Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

our brethren of other denominations, and in the fear of giving too much importsnce to what we were willing to consider a non-essential, we have not taught the members of our churches to estimate rightly the value of our simple and Scriptural form of church polity. What wonder is it that so much of our strength has been drawn off to build up other denominations who have been animated by a more intense devotional zeal! The danger of the times, in church as well as in state, is the centralization of power, and the blunting of all individual responsibility among the masses of the people. Congregationalism, better than any other system, is calculated to make the members of our churches feel their personal responsibility for the advancement of the interests of religion, and the necessity of being individual centers of influence. We bespeak for this volume a wide circulation and attentive readers.

PHILOSOPHY.

McCOSH'S INTUITIONS OF THE MIND.*-We welcome this volume as a valuable contribution to metaphysical science, and as being in some respects a very extraordinary book to appear in the English language. It demonstrates the truth that the interest in speculative studies is becoming almost a passion among thinking men in Great Britain. By the "intuitions of the mind," the author means those a priori conceptions and beliefs which are the conditions of all empirical and concrete knowledge, and without which all science of every kind, ethics and theology, are each and all alike impossible. In proposing to investigate these intuitions inductively, he assumes that it is possible to ascertain what these intuitions are, and to establish beyond a question the position that they are not acquired by experience, but are gained by direct and necessary acts of cognition. The general method pursued by the author is the same with that which Dr. Reid has followed in his Essay on First Principles. But since the time of Reid we have had Kant's Critique of Pure Reason-Cousin's Critique on Locke-the writings of Whewell and J. Stuart Mill-Hamilton's Reviews and Lectures, all of which treatises have cleared the subjects involved of many difficulties, and contributed important materials for the better understanding and the more satisfactory adjustment of the questions at issue. These writers,

The Intuitions of the Mind inductively investigated. By the Rev. JAMES McCosи, LL. D., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in Queen's College, Belfast, &c., &c. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers. 1860. 8vo. pp. 504.

and some others of secondary importance, Dr. McCosh has studied with earnest attention, and he has them constantly in mind as he shapes his own arguments and evolves his own distinctions. Beyond these writers and a few others, his reading does not seem to have extended. At least, he does not seem to be at home with any besides those we have named. With the more recent philosophical literature of Germany, exuberant and able as it is, he seems only to be superficially acquainted. Such writers as Trendelenburg and Lotze, Ulrici and Fichte, ought to have been thoroughly studied before he ventured to publish on the profound subjects of this volume. A passing reference to their writings does by no means suffice.

Dr. McCosh is a clear and interesting writer on philosophical subjects. He is quick in his suggestions, acute and sagacious in his criticisms, occasionally subtle and original in his conclusions. He is eminently fitted by the warmth, the copiousness and fluency of his style, to excite an interest in speculative studies. But as a writer of authority, we cannot assign him the highest rank. He is not precise in his use of language. He is not rigorous in the development of his argument. He does not always seem to know what he is saying, but blindly beats the air. When compared with Hamilton, he is not only immeasurably his inferior in the extent and accuracy of his reading-but he falls below him in the strong and tenacious grasp of his conceptions-in the simple yet forcible precision of his language, and the undeviating and onward march of his logic. Hamilton is not always correct in his opinions. He lays himself open to easy criticism. McCosh does not fail to send an arrow between the joints of his harness; but, in spite of his errors, Hamilton is incomparably the greater philosopher, while McCosh is scarcely a philosopher at all, but rather a philosophizer or philosophical essayist. Notwithstanding these capital defects, this work is so interesting and so acute, that it cannot fail to stimulate to active thinking, while it will now and then reward the discriminating student with an original and wide-reaching principle.

The topics discussed in this volume lie at the foundation of our knowledge and our faith-Time, Space, Identity, Power, Causation, Quantity continuous and discrete, Motion, the Infinite, Being, Substance, Personality, Freedom, Moral Obligation-these, and other subjects are considered again and again, in the abstract and the concrete. We are surprised that intuition is omitted, which is the most interesting of all from its own intrinsic character, and from the importance of its application in ethics and theology. We refer to the intuition of design or

final cause. We are especially surprised that it should have been overlooked by the author of that most interesting volume entitled "Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation." Surely Dr. McCosh cannot be ignorant that this Intuition is the one of all others which concerns the questions at issue between the Deist and the Pantheist-and that for a score of years at least, the discussion of it has excited more interest than that of any one speculative point; nay, than that of all others togetherwith the physiologists and the philosophers of Germany. But Dr. McCosh does not notice it in this volume.

COLLINS'S HUMANICS.*-This is a highly original treatise on man as body and soul-answering pretty nearly to what in Germany would be called a system of anthropology. It was manifestly wrought out by the author's independent reflections, with very considerable reading. The result of this thinking is given in a brief and condensed essay, which touches some of the chief questions in Physiology, Psychology, and Metaphysics, in an able and original manner. The chief drawback to the interest and popularity of the work is the artificial nomenclature adopted by the author, and the brevity of his discussion of some fundamental questions. The chief merit of the treatise is that it distinguishes thought from sensation, and draws a sharp line of distinction. between the lower and the higher functions of man's complex nature, thus clearly and triumphantly vindicating the spirituality of the soul. Every effort of this sort by a man who understands and does justice to all that a materialistic and spiritualistic physiology can urge in behalf of organization, renders an important service to the science of the times. The author's views of the process of thought, we cannot accept. He makes its initiatory and most elementary act to be enumeration, or, as he otherwise expresses himself, the ideation of the unit. Not only is numbering the primordial act of thinking, but it is continually repeated in all its more complicated processes, so that in reasoning of every kind the author finds little except addition and subtraction.

In other words, numbering, when applied to the varied content which is furnished for it to act upon, is the distinct element of the mind's thinking function. This theory is not peculiar to the author. It has often been propounded with more or less boldness and consistency of application. It is plausible, but not therefore convincing or

* Humanics. By T. WHARTON COLLINS, Esq., Professor of "Political Philosophy," University of Louisiana, ex-presiding Judge City Court of New Orleans, &c. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1860. 8vo. pp. 358.

tenable. The elementary act of the mind in thinking is to distinguish one object from another, but not to distinguish it as one, which requires the consideration of it in a special relation. The relation of number, by which every object can be connected with every other, is only one of the thought relations, a relation universally applicable to every object, but not therefore explaining every other. The fallacy which leads the metaphysician to think it does explain every act and object to which it may be applied, is literally cum hoc ergo propter hoc. But though we dissent from the author in this fundamental position, we recommend his book as an interesting, original, and ingenious contribution to the knowledge of man.

SCIENCE.

DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.*-The received doctrine in respect to the origin of species in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, has generally been, that they were formed by the Creator, each after its kind, and endowed with the power of propagating their like. It has been admitted, indeed, that within the limits of single species, a great number of varieties might arise, some of them as the result of culture and breeding, and that these varieties might, with sufficient pains-taking, be preserved true to their originals. It was also admitted that species nearly allied might propagate hybrid species, and that between certain kinds of plants this propagation might go on to an extent not easily defined or controlled. But it has been contended that in most species the limits within which varieties diverge from the common type, were very narrow, and that a constant tendency to come back to certain common and essential characteristics, is continually making itself mani- · fest. Even in the best established varieties of plants and animals, the constant pains of the culturist and the breeder is required to keep the variety up to its normal state and to overcome the tendency to fali back to the original or the wilder forms.

This doctrine is rejected by the eminent naturalist, Dr. Charles Darwin, who has written this volume to explain, and in part to vindicate, the view which he would substitute. He contends that an induction

*On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the struggle for life. By CHARLES DARWIN, M. A., Fellow of the Royal Geological, Linnæan, &c. Societies. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1860. 12mo. pp. 432.

from the facts of animal and vegetable life warrants the conclusion, that all living animals "have descended from, at most, only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number. Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless, all living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their germinal vesicles, their cellular structure, and their laws of growth and reproduction. We see this even in so trifling a circumstance as that the same poison often similarly affects plants and animals; or that the poison secreted by the gall-fly produces monstrous growths in the wild-rose or oak-tree. Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth, have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed."

The facts which first suggested to the author this most sweeping inference from analogy, were the extraordinary changes in the form, the habits, and even the instincts of pigeons, by the care of breeders. The carrier, the tumbler, the runt, the barb, the pouter, the turbit, the Jacobin, the trumpeter, the laugher, and the fantail, are all as unlike one other as are different species of birds. Yet all these have been produced from the common wild pigeon, care being taken by man to develop slight peculiarities, by separating the parents in which they appear, and doing the same with those of their offspring in which the peculiarities desired were most conspicuous. Dr. Darwin also makes much of the fact that, in certain conditions of the parents of both plants and animals, accidental peculiarities of every kind are transmissible, and become fixed in their offspring; and he argues that what can be effected in the case of the pigeon, might be accomplished for every other species, provided they could be isolated as easily and brought under the plastic culture of man. Now, what man accomplishes with a few species, by artificial methods of seclusion and separation, he contends nature has done with all the animal and vegetable tribes, by the force of natural selection in the struggle for existence. He conceives the process thus. An animal or plant which possesses any marked peculiarity or tendency, coupled with superior vigor of constitution, would assert a superiority over its feebler competitors, displacing them by an excluding or overshadowing growth, robbing them of nourishment or of prey, or gaining an advantage in transmitting life to offspring. Where one variety or tendency survives in a single generation, or long enough to gain a fixed and permanent superiority, ten thousand may have been overborne and

[blocks in formation]
« AnteriorContinuar »