region of void abstractions, we are apt to feel ourselves relieved of all these annoying checks, and to expatiate in our freedom from them. Then, instead of plodding our way cautiously from fact to fact, we steer boldly forth through the beaconless azure, and are confident of our reckonings, though they are obtained in a manner that would forbid any reliance upon them, were they hazarded within the sphere of every-day experience.

If we will speculate, and at the same time if we would aim at reliable issues, it is plain that we must conduct the process, throughout, with a watchful submission to facts. At every step we must compare our conclusions with them. We must have no wish, nor thought, to modify them, in order to make them agree with our arguings; on the contrary, our arguings must be kept in agreement with them. It is important that even the language in which we carry on our speculations, should be that of common-sense. It must have the same significance that it has when used concerning familiar facts and the concerns of practical life, and be answerable for all its legitimate bearings on facts. We note this especially; for it is very apt to be fancied that the language of speculation may be allowed to have some abstract sense that is quite aside from the usual sense of similar expressions; so that a proposition shall not be held to mean the same thing, in theorizing, as it does in matters of experience. It is by no means rare, that propositions which, in the latter, would not be tolerated a moment, are deliberately propounded, in the former, and regarded as harmless there, even if not true. Above all, we must, both at the outset and at every subsequent stage, accept as authorities the insuppressible dictates of our nature, the testimony of its consciousness, its intuitions, and its original suggestions. It is from these that all legitimate reasoning begins. The very proposal to set aside any of these primary sources of our knowledge, is itself the extreme of absurdity; and, from the nature of the case, it can not but lead to conclusions false in proportion to the logical accuracy with which we subsequently proceed from our mutilated or one-sided premises. Instances of this kind are abundant. The dictates of our Moral Nature, to the exclusion of the demands of our Intellect, have frequently been taken as the sole premises in the construction of speculative systems; and still oftener

have the suggestions of the Intellect, to the exclusion of those of the Moral Nature and Personal Consciousness, been selected for the same purpose. In both cases, the results, by a just retribution, have always turned out to be monstrosities. one hand, Free-Will has been exaggerated into such an agency as is beyond the reach even of its Author, overpassing all limits assigned to it by common-sense, morality, and religion; on another hand, it has been annihilated, and all its perversities, follies, and freaks have been attributed either to the Divine Will, or else to a law of Necessity, that is, in its turn, exaggerated till it subjects Deity himself with his creatures, and makes the universe a magnificent imposture. Both trains of reasoning, or of speculation, are of a piece. They belong to a very numerous class of reasonings, so called, which start from one-sided premises, and so run straight off on a tangent. In their disregard of the judgments of common-sense, they are like the argument, that if we exact any faith whatsoever, as a condition of Christian fellowship, we can not stop, till we have assumed Papal Infallibility; or that, if we suppose any rain to be good for our crops, we must suppose a Noah's flood to be still better for them. Very straight-forward dialectics, perhaps! but, unhappily, regardless of facts.

H. B. 2d.

ART. XX.

Order of Religious Ideas in History.

In the review which we have taken1 of the progress of the human mind, we have seen that the earliest type of thought is the poetic or imaginative; manifesting itself in bold hyperboles and personifications-endowing the powers and elements of nature with the personal attributes of consciousness, affection, passion, memory, and will. We have seen also that among all peoples who have attained any considerable

1 See Art. xi. in the Quarterly for April, 1859. VOL. XVI. 30

degree of enlightenment, this eventually gives place to the more aspiring method of metaphysical speculation. We must not suppose, however, that the transition is ever sudden or sharply defined. The change is a part of the order of Nature, which seldom proceeds per saltum, but by scarcely perceptible gradations. The two forms of thought would often co-exist, the one insensibly gaining the ground which the other was losing. The thoughts of the philosopher would differ widely from those of his less intellectual contemporaries. We even see persons every day use for one class of subjects forms of ratiocination which they never think of applying to another class. A large part of the human family are a kind of intellectual monomaniacs; perfectly sound on most topics, but on a few wholly irrational. Within the charmed circle of their favorite opinions they are unassailable, for there they do not admit that our intellectual methods apply.

But while poetry and philosophy in their primitive types engrossed the attention of the most gifted, a third form of thought existed from the earliest ages, most modest in its pretensions, but destined to work the grandest results. It was the way in which common men thought about common things. The hunter, the fisherman, the tiller of the soil, the worker in paints, dyes and metals, within the sphere of his own immediate pursuits, neither imagined nor speculated, but observed and experimented. By direct trial, the first men gathered, grain by grain, some little knowledge of the things with which they were most conversant, which they delivered as a precious inheritance to their sons. Each generation added something to the store; and he who discovered and made known a single fact of nature, if it related only to the properties of an herb or stone, or the habits of an insect, was to that extent a benefactor of mankind. The accumulation of knowledge in this way is extremely slow, compared with the flights of abstract speculation, but also extremely sure. The outlines of nature and creation have been conjecturally sketched a hundred times with rapid hand, and almost without effort; but thousands of years were required to prepare a scientific foundation for chemistry and geology. The poet might repudiate this plodding inquisitiveness about single natural facts as something too low and earthly, and the philosopher might despise the

plebeian toil as fit only for rustics and artizans; yet the inquirers kept on from age to age, with a patient industry like that of the coral worm, building up the resting place for which Archimedes longed in order to move the world. Call this common sense, induction, empiricism, what we will, it is the intellectual method of all men wherever they have sufficient certain knowledge; and where there is no certain knowledge, abstract speculation is little better than guessing at random. Leaving Revelation for the moment out of the account, we must regard the observation of facts as the foundation of all knowledge; and philosophy is safe precisely in proportion as it keeps faithfully near to these primitive data. Wherever there is a large accumulation of facts, a comprehensive mind will seek to classify them and obtain general results. To do this is the true province of philosophy, and we shall have occasion to observe that the tendency of modern philosophy is to keep ever closer to facts, · and to introduce less and less of mere gratuitous conjecture. It would be absurd to say that the inductive method was originated by Bacon, or any one else. It was employed by the first man who observed that rain fell from the clouds, and streams ran downwards, and ever since by all men where they had sufficient information. All the practical business of life, and the arts that minister to human wants and comfort, are based upon the generalization of observed facts; and as these facts never cease accumulating, the domain of the inductive method has always been widening, and will, we believe, ultimately include every object of human intelligence.

Although we have pointed out three modes of thought essentially distinct, and indicated the order of their succession, we must remember that the three are often singularly blended in the same mind. Thus in the writings of Bacon, they are found in almost equal proportions of the three, we should say the fancy is rather the most conspicuous, and Plato was either the most poetic of philosophers, or the most philosophic of poets. It is common to see the same person view one class of subjects through the medium of the imagination, another by the aid of abstract assumption, and a third and more familiar class by the light of observation and experiment. Subjects of a religious character, especially, are still commonly considered as exempt from the

requirements of the Baconian method. We are not surprised, therefore, to find illustrious examples of diligent research, such as Aristotle in zoology and politics, Theophratus in botany, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus and Ptolemy in astronomy, and Archimedes in general physics, in ages when all professed philosophy rested on arbitrary assumptions. The significant circumstance is the constant increase of facts, and the increasing attention which they receive, and the consequent gradual falling into disuetude of very much that rested upon a less permanent foundation.

The

It will scarcely be a digression to notice here an element which has had an important influence on the history of human development, namely, the diversity of national characteristics. Nations and races of men appear to have characters and aptitudes as distinctly marked as those of individuals. The Negro and Indian in this country present a striking illustration of what we mean. The one is vain, easily flattered, submissive to authority, grossly superstitious, and extremely susceptible to religious excitement. He chatters, laughs, sings, dances, and grows fat in bondage, and multiplies like Israel of old. The other is proud, grave, silent and sad, untameable as the wild ass that scorneth the crying of the driver, and he melts away at the approach of the white man like snow from the face of the sun. group known as the Arian or Indo-European nations, whose spreading branches extend from the Ganges to the western shores of Europe, and constitute the nations and colonies of the new world, comprising the Hindoo, Persian, Greek, Roman, Slavonian, Russian, Germanic, and more remotely the Celtic nations, has played the most conspicuous part in history. They are all brethren in a sense more strict than that in which the same may be said of the Greek and the Jew, for example and are allied in language, in primitive religious traditions, and intellectual characteristics. Side by side with them, but separated by radical diversities of language and thought, and rarely coalescing, were the next most important group,-the so called Shemitish nations, the Syrians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabians. The Arian man is ingenious, versatile, and aspiring. Proud of his manhood, he claims kindred, and often equality, with his gods, and with the unaided reason attempts to explore the mys teries of the universe. In the land of the Seven Rivers,