The eight or ten pages of letters from various persons with which this volume is prefaced, and in which the author receives thanks for copies of his book, forcibly remind us of Sheridan’s formula for acknowledging the publications that were constantly sent him: “Dear Sir: I have received your exquisite work, and I have no doubt I shall be highly delighted after I have read it.” The persons, known and unknown, whose names are paraded here all anticipate a time when they shall be able to congratulate themselves upon having put the Basis of Social Science beneath their feet.
Mr. Wright is doubtless a well-meaning man; and if good intentions could pacify a critic’s irritable soul, between him and ourselves there would be no quarrel. His aim has been, he informs us in his preface, to write a work which, without offending the religious, political, or scientific susceptibilities of any one, would commend itself especially to “pious young men” and “students for the ministry, who really desire to be useful and to be abreast of their age on this subject”; and we are therefore prepared to find him ready to embrace with equal tenderness a Mormon prophet, an Oneida free lover, a French communist, and a Catholic monk. Mr. Wright’s sweetness and piety are as offensive to us as the caress of a Yahoo was to Dean Swift. These attempts to reconcile the antagonisms, incompatibilities, and contradictions of the age, by besmearing them all with honey, are worse than absurd; they add to the confusion and weaken the power to apprehend truth. The self-imposed task of the author of this volume is one
which the greatest mind now living could not perform in a satisfactory manner. Of all sciences, the social is, if it may as yet be called a science, the most difficult, the most involved and uncertain; in its idea it is a synthesis of all knowledges, and no one who has not gathered into his own mind the intellectual achievements of the whole race should attempt to construct a philosophy of social science. The importance of the study of sociology we fully admit, and gladly welcome even the humblest efforts to increase our knowledge of this subject; but when those who ought to remain in the ranks seek to take command, they become disorganizers. Had Mr. Wright been modest, he might have been useful; having attempted too much, he has failed to accomplish anything. In fact, he has not the first requisite of an author—a knowledge of the language in which he writes. His style is barbarous and tumultuary, often ungrammatical. It must, however, be striking and emphatic, if we are to judge from the number of words printed in italics and majuscules. And his thought is like his style—incoherent, crude, and embryotic. He has read Comte, Fourier, Mill, Herbert Spencer, and Appleton’s Cyclopædia, and with their aid and the help of a certain “Theory of the Six Units” he has sought to develop an ideal of human society not more impossible than Plato’s Republic or more visionary than More’s Utopia.
The keynote to his system is the “Theory of the Six Units.” The six units are the Individual, the Family, the Social Circle, the Precinct, the Nation, and Mankind. It seems to have been his acquaintance with certain other “singular sixes” that led him to a belief in six, and but six, social units. In the first place, “the figure which gives the maximum amount of internal content with the minimum amount of external surface of similar bodies joined together is a HEXAGON.” Again: “In developed civilization there are six great classes of society”; but it is only in some future work that the author will tell us about these six great classes. And just here we wish to find fault with Mr. Wright for a habit he has of adroitly arousing our curiosity, and then, as we are beginning to imagine we are about to learn something, coolly dropping us with the remark that the matter “will be portrayed
in another book.” He sometimes, too, seems to take a wicked delight in puzzling his readers, as in the following sentence: “All affairs, when they become ordinary, are apt to become matters of business; and business matters are—well, we need not say what.” But to return to the “sixes.” There are six fundamental motors of human passions. There are six infinities—namely, deific spirit, soul spirit, matter, space, duration, diversity. There are six organs of sense (the old notion that there were but five is exploded)—sensation, temperature, taste, smell, hearing, sight. There are six crystallizations—monometric, dimetric, trimetric, monoclinic, triclinic, and hexagonal. There are six religious societies—Adam, Adam and Eve, Patriarchy, Israel in Egypt, Israel in Palestine, the Christian Church. It follows as a matter of course that there must be six social units; and in fact, if it were worth while, we could prove that there must be ten or twenty.
There is no unit in which Mr. Wright so much delights as the Precinct. The real cause of the American civil war he has discovered to have been a neglect of Precinct by both the North and the South; and it is quite probable, we think, there is no social or political problem which may not ultimately be solved in the same felicitous and satisfactory manner.
Genius is manifested—at least this is, we believe, the opinion of Mr. Emerson—quite as strikingly in quotation as in original composition, and we respectfully call the attention of the philosopher of Concord to Mr. Wright as a confirmatory example of this law of mind. Many a household will find food for thought in the following citation: “Family miffs are a grand institution for giving needful repose and after-exhilaration to overtasked affection.” And this other will be interesting to politicians: “It is to the criminal propensities of man that we owe civilization.” “Alas!” sighs our pious philosopher, “that the Radicals cannot make a better basis for civilization than the foregoing crime-begetting one.”
From Wells, the phrenologist, Mr. Wright gets the following quotation, which almost makes us repent of what we have written: “As a class the theologians have the best heads in the world.”
Cantata Catholica. B. H. F. Hellebusch. Benziger Bros.
This is a collection of music for the “Asperges,” “Vidi Aquam,” several Gregorian Masses, the Gregorian Requiem, the Preface, the Pater Noster, Responses, Vespers, the Antiphons of the Blessed Virgin, “O Salutaris,” and “Tantum Ergo,” besides a large number of pieces intended to be used at Benediction and at various other times. The Gregorian chants for the “Asperges,” “Vidi Aquam,” and the Masses are harmonized by Dr. F. Witt. We cannot say that we admire the peculiar “drone bass” which Dr. Witt uses so extensively, and the harmonies are, to our ears, crude, and sometimes even barbarous, and as a general rule are not in accordance with the mode. We also noticed some ear-splitting fifths, used without any excuse whatever. The Requiem is very incomplete; five verses only of the “Dies Iræ” are given, and the Gradual and Tract are entirely omitted. Mr. Hellebusch remarks in his preface that “the Preface and Pater Noster should only be accompanied when required by the officiating clergyman and after rehearsal.” In looking in the book for the reason for this remark, we find that to accompany the simple melody of the “Preface of Trinity” one hundred and ninety sharps, flats, and naturals are required; and in the accompaniment of the words “socia exultatione concelebrant,” in the “Common Preface,” we find twenty. The melody of the “Preface” has also been altered by sharpening “do” all through. Over eight pages are devoted to Responses, exclusive of the Responses for the Preface and Pater Noster. In that portion of the book devoted to Vespers are some grave errors. On page 103 is a note which informs us that “the Psalms can be chanted to any of the following authentic or simplified Vesper tones.” We have yet to learn which are the eight authentic tones, and we were not aware that authentic and simplified meant one and the same thing. The eight Psalm-tunes are given with their various endings, and with the Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth, or “Final by words of one syllable.” We suppose “mediation” is meant; but then the Sixth tone has no different mediation for words of one syllable, and the rule for Hebrew proper names is not given at all. In the Fifth tone the “si” is improperly marked