1842.] Henry's History of Philosophy. 223 contemplate itself, to review its past efforts, and connecting them with the present, to gather from all quarters those elements of truth which, by their interest, have ever kept the human mind engaged in their anxious search, and to discover the sources of those errors which, by mingling with these truths, have ever prevented their being formed into a complete and satisfactory system. It is this species of eclecticism which forms one of the peculiar features of modern philosophic investigation. Whether this method is calculated to lead to better results than the vigorous pursuit of some one system until its truth or falsity are clearly shown, we are not prepared to decide. It may be safely asserted, however, that those who pursue it have superior advantages for writing an impartial history of philosophy, and are less likely to be led into distorted accounts by exclusive attachment to any one system as a whole. The intelligent reader cannot fail being struck with the truth of this remark, on contrasting the present work with that of Tenneman, in which every thing is colored, and many things essentially changed by the peculiar medium in which the author thought and wrote. All who are in any degree familiar with the subject, must concede to the present work the high merit of the utmost fairness. We can unreservedly trust its statements of the opinions of the different schools of philosophy, although we might not yield our entire assent to that eclectic system, to which its authors may perhaps be regarded as inclined. The translator, Dr. Henry, has contributed what are decidedly some of the most valuable portions of the work. The section (by him) on supernaturalism and mysticism, contains an admirable sketch of the philosophy of Cudworth, the most genuine Platonist since the days of Plato himself. He has also supplied a great deficiency in the original work, by his history of the English philosophy be. tween the periods of Locke and Reid. The appendix is wholly by the translator, and brings down the history of philosophy from Reid to the present time. It is this portion of the work with which we have been most pleased. We have been particularly interested in his account of the philosophy of Bentham, and his clear and accurate discrimination between him and Hobbes, in which he shows that the former departed from his one fundamental principle, by confounding personal and social utility. The section on Brown, and the difference between him and Stewart, also possesses great value, and especially on account of the fact, that careless and superficial readers have generally regarded these writers as belonging in all respects to the same school. Admitting, however, that this is an excellent history of philosophy, some might perhaps ask, cui bono? Why should it have a place in such a popular series as the Family Library, to the exclusion of more practical works? We reply, that this is a practical work, a useful work, in the highest sense in which the term can be employed. A careful perusal suggests two ideas of the utmost practical value to every thoughtful mind; first, that the human soul has ever been struggling after something which may be styled absolute truth, with a conviction of the reality of the object of its search, which the failures of many centuries could not weaken; and secondly, that this intense inquiry has, in the main, resulted only in a mass of contradictions, furnishing the most melancholy proof of the imbecility of human reason, and its utter incompetency as a sure guide to those higher truths which lie beyond the region of phenomena or sensation. From this, any one who reads such a work with that degree of thought which it demands, must derive a conclusion of the highest practical utility. Either the human mind must sink down into the despair and utter darkness of scepticism, or there must be a revealed standard of absolute truth of the highest kind, accommodated to all conditions, and expressed not in the conflicting and indefinite phraseology of human philosophy, but in "those words by which the Holy Spirit teacheth," a standard making known, in clear and explicit terms, the true relation between man and God, and from thence deriving the only ground on which there can be a true revelation of man to himself. That there must be such a thing as implicit faith in an authority higher than reason, is the solemn lesson taught by a history of philosophy, and such we believe to be the lesson which every sober mind will derive from the perusal of these volumes. In this way the authors and publishers have rendered an essential service to the community. It is boasted that the theatres have been superseded by the more intellectual pleasures of the lecture-room. May we not hope, from the appearance of such publications in a popular series, for an improvement still more salutary, when the superficial and oft-times erroneous instructions of the crowded lecture-room shall give place to the select reading of the social and domestic circle? Certain are we that all the literary exhibitions which nightly call forth the inhabitants of our principal cities, cannot furnish as substantial food to the meditative mind, as the thoughtful perusal of this and similar productions, revealing the melancholy failures of human reason in its noblest efforts, and thus silently, yet powerfully pointing us to Him who has declared himself" the way, the truth, and the life." 4. Democracy. By GEORGE SYDNEY CAMP. New York: 1841. Harper and Brothers. Family Library, No. 138. 12mo. pp. 244. WHO Mr. Camp is we know not, nor do we think the literary public is as yet acquainted with his name; but he is evidently a writer of more than ordinary boldness of thought, and power in un 1842.] Camp's Democracy. 225 folding and enforcing it. Sound, however, we cannot hold him to be, though with less deviation from it in his practical conclusions than we should anticipate from his theoretical principles. He is evidently a man of strong natural sagacity, not unread as a scholar and historian, and not to be lightly encountered as a logical reasoner—and yet, withal, he is not wise he is not what his subject demands him to be a philosopher-nor, what is also highly needful, he is not, as we conjecture, a travelled observer one who has seen with his own eyes the working of other systems besides his own, and balanced them in the only safe scales- those of a liberal experience. We may be wrong, however, in this conjecture, but still we cannot conceive the possibility of one who has actually witnessed the operation of limited monarchy in England, or even of the patriarchal autocracies of Denmark, or Austria, passing upon them the sweeping condemnation which he does, of an unmitigated evil and tyranny. But to the work. His motto is from one whose speculations on democracy seem to have given rise to his own. "A new science of politics," says De Tocqueville," is indispensable in a new world." Upon this hint Mr. Camp has spoken, and brought forth what may well be termed a new science of politics," inasmuch as it discards the fundamental principles of every other treatise on this subject, ancient and modern, charges folly on all who have lived before him, and threatens destruction to every other form of government, except the pure democracy which he eulogizes—no matter how congenial that form may be to the wants or wishes of the people, or however wisely and virtuously administered. Preceding admirers of democracy have been content with making it the best of all possible forms of government. Mr. Camp goes further, and boldly asserts it to be the only form all else is founded and supported by fraud, tyranny, and corruption alone-nor is any plea of mitigation to be admitted for a government not purely democratic siderations of expediency. no peculiar circumstances no attachment of the people no reverence for old established names and usages no prescriptive rights, "were it even of ten thousand years" none of these things are to weigh for one moment against man's "inalienable, indefeasible rights of self-government," and the only bar to every man's immediate enforcement of these rights withheld, being the fear that all things are not yet quite ripe for revolt. - no cón Now, that these assertions are doing our author no injustice, we quote at hazard a few of his own, in his own words: "We must be original and independent in our politics. To say that republicanism is the best, while we admit other forms to be legitimate, is occupying but very debatable ground in favor of our own institutions."— p. 127: "An individual has the same right to be independent that a nation has.”. p. 89. "Man is by NATURE, independently of adventitious circumstances, competent to govern himself." — p. 83. NO. XIX.-VOL. X. 29 "Woman has all the requisites of political freedom in their perfection." As to their exercise, he adds: "It is a question I do not care to discuss, as I would rather admit the invalidity of the exception than impair the force of the general rule."— p. 85. "The first act of every other but republican government over the citizen, is an act of usurpation. Man issued from the hand of his Maker without any trammels. The moment any restraint is put upon his will, the condition of nature is violated."- p. 89. Alas, under this rule, for the discipline of the school and the nursery! "Whatever there is of monarchy in foreign governments, is totally and radically wrong; whatever there is of democracy is right, and must therefore be good; the dividing line is distinctly marked, and adequately traced.” — p. 125. "Prescription is no better than a right by conquest, the actual foundation of it." "Ten thousand years of usurpation would not establish," etc. - p. 115. "If the artificial strength of a government be far superior to what a revolt in favor of liberal principles can excite against it, there," etc. - p. 86. Now, under all these false and revolutionary principles in theory, our author's deductions in practice are generally conservativeat any rate, (we say it to the credit of his good sense rather than his logic,) he is no agrarian-" equality, not of property, but of rights," is his motto-he is no infidel, but on the contrary, speaks and reasons like a sincere, though we cannot say well-instructed, Christian. On the right of bequeathing property in land, he goes even beyond monarchists, making it to be a right "vested in man by nature;" and finally, on the question of instructing representatives, in congress or elsewhere, he is a step beyond Burke in claiming hightoned independence for the legislator. Such are the incongruities of Mr. Camp's democracy-good sense and right feeling battling it with narrow prejudice and false theory. On the whole, it is a work more creditable, we think, to the author's talents than to his judgment, and open certainly to many grave and even fundamental objections, when put forth as a work of political science. In it there are laid down principles, setting aside the question of civil government, that strike at the root of all parental rule. From nature and from birth, we are taught, comes "the right of self-government," a right to be claimed so soon as there is power to enforce it that is, in families, so soon as the child can flog the parent- and some doubtless there are who will so interpret it. We know Mr. Camp means not so; but still Mr. Camp's meaning will be no bar to the perversion of his unsound principle. The Christian principle is - all government is of God - this is its true foundation, whatever be its form the man is born under government, even as the child is, and although improvement is ever a duty, revolt is ever a crime, and in all cases a sound expediency is the law of its interpretation, looking 1842.] Baird's Visit to Northern Europe. 227 to the practical perfection of the whole, and not to the abstract rights of the individual for democratic rule, which last may be a blessing or a curse, just according as a people is fitted or not fitted, wisely to exercise them. With these views we take leave of Mr. Camp, trusting again to meet him where our admiration of his natural acuteness and powers may not be diminished by our higher sense of duty- -the charge we hold as moral censors over the inlets to public confidence. 5. Visit to Northern Europe; or, Sketches, Descriptive, Historical, Political, and Moral, of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and the Free Citics of Hamburg and Lubeck. By ROBERT BAIRD. With Maps and numerous Engravings. New York: 1841. John J. Taylor and Co. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 347-350. THESE unpretending volumes are the result of two successive visits of the author, as agent for some of our benevolent associations, to the northern parts of Europe; the first in 1835, the latter in 1840, on the partial narration of which last the whole of the work is founded. They exhibit observation and care in the accumulation of materials, rather perhaps than skill in the use of them; yet in the scantiness of our actual knowledge of those little-frequented regions, every addition to it we receive thankfully. With such general praise, however, we must also mingle a little criticism. There is in them, then, we think, too much that is not new to awaken much interest in their perusal; too much of past history, early laws, institutions, etc., for the taste of the living generation to which they are addressed. It is true that our author, as he states, chose intentionally this didactic form in preference to that of personal narrative, and that he has studiously rejected from his work the names of all the great and well-known personages with whom his apostleship of Christian benevolence brought him into familiar contact. We acknowledge all this; but the knowledge that he had it in his power thus to have made his work so much more interesting, only increases our regret and condemnation that he should not have done it. In displaying to the world the Christian character of sovereigns and public men, as unfolded in their official intercourse, there is surely no breach of private confidence, and we hold our author over-scrupulous in thinking it, and assure him that the great cause he has in hand would have been further advanced by the simple narrative which we know he could have given of his intercourse with the king of Prussia, or of Denmark, than by a whole chapter of generalities. As it is, the work is a multifarious compilation, an instructive one, no doubt, with here and there an |