respect to no sentiment of dependence or relationship to a holier life and a higher destiny, till every doubt is cleared away, and Deity becomes as demonstrable as the laws of astronomical science?

And while the order of mental and human progress is admitted to be generically as Comte states it, through the theological and metaphysical to the Positive stage; is there not a lesson in the instincts of the first, or must the mind rising from simple fetichism or pantheism to the conception of the Unity of Divine Providence, fall back again by means of scientific progression to a lower depth than its original, and ignore altogether the instinctive idea of necessary causation? Is the fetich-abuse of the religious idea religion; or a blind superstition, theology? Because men have made gods of everything, is there, therefore, no God? Because errors commingled with truth have produced an intellectual recoil, is there therefore no truth? Because we cannot comprehend causation, must we reject all interest in first or final causes? Are the laws of nature, the ultimatum of human speculation? Are we not to be allowed to look beyond the law to the authority on which all law depends?

It is a stale method of scepticism to shroud Deity and Providence beneath invariable laws. But the very nature of what is called law, and even its invariability are only forceful testimonies to the great truths of an all-comprehending and uniform Providence. The Positive Philosophy objects to the theological, that supposing as it does everything to be governed by will, "phenomena therefore are eminently variable and irregular." But in this inference, utterly unwarranted, it shows itself a false interpreter. The precision of established laws is in no respect discordant with the constant supremacy of a sovereign will. Nor again is it true that the whole theological system rested, as Comte asserts, "on the notion that the entire universe was made for man," and if setting up this man of straw, he then undertakes to overthrow it by the disclosures of astronomy, and with it all providential action, he has overturned not theology-but a figment of his own brain. To speak of "metaphysical thraldom broken by the invariable relations and spontaneous and necessary order of the heavens," is in this case, a mere playing with words.

Comte, moreover, readily admits the value of hypothesis as preparatory to the establishment, or as experimental to the verification of scientific laws. We must, he asserts, "begin by anticipating results, by making a provisional supposition, altogether conjectural in the first instance, with regard to some of the very notions that are the object of the inquiry." Without this method, discovery or verification would, in many cases, be impossible. "The advice of prudent mediocrity, to abstain from hypothesis is very easy to offer, but if the advice were followed, nothing would ever be done in the way of scientific discovery." "There is no use," he remarks, "in dwelling upon a liability which arises from the infirmity of our intelligence." He admits that the use of the provisional hypothesis places us "in a sort of a vicious circle, from which we can issue only by employing in the first instance, materials which are badly elaborated, and doctrines which are ill-conceived." Yet he maintains that "a determinate end being indispensable to all true observation, any theory is better than none." Surely we have only to retort upon him his own arguments, to sweep away the whole pretence on which he ignores the entire body of theological doctrine. Call religious truth a hypothesis if you will, and bring to it as a test of its accuracy all the results of human observation and experience, and then see if all its main doctrines are not abundantly confirmed by a testimony as reliable as any offered by the most rigid science. Here is the theoretic form of that principle which Christ announced, when He said, If any man will do my will, he shall know of my doctrine. We demand some hypothesis. We, too, feel that "any theory is better than none," when we are confounded by moral and religious problems, by thoughts and feelings amid surrounding immensities, too grand for utterance, and we feel that far beyond all the unfoldings of science, a verified hypothesis of human nature and destiny is the problem of the world, and while with devout gratitude to God we acknowledge its solution in the volume of revealed truth, we find there what an atheistic philosophy must ever desiderate for its social plans, and what an humble piety would have shown Comte to be infinitely superior to all the grand generalizations and sagacious speculations of his own gifted intellect.

NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

I. Liberty and Necessity; in which are considered the Laws of Association of Ideas, the Meaning of the word Will, and the true Intent of Punishment. By Henry Carleton, late one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Louisiana. Philadelphia: Parry & McMillan. 1857. pp. 165.

Judge Carleton is a gentleman of leisure, now residing in Philadelphia, who studies and writes upon metaphysical subjects because of a taste for them.

The opinion of Judge Carleton is, that "such an agent as the Will is defined to be, has no place in the human mind." He does not believe in the existence of what philosophers, either of the Edwardean or self-determining school have agreed to call Will. The Will, he says, is "simply another name for the power exerted over the mind by sensations and ideas. As these or their combinations are strong or weak, external action does or does not take place." As soon as he saw this, "the riddle was solved."

If, then, we substitute desire for will, the clouds that overhang the subject of liberty and necessity will instantly vanish, and we shall perceive one all-pervading immutable law, the desire of pleasure, to be the immediate and necessary spring of action in all breathing things that inhabit earth, air or seas, from man down to the poor insect crushed under

his feet.

Judge Carleton also holds that God is the author of moral evil, but that it is not sin to Him because He cannot commit sin. pp. 154-7. Punishment is always a remedy; "by the fear of pain the temptation to repeat the offence is overpowered." p. 160.

Judge Carleton of course rejects all idea of punishment which is of the nature of infliction for blameworthiness; guilt is folly in not pursuing true happiness properly; punishment is remedy only.

In reply to this method of philosophizing we remark: No true philosopher holds that Will is an agent; or something outside of a man; it is the man himself, determining; just as reason is the man himself in the attitude of thought, and sensation or emotion, is the man himself, feeling.

Take any of the cases in Judge Carleton's book; the man choosing a ship to cross the Atlantic, for example. He examines three vessels; on the whole the accommodations of the Arctic are, he thinks, the best. What happens, then, precisely at that point? The impression made by the superior accommodations, or their agreeableness, does not actually put him on board the vessel with his baggage. These are ideas or emotions. The man must put himself in another attitude before he can go―he determines

-in doing that he is in what we call the condition of willing; the man wills.

A man is not guilty of murder who feels within him the risings of envy, hatred, anger or any other of the incitements to murder. Before he is a murderer, he must determine. There is always a moment in every thing wrong, as the wrong doer well knows, when he yields, that is, he determines to commit the crime.

So far as Judge C. maintains that what we call faculty, &c., is merely the man himself in different attitudes, we agree with him, but that man is a machine who must yield to his sensations and ideas, we do not believe. It destroys the fundamental ideas of duty and responsibility. It is a form of Epicureanism and by no means a high one.

This crops out plainly in every thing which is said about the Almighty being the author of moral evil, and concerning the nature of punishment. We do not believe that happiness is the chief good; we believe that a man is bound to do right, and that besides the punishment that is remedial, there is an awful punishment that is vindicatory, because a man has degraded the high and solemn nature that God gave him, when he made him in His own image. Happiness accompanies holiness or rectitude. It is the enjoyment of a perfect working; the music which the spheres give out in their heavenly movement, but neither the spheres nor their movement are for the sake of the music. Heavenly natures have a glorious complacency in their high and magnificent workings, but the action and the glory do not lie in the complacency, but in the holy obedience to the high law which emanates from the spotless throne. God is infinitely blessed, because he is infinitely holy, but the blessedness is only the radiance of the orb, the fragrance of the flower, the sheen of the ocean, the brilliancy and beauty of the essentially Excellent.

The helpless vice of Epicureanism in every form is, that it fixes the eye upon the wrong object, and hence all such systems bring men down. Epicurus himself was a temperate and honest man, but he fixed men's minds on happiness as the chief good, and thus created a selfish sect which finally became what we all know. The philosophy has never been revived under any form whatever, without gradually bringing its followers to the ground, while even Stoicism which was not the absolute truth, but only the antipodes of Epicureanism, always raised men up. Its stern assertions of right and duty kept men looking at the proper object, and nerved them against weakness and temptation.

The Will is king in man. Judge Carleton dethrones him and leaves humanity

His "

Suffering the nature of an insurrection.

man "would be like the Jews at one period of their history. "In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes." We might punish for ever on Epicurean principles, but unless the awful idea of duty fill the soul, the man is only an intelligent animal.

II. Married or Single? By the Author of "Hope Leslie," &c. In two Volumes. New York: Harpers. Philadelphia, for sale by Lippincott & Co. 1857.

She

Miss Sedgwick re-appears, after long silence, in this book. says, very gracefully: 'It might seem natural and decorous, that one approaching the limit of human life, should-if writing at all-write a book strictly religious, but the novel (and to that guild we belong) does not seem to us the legitimate vehicle of strictly religious teaching. Secular affairs should be permeated by the spirit of the altar and the temple, but not brought within the temple's holy precincts."

The moral of "Married or Single?" is thus stated:

We raise our voice with all our might against the miserable cant that matrimony is essential to the feebler sex-that a woman's single life must be useless or undignified. It is not in the broad and noisy fields sought by the apostles of Woman's Rights,' that sisterly love and maidenly charity best diffuse their native sweetness.

We do not, therefore, counsel our gentle young friends to nourish a spirit of enterprise, nor of necessity, even to enlarge the plain and natural circle of their duties. But in every sphere of woman-wherever her low voice thrills with the characteristic vibrations which are softer and sweeter than all the other sweet notes in nature's infinite chorus, maidens have a mission to fulfil as serious and as honorable as those of a wife's devotion or a mother's care-a mission of wider and more various range. Our story will not have been in vain if it has done anything towards raising the single women of our country to the comparatively honorable level they occupy in England-anything to drive away the smile already fading from the lips of all but the vulgar, at the name of 'old maid.'

The warning against ill-assorted marriages in this work, is one that might prevent much misery. Miss Sedgwick shows that it is not only the silly and the thoughtless that fail in wisdom at this great crisis of life, but even the wise and good. There are strange influences connected with marriage that prevent the exercise of cool judgment; and even the sympathies and instincts that guide us under other circumstances with almost unerring certainty, sometimes fail here. The immense importance of marriage is not realized by the young, and with this realization, mercenary feelings often arise.

We are glad that so wise a
Perhaps the information

It is a most difficult subject to deal with. woman as Miss Sedgwick has undertaken it. needed on such a subject may be best conveyed in this form. A hint-a maxim-a sudden suggestion-will sometimes influence us permanently, and in a story, as in a mirror, we may see our own life.

The book is interesting, and of course well written. It has not the brightness and playful humor of Hope Leslie, but Miss Sedgwick still retains her graphic powers and keen discernment.