of history without the soul,-events without ideas,-effects without causes,- -the very atheism of narrative."

And again, alluding to the dispute which has called the Free-soil party into existence:

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Now, we can sympathize with a person who has had the gout transmitted to him, the only legacy of a loving father; but that a man should go deliberately to work, bottle in hand, to establish the gout in his own system, is an absurdity which touches the Quixotic in diabolism. Yet this, or something like to this, has been gravely proposed, and some of our southern brethren have requested us to aid in the ludicrously iniquitous work."

We very often see that the faults or weaknesses of character are good traits exaggerated, or disrespectful to healthy limits. Qualities that bloom in prudence run to seed in meanness. Generosity of nature often passes over into prodigality, and firmness frequently topples into obstinacy. The faults which Mr. Whipple's pages betray, are vitally connected with the distinguishing merit they reveal-the vigor with which a fact is conceived, or a law comprehended by his mind. Subtle elements of genius, principles in the domain of literature, which most minds apprehend but faintly, he sees so clearly that he utters himself like a prophet, with a savage intensity of expression. There is nothing tawdry or florid in his style; a figure seldom appears; and his language is always precise, idiomatic and racy. But it expresses too much. Every sentence blazes with meaning, and the paragraphs tire from the continual succession of phrases that are crammed with power. There ought to be more negligence, more shading, more of a suggestive quiet and carelessness. His intellect seems to be always armed cap-à-pie, and every passage is an approved attitude of mental carte and tierce. If Mr. Whipple could create a world, there would be no latent heat and but little twilight in it. As a painter he would be a poor master of background. Strong and precise as his decision always is, if it were less steely, if the movement of his thought were less military and more flowing, it would be much more pleasant to read, and by not making so great a demand for microscopic attention, would convey more to ordinary thinkers.

But Mr. Whipple has already given ample indications.

that, in the highest line of literary criticism, he can be the best critic in this country. With a mind so active and catholic, with a brain so reverent and so admirably poised, with a power of analysis only equalled by mastery of strong, expressive English, and with a passion for the works of genius that is almost a fever in his blood, he is admirably fitted, not only to be a good interpreter of the various dialects of the great masters of literature, but also to produce a work upon the laws and methods of genius itself, that will be a valuable addition to a branch of philosophy which has been too slightly cultivated.

T. S K.

Scot Erigène et la Philosophie Scholastique. Par M. Saint-René Taillandier, Professeur suppléant à la Faculté des Lettres de Strasbourg. Strasbourg, Ve. Levrault, &c., Paris, P. Bertrand, &c. 1843. [Scotus Erigena and the Scholastic Philosophy. By M. St. René Taillandier, &c.] 8 vo. pp. 334.

OUR readers may find, in the Appendix to the Ancient History of Universalism (2d Edition,) most of the principal facts, that can now be ascertained, of the life of John Scotus Erigena. We shall not here repeat them, but confine our notice chiefly to his philosophy. For this, we are dependent for the most part on the information, apparently thorough, which is given in the work named at the head of this article, as we have not read Scotus himself. will only remark that he flourished at the head of the learned in the court of France, under the reign of Charles the Bald, during the middle of the ninth century, and that he was unquestionably the most brilliant genius, and the greatest scholar, as well as the most independent thinker, of his times.

We

He belonged to that numerous class of philosophers, so called, who assume to fathom the Infinite, that is, God,

and the world visible and invisible, together with the relations of Deity to his works. He professed to carry philosophy through the whole domain of religion, by scientifically exploring every thing which the latter recognizes. He thought thus to identify the two. Of course, he incurred the inevitable consequence of such an attempt, abortion. For the philosopher, like other men, is but finite. All the faculties by which he philosophizes, are but finite; and therefore they can neither analyze nor synthesize, nor explore scientifically, beyond the finite. Should we even admit the fanciful hypothesis of the impersonality and superhuman nature of reason, it would not affect the conclusion. For, even in that case, we could receive into our own minds, no more of the teachings of such impersonal and superhuman reason, than our personal capacities, which are acknowledged to be finite, can admit. Let reason be God himself, if we please; let it know all things; or, let there be any other power or property of an omniscient kind, associated with our nature, but extending beyond it; yet, if we who philosophize, though we do it by such help, are still but finite, it is plain that we ourselves can receive but finite knowledge, howsoever much reason in the abstract, or any other superhuman property, may be capable of knowing. Of course, when we attempt to explore the Infinite scientifically, we begin by substituting the finite for the Infinite; since the former is all that we can take in. If we aim to comprehend God, eternity, immensity, we always, by a necessity of our nature, reduce them to no God, no eternity, no immensity. We may grasp at the Infinite; but we seize only the finite. This consideration shows that philosophy is inadequate to construct a religion scientifically; and that to identify the two is beyond the scope of our powers. Strictly speaking, a thoroughly philosophical religion is an absurdity, with any finite crea

ture.

So much, we think, is evident from the nature of the case. It is verified, also, by the history of philosophy. For example: take Platonism, the most religious of all the ancient speculations; trace it down historically, through the Old and the New Academy, to the universal Skepticism in which it resulted, or, again, to the Pantheism in which it was developed among the Neoplatonicians. The more

consistently Plato's philosophical method was pursued, we mean, the purely philosophical part of his method; the more rigorously his materials were wrought over and analyzed, and the farther the impulse he gave was followed out in its scientific direction, the more clearly did the elements prove themselves to be but finite. Or, take the modern omniscient philosophies of continental Europe, especially of Germany, and follow them, through their successive and legitimate developements, to the Pantheism and Atheism in which they have at last determined themselves. In all these cases, their boasted Infinite was at first but the finite; and when the systems had been wrought out into complete consistency, it showed itself as such. Of course, we do not here speak of all that was originally included in those theories; for it was natural that much should, in the beginning, be admitted unconsciously on the ground of faith. We speak only of the strictly philosophical elements and methods with which they set out; and of these, as stripped of all adventitious matter, which had to be defecated in subsequent and more searching analyses.

Erigena begins by describing the successive means by which we attain to knowledge, and the steps by which we may rise to the pure cognition of the Infinite. There are, first, the Senses, which reveal to the soul the phenomena of the outward, or sensible, world; secondly, Reason, which traces these phenomena to their cause,-to God,-and which instructs us that God exists, but does not enable us to say what he is; and, thirdly, there may be awakened in us, by the suggestions of reason, what he calls a supreme Intuition, which elevates the soul above itself, and out of itself, and makes it comprehend God. In this last process, the soul becomes, like the angels, a pure intellectual activity, unfettered and unobscured by the conditions of time and sense; it moves in perfect freedom around the Deity, and has a direct intellectual vision of him,—a vision, not an inference of the reason, nor a conviction by faith, but an immediate intuition. It is in this third specification, that our author passes out of his legitimate province as a philosopher, into the domains of fantasy; for nothing is clearer than that the state of mind which he describes under this head, is that of revery, in which imagination is

enthroned in the place of reason, playing as many different parts as there are different speculatists.

He proposes, however, another method, which he thinks preferable, as a way to the contemplation of God: namely, by looking into our own soul, and analyzing that. For, since our soul was created "in the image of God," we find there a reproduction, as it were, of him; a reproduction of him so complete as to image forth even his triune nature, as well as his divine perfections. To know our soul, the image, is to kow God, the original. Now, we may admit that, if it could first be shown that the human soul is really God in miniature, Deity reduced to a finite scale, this method might then answer, to a partial degree, the purpose proposed; we say, to a partial degree only, because even then it could afford us no representation of God as infinite. And since no such miniature, or reduction, is possible, the human soul, contemplated objectively, can only serve, like all the rest of God's works, as a datum whence reason may infer, by its ordinary processes, the nature of the Creator.

These two methods, the ontological and the psychological, he proposes as the ways to an immediate intuition of God. He remarks that this intuition, attained in either of these ways, does not come by slow and successive steps; when the conditions just mentioned are fulfilled, it springs up at once in that primary faculty of the soul which lies behind all the intimations of the senses and all the discoveries of observation,-springs up in that original and simple power of the intellect by which we know. The soul is made to project itself beyond the limits of its nature, (so he says,) and rises to a pure and immediate apperception of the Eternal, the Immutable. He proceeds, with his trancendental jargon, to say that, having reached this height, the soul re-descends as it were into itself, and recompenses its reason and the senses, which have aided it to mount to the Infinite; it recompenses them by dis. tributing to them the light it has discovered, and thus glorifies them along with itself. While it was mounting towards the Absolute, it was like the angels, those pure intellectual activities which are borne forever around the original Principle of all things; but when it attains that' point, it becomes like God himself. Then, its intuition