"consequently?" and why "the common denominator?" but we will not stop to make these inquiries. If we examine the exposé of the Vestiges, we shall find that the reduction of all the faculties of the mind to one, and to this particular one especially, and the limitation of all its various modes to a single specific type, is neither accurate in itself, nor capable of affording the advantages sought from it. In the first place, it proceeds upon an entire misconception of the nature and meaning of a faculty which is not a distinct entity, but simply a difference of form in the operation. The author's etymological tastes might have rendered him some service here. In the next place, the unity of the intellect has never been denied, so far as we are aware, except by such men as Paracelsus and Van Helmont; and the author's process merely substitutes the term Perception for Intellect, the specific manifestation for the acting cause, thus unwarrantably producing a needless multiplication of equivalent terms. Moreover, the alleged varieties of Perception are just as truly diversities of thought as the faculties which he has attempted to cashier: his argument thus leads him to the same conclusion which it was designed to subvert. It is, too, a very forced construction of the term Perception to require it to subserve the new functions assigned to it. It is true that the word is, with the possible exception of the term Idea, the most slippery and intractable in the whole vocabulary of metaphysics; but this is no recommendation for its new employment. The acute criticism of Sir William Hamilton has nearly succeeded in banishing it from the metaphysical nomenclature as a useless and officious go-between, which, like all intermeddlers, was only calculated to produce embarrassment and misunderstanding. Yet this very phrase, so illusory in its vague and multitudinous usages, so unnecessary in all but the most restricted acceptation, is now recalled as a maid-of-all-work, and is dilated, amplified, and mystified by this author, until the indefinite latitude of its new signification is utterly at variance with its ordinary meaning, and it is converted into an exact synonym with mind. It is only by the consolidation of all the clouds of meaning, which float like a hazy halo around the central idea involved in the term, and by a most untechnical and unauthorized employment of it, that it can be applied in any such way; and then, instead of introducing simplification, it carries its own misty vagueness into the whole realm which it is designed to regulate, systematize, and rule. Yet, notwithstanding this characteristic nebulosity, and with all its advantages for confused speculation, and its inaptitude for accurate reasoning, it is actually employed as the attenuation of the idea of sensation, furnishing the substratum for a shadowy creed, for which sensation is too metaphysical, as representing an apparent entity or function of an entity. It is intended, at the same time that it usurps the throne of mind, to be also a sublimation-a vaporization-of the notion of sensation, and to represent the mere phenomenal act of relation between the thing knowing and the thing known, which is coarsely designated by materialistic and other philosophers as the act of sensation. In the mental manhood of the nineteenth century has the intellect dwindled into this mere shadow of itself? The human mind, according to the French philosophers, had been regarded as a too mystical entity, a too fiery particle, and was by them degraded into mere animalized sensation. It is now evaporated into the simple phenomenon of sensation-the mere relation between the thing knowing and the thing known, thus showing how the mysticism of idealism may be transmuted into the mysticism of empiricism; so closely analogous to the earlier excess, both in form and appearance, as to be spectral in both extremes. Thus the vestiges of former errors are revived as the land-marks of succeeding generations; and the resemblance of the two might excite surprise, if we did not know that the diminution of gravitation was equal at equal distances on both sides of the centre of gravity; and that negative and positive distances, or distances measured in opposite directions, were identically the same. Such is the unity which is received as the corner-stone of the Vestiges. When we note the manner in which the author attempts to establish it,* we shall discover that the argument is as invalid and unwarrantable as the result. There is throughout an entire ignoratio elenchi. The identity of the agent is assumed as proof of the identity of its actions; the unity of the mind regarded as evidence of the unity of its processes. By this mode of reasoning the leaf, the flower, and the fruit would be demonstrated to be the same, because produced by one and the same vital energy. The Perception thus inducted as the original germ and unit of the whole contemplated series, by its very looseness and vagueness lends itself readily to the scheme of the author; and by an easy selection of a certain definite number of mental operations, and their reference to perception as a type, a table of triads is promptly drawn up, and the first round in the ladder of the theory is secured. In the words of this writer "Perception passes progressively, and in consequence of the constant effort to simplify the phenomenal world into harmony with its own unity, through— 1st (series,) Sensation: Memory: Imagination. 2d 3d Reflection: Vestiges, § 9, pp. 35, 36. Generalization. Abstraction: † Vestiges, § 3, p. 47. According to the Vestiges, Perception is the sole faculty of the mind, hence the equivalent of the mind; and the signification of the above declaration is, that the mind, in its endeavour to harmonize the diversities of nature with its own unity, passes through the series indicated; or, in other words, constructs this scheme for the gratification of its own caprices, or the satisfaction of its own desires. The asseveration then simply amounts to this, that the scheme is an ideal one-a mere cobweb of the brain, efficient to catch flies, but not potent enough to fetter the universe. The table itself is open to its own objections. What sort of affinity is there between Perception and the act or faculty of Abstraction, or between Perception and the process of Reasoning? Why may we not add another term to each of these series-to the first, Conception; to the second, Judgment; to the third, Comprehension?—or interpose this triad in the list as a new series? The table is evidently incomplete; it does not furnish the full catalogue of mental processes; it classifies and distributes them erroneously, as in making Comparison a step beyond Reasoning, of which it is one of the principal elements. In fact, the scheme is a mere artifice, presenting by its apparent regularity the presumption of validity, but in no respect comporting with either the conditions of truth, or the actual necessities of the problem. It is just such a piece of verbal miracle-mongering as might amuse an idle audience, but could hardly beguile a reflecting man, not misled by the seductions of a theory. We have no intention to advance further in the consideration of this novel system, although it would be as easy to destroy the fantastic edifice as it was easy to construct it. In both cases ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte. In consideration of his reverence for French, we give the author the benefit of the French proverb. But it is not our purpose to examine the scheme, simply because we have not the time, and do not deem it requisite. We have shown the invalidity of the author's logic, the fallacy of his premises and procedure, the entire absence of anything having the character of proof as of anything entitled to be considered as evidence of the special thesis proclaimed; and if we refuse to attack the system itself, thus left entirely without support, the fortress is not the less effectually reduced because we decline to draw the plough over the lines of its crumbling walls. We will only say of the theory, as of the reasoning by which it is maintained, that it is a strange and hybrid production—a curious cross between the Transcendentalism of Schelling and the Positivism of Comte. The aim is derived from Comte, the spirit is an emanation from the German school; the form belongs to the type of the ideal philosophies of nature, but occasional suggestions, details, and principles are derived from the Cours de Philosophie Positive. It is singular, again, that the Messianisme of Hoëné Wronski is never once mentioned by this author-singular in more respects than one. The system of the Vestiges is, indeed, rather analogous to the Messianisme than identical with it, inasmuch as the latter contemplates the reëdification and sublimation of Christianity, the former its extinction; but both presuppose as implicit principles the proposed results of their doctrines, and the line of the argument, the style of the reasoning, and the convolutions of the scheme in accordance with the triplicities of a mathematical law, are strikingly similar. There is the same triadic progression of apparently identical processes; the same recognition of mathematics not merely as the most certain science, but as the one science-the type, instrument, creator, and embodiment of all the sciences *___ and the same design to construct through its agency the one absolute and universal science. If, under these circumstances, and the parallelism might be much extended,-if the author of the Vestiges has not studied M. Wronski's speculations, as we are disposed to believe from all appearances that he has not done, this spontaneous and unconscious coincidence in systematic error is certainly remarkable. It may, however, with the corresponding theories of Poe and Stallo, reveal the licentious tendencies of modern intellectual speculation, and prove that the recurrence to the ante-Baconian processes must result in the resurrection of the dreams of the Scholastics. If, as we do not suspect, the author of the Vestiges has pondered over the mathematical abysms and inextricable confusion of the Philosophie Absolue, his failure to mention the triumph of his penetration in mastering the intricate uniformity and systematic perplexity of the Messianisme would be even more surprising. In either case, there is nothing half so miraculous in the affinities of Telesio and Campanella as in the agreement of the Investigator and Hoëné Wronski. - The contrast between the purposes of these authors is as remarkable as their analogies. M. Wronski proposes that each individual should philosophically evolve his own Paraclete and effectuate his own salvation; the author of the Vestiges indulges the hope that every rational man will disown scientifically "the traditional dictates of a farrago of nursery-tales imagined two or three thousand years ago by a handful of scrofulous barbarians, the refuse of the ancient and • Vestiges, § 31, p. 116. † Vestiges, § 34, p. 130; § 54, p. 194. the ridicule of the modern world."* It would be an easy office to us to censure in stronger, because more appropriate and legitimate, language, such glaring improprieties of thought and expression, but we refrain from doing so for reasons which we shall soon state; and, if an author of such high talent and such vigour of intellect condescends to defile his work by substituting Billingsgate for argument, and by mistaking blasphemy for profundity, we will let it pass without rebuke-it shall surely have its own reward. But we were noticing the contrast between the Messianisme and the Vestiges, a contrast which produces a notable result. M. Wronski undertakes to generate from human reason a God: the author of the Vestiges to construct from human experience a new organism. M. Comte had endeavoured to elaborate and introduce a new religion-the worship of Humanity and to elevate Humanity to divine honours"le véritable Grand-Etre"-"le nouvel Etre Suprême." The Vestiges, herein following in the footsteps of the Positive Philosophy, but deviating slightly from its course, converts the shadowy Jupiter, the phenomenal divinity of Positivism, into a reality, and recognises in the same humanity, or aggregate collection of all men, a new, separate, and individual existence t-thus taking his stand at the pole opposite to M. Wronski. The error of both the Vestiges and the Positive System is virtually identical with the ancient delusion of endowing the universe with an anima mundi, and regarding the earth as an animated mass; and arises in both instances from the same disposition to hypostatize generalizations and abstractions, though the burthen of the complaint with M. Comte and this anonymous writer is directed against this fallacy. 'But half of our solemn task is done," and yet we hasten to a close. We have left the system of the Vestiges entirely untouched: we have exhibited but a slight portion of the general and characteristic defects of the work; and we have certainly not attempted to gather even the tithe of the errors, the mistakes, the fallacies, or the fantasies which distinguish the details. Yet our censure has run to such a length, and has hurried over so many and such grave topics, that some explanation seems requisite to justify the praise which we have at times bestowed upon the treatise, and the eulogy and respect with which we have always spoken of the author. Glancing through the mists and clouds of this untenable speculation, steal every now and then brilliant glimpses of a brighter, clearer, purer heaven of thought beyond, where the mind of the author is Vestiges, § 144, p. 353. Such unworthy indecorum-to say no more-is of constant recurrence. Vestiges, § 47, p. 184. |