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1849.]

Late Works on Philosophy.

599

language only as Hobbes, Horne Tooke and Condillac, then the position of Mr. J. Stuart Mill who considers it as more safe and practical, to regard it as having to do with things. With this Chapter, the author concludes the historical view. He then proceeds to the direct consideration of the nature and office of Logical Method. This he prosecutes in the nine Chapters following, which are entitled, "On Logical Method in general. On the Method of Science. On Scientific Ideas. On Classification and Definition. On the Gradations of Science. On Method in Art. On Method in Morality. On Analysis and Synthesis. On the connection of Method with formal Logic." In all these Chapters striking thoughts are expressed in a felicitous manner, but the expectations raised by the perusal of the historical criticisms of the views of others are not sustained when the writer proceeds to grapple with the subject itself. At all events, the difficulties are not all solved, nor is the subject exhausted. He concludes with the following inquiries, which will be recognised by some of our readers, as indicating a tendency similar to that avowed in this country." And how far is this fair Mother of Sciences [Theology] like her children? Do the same formal conditions which bind them, bind her also? If they do not, has she another Method of her own; her own laws of investigation, and standards of truth and falsehood? If they do, how does the nature of the high and mysterious subjects with which she deals affect and modify their application? If again, she neither conforms to the ordinary rules of speculation, nor has extraordinary canons of her own, how can the body of truth which she presents, be fairly studied at all? How can the human mind, prone, not by its perverseness and obliquity but by a right instinct and a deep principle of nature, to seek for order and system, find its highest occupation in resting on details which may not be combined, statements which may not be compared, examples from which no principles may be extracted, facts which refuse to incorporate themselves with doctrines ?

"He will do a good service to Truth and Christianity and the Church who shall face these questions fairly; and in grave earnest and after all due preparation venture in a strength not his own, to treat of a subject which I have not ventured to handle the application of method to Theology." These inquiries have a significance at Oxford which they do not have elsewhere, but they also suggest a subject for discussion, for which the times and the minds of men are ripe with us.

The volume" On the Development of the Understanding," is altogether unpretending in its character, and may not be very rich in its actual contributions to the science of the human mind. It is however quite refreshing to meet with an English author, who dares to follow a method of his own, and to pursue a course of inquiry, with the air and the aim of a man, who thinks for himself. The work does not profess to be a complete and ex

hausting" system," nor to be a "manual" for the instructor and the class room. It is only an Essay starting from a point well defined and proceeding through a distinct series of topics, with a single object. The first Section is entitled, "Scope of the Work." In this section Mr. W. first contrasts the superiority of Mental over Physical Science with the Ancients, and then asks, how it is to be accounted for, that this order of superiority has been precisely reversed with the moderns. The answer to this inquiry he finds in the fact that a precise and well grounded method of procedure has been applied to Physics, while no such method has been rigidly adhered to, and thoroughly applied, in the study of the mind. Every object of thought may be considered in two lights; first in its relations to other objects, and secondly, with reference to its relations with the thinking being himself. In the second light we ask, "by the exercise of what faculties, by what train of mental action is it discerned amidst the multifarious scene, which is in a constant course of representation in the region of sense, or among the objects already developed in the Understanding." This last is the true method, which is coincident with the object proposed by Locke in his Essay. "Unfortunately Locke has not carried out his system with the rigor necessary to wring from it an authoritative decision in many of the great questions respecting the foundations of knowledge." The object of the author is, to apply the method of Locke to the solution of these unsettled questions. Lecture II. is on "Sensation and Thought." The difference between the two is thus indicated. Thought is not exclusively appropriated to objects which are absent, but it accompanies sensation by being employed with it, on those which are present. In sensation, the attention is directed to the phenomenon before us. In thought we compare the present with the past. We regard both as a single thing. How do we pass in this way from sensation to thought? By the impression of resemblance. This perception of resemblance in the matured understanding is spontaneous; much more then should it be so, in the first beginning of its activity. From this distinction, the author proceeds to account for the fact of perception, or the distinguishing of the self and the not-self, and also to explain the origin of the distinction of substance and attributes. Section III. on "Number," carries forward the same course of thought. The perception of resemblance, involves that of difference, and in the perception of things as different originates the idea of Number. This is relative. The first object is apprehended without this feeling of resemblance to any other. The second is recognised as like the first, and is attended with a recollection of the first as being unattended with the discernment of such likeness. Hence the origin of first and second, and so on. The author then proceeds to discuss the following subjects. IV. Body and Space. V. Cause. VI. Free Will. VII. and VIII. Position. IX. Figure. X. Reasoning.

1849.]

Essay on Causation, etc.

601

XI. Right and Wrong. To give an account of the opinions of the author on these points, and to show how he develops these notions, would require us to exceed the limits prescribed, and almost to copy the entire volume. It is enough to say that the method is novel and fresh, when the opinions are familiar and old, and that in more than one instance truths not familiar are explained and illustrated in a manner, that is striking and original. It is quite refreshing to the student of dry abstractions, often rendered doubly dry from being announced in the same stereotype phraseology, and enforced by the same out-worn illustrations, to meet with a book like this, which is at once thoughtful, condensed, and striking, without being also affected, obscure and ambitious.

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'Ideas, etc." is a book quite as striking in its way, though the way does not seem to us quite so good. It is written in English by a Frenchman, and is designed to serve as a pendant to a previous work on the "Philosophy of Geology." We give its title at length. "Ideas. Essay the first; On Causation and fundamental Ideas; or Common sense versus the Kantian, Berkelyan, Scottish, and Whewellian Doctrines." It is divided into fifteen chapters. In the first, the author informs us that in his previous work he had advanced the opinion, that in the application of the idea of Causation, it must not be considered as involving a priori the constant uniformity of the antecedent fact. Otherwise as appears from the subsequent discussion, the evidence, furnished by Geological phenomena of the interruption of the constant uniformities of nature, by the interposition of a power purely creative, could not be received. He then considers the doctrine of Sir John Herschell, who derives the notion of power and of causation, from the consciousness of effort in the exertion or the resistance of force. This he rejects, as introducing into the science of nature, an element altogether extraneous and impertinent, but as it seems to us without exactly comprehending what Herschell intended by the doctrine, or the way in which he could apply it. He then attacks the a priori view of Whewell, and in order to explode his views of the origin of the idea of Cause, is led to discuss his account of Space, Time, Motion, Number and Substance. After a rambling discussion of these topics and of the fundamental view which they all involve, he proceeds to consider at some length the doctrines of Hume, Reid, and Dugald Stewart, and then those of Aristotle, Kant, Coleridge, Fichte and Berkely. He then brings before us his own view, to make way for which he had exploded all the theories of these celebrated philosophers. We derive the notion of Cause from our observation of the course of nature, or from actual experience. "Every fact is preceded by its appropriate antecedent fact, and vice versa." "Cause is the anterior fact; Effect is the fact which follows, and the idea of necessity has no other origin than the observation VOL. VI. No. 23.

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of the constant repetition of the same relation between antecedent and consequent facts." But though Hume was in the main correct, in his view, he was wrong in requiring that the same fact should invariably precede its consequent, as is proved by the record of facts that are laid up in the rocky tablets which Geology uncovers and interprets, in which is plainly to be read, that facts have come into being, without being preceded by their common natural antecedents. Their antecedent and cause is therefore God. The whole discussion, béginning with its announcement, followed through its acute, ingenious, yet unjust attack upon his opponents, and terminating in a result so theistic, strikes one as decidedly singular. The book is worth reading however. In one other respect it is altogether by itself. Surely never was a discussion on "Causation and Fundamental ideas" served up in a volume so daintily executed as this. The paper is of the finest quality, the type is exquisitely cut, the binding is in the brightest red, and the edges of the leaves are gilded as if the book were prepared for the boudoir of a luxurious lady, rather than for ́the smoky recess of an angular metaphysician.

If "Ideas, etc." is a singular book, "Exact Philosophy" will be pronounced both singular and amusing. Who this H. F. Halle, P. LL. D. may be we do not know; but if he may be judged by the account which he gives of himself in a self-glorifying Preface of some twenty-six pages, He is certainly a very wonderful man-a man far before his age, and whom his age treats with no greater regard than it treated Lord Bacon and sundry other philosophers in their life time. What his Exact Philosophy is, we cannot learn; for Books first and second contain little 'more than a general onslaught on the chemists, physiologists and philosophers of the day, who adopt the principles of the atheistic and material school. The most conspicuous objects of their attack are G. H. Lewes, Auguste Comte and J. Stuart Mill. This attack is not wanting in ability. In its argumentative portions it is able, and in the exposure which it makes of the verbal pretensions and the real hollowness of these influential writers, it is forcible and severe. The only thing to be regretted is that while the critic makes the subjects of his remark occasionally objects of contempt; he makes himself still more decidedly an object of laughter; and by his Quixotic and pedantic effusions, makes us wonder, under what "disastrous influence" of the stars his intellect was constructed and trained. One cannot however read his exposé of the current philosophising of the day, without a feeling of horror at its mingled superficialness, pretension and blasphemy; nor can we contrast the occasional glimpses of a sounder and more religious science, which the author would defend, without wishing that his self-knowledge and intellectual dignity were equal to his acuteness and his zeal for the truth.

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Ar the close of the year 1848, the cause of classical learning and of archaeology sustained a severe loss in the death of Letronne, who stood altogether at the head of the French savans in his department. He was born at Paris, Jan. 15, 1787, of an obscure family; and, while obtaining his education, was obliged to divide his time between study and the labor necessary to supply his wants. His first impulse was towards geography. On returning from a journey which he performed as a companion to a foreign gentleman, between 1810 and 1812, he published his "Essai sur la Topographie de Syracuse pour servir a l'intelligence, de Thucydide et de plusieurs autres auteurs anciens." His next work known to us is his "Recherches geographiques et critiques sur Dicuil;" published in 1814. Dicuil was an Irish monk who wrote a geographical compilation, entitled "de mensura orbis terrae," in the year 825, as he himself informs us in some verses at the close of the work. The extracts, of which this little work (filling 69 pages in Latronne's edition) principally consists, are taken from Pliny, Solinus, Orosius, Isidore of Seville, Priscian, the author of a Cosmography, and the reports of certain commissioners (missi) of the emperor Theodosius (the Great, probably, and not his grandson), sent out to make measurements of the provinces. No other information has come down to us of such an undertaking by the Roman emperor. Besides these authorities, Dicuil quotes from contemporary travellers: one of these travellers is the monk Fidelis (Dicuil 6. § 3. ed. Letronne), who told Dicuil's master, Suibneus, in his presence, that on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem he sailed down the Nile by seven granaries of Joseph (pyramids), and from the Nile into the Red sea. This Letronne looks upon as a proof that a canal uniting these two waters, was then in actual use. In another most valuable passage Dicuil speaks of certain islands two days and nights' sail distant from the northern British isles, which can be no other than the Faroe isles, and of which he says that hermits from ex nostra Scottia,' had lived there for a hundred years; but now, owing to the incursions of the Normans (causa latronum Normannorum) had left their abodes. This is testimony contemporary with the earliest Norman expeditions, and agrees with a report that these rovers found Irish books there when they landed.

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