones of tropical lowland vegetation. The Andes of South America became the premier spot on earth for landscape painting, for only here does the full luxuriance of the lowland jungle stand in the shadow of such a massive range of snow-clad peaks. Humboldt therefore chose South America, as did Darwin, Wallace, and Frederic Edwin Church, much to the benefit of art and history. Humboldt wrote:
Are we not justified in hoping that landscape painting will flourish with a new and hitherto unknown brilliancy when artists
of merit shall more frequently pass the narrow limits of the Mediterranean, and when they shall be enabled, far in the interior of continents, in the humid mountain valleys of the tropical world, to seize, with the genuine freshness of a pure and youthful spirit, on the true image of the varied forms of nature?
One of Church's versions
of Cotopaxi,
showing the full range of environments from tropical lowland vegetation to the snow-clad volcanic peak
.
When Church was still a small boy, Humboldt's travel writings also played a major role in setting the life course of a young English graduate who planned to become a country parson (not from any particular zeal for religion, and probably to maximize time for avocational interests in natural history). But Charles Darwin veered down a different course to become one of history's most important intellectualsâand Humboldt served as his primary influence. Darwin read two books that focused his interests upon natural history in a more serious and professional way: J. F. W. Herschel's
Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural History
and Humboldt's
Personal Narrative
of the South American voyages (1814â29). As an old man, Darwin reminisced in his autobiography:
[These books] stirred up in me a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science. No one or a dozen other books influenced me nearly so much as these two.
Moreover, directly inspired by Humboldt's views on the importance of tropical travel, Darwin hatched a plot to visit the Canary Islands with some entomologist friends. Darwin involved his mentor, botanist J. S. Henslow, in the plan, and this decision led, clearly if indirectly, to Darwin's invitation to sail on the
Beagle
, the beginning and
sine qua non
of his rendezvous with history. Mathematician George Peacock asked Henslow to recommend a keen young naturalist to Captain FitzRoy, and Henslow, impressed with Darwin's general zeal and desire for tropical travel, suggested his young protégé for the job. The
Beagle
spent five years circumnavigating the globe, but the trip had been conceived primarily as a surveying voyage to South America, and Darwin spent the bulk of his time in and around Humboldt's favorite places. More than mere accident underlies the fact that the twin discoverers of natural selection, Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, both cited Humboldt as their inspiration, and both made their most extensive, youthful trips to South America. On April 28, 1831, as Darwin prepared for the
Beagle
voyage, he wrote to his sister Caroline:
My head is running about the tropics: in the morning I go and gaze at Palm trees in the hot-house and come home and read Humboldt; my enthusiasm is so great that I can hardly sit still on my chair.
Darwin's first view of the richness of tropical life led him to rhapsody, for the real objects even exceeded Humboldt's descriptions. In Brazil, Darwin wrote in his diary for February 28, 1832:
Humboldt's glorious descriptions are and will for ever be unparalleled; but even he with his dark blue skies and the rare union of poetry with science which he so strongly displays when writing on tropical scenery, with all this falls far short of the truth. The delight one experiences in such times bewilders the mind; if the eye attempts to follow the flights of a gaudy butterfly, it is arrested by some strange tree or fruit; if watching an insect one forgets it in the stranger flower it is crawling over; if turning to admire the splendor of the scenery, the individual character of the foreground fixes the attention. The mind is a chaos of delight, out of which a world of future and more quiet pleasure will arise. I am at present fit only to read Humboldt; he like another sun illuminates everything I behold.
And, more succinctly, in a letter to his mentor Henslow a few months later, on May 18: “I never experienced such intense delight. I formerly admired Humboldt, I now almost adore him.”
Darwin did not read Humboldt only for visceral wonder; he evidently studied Humboldt's aesthetic theories with some care as well, as several entries in the
Beagle
diary testify. Consider this comment from Rio de Janeiro in 1832:
During the day I was particularly struck with a remark of Humboldt's who often alludes to “the thin vapor which without changing the transparency of the air, renders its tints more harmonious, softens its effects,” etc. This is an appearance which I have never observed in the temperate zones. The atmosphere, seen through a short space of half or three-quarters of a mile, was perfectly lucid, but at a greater distance all colors were blended into a most beautiful haze.
Or this passage, from his summary comments upon returning in 1836:
I am strongly induced to believe that, as in Music, the person who understands every note, will, if he also has true taste, more thoroughly enjoy the whole; so he who examines each part of a fine view, may also thoroughly comprehend the full and combined effect. Hence a traveler should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment. Group masses of naked rocks, even in the wildest forms. For a time they may afford a sublime spectacle, but they will soon grow monotonous; paint them with bright and varied colors, they will become fantastick [sic]; clothe them with vegetation, and they must form at least a decent, if not a most beautiful picture.
Humboldt himself could not have written a better passage on the value of diversity and his favorite theme of aesthetic appreciation enhanced by detailed knowledge of individual partsâthe union of artistic pleasure and scientific understanding.
So we reach the pivotal year of our drama, 1859. Humboldt lies dying in Berlin, while two powerful and influential men, half a world apart in geography and profession, reach an apex of fame founded on Humboldt's inspiration: Frederic Edwin Church displays
The Heart of the Andes
, and Charles Darwin publishes
The Origin of Species
.
And we encounter a precious irony, an almost painfully poignant outcome. Humboldt himself, in the preface to volume one of
Kosmos
, had noted the paradox that great works of science condemn themselves to oblivion as they open floodgates to reforming knowledge, while classics of literature can never lose relevance:
It has frequently been regarded as a subject of discouraging consideration, that while purely literary products of intellectual activity are rooted in the depths of feeling, and interwoven with the creative force of imagination, all works treating of empirical knowledge, and of the connection of natural phenomena and physical laws, are subject to the most marked modifications of form in the lapse of short periods of time. . . . Those scientific works which have, to use a common expression, become antiquated by the acquisition of new funds of knowledge, are thus continually being consigned to oblivion as unreadable.
