Miscellaneous. A Memorial Record of the New York Branch of the United States Christian Commission. Compiled under the direction of the Executive Committee. 8vo., pp. 103. New York: John A. Gray & Green. 1866. A beautiful memento volume. Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries, and of the Dis- An Introduction to the Devotional Study of the Holy Scriptures. By Notes from the Plymouth Pulpit. A Collection of Memorable Passages The Lost Tales of Miletus. By the Rt. Hon. EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, History of Frederich the Second, called Frederic the Great. By THOMAS A Text-Book of Physiology, for the Use of Schools and Colleges; being an The Shadow of Christianity; or, the Genesis of the Christian State. Houghton. The Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell, afterward Mistress Milton. The last two are part of a series of interesting historic fictions, The Scriptural Law of Divorce. By ALVAH HOVEY, D.D., Professor of Essays upon the Gift of Speech and its A Text-Book of Chemistry. For the Use of Schools and Colleges. By HENRY DRAPER, Professor in the University of New York. 300 Nlustrations. 12mo., pp. 507. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1866. METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW. OCTOBER, 1866. ART. I.-THE ORIGIN OF REVOLUTIONS IN PUBLIC OPINION. Social Statics; or, The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of them Developed. By HERBERT SPENCER. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1865. A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe. By JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER, M. D., LL. D. New York: Harper &' Brothers. 1863. The Biographical History of Philosophy, from its Origin in Greece down to the Present Day. By GEORGE HENRY LEWES. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1857. Essays and Reviews. [Particularly, Essays on "The Education of the World," by DR. ZEMPLE.] London: John W. Parker & Son. 1860. WE have grouped these volumes together, and might have added the titles of other notable works, not to criticise them in detail, nor even to indicate their various sentiments, but simply to call attention to one doctrine which under various guises they all hold, namely, the bondage of man to circumstances, of matter to mind. With them souls, as bodies, are simply and only effects. History is an exact science; man is only a machine. It has become a favorite generalization of a class of thinkers, of late, to regard the whole world of man as an individual passing through several successive periods of development or character; from the ignorance and imbecility FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XVIII-31 of infancy, through the hopefulness and credulity of childhood, the passion and poetry of youth, to the sterner practical ambition of manhood, and the final positive convictions and welldefined knowledge and contented despair of old age. Whenever an hypothesis similar to this is entertained and elaborated by philosophers who disallow any information superior to the deductions of the human reason, the final stage of human development is depicted, not as an era of hopeful, joyous anticipation, but as a cold passionless reign of science, in which men shall have learned the power of all material and mental laws, and obeying them shall present what they deem a perfected manhood, which, like a perfected vegetation, shall pass through its appointed rounds and die away, without any hope or fear not necessary to its complete development in this, its only known existence.* But others, who do not discard man's chief glory, his religious nature, and who accept the logical deduction that this nature proves the existence of the supersensual and the eternal, still adopt the generalization of the gradual growth of the race, but anticipate in the last era the co-reign of science and faith, both efficient and harmonious, and each with its well-defined powers, under whose joint domain man shall obey all the laws of the present life, and thereby become qualified for graduation into a higher order of existence. All who entertain the idea of development, common to both of these parties, see in the history of man, already past, several successive stages, in each of which some one race has been dominant, and has gradually assumed the empire of the world. During its infancy all its parts were in common growing, and a common credulousness appeared, like the blossoms of spring, beautiful, and often desired again when gone, but really fruitless, and to maturer minds insipid. The hopefulness of childhood too was universal in its reign, and spontaneous in its inception. But in manhood the races diverge in nature. The Hebrews, in the early manhood of the human race, taught the sublime doctrine of the unity of the Supreme Being, to all the world; the Greeks, in a maturer intellectual manhood, car * See the Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, last chapter. ried poetry and the love of the beautiful to a supreme place in the affections of the world; the Romans enthroned order; Christianity initiated the empire of love; while modern Europe presents man emancipated from the follies of youth and the ambition of early maturity, and has demonstrated the power of science, which promises in its reign to subject all other powers to its control and limit them to their just spheres; while America in particular claims the attention of the world by demonstrating that even the masses of mankind, hitherto regarded first as slaves, and next as helpless immortals to be protected, are really capable of self-government, self-purification, and growth. Now whether this theory be regarded simply as a convenient hypothesis, by which the facts of history may be classified, or as a genuine expression of an actual law, though false, it may be convenient and useful to the honest student of history and man. The theory also presupposes what we may concede to be an evident fact, that men have been accustomed to move in masses, not only literally and bodily, but mentally and morally. The history of the world is not the history of individuals, but of classes and of epochs. We are not dealing with imaginations, but with positive well-defined entities, when we speak of the Egyptian civilization, Babylonian and Persian despotism, the Grecian æsthetics and culture, the Macedonian ambition, the Roman order and imperiousness, (each for its time dominant in the civilized world,) the reconstruction of society by Christianity after the disintegration of the Roman empire, the gradual rising of the people into notice during the middle ages of Europe, the severe conflicts of thought in our own age: all these words express great, ponderous facts, and presuppose our common conviction that men move in masses— that either special thoughts, or passions, or habits, or some kinds of mental motive-power, obtain a supremacy for a time over a race, and often, sooner or later, over a large portion of the world. History is only instructive as it describes and accounts for these facts. It does not fall within our purpose now to inquire whether any system can be detected in the succession of these great moral motors, indicating improvement, or reactions, or simply repetitions in a stupendous cycle; nor whether we can detect in them any plan, or evidence of a control by an independent and supreme intellect and will. These inquiries, though, in our opinion, the sublimest of which the mind is capable, and not grasped in the conceptions of such men as Auguste Comte, and Lessing, and Herbert Spencer, are nevertheless too vast to be even fairly stated in a brief essay. We there fore select a single vein of thought, a central vein indeed in the great vital system of the universe, a correct perception of which would do much to prepare the mind for a proper view of the whole. We propose to inquire what causes special independent waves of public opinion, that sweep over large parts of the world, and give it character for successive epochs? Are these caused by human instincts? The instincts of human beings are always the same. The limitations of their ability are the same. Their native phys ical, mental, and moral capacities vary within narrow limits. It is true that the character of one generation does modify even the instincts of their successors, and some tendencies, tastes, habits, and temperaments seem to be transmitted; but these influences are so irregular, capricious, and untraceable, as to lead such a man as Buckle hastily to deny them altogether;* and even if they be acknowledged, they could not account for sudden waves of public opinion and character, which have a distinctly marked genesis and exitus; and moreover, if acknowl edged, an explanation of this origin is demanded, and the difficulty is only crowded one step further back. Are these great people-and-age-characteristics the result mainly, or to any appreciable extent, of some newly created or newly operative material power? Does climate vary so as to change the nature of man? Is the planet on which we dwell growing smaller, or colder, or warmer, or more or less magnetic? Are the oceans and land displacing each other! Are volcanoes disappearing? Is the earth preparing for the maturization and extinction of the present race, and the introduction of a post-Adamic man? Is the sun feeling the effects of the high price of fuel, or has man, by his rash and foolish interference with nature, irrecoverably spoiled the earth as a place for human habitation? If it was "good" when created, *Civilization in England, vol. i, p. 161. |