people, yet the principle of universal suffrage remains. It had previously been exercised only for a short period at the fitful intervals of revolution. The great Napoleon was the first ruler of France who fully and fairly put in practice the doctrine of "the right man in the right place." He employed men of all classes, and put them in the places they were best adapted for. In this way obscure men like Junot and Augereau rose to be field-marshals and dukes of the empire. He would not employ any one merely on account of his wealth or his rank, as has been almost the strict rule with the old monarchies of Europe. Merit of any sort had but to make itself known to Napoleon to be rewarded and put in the way of utilizing itself. This was one of the causes which produced the power and brilliancy of his reign. And the late emperor followed his example in many cases, but, being anxious to propitiate the old nobility and the legitimists, he occasionally employed those who could be induced to swerve from their principles. And he adopted the same policy with the ultra-revolutionists-successfully, too, as in the case of Emile Olivier, whom he subsequently made premier. The first Napoleon, however, adopted a policy which his less astute successor only occasionally and feebly imitated. "I never made overtures," said Napoleon at St. Helena, "to leaders in order to gain over parties. On the contrary I approached the mass of the parties, that I might be in a situation to despise their leaders." He should, however, have added that these leaders were very carefully watched and sometimes entrapped by his police. There are other points on which we might dilate, but want of space warns us to close our remarks. The resemblance between the two empires is remarkable. The second may be considered a reflex of the first, but the brilliancy of the latter is to that of the former as the abilities and genius of the first Napoleon are to those of the third. Both of these distinguished men contributed largely to the promotion of the fine arts, and to great public works. They beautified Paris, and the third Napoleon may be said to have almost rebuilt that city. And they have both left a permanent impress on the nation. ART. II.-1. Dissertation de Distintione Mentis a Corpore (Dissertation on the Difference between Mind and Body). HERM. BOERHAVE. 2. Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit. By JOSEPH PRIESTLY. London. 1777. 3. Untersuchungen über das Wesen und Wirken der Menschlichen Seele, etc. (Researches on the Nature and Operations of the Human Soul). CHRISTIAN WEIS. Leipzig. 1813. 4. De Senectute. De Amicitia. (Old Age. Friendship). CICERO. 5. Principles of Psychology. By HERBERT SPENCER. No investigation has so thoroughly engrossed and entirely baffled the human mind as the inquiry into the nature of the soul. And the old Delphic admonition "yvale 6ɛator" is as pertinent to-day as ever. There is, at the present time, however, a tendency to abandon the inquiry into the constitution of the soul in many intellectual quarters, arising from the preponderance of interest felt in material development and in the science of external things. There is a disposition among many individuals of the highest culture to give up as futile a search hitherto attended with failure, and hereafter likely to be attended only by indifferent and equivocal success. The study of the constitution of mind is supplanted by the study of the development of mind, even among metaphysicians. Self-culture takes the place of self-knowledge; and the individual finds greater pleasure and profit in knowing how we are than what we are. The human mind is occupied chiefly with the generalization of effects and the discovery of the laws that govern the phenomena of the universe. There is, nevertheless, a latent desire among all classes to understand more of the nature and constitution of the soul. Each of the religious classes accepts the revelations of its particular religion as proof enough of the existence of a soul independent of the body. The scientific classes are divided in their views. There are those who profess to find no evidence of the existence of the soul as a distinct entity, and who disbelieve in its existence as such; those who are content to remain in perfect doubt; and those who think they have sufficient positive evidence of its independent existence. But it is now quite generally conceded that there are two distinct forces, the one designated physical, the other psychical, whose natures may or may not have something in common.* By the Idealists, the psychical force is supposed to be principal or primary, and the physical force subordinate, or secondary and derivative. Matter is therefore a creation of mind, or an in *It must be admitted that modern philosophy has shed no new light on the nature of the soul. By no moderns has the subject been discussed more searchingly or more profoundly than by Plato and Aristotle. Indeed, we may as well acknowledge that none have approached those great thinkers, so far as mere human reasoning is concerned, and we are not now speaking of the dogmas of Christianity as expounded either by the Fathers of the Church or by later theologians and divines. Among the Romans, those who have studied the Greek philosophy most thoroughly, especially as far as it relates to the soul, are Cicero and Seneca. These two philosophers embody in their writings the essence of the different systems received by any considerable portion of the philosophical world up to their time. And what this essence is, is made sufficiently plain in some passages in Cicero's admirable dialogues on Old Age and Friendship. We can only extract a sentence or two, but it is enough. "Nor am I able to agree," says the eloquent Roman philosopher, "with those who have begun to affirm that the soul dies with the body, and that all things are destroyed by death. I am more inclined to be of the opinion of those among the ancients who used to maintain that the souls of men are divine, and when they leave the body they return to heaven, and those who are the most virtuous and upright have the most speedy entrance."-" Neque assentior iis, qui hæc nuper disserere cœperunt, cum corporibus simul animos interire atque omnia morte deleri. Plus apud me antiquorum auctoritas valet, qui dicebant animos hominum esse divinos, iisque, cum e corpore excississent, reditum in cœlum patere, optimoque et justissimo cuique expeditissimum." De Amicit. 3. If any among the student class still think that the moderns have added anything to the world's stock of knowledge, as to the essential nature of the soul, let them peruse Seneca's De Beneficiis, De Vita Beata, De Brevitate Vitæ, De Irá. ference of the intellect. With this class the argument in regard to the existence of the soul has no meaning, for to them everything is soul, or the projection of soul. By the Materialists, on the contrary, the physical force is supposed to be principal and primary, and the psychical force subordinate, secondary and derivative. To these, mind is but a manifestation of matter, and there is, as a consequence, nothing existent but matter, and no such thing as soul in the common acceptance of the term. By the Substantialists, physical and psychical forces are supposed to be branches of an underlying substance in which these forces inhere. Matter and mind are, therefore, modifications of an ultimate reality, and soul is as much an entity as body or matter.* But the universal conception of force is as the resident of a medium. From this conception we can never free ourselves. It is a conception grounded in the nature of mind and corresponding to the nature of things. In whatever aspect we view a thing, external or internal, there will always be presented the antithesis (and synthesis) of force and medium. “There must be a medium for the residence and exercise of every force" is the universal postulate of the human mind, and the resultant proposition of all our experience. If we call this * "Hence, though of the two it seems easier to translate so-called matter into so-called spirit, than to translate so-called spirit into so-called matter (which latter is, indeed, wholly impossible), yet no translation can carry us beyond our symbols."-Principles of Psychology, vol. i., 2d ed., § 63. By Herbert Spencer. "See then our predicament. We can think of matter only in terms of mind. We can think of mind only in terms of matter. When we have pushed our explorations of the first to the uttermost limit, we are referred to the second for a final answer; and when we have got the final answer of the second we are referred back to the first for an interpretation of it. We find the value of x in terms of y; then we find the value of y in terms of x; and so on we may continue forever without coming nearer to a solution. The antithesis of subject and object, never to be transcended while consciousness lasts, renders impossible all knowledge of that ultimate reality in which subject and object are united."-Ibid., § 272. "And this brings us to the true conclusion implied throughout the foregoing pages-the conclusion that it is one and the same ultimate reality which is manifested to us subjectively and objectively."--Ibid., § 273. medium "matter," then experience proves that there are two heterogenous forces existing in matter and evolving themselves into the external world, physical and psychical force. Thus far human experience has never found either of these forces independent of, or outside of, this medium.* Neither is there any opportunity for the deduction that pure force, whether physical or psychical, could ever exist without a medium. The dissolution of the connection is absolutely inconceivable. If ever experience has taught us that hardness, or roughness, or extension, or any power or force has existed in any material substance, the human mind is so constituted that it cannot think of hardness or roughness, or any physical qualities, as entities separate, in fact, from the bodies in which they appear, or some other bodies. There may be a conversion and locomotion of force, but never a dissolution of it from some medium. Again if ever experience has taught us that love or hate, or reason or any intelligence, or any force existed in a person, the human mind is so constituted that it cannot think of intelligence or feeling, or any psychical force, except as resident and operating in and through some medium, personal or impersonal. We cannot think of soul or mind as force independent, in fact, of some medium of existence or operation. The question recurs, then, what is the nature of this medium of the soul? Our vocabulary has no word for the medium in which we see all forces manifested, except some such word as "matter" or "substance." And this term matter or substance is applied to a medium than which we know, or can think, of none other. It would be useless to assert that there is and can be no other medium; but it is safe to say that we have never found and cannot conceive of any other. So, far, then, as we know or can conceive, the medium of physical force was and will be essentially what it is now, with changes and modifications in that force; so far as we know or * "... And we know nothing of cause, save as manifested in existences we class as material-either our own bodies or surrounding things.”—Prin. of Psychology, § 272. |