The consecration and the poet’s dream.”
No one can read the present volume without being struck with the vigor and variety of the author’s mind, the breadth and intensity of his sympathies, and the true manliness of his character. The success of such a work is certain.
Remarks on the Science of History; Followed by an A Priori Autobiography. Boston: Crosby & Nichols. 1 vol. 12mo.
This is one of the most original and striking books ever published in the United States, and if it were not marred by some needless obscurities in the preface and notes, would be likely to obtain a popularity commensurate with its merits. It evinces a mind of great power in the region of pure thought, and of great acquisitions in metaphysical science. The leading object of the volume is to present universal history under the form of biography, and its hero is a person who lives the life of the race. It is assumed that he who thoroughly understands the present epoch must have reproduced, and lived through, in his private experience, all the religions, dispensations and civilizations which preceded it; and accordingly the author supposes the case of a man whose mind, in its development, passes through all the leading systems of philosophy which have successively appeared in the world, and lives them in thought as in different ages they have been lived in action. His hero accordingly lives and outlives sensuality, diabolism, atheism, deism, pantheism, Platonism, necessitarianism, transcendentalism, until he arrives at the belief of a living God and a Christian dispensation. The mental moods as well as the opinions of these different systems are represented, and an almost audacious expression given to some of them. Though the work is deficient somewhat in artistical as distinguished from logical completeness, and is too condensed in passages where expansion would have aided the reader, no person who avoids the notes and adheres to the autobiography, can fail to notice the clearness as well as the depth and force of mind it evinces. We are aware of no other book in which so much knowledge of mental philosophy is conveyed in so small a space. The exposition of Plato’s theory of Ideas—the stringent logic applied to the doctrine of necessity—the keenness with which the weak points of atheism are detected, and the remorseless analysis with which they are probed, and the masterly power of impassioned argumentation, fierce, rapid and close, with which the subject of the Will is cleared from its obscurities, all indicate a mind of no common order. The author is evidently a man destined to leave his mark on the philosophical literature of the country. In the present volume there are important and original ideas which will sooner or later become influential.
Remarks on the Past and its Legacies to American Society. By J. D. Nourse. Louisville: Morton & Griswold. 1 vol. 12mo.
Those of our readers who have any taste for the philosophy of history, and who are desirous to see how an American writer can handle the problems which have tasked the acutest and most comprehensive European intellects, had better procure this work. It is written in a style of much energy, beauty and clearness, and is the result of forcible and patient thinking on a wide basis of historical facts and principles. The author is a Kentuckian and a scholar in the true sense. Although the book evidences a familiarity with the productions of others in a similar department of letters, it is still original as well as powerful. There are sentences in it which deserve to pass into maxims; and through the whole volume none can fail to observe the steady and almost triumphant march of an independent and forcible intellect. We do not know how the work has succeeded at the west, but if it has failed to attract notice there, it shows that Kentucky is not so ready to recognize marked ability in letters as in politics. The author, from his position as an American, really holds an advantage over his European rivals; and the felicity and comprehensiveness of his grasp of some great principles, and the power with which he wields them, are in a considerable degree referable to his freedom from many prejudices which beset the largest minds abroad. This volume ought to give Mr. Nourse a name, and we trust it will have that large circulation which its importance and usefulness so richly merit.
Romance of Yachting. By Joseph C. Hart. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.