Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

'Vitri ornati di Figure, The Comet, Prayers for
the Princess Frederick William, Protestants of
Hungary, Queen's Visit to Germany, Crinoline
Checked, Reparation for Jeddah, Langloin's
Log-Book, New East-India Company, 142;
Revelations of the Microscope, Bible in
Churches, Poison of the Cobra di Capello, Ice-
land, Jenny Lind, 143; Solar Eclipse, Photo-
graph of Saturn, A Rainbow, To Birds, Crino-
line Dangerous, Conspiracy in Mecklenburgh
Schwerin, The Human Heart, Shower of Toads,
Musical Festival, Mr. Kavanagh, House of
Commons, Invention of New Kind of Paper,
144; The Comet, Index to the Bibliotheca
Sacra, 429; New England Chattels, Memoir of
Rev. David Tappan Stoddard, Todd's Lectures
to Children, North-American Review, Web-
ster's Quarto Dictionary, Wayland's Sermons,
Spurgeon's Gems, Magnet in Surgery, 430;
Tobacco, Virtue and its Reward, Smart Retort,
Aerial Navigation, Wellington's Place of Re-
pose, 431; Substitute for Embalming, Rail-way
to Heaven, Poor Goldy, Old Stylo in Modern
Dress, Shakspeare in French, 432; Humboldt
in Hebrew, Franklin and his Lightning, Rags,
Mungo Park, The Hebrew, Prize by the French
Academy, Engineer Vauban, 433; Croker,
Thackeray, Djidda, Lion in the Path, French
Flying Machine, 'Astrakhan, Spain muzzling
the Press, Jena University, Montalembert, 434.

Prescott, William H.,

R

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors]

M

30

[ocr errors][merged small]

W

331

[ocr errors][merged small]

8

Mohammed, Life and Times of-National Review, 456
Montmorency, Madame de Colburn's New

[blocks in formation]

-

Work and Play, Phenomena of-Fraser's Maga-

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[graphic][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

WE are reminded of the growth of this world of ours by the rise of new sciences, and by the new relations which older sciences are forming with each other. A wide and all-embracing survey of the past, such as only recent research, and the new life which it has infused into the old learning, have enabled our modern scholars to take, is an indispensable preliminary to the discovery of any law (if such there be) affecting the order of human progress. "The science of history," says an acute

Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte. Herausgegeben von Dr. Eduard Gans; besorgt von Dr. KARL HEGEL.-G. W. F. Hegel's Werke: Vollständige Ausgabe; Neunter Band, Dritte Auflage. Berlin, 1848.

Lectures on the Philosophy of History. By G. W. F. HEGEL. Translated from the third German edition by J. SIBREE, M.A. London: Bohm, 1857.

J. S. Mill's Ratiocinative and Inductive Logic, vol. ii. p. 615.

VOL XLV.-NO. I

and thoughtful writer, "has only become possible in our own time." Not that works, and some of very remarkable ability, have not long been before the public in which the succession of events in history has been attempted to be reduced to a principle. But such works have either been written to establish a foregone conclusion, and retrieve the character of some depreciated theory, like Bossuet's Histoire Universelle and Frederic Schlegel's Philosophy of Historyan assumption which necessarily deprived them of all scientific value; or, when they have been really philosophical in their aim, they have endeavored to trace the relations of cause and effect within. a. limited period, and in reference to a particular issue-perhaps have confined themselves to the examination of a single element in the complex working and result of oivilization. Works of this latter kind,

1

[ocr errors]

ferred to as an absolute rule for the construction of universal history.

Released from former restraints, and furnished with new instruments of inquiry, learning has wrought out its results in such abundance, and with such rapidity, that the mind is almost oppressed by the multitude of its materials. Mere accumulation of unrelated facts, however new and curious, fatigues the attention and

therefore, are rather contributions to the | even of the earliest periods, must be re-
philosophy of history than the exponents
of its philosophy, in a strictly scientific
sense; developing the proximate and em-
pirical laws which characterize particular
groups of events, and which, when they
have been examined and compared with
each other in the several spheres of their
operation, may possibly furnish the data
for ascending step by step to ultimate
principles, and to generalizations war-
ranted by the universal kosmos. Poly-deadens the intellect. History, without
bius's investigation of the causes of the
world-wide dominion of Rome, may be
mentioned as an early and an admirable
specimen of the philosophical treatment
of a certain portion of human history.
Mr. Hallam's Constitutional History of
England, and M. Guizot's masterly deve-
lopment of the principles of our modern
civilization from its medieval rudiments,
are other examples of the same descrip-
tion of writing. Montesquieu's Spirit of
Laws, though its object is limited, more
fully realizes the idea of a comprehensive
philosophical review of former ages; and
Burke's Speeches and Tracts abound with
aphorisms, combining the experience of
the practical statesman with large general
views, in which he has condensed the es-
sence of principles universally applicable.
But none of these writers ventured to
embrace the vast subject of the history
of our species as an organic whole. Per-
haps we are not yet prepared for such an
undertaking. Perhaps all the attempts
hitherto made in this direction can only
be regarded as tentative and preparatory,
and are hardly to be vindicated from
the charge of something presumptuous.
This much we may at least affirm, that
only within the last half-century have the
studies been prosecuted, and the views
opened, and the victory over old preju-
dices won, that rendered it possible so to
combine the results of wide-spread in-
quiry, and so to interpret from a common
point of view the records of the past, as
even to approximate to a theory of human
progress and destination. It is scarcely
necessary to allude in passing to the im-
mense advance in every branch of philo-
logical and historical learning effected by
the labors of the great scholars of France
and Germany since the commencement of
the present century, and to the abandon-
ment, under the weight of resistless evi-
dence, of the false and misleading notion,
that the biblical annals and chronology,

a law, is like a vast almanac of the ages, mere juxtaposition without connection. We want a principle to organize this huge chaos into significance, and tell us what it means. We want to see what all the strife and change which has been incessantly agitating mankind is tending to, and where it is destined to issue. We desire, if possible, for the very relief of our minds, to cast on the darkness and confusion of history the interpreting light of philosophy. England, slow to generalize, and tenacious of obvious practical conclusions, has done little towards this work. Mr. Mill, at the close of his work on Logic, adopting the better elements of the Philosophie Positive of M. Comte, has offered some valuable suggestions on the method in which it should be conducted. The point of main interest turns on the question, whether society revolves in ever-recurring cycles of advance and decline, or is destined to a slow and irregular but still continuous progress. Vico, a century ago, maintained the former of these views. Somewhat later, Herder, whom the Baron Bunsen justly designates "the founder of the Philosophy of History," put forth a well-known work, which treated the history of the human race as a grand organic development, and in which, notwithstanding some indistinctness in his general conclusions, we may consider him as the advocate of the latter. Herder's work, though rich in thought and very suggestive, was loose and desultory in its composition, and can only be regarded as a prolusion to the proper science of history. It was in the more recent philosophical schools of Germany, combining immense erudition with rare powers of abstract reasoning, that this high theme was first encountered with any degreee of scientific exactness. The English, French, and Scotch metaphysi

[ocr errors]

* Christianity and Mankind, vol. iii., p. 16.

cians of the last century confined them- One of these, which he calls the geome-
selves mainly to an analysis of the psy-tric, proceeds à priori, and is deductive;
chological phenomena of the individual the other, which he designates the che
consciousness; but to inquiries in this
narrower field the Germans have added
profound philological attainments, and a
thorough acquaintance with history in all
its branches, which give remarkable
breadth and many-sidedness to their phi-
losophical speculations. Of all British
philosophers, the late Sir William Hamil-
ton was in this respect the most of a Ger-
man. This tendency to unite history with
metaphysical analysis is perceptible more
or less in all the German schools, from
Kant to Hegel. It is conspicuous in
Schelling; even the severe abstractions
and high generalizations of Fichte's Bes-
timmung der Menschen betray its in-
fluence; and so deeply does it impregnate
their kindred theories, that sooner or later
a comprehensive work on the Philosophy
of History might have been confidently
predicted as an inevitable result of them.
It is only, therefore, what might have
been expected, to find Hegel, whose sys-
tem represents the last term of the specu-
lative philosophy of Germany, applying
its principles to the elucidation of history,
and venturing to assign the law which
governs the progress of the human species.
The introduction of this remarkable work
for the first time, we believe, to the Eng-
lish public through the medium of Mr.
Sibree's translation, affords us the oppor-
tunity of exhibiting a brief statement of
its views, which may be new to many of
our readers, and of offering a few re-
marks on their soundness and applica-
bility.

Mr. Sibree has executed his task very creditably. To those who are unacquainted with German, we can recommend his version as perspicuous and readable. From constant comparison of it with the original, we can affirm that he has given the sense of his author with great fidelity, though sometimes rather paraphrastically, and with the occasional use of expressions that will strike the English reader as affected. But it is no easy matter, with our ordinary and accepted phraseology, to put the English mind on a level with so novel a range of thought. On the whole, we think the translator has been successful.

Mr. Mill observes, that hitherto the science of history has been conducted almost exclusively on two opposite methods.

mical, begins by an analysis of facts and their aggregations, and thus ascending by degrees to the recognition of proximate laws, is inductive. These two methods, Mr. Mill has shown, should be combined, and made to verify each other. Hegel declares that he has followed the inductive method, (Einleit. p. 14; Engl. Tr. p. 10;) that his theory is not an assumption, but a result deduced logically from the collective facts of universal history, which he has passed successively in review before him. It is hardly possible, however, to keep assumption and result altogether distinct. Every man sits down to study under some mental influence or prepossession, which unconsciously directs his attention to those facts, and those relations of facts, that are most in harmony with the idea latent in his mind; and he is thus committed to a theory before he is aware of it. It can not be asserted of Hegel, that he has been wholly proof against the snare which besets a speculative genius with such alluring force. Hegel's theory of history is a particular application of his general philosophical system-that the world is the evolution of an idea, the progressive realization of a potential logic wrapped up in its primitive germ. There is something startling in the adventurous effort of a human mind to grasp the fundamental conditions of absolute being, and to draw out of them the grand architectonic plan of the universe. As clearly and briefly as we can, we will endeavor to convey an idea of Hegel's world-theory, if we may so call it; and to show how it is applied by him, or is itself applicable, to the successive phases of social development.

According to Hegel, the simplest and most elementary possibilities which thought can entertain are existence and non-existence, and these are absolutely contradictory to each other. A contradiction or antithesis, therefore, is involved in the fundamental idea of the universe; which antithesis is harmonized or solved by the origination of individual finite existences, passing from non-existence into existence, (Werden,) and so bridging over the chasm between them. Such, he supposes, was the commencement of the great process of the world's development, expressing in that primary act the law of

[ocr errors]
« AnteriorContinuar »