, much less scientifically to understand their effects.
Superstition, selfishness in a thousand forms, the presumption of the
schools, laid hold of unconnected facts. They vainly thought to
comprehend the whole in the individual, and perceived not the universal
spirit which, in intimate union with the mighty powers of nature,
animates the movements of all existence, and permits not any phenomenon
to originate from isolated causes. To attempt, five centuries after that
age of desolation, to point out the causes of a cosmical commotion, which
has never recurred to an equal extent, to indicate scientifically the
influences, which called forth so terrific a poison in the bodies of men
and animals, exceeds the limits of human understanding. If we are even
now unable, with all the varied resources of an extended knowledge of
nature, to define that condition of the atmosphere by which pestilences
are generated, still less can we pretend to reason retrospectively from
the nineteenth to the fourteenth century; but if we take a general view
of the occurrences, that century will give us copious information, and,
as applicable to all succeeding times, of high importance.

In the progress of connected natural phenomena from east to west, that
great law of nature is plainly revealed which has so often and evidently
manifested itself in the earth's organism, as well as in the state of
nations dependent upon it. In the inmost depths of the globe that
impulse was given in the year 1333, which in uninterrupted succession for
six and twenty years shook the surface of the earth, even to the western
shores of Europe. From the very beginning the air partook of the
terrestrial concussion, atmospherical waters overflowed the land, or its
plants and animals perished under the scorching heat. The insect tribe
was wonderfully called into life, as if animated beings were destined to
complete the destruction which astral and telluric powers had begun. Thus
did this dreadful work of nature advance from year to year; it was a
progressive infection of the zones, which exerted a powerful influence
both above and beneath the surface of the earth; and after having been
perceptible in slighter indications, at the commencement of the
terrestrial commotions in China, convulsed the whole earth.

The nature of the first plague in China is unknown. We have no certain
intelligence of the disease until it entered the western countries of
Asia. Here it s