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    Untitled Article

    Somk months ago we announced that Carlylb had written a Life of John Stickling , which would , for the first time , give an honest statement of the belief that struggling thinker finally arrived at . Doubts were thrown upon the authenticity of our assertion , which , however , will be cleared up next month by the publication of the work * Meanwhile , let us be distinctly understood as guaranteeing the truth of all the literary gossip we chronicle here , unless when we give it as a rumour . That precaution taken , we may now announce the

    certainty of an abridged translation of Augustk Comte ' s six volumes of Positive Philosophy appearing as soon as is compatible with the exigencies of so important an undertaking . A very competent mind has long been engaged upon the task ; and the growing desire in the public to hear more about this Bacon of the nineteenth Century , renders such a publication necessary . Nor have we forgotten our promise of devoting to the Positive Philosophy a series of articles , which will appear on the completion of arrangements for their uninterrupted publication .

    A series of papers on Socialism is now in course of publication in the Economist , to which we direct all who desire to hear the adverse side of the question forcibly stated . When the series is complete we may answer its arguments at length . They admit of easy answer ; as the writer may imagine when we tell him that we accept most of his positions , for in truth they do not touch Socialism , they pass beside it . He commits the almost universal mistake

    of adducing purely economic arguments against a moral doctrine . By studiously omitting the moral consideration he leaves Socialism just where it stood ; Socialists having perpetually declared the radical vice of the Economists to be this limitation of social questions to those of mere profit and loss ! The writer of whom we now speak labours to show

    that Cooperative Stores and Working-Men ' s Associations , however they may prosper , can only surpass an ordinary tradesman in the small margin of profit which accrues from the difference between the wages of the foreman and gains of the master after deducting the interest of capital . Granted . What then ? The Profit is not greatly increased ,

    but ia the condition of the Producers not greatly ameliorated ? Is it nothing to the workmen themselves that they shall be raised from the condition of hired servant into that of free man , working with their equals in a spirit of hearty goodwill , conscious that they are increasingthe social tendency , conscious that their little experiment may be the forerunner of a change which will make all men cooperate upon principles of Justice , instead of struggling to exploiter each other upon principles of Selfishness ? Is this nothing ? Is a question of Profit to swamp such considerations ?

    We merely touch , in passing , the weak point of the Economist : for a more ample refutation we must wait till the series is completed . Perhaps the writer will reconsider his position , and meet Socialism as a Social doctrine , which includes Political Jiconomy , but includes a great deal more than that .

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    In this week ' s number of Household Words there is an amusing and suggestive paper on Nursery Rhymes , wherein the ferocious morals embalmed in jog-trot verso are indicated , for the reflective consideration of all parents . A terrible case is made out against these lisping moralists : slaughter , cruelty , bigotry , injustice , wanton delight in terr ible accidents and awful punishments for trivial offences , ferocity of every kind—such a mass of " shocking notions" an would people our nurseries with demons , were it not for the happy indifference of children to anything but the rhyme , rhythm , and the quaint image . The philosophy of this subject is

    not touched upon . It would make a separate paper of grea « interest . The imperfect adaptation of man to the Social state , which our admirable friend Herbert Spknckr shows to be the source of all Social discordances , is here exemplified in the love of children for stories which appeal to their destructive propensities . The " manly sports , " which grow into h eroisms in the eloquent pages of sporting writers—the cock fights , bull fights , boxing matches , game battues , and military glor ies , are all activities of those propensities which make the truculent incidents of Nursery Rhymes so acceptable to the child .

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    French Literature is beginning to show some activity . Thikrs issues the eleventh volume of his History of the Consulate and Empire ; instead of the ten volumes originally proposed , the work is to extend to fourteen—an extension for which few will be grateful ! We stumbled the other day upon a passage in Pliny , the Elder , wherein he notes the fact , that paper ( or the ancient substitute therefor , viz ., Papyrus ) is an

    article not absolutely to be counted on . " There was a dearth of paper , " he says , "in the reign of Tiberius , and it became so alarming that senators were appointed to look after its distribution , otherwise the greatest inconveniences would have occurred . " In certain sarcastic moments who has not wished for such a dearth—for anything , in

    short , that would limit the voluminousness of modern authors ? Uecrivaillerie , says old Montaigne , est le symptdme d ' un siecle deborde ; but sarcasms against the " itch of writing , " cacoethes scribendi , are almost as ancient as authorship itself , so we will allow Thikrs and his fourteen volumes to pass by , envying the man who has leisure to read them—a leisure we should diligently employ in not

    reading them . Adolphb Granieb dk Ca 8 Sagnac , the lively , impertinent , paradoxical journalist , is writing a Histoire du Directoire in his own paper ( as we announced months past ) , and the Brussels edition of volume one now lies on our table . It is full of sarcasm 8 and declamations against the Republican party and their great Leaders ; but it is sprightly , amusing , and has something of novelty in its tone : after so much wearisome laudation of everybody in the Revolution , a spirited , reckless , and dashing onslaught makes the old subject piquant .

    Eugene Suk offers us a new novel , L Avarice , the last of his series on the seven cardinal sins . It is in one volume ; and its presence reminds us that we have not yet spoken of Miss Mary , which ia still a novelty . In Miss Mary we have Eugene Suk , not precisely upon English ground , but with one foot here—just enough to exhibit to his countrymen his perfect familiarity with the " insolent Islanders . " Miss Mary is the daughter of * *?»> Lawson Esquire , one of the richest gentlemen cultivateurs of his country—possessing eight magnificent horses of true Irish breed , and a kennel of five

    and twenty fox hounds , not to speak of the manorial estate , Lawson-cottage . Miss Mary , however , is forced to quit Ireland , forced to give up her horses Turner and Smogler , which the little Johny rode en postilion—and is now wending her way to France , where she ia to be a governess , Sir Lawson having met with misfortunes which have reduced him to poverty . Of course the gentleman in whose family she is governess falls in love with her ; but what the upshot in we cannot say , for at this point the reading faculty fairly gave way .

    Turning from Eugknk Suk to the Count Johki ' H dk Maihtrk—from the popular romancist to the most illustrious defender of the Catholic Cliurch , is something like taking a literary Russian bath . We found it agreeable . The two volumes of 1 ) e Maihtrk ' s letters and inedited trifles , Lettres et Opuscules inedits , with a biographical notice written by hia son , will be very acceptable , not only to Catholics , but to all who can riae above differences of creed , and recognize the amazing power of this great writer . These volumes present him , en dishabilh , and he is worthy knowing eo .

    Oxford has lost an ornament in losing Dr . Kidd , the Regius Professor of Medicine in the University , whose death we see recorded in the papers ; and the public will remember him as the author of one of the most popular Bridgewater Treatises , a series of works intended to give orthodoxy the support of science , and which , by the very juxtaposition of religion and science , have greatly helped to bring their discordances into relief . Dr . K idd was not a writer of such attainments in philosophy as to give any weight to his views ; but his

    knowledge of facts was extensive , and his exposition popular in style . It may be worth remarking that the title of his book , On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man , is radically opposed to the most advanced views of physiology , and ( unless Morphology is to bo tossed contemptuously aside as " materialistic " ) the title should be reversed into the Adaptation of the Physical Condition of Man to the External Universe . This title , indeed , would not suit the orthodox view which assumes that Nature is made for

    Man — adapted to him , instead of Man being adapted to the conditions of Nature ; a view which might have been accepted at a time when the stars were supposed to be nothing more than lamps for the night , the whole universe being centred in our planet—a view which modern science unequivocally opposes . * ' What ' s in a name ? " asks some hasty reader . Everything , when that name implies a theory , and that theory a false one !

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    THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM . The Creed of Christendom : its Foundations and Superstructure . By William Bathbone Greg . John Chapman . English Protestantism , effete as it seems in its ecclesiastical and sectarian forms , is manifesting the vitality of its roots in the vigorous and rapid growth of free religious inquiry among earnest men . The writers who are heading the present movement against dogmatic theology , are not mere speculators enamoured of theory , and careless of its practical results . Still less are they antireligious zealots , who identify all faith with superstition . They are men at once devout and practical , who have been driven into antagonism with the dominant belief by the force of their moral , no less

    than of their intellectual nature , and who have been led to the avowal of that antagonism , not simply by the impulse of candour , but by an interest in the spiritual well-being of society . They know that to call dogmatic Christianity the popular creed is a misnomer ; that the doctrines taught in our pulpits neither have , nor can have , any hold on the masses ; and that if our population is to be Christianized , religious teaching must be conducted in a new spirit and on new principles . They protest against the current faith , because they would substitute for it one purer and more influential ; they lay the axe to the old , only that there may be freer play for the energies which are ever tending to the development of the new and more perfect .

    Among these pioneers of the New Reformation , Mr . Greg is likely to be one of the moat effective . Without any pretension to striking originality or extensive learning , his work perhaps all the more exhibits that sound , practical judgment which discerns at once the hinge of a question , and it bears throughout the impress of an honewty , geniality , and refinement which imply a moral nature of a very high order . The absence of any very profound critical erudition , far from disqualifying Mr . dreg for the task he has undertaken , is essential to the aim of bin book—namely , to show at what conclusions concerning the Bible and Christianity a sensible , educated layman in likely to arrive , with such an amount of critical attainment as

    is compatible with the work that lien before him in daily life . If such conclusions inunt necessarily be unsound because they are formed in ignorance of the last new edition of every Biblical critic , orthodox or heterodox , the right of private judgment ia a nullity , and the unclericul mind must either dismiss the subject altogether , or surrender itself to a more consistent spiritual despotism than that of Protestant divines . The Creed of Christendom claims the attention of the theologian , not that it may teach him Biblical criticism , but that it may render him more familiar with the impression made by the vexed questions of his science on an earnest , cultivated mind , cut off by no barrier of caste or prejudice from full sympathy and acquaintance

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    rritiosare not the legislators , but the judges and police of SSatSe . They dS not make Uws-they interpret and try to enforce them—Edinburgh Review .

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    Sept . 30 , 1851 . ] gfl g 9 . $ ** iV .

    897

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 20, 1851, page 897, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1901/page/13/