that nation with whose commerce, religion, and language they are already acquainted, and it is not irrational to suppose that, by perfectly fair and legitimate means, Christian policy may in time supplant the effete system under which those fertile plains have so long labored, while the present garbled creed professed by the expectant sovereigns, purified by the efforts of earnest and good men, may lose the grosser materialism that pollutes its nature, and, dropping as sediment the foul blasphemies which we have pointed out, rise sublimated into an evangelical faith, held in the hearts and living on the tongues of the millions upon millions of a prosperous, happy, regenerate people. ART. IX. The Positive Philosophy of AUGUSTE COMTE, freely translated and condensed by HARRIET MARTINEAU. don: John Chapman. 1853. 2 vols. 12mo. Lon WE are sorry, but not surprised, that Miss Martineau should have adopted the opinions which are avowed in the recent publication of her correspondence with Mr. Atkinson, and in this attempt to translate Comte's Philosophy and to render it popular in England. Her former writings showed considerable ability, but it was the ability of an ill-regulated mind,of a mind working out of its proper sphere, and scorning all those limitations and restraints which indirectly help us in the search after truth, because they narrow the field of inquiry, and act as preservatives against the most hurtful errors. In her ambition to leave the common track, she has wandered wildly over the whole field of knowledge, and come to the most barren conclusion at last,—to a belief, if it can be called such, that there is no divine superintendence of the affairs of this world, and no hope of a world to come. The leading vice of her character has always been intellectual arrogance. She has never had any deference for man, and now has ceased to entertain any faith in her Creator; the only being whom she has never learned to distrust is herself. The very outset of her career as an author was an unfortunate one for the growth and discipline of her mental character, however flattering it was to her vanity. Under the special patronage of Lord Brougham, then flushed with exaggerated hopes of the results to be accomplished by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and proud of the abilities of his "little deaf girl," she undertook to teach the people of Great Britain the abstruse doctrines of Political Economy, mincing up this strong meat into popular tales, so that it might be fitted for the nutriment of babes. Considered simply as stories, her "Illustrations" were very successful; people were amused by them, and paid no heed to the grave lessons which they were intended to teach. As Miss Martineau presumed to treat them like children, they took their revenge by acting like children; they ate the sugar and threw the medicine away. Luckily for them, it was easy to separate the two ingredients, as nearly all the science was condensed into a page or two at the end of the book, and the little that was fairly incorporated into the story did them no harm. What was considered as the most pleasing of her stories, when taken simply as an ingenious fiction in prose, was meant to illustrate and enforce the revolting doctrine of Malthus about population. We hold that it is an impertinence to write fiction for any avowedly didactic purpose, beyond that of inculcating some simple moral, such as the events of real life often teach. In Miss Martineau's attempt, impertinence and pedantry were combined. Her subsequent publications are characterized by the same spirit of arrogant self-conceit, and the same disposition to meddle with subjects which are out of her sphere, and which she is entirely incompetent to discuss. In one of her books, there is an amusing confession of her weakness in this respect. "That degree of self-confidence," she observes, "which is commonly called conceit, grows in favor with me perpetually." Perhaps so; but as her first publication betrayed an almost incredible amount of this amiable feeling, we hardly see how it could "grow perpetually," without overshadowing by this time her whole mind and character. Her "View of Society in America" is equally a view of our government, our literature, our ecclesiastical institutions, the course of our legislation, and the character of our people. On practice. Vainly is it ob- all these themes, she favors us with sweeping opinions, delivered in as dogmatic and magisterial a manner, as if the whole Western continent had been summoned before her for a hearing. "The Senate" of the United States, she remarks, "is an anomaly, and an anomalous institution cannot be very longlived." She will not admit that what appears to her as faulty in theory can possibly succeed in jected that the Senate works well. replies, is only a temporary affair, change becomes a question of time experience of sixty-five years, during which time the institution has certainly increased in favor with the people, while the people themselves have more than quadrupled in number, evidently weighs nothing against Miss Martineau's judgment of what is fitting and proper. The Senate is still doomed, and the judiciary are little better off. "The appointment of the judges for life," she remarks in the next paragraph, "is another departure from the absolute republican principle." So it is; and for this very reason, those who do not like absolutism in matters of government, whether in the form of absolute monarchy, absolute democracy, or absolute anarchy, are strongly attached to the independence of the judiciary. Considering the ease and freedom with which Miss Martineau propounds her opinions upon these very grave subjects, it is much to be regretted that she was not made a member of the last Convention for revising the Constitution of Massachusetts. She would have been quite at home in that body; and nothing in her speeches would have reminded her auditors of her sex. Certainly there is nothing feminine in her books; never was sex more completely discharged from style. She writes like a political economist, like a veteran statesman, like a philosopher, like anything but a woman. Not an allusion, not an idiom, not a trace of delicacy or faint-heartedness, not even a gleam of fancy or affectionateness, betrays the counterfeit. She borrows Rosalind's language, but acts out her part far better than Rosalind did. -- "Were it not better, . . . That I did suit me all points like a man? A gallant curtle-axe upon my thigh, A boar-spear in my hand; and (in my heart We have no quarrel with Miss Martineau, and no disposition to be very severe upon her errors and her failings, which surely bring with them their own worst punishment. But now that she has assumed to dogmatize upon subjects of the dearest interest to mankind, now that she has begun the career of an avowed free-thinker, and undertaken to teach the world philosophy and infidelity, it becomes a matter of some moment to ascertain what her opinions on these and other subjects are worth, and under what influence she has formed them. Argument can have no effect upon a mind like hers, for she has never been accustomed to reason, but only to pronounce judgment. Her opinion as to the truth of the Christian religion rests on about as much evidence, even in her own mind, as the assertion coolly made by her, seventeen years ago, after she had had an opportunity to become acquainted with perhaps one American clergyman out of a thousand, and to converse familiarly with probably half a dozen of them,— that "the American clergy are the most backward and timid class in the society in which they live, the least informed with true knowledge, the least efficient in virtuous action." If Miss Martineau is not in her own opinion inspired, how was she enabled to speak thus confidently of the characters, and the results of the labors, of a very numerous class of men, scattered all over the United States, of whose very names, with perhaps a dozen exceptions, she was entirely ignorant? We are tempted to retract what we have just said about her success in suppressing all moral and intellectual tokens of her sex. She does betray a slight feminine weakness, one that would be expected, however, only from women of inferior cultivation,-in using very strong language without any apparent consciousness of its strength of meaning, and in an unhesitating expression of very hasty judgments. Miss Martineau's correspondence with Mr. Atkinson is chiefly curious as an illustration of the old remark, that the provinces of infidelity and excessive credulity are separated only by a thin partition. "Unbelievers," says Pascal, "are the most credulous persons in the world; they believe the miracles of Vespasian, in order not to believe those of Moses." Mr. Atkinson and his fair correspondent go one step farther; they accept the marvellous reports of mesmerism and clairvoyance as a reason for discrediting both the life and the doctrines of our Saviour. Such persons are properly incompetent to enter a jury-box; for they are incapable of weighing the force of testimony. Their estimate of what is marvellous and incredible is not objective, but subjective; what is new to them— that is, what has been recently reported, though it may not be very marvellous in itself-excites their wonder to a far greater degree than that which is intrinsically much more mysterious, but which they have so often heard of and talked about that it has ceased to surprise or interest them. The best illustration of this state of mind is the story told of the good old lady, who, when her sailor son was reporting to her the marvels he had seen, flatly refused to believe his story about the flyingfish, but saw nothing incredible in his statement that, when his ship was in the Red Sea, the sailors found, on weighing the anchor, that they had drawn up also one of Pharaoh's chariot-wheels. This worthy matron, indeed, not having a turn for philosophizing, followed the natural principle of belief, by regarding what seemed to her most wonderful as least deserving of credit. But Miss Martineau, wise as an owl, inverts the laws of credibility; it is precisely because the silly fables of mesmerism appear to her more strange and unaccountable than the miracles recorded in Scripture, that she is bent upon believing the former and rejecting the latter. Properly speaking, then, she is the credulous person, while the sailor's mother was comparatively slow of belief. The relative weight of testimony in the two cases- the only ground of rational judgment—is just what neither of the two women was capable of estimating. The blunders of pedantry are often more amusingly absurd than those of simple ignorance. The Preface to this translation of Comte's Philosophy is written in the defiant and contemptuous tone which appears so often and repulsively in the author's former publications. She is perfectly aware that the doctrines of the work will be painful and shocking to many who are incapable of estimating |