stitions which still defile Christianity, they will here meet with no offensive reforming zeal which shall shock their prejudices. The Christian teacher, also, will find this work powerfully adapted to prepare the way for the gospel among a class whom his instructions are little likely to reach; and may himself derive some valuable hints from a work which opens so uncommon a method of appeal. We announce its purpose in the author's language rather than our own. "In the course of an inquiry into the meaning and origin of the mysticism of Plato, my attention was arrested by some peculiar traits in the character of Socrates. These appeared to me deserving of a close examination, not only for the sanction they derive from the integrity and wisdom of Socrates' character, but on account of a remarkable analogy which subsists between the state of knowledge in Socrates' times, and in our own. Each period may be considered a transitionstate from a relaxing authority to a more fully established conviction. The Politician, requiring obligations to prevent the dissolution of all the bonds of society; the Speculatist, desiring to know how far he may urge his theories without danger to practice; and the Religious, anxious to prevent belief sinking into scepticism, and devotion being chilled into irreligion, may find much that deserves his attention in the conduct and motives of Socrates. For the very end of Socrates' philosophy is to fix important objects, and to develope sufficient motives to excite men to pursue them. "Socrates investigated human nature for principles, and examined human affairs for consequences; and ascended, by the soundest inferences of reason, and the purest dictates of conscience, to a still higher obligation. He desired something which might be made a Discipline for the young, a Rule for the guiding of middle life, and a Support to the aged. And surely his Philosophy is addressed to the feelings of the purest time of life; yet stands the test to which the experience and knowledge of manhood can put it; and its recollections and anticipations are among the best comforts of age. It affords a system of obligation which rests on the most enlarged view of moral and physical causation. It does not indulge in the splendid error which would separate the present from the past; yet it proposes to make the present better than the past, and the future than the present time. And, lastly, it affords one of the most perfect comments which reason and conscience have ever supplied on the truth and importance of the moral lessons we have derived from the Christian Religion."- Pref. v - vii. After a beautiful sketch of Socrates, as a Speculatist and a practical Moralist, the work consists of an exposition of the three great objects to which his agency was directed; viz. to rouse and elevate the minds of the people to such a reverence for the Deity as may become an influential motive to conduct to make his expression of this reverence as consistent as truth would permit with the established belief and worship of his country and the removal from his country's belief and worship of whatever principles appeared irreconcilable to reason, and prejudicial to happiness. Under these three heads are comprehended an inquiry into the rectitude of Socrates' principle of resting conduct on Divine Obligation; an inquiry into the nature, design, and result of his compliance with the religion of his country; and a consideration of the duty and the best methods of removing practical falsehoods from that religion, as generally professed. We will not injure an argument so closely knit by separating its parts for the extraction of any; nor will we anticipate the effect of the whole on the reader by commenting on its separate portions, from some of which we should have to express our dissent, and expose what we deem their sophistry. We give only a few paragraphs which will bear disconnexion, and chiefly for the purpose of attracting our enlightened readers to a study of the work. "Antiquity has adjudged to Socrates the palm for goodness and for wisdom; for the goodness which labors to promote the well-being, and for the wisdom which discerns what constitutes the well-being of man. In all that Socrates is recorded by his more scrupulous biographer to have said or done, there is so much good sense, and so much right feeling, that we are in danger of forgetting his power of intellect in dwelling on the soundness of his character. We are in danger of considering the philosopher, who may with truth be said to have developed all the leading truths of natural religion and morals, merely a plain good man, because he has preferred whatever is sound in practice to what is striking in theory. "But the simplicity of Socrates' manner may with many prove as great an obstacle to his being ranked high as a philosopher, as is the soundness of his matter. If ever there existed a merely human being who could recognise the Divine voice in the plain instincts of conscience, and the simplest inferences of reason, it may be admitted that Socrates had that power. Therefore it is that his opinions and conduct exhibit a harmony so consentient between feelings not too acute, and a reason not too grave, yet each yielding its clear and perfect tone, that we are tempted to consider the instrument perfectly attuned by the Divine hand, and to think less of the master's skill. In other words, we are inclined to attribute the invariable soundness of Socrates' mind to the Divine allotment of an unerring moral sense, and to forget the largeness of his prudence in the supposed acuteness of his sagacity. "It is thus, that some calm and majestic temple, raised by a master in Grecian art, when compared with the innumerable perplexities of Gothic barbarism, appears so indivisible in its unity, so inseparable in its completeness, that we are tempted to consider it the execution, or rather the conception, of some happy moment, and to deny that it could have been put together from an infinity of formless materials by the vexatious toilings of incessant care, directed by a profound knowledge of the principles of beauty. This is a great error into which we are in danger of falling. Analogy might teach us that only rude and unorganized masses of matter have been allowed to attain their state of being suddenly. 'The crystal grows slowly in its silent but not uninstructive cave, and the exquisite brilliancy of the diamond is not that instantaneous hardening poets love to dream of. And, whatever soundness there be in these analogies, it is matter of known fact, that the temper of Socrates was of mortal mould, and only the industry bestowed on its correction was indeed divine. By the same constant care, the intellectual and moral simplicity observable in Socrates was built up. "However we estimate Socrates as a speculatist, there can be but one opinion about his practical character, about his sagacity in detecting in what happiness consists, and about his success in promoting it. Plato had more enthusiasm of imagination; and when the test of his master's sounder sense was withdrawn, ran into speculations well adapted to exercise a powerful influence over sensitive and imaginative minds. Aristotle was more nice in his distinctions, and more scientific in his arrangements; and, when his master's practical objects had ceased to direct men's attention wholly to conduct, was well fitted to be listened to with admiration by those who view morals as a science. But for a sound judgment in questions of honesty and usefulness, we would prefer Socrates' strong sense and right feeling, and practical mode of viewing every subject, to the peculiar powers which belonged to either of his great pupils."―pp. 9–13. It has required some self-denial to refrain from an indefinite enlargement on the matter of this essay, for which we shall possibly repay ourselves on the appearance of those which our author has announced on the Mysticism of Plato, and on the Utilitarianism of Aristotle. PHYSICAL CONSIDERATIONS CONNECTED WITH MAN'S ULTIMATE DESTINATION.* THERE are three ways of regarding the condition of the human being after death, each of which has its advocates, since the subject presents but a choice of difficulties. Men will not cease to speculate on a subject in which each has an individual interest, though a very scanty portion of evidence can, from the nature of the case, be obtained at present, and science, both physical and metaphysical, must have advanced to a degree which we can scarcely anticipate before any thing like certainty can be established as to the essence of human identity, the mode in which that identity is preserved, and the circumstances by which it shall be surrounded after death. There are a multitude of accessories to the interest which attends this very obscure inquiry. A being, whose individual fate was in no way involved in the question, one who could contemplate humanity without being subject to its ordinary conditionsthe Wandering Jew, for instance, or St. Leon - could not but feel a stirring curiosity about the destination of such a creature as man, after it was known that death is not the end of being. He would look on him one day, every fibre thrilling with life; and every limb, powerful in its muscular strength, made tenfold more powerful by the direction given to that strength by some internal existence made known only through its control over the outward man. He would look on him again and see the external frame, fearfully wonderful in the delicacy of its organization, but cold, insensible, tending to decay; and as for the power within-what and where - * An Essay on such Physical Considerations as are connected with Man's Ultimate Destination; the Essential Constitution of Superior Beings; and the Presumptive Unity of Nature. By Andrew Carmichael, M. R. I. A. Dublin. 1830. |