"Glimpses of Jesus; or, Christ exalted in the Affections of his People. By W. P. BALFERN." (18mo., pp. 259. New-York: Sheldon, Blakeman, & Co. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. Richmond: Wortham & Cottrel. 1858.) "Ursula, a Tale of Country Life. By the Author of 'Amy Herbert,' etc. In two volumes." (12mo, pp. 311-314. New-York: Appleton & Co. 1858.) "Gilbert Harland; or, Good in Everything, being the early History of a City Boy. By Mrs. BARWELL. Four Illustrations." (Square 12mo, pp. 211. New-York: Carlton & Porter, Sunday School Union. 1858.) "Ellinor Grey; or, The Sunday-School Class at Trimble Hollow. By Mrs. H. C. GARDINER. Four Illustrations." (18mo., pp. 194. Carlton & Porter, Sunday School Union. 1858.) New-York: ART. XIII.-LITERARY ITEMS. The following new publications in England are note-worthy: Oxford Essays for 1858. History of Frederick II, King of Prussia, called Frederick the Great. Poets and Poetry of Germany. Biographical and Critical Notices. By Madame De Pontes, Translator of Körner's Life and Works. Trübner & Co., London, announce : A Critical Dictionary of English Literature, and British and American Authors, Living and Deceased, from the Earliest Accounts to the Middle of the Ninteenth Century; containing thirty-one thousand Biographical and Literary Notices, with an Index of subject-matter. By S. Austin Allibone. 1 vol., pp. 1600, royal 8vo. Trübner's Bibliotheca, I. The Literature of the American Aboriginal Languages. By Herman E. Ludervig. With Additions and Corrections by Professor W. W. Turner. 8vo. The following are noted in the English periodicals: Translation of Hegel's Work on the Philosophy of History; being that philosopher's most popular and interesting work. Published by Bohn. Macknight's Life of Burke, 2 vols. John Garth Wilkinson is a Swedenborgian writer of no ordinary brilliancy and power. His style is somewhat of the Carlyle order, but bears marks of individuality which show that he is an independent, owing nothing to imitation. His last work is entitled Spirit Drawings; which the National Review says, "is a curious account of real phenomena within his own personal experience-phenom ena which he regards as normal, but which most people would think morbid." Wilkinson is a physician. A prize of one hundred guineas is offered for the best essay on the causes of the decrease and apparently approaching extinction of the Society of Friends, or Quakers. It is offered by a gentleman who believes that the Friends were powerful witnesses to important truths, and who laments that while the population of Britain has doubled in fifty years, the Society of Friends has diminished in number. Adjudicators of the prize, Professors Maurice, Nichols, and Rev. E. S. Pryce. We have received a specimen of a NEW LATIN-ENGLISH SCHOOL-LEXICON, on the basis of the Latin-German Lexicon of Dr. C. F. Ingerslev, by G. R. CROOKS, D.D., late Adjunct-Professor of Ancient Languages in Dickinson College, and A. J. Schem, A.M., Professor of Hebrew and Modern Languages. It is announced as nearly ready, in one volume, imperial octavo, consisting of nearly one thousand pages, from the press of LIPPINCOTT & Co., Philadelphia. What worthy History of the Methodists could come from Robert Southey? is a question keenly put by the last North British Review. And yet his biography of Wesley has been the standard work by which the world outside our own pale, including even the large mass of evangelical Christians, has judged the Wesleyan Reformation. We cherish the trust that this work is to be soon supplanted by the HISTORY OF METHODISM, by DR. STEVENS, the first volume of which will soon be put to press by CARLTON & PORTER. THE METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW. OCTOBER, 1858. ART. I.-MODERN MATERIALISM. THE Conditions of our nature incline us to materialism. There may be embodied spirits whose corporeal frame-work is so ethereal, and whose pursuits are so spiritual, that they may not be conscious of their material organs; but man, subjected to incessant calls by the wants of his decaying body, absorbed in secular pursuits, and consumed with worldly anxieties, is in danger of passing life without reflecting that he has a soul. When we consider that the tendency of our philosophy concurs with that of our nature, we can but think that materialism would be generally prevalent were it not for the counteracting influence of our religious belief. It is more general than many suppose. The gainsayers are upon us in swarms; not merely the vulgar but the refined. Dr. Lawrence, a distinguished physician of the last age, and the writer of the article Man in one of our best encyclopedias, (Rees's,) says, that the notion of an immaterial soul is opposed to the evidence of anatomy and physiology. French physiologists generally take the same view. Dr. Elliotson, a high living authority in medicine and phrenology, and a believer in the Christian Scriptures, declares that "the doctrine of mind, independently of matter, indicates a want of modern knowledge, and involves us in endless absurdity;" that God cannot create beings irrespective of matter, and that those who believe in the existence of the soul "are usually rank, malicious hypocrites and Pharisees." Many who adopt the creed of these gentlemen are restrained by prudential considerations from professing it, while thousands admit their premises without perceiving the conclusions which logically follow. It is the fashion to cast science and literature in a material mold; nor is even theology an exception. Matter is becoming the idol in the temple of modern thought. It may not be improper to FOURTH SERIES, VOL. X.-34 glance at the old controversy concerning matter and mind in an age so prone to forget the distinction between them. Modern materialists usually state their conclusion as an induction obtained in the following mode. Begin at the zoophite, where life is scarce suspected but by the naturalist, and you find a scarcely perceptible animal organization, and a corresponding spiritual manifestation: advance upward, through fishes, reptiles, birds, quadrupeds, and quadrumana to man, and as the organization becomes more perfect the intelligence does also; so that it would seem that the enlargement of the encephalic mass was the enlargement of the spiritual power. Every animal species presents a great variety of animal organization, with corresponding variety of spiritual power. Take man for example. As you pass by the Ethiopian, Malay, American, Mongolian, and Caucasian families, you go from less perfect to more perfect organizations, and proportionably from less noble to more noble minds. Every individual passes through various stages of improvement and deterioration, and exhibits corresponding variations in intellectual powers and emotional states. The human brain, commencing in a single fold of nervous matter, advances successively through forms resembling the brains of fishes, reptiles, birds, etc. After birth, while it is yet soft, the mind. dawns; as it grows firmer the intellect strengthens; and as it passes through the seven ages, the mind grows with its growth, matures with its maturity, and declines with its decay, until it ends in "second childishness and mere oblivion." The mind is affected by the health of the brain. If this organ be struck, the memory may be dislocated; if it be compressed, the mental operations will be suspended; if it be inflamed, lunacy may result; if it be weakened, delirium; if it be softened, fatuity; if it be not properly supplied with blood, or if its blood be not made of suitable materials, or if its circulation be accelerated or retarded, or if its sympathies with other organs be disturbed, the operations of the mind will be hastened, checked, or perverted. If it be strongly affected by narcotics for a length of time, its whole character may be changed. Finally, death destroys all indications of mind; lay the corpse in the grave, and it is soon resolved into oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, phosphorus, etc., which, by the route of the atmosphere, soon pass into other animate forms: finally, there remains no trace of the body and no echo of the soul. The inference is that the mind is a mere function of the brain. We submit that there are three errors in this induction: the statements are not properly qualified, the view taken is imperfect, and the relation of the subjects is not correctly ascertained. The father of inductive philosophy pointed out the tendency to be more impressed with affirmative facts than with negative ones, although it often happens that a single negative, well established, is fatal to a theory. The human brain resembles the brain of inferior creatures, having no part which is not found in some one of them: it is not absolutely larger than that of some other animals; the elephant's exceeds it in size; it is not larger in proportion to the body; in this respect a rabbit's brain is twice and a half as large as man's.* The intelligence of inferior creatures is not in proportion as their brains resemble the human; the brain of the rat wants convolutions, that of the swine does not, yet the former animal has more cunning than the latter. The brain of the Chimpanzee so closely resembles that of man, that if the anatomist could supply his dissecting table with the former he would never need the latter; not an organ nor a vessel, nor a ventricle wanting; not a difference either in material, or configuration, or situation of parts; the only differences discernible are in the size of the parts, the number of the convolutions, the depth of the sulci, and the relative thickness of the cortical part, yet the two former are intimately connected, the two latter widely separated. Take the most inferior negro, even though he be deaf, and dumb, and blind; and by proper instruction you may teach him verbal language, abstraction, generalization, right and wrong, the knowledge of God, aspiration after a higher state, gradual, ceaseless, intellectual and moral progress. You prove that he has within him all the powers of the noblest mind and all the elements of the profoundest knowledge. The difference between him and the philosopher is only in degree. But by no process can you bring the best ape up to his level the difference between them is in kind. There is here an immense moral chasm; can it be bridged by the slight differences of the organism? Whatever cunning or capacity inferior creatures show, it is instinctive, automatic, untaught, not directed by their will. The capacities of the different varieties of a race that is cultivable, intellectually and morally, cannot be speculatively determined; the question is an experimental one. Who knows but that in the lapse of ages the path of empire and civilization may be reversed, that migrations, changes of climate, of food, of shelter, of habit, and The average weight of the whole encephalon in proportion to that of the body in man, is 1 to 36; in the mammalia, 1 to 186; in birds, 1 to 212; in reptiles, 1 to 1321; in fishes, 1 to 5,668; but there are exceptions. In the blueheaded tit the proportion is 1 to 12; in the goldfinch, 1 to 24; in the fieldmouse, 1 to 31. It is alleged, however, that in birds and rodent mammals, the sensory ganglia forms a considerable portion of the encephalon. of education, may sink some branches of the human family and raise others? Are there not African-shaped skulls in Europe, and Caucasianshaped skulls in Africa? Does it appear that in each tribe, family, and nation, men occupy a position corresponding to their cerebral development? Is the size of a man's brain the measure of his intellectual capacity? Maturity of mind does not correspond to maturity of body; the body becomes mature at forty or forty-five; the mind continues to improve, if properly employed, down to old age. In every department men have usually displayed their greatest talents, and won their noblest laurels, after they had begun to experience bodily decline. The chief claim of Havelock to renown rests upon the achievements of advanced years; the same is true of General Scott. The ablest judicial decisions ever given in England and in this country, have been pronounced by judges who had reached their seventieth year. Lords Brougham and Lyndhurst have passed beyond their threescore years and ten, and though their eyes are dim and their knees tremble, their thoughts are clear as the sun, and their minds ascend like the eagle; the latter, now eighty-six, needs assistance to rise from his seat, yet his speeches are more replete with wisdom and eloquence than those of his earlier years. A similar remark might have been made of New-England's "old man eloquent," and Kentucky's favorite son, statesmen whose names will be pronounced with veneration, long as the noblest combinations of genius, patriotism, and humanity can charm the human heart. There is a period when the greatest intellect grows dull and inactive, but is not this owing greatly to the failure of the senses, by which the soul, losing its communication with the world, loses its interest in it. The brain may be much injured while the mind is unimpaired. According to the Morbid Anatomy of Haller, it would seem that there is no part of the encephalon which has not been destroyed or impaired, without producing any important change of the intellectual and moral faculties. Among the cases recorded are some in which the whole cortical part was wasted, while the senses remained entire.* Mr. Flourens, a recent writer of high authority, thinks there is a center in the brain where the senses and their sympathies are united, the division of which will interrupt the manifestation of mind; but he proves incontestibly that the brain may be destroyed to a large extent without destroying any of the mental functions. To diminish the shock which the notion of a spirit receives at the * Edinburgh Review, vol. xi, p. 154. |