The Advancement of Society in Knowledge and Religion. By James Douglas, Esq. 8vo. 9s.

THE intellectual history of the human race, treated in close and unbroken reference to the prominent land-marks which revelation affords, and displaying the pointings which begin to appear, of an improvement more general and higher than has yet been known in the best periods, or the choicest spots, is a work of no ordinary enterprise and difficulty. Doubtless some sections of the undertaking might be filled up without great labour or unusual talent, but the connexion of the multifarious parts, the succession of the many stages, the discrimination of the chief causes, and the judicious display and contrast of the light and shade which are in almost constant play over the whole scene, require a mind of no ordinary comprehension and no common acquirements. Indeed it is a task that can be accomplished thoroughly by no one hand: the field is too vast, and the qualities requisite for its analysis so various, that little more can be done by an individual, than either to execute a single section, or present a mere sketchy or outline exhibition of the whole. Yet the attempt is magnanimous and noble; and to have displayed but the general bearings, though with many imperfections and breaks, is a work of high merit and of intense interest. For if the advancement of terrestrial geography is important, and he who contributes but the soundings of a single new bay, or the outline of a single coast, is counted a bene factor to the human race and to true science; what honour shall be adequate to his merit, who can map the moral and intellectual

geography of the various nations and ages of the world, and give us, in a single chart, all the descending and ascending stages of human society, from the creation to the consummation of the globe. This is, indeed, to furnish nothing short of a historical exposition of that fine saying of Plato, vec esi Baoiλevs ερανε καὶ γης. Mind is king of heaven and earth. Whether the ancients generally entertained the doctrine of the supremacy of mind, as was maintained by Macrobius and Porphyry, or not, is scarcely worth a dispute; but assuredly the history of the human race supplies much to illustrate and render plausible the Platonic philosophy, and to lessen the degree of our astonishment that such principles should have received the approbation and support of men so eminently endowed. In the absence of a purer light and a more authoritative judge, it is rather surprising that the Grecian philosophers attained so exalted a conception, than that they rose no higher. Their philosophy, like their navigation, was bold, considering the principles which it had to depend upon; but both being destitute of the infallible and the universal, dealt rather in expedients than in laws; while the greatest proficients never rose in the one above the character of coasters, nor in the other above that of speculators. They touched on all shores, but left the seas untouched; they treated upon all questions, but settled none: they had as little notion of a hand that could guide them across the mazes and the gulfs of their philosophy, as of an instrument that should mark a sure path to the navigator in the absence of light, and on the surface of a limitless ocean. Hence their philosophy, like their navigation,

was feeble and inefficient; yet the notion of Anexagoras,* that mind, or intellect, being an autocrat, and unmingled with any other power, orders and pervades all things, contains in it a sublime notion, the germ of the present interesting volume, and the principle which yet remains to be more amply developed in the upward march of intellect to virtue, happiness, and God.

Without stumbling upon the indistinct and ill-assorted notions of pagan philosophers, upon the nature, capabilities, and relations of human intellect, and without sanctioning the far less sober and profound views of modern perfectionists, a theory may be maintained to which all the facts of universal history shall respond, and with which may be linked the brightest anticipations of the philanthropist, and the fairest visions of the reformer. That which in the past has perplexed and shipwrecked the speculations of infidel philosophers, and that in the present, which has so often made them desperate and frantic, falls into its place in the true theory, links on with all the other parts of the mundane history and system, answers to the inspired record, word for word, fact to fact, principle to principle, and leaves that sacred authority in full possession of the right to unfold to the eye of hope fairer visions than the pencil of poetry ever drew, and as real as any that the pen of history ever recorded. Monboddo, Hume, and a host of inferior imitators have attempted to speculate upon the philosophy of human history, but they have all proved themselves not more at variance with the decisive and general testimonies of revelation than with the admitted facts of human nature and profane

* Αυτοκρατορα γαρ οντα αυτον και εδενι μεμιγμένον παντα φησιν αυτον κοσμεῖν τα πραγματα, δια παντων sorra.-PLATO in Cratylo.

history. They refused to steer their course by these ascertained soundings and bearings, and the result was, they were either lost in an ocean of perplexity, or made a blind voyage round the misty island of their own theory, and then gave themselves out as circumnavigators of the globe. The Germans have subsequently indulged their moody genius in endless speculations upon various departments of this vast subject, and in some general theories, both historical and prophetic; but like most of the speculations of the infidel philosophers of France and England, who had preceded them, their theories have been as full of dreams as void of truth, and as repugnant to an enlarged induction of facts as to the testimonies and prophecies of revelation.

Mr. Douglas is a philosopher of a different school, and under the guidance of a heavenly star he has performed a voyage of greater extent, of more accuracy, and of infinitely greater promise than any or all his predecessors. The title of the volume conveys no adequate idea of the extent and variety of the matter, nor of the difficulty and complexity of the subjects discussed. It is an outline of the intellectual history of the human race, containing a delineation of all the principal eras of social advancement, and a display of those present circumstances which appear pregnant with promise and hope, in reference to the moral and religious advancement of the whole race.

In describing a treatise of so complicated a character, it is much more easy to present an analysis, than to afford an adequate view of the research which every page exhibits, and of the ability with which the whole is executed. We cannot express the admiration we feel of the general design and plan of the author. The principles which he has adopted, and the lights which

cestors of Upper Asia, is the intervening sea, with the want of barks of sufficient hurden to transport their cattle.

"The appearances of society, over both the old and the new continent, exactly tally with the effects which must have resulted from the dispersion of mankind, as described by Moses; a dispersion which took place after a common sojourn, for a length of years, in a country favourable for the increase of their flocks; and after having had long access to the arts and knowledge of a still earlier race by the long lives of the Patriarchs, who formed a connecting link between the Antidiluvian and Postdiluvian World. The light, which spread over the earth, may be traced to the plains of Babylon as its centre, and the barbarism and the depression of the different tribes of men is shaded more deeply, according to their distance from the parent seats of mankind, and the difficulties of their journey.

"It is from this one fount of emanation that the first vestiges of thought and improvement are derived, which are common to all nations and languages; and which have been assigned, even by infidel philosophers, to one primitive race, the stock whence the many families of the earth have sprung; who have left behind them resemblances and affinities in the remotest languages, and recollections, however disguised by fable and mythology, which refer to a period when all the earth had one common history and interest.

"Thus the time which elapsed between the deluge and the dispersion of mankind, must be looked upon as the first period of civilization. No doubt owing to the early invention of arts among the descendants of Cain, and the long life of the antediluvians, so favourable to the cultivation of science, great advances would be made, and commanding heights of knowledge,

would be reached, by men, who could not complain, like Theophrastus, that nature had denied them that length of days for cultivating their reason, which she bestow ed upon many irrational animals; but it is not by the mass of knowledge that existed before the deluge, but by the remnants that were preserved in the ark, that aftertimes have been affected and benefited.

To form some conception of the change

which ancient science would undergo in the hands of the postdiluvians, we may imagine what would be the fate of a varied and copious language, which, after abounding in works of every character, came to exist only in the speech of a few individuals; how the additions by which it

had been enriched would fall into disuse, and the language itself would return to its first rudiments and primitive sin plicity, while the derivatives would occasionally remain, and the roots from which they had sprung be forgotten; the same would

it fare with science, reduced to the same circumstances, the higher and more speculative parts would be forgotten, the application might be retained without the principle, and the elements might rest behind as witnesses of the perfection to which knowledge had been brought, and of the advanced state of the sciences from which they had been separated.

"Possessed of the relics of ancient language and of ancient knowledge, a new population rapidly multiplied in the land where nature had planted the olive and Noah the vine, and wandered, with their increasing flocks, beneath that serene sky where the stars were first classed into constellations, without fixed habitation in the country of their transient pilgrimage, previous to their spreading anew the tide of life over the dispeopled earth, and rearing in the wilderness once more the dwellings of men.

"It is this period of universal intercommunity which has given an indissoluble bond of connection to the far scattered family of man, and irresistibly carries back whatever holds of high antiquity to the common origin of the species. Among the remotest races, dissevered by vast ages, and unnavigated oceans, fragments of language, tradition, and opinion are found, which piece in together, and when united with every remnant, from every distant region, almost recompose that body of transmitted recollections, which, surviving an earlier civilization, and an almost universal catastrophe, was separated and dispersed over the earth, by the separation and dispersion of mankind."-pp. 10-15.

Of the general accuracy of these observations there can remain little doubt, though some notice might properly have been taken of other opposing accounts of the early condition of mankind, and something more formidable might have been alleged against the speculations of infidels. But we are indisposed to point out defects amidst so much that is excellent. After treating of the first monarchies he approaches the Grecian and Roman eras, and here, as we expected, the author is both more copious and more eloquent, though, at the same time, from the very nature of his subject, he is more open to objection. It is no easy task to give our readers a fair specimen of the manner in which the author has executed this part of his undertaking, but

we shall select a paragraph or two as a specimen of the whole.

"An influence, highly favourable to the Grecian States, consisted in their internationality. Greece, indented and mountainous, was severed into many states, but all peopled by one primitive race, speaking the same primitive language. In its many states advancing together in the career of civilization, it resembled modern Europe; but the intercommunion between them

was far more intimate and effectual, from their lying within a smaller compass, and from their speaking the same language; yet not merely one language, but rather many dialects, which had each its peculiar excellence, and left untouched the originality of the rest. A faint example of the advantage of this may be found in the Scotch verses of Burns, which had all the freshness of youth when the contemporary English writings bore strong marks of the decay of age. This variety of dialects not only gave a freshness and originality to the poetry of the different states of Greece,

but allowed the riches of all to be trans

fused into each without the strangeness of thoughts, which, when translated, are seldom more than half naturalized, and exempt from the loss which a difference of idiom inevitably occasions. From these multiplied sources of abundance arose the copiousness of Grecian genius and literature; and hence proceeded many of the

advantages which Homer possessed over other poets. The seeds of poetry are the events of dark ages, increased by tradition, and expanding with the growing imagination of men, who are passing from obscurity into light. These traditions, after receiving the colour of the popular fancy, in their second stage, are moulded by the imagination of the earliest and often forgotten bards; and after this comes the season favourable for the appearance of a great genius, who has every thing prepared for his advent in the workings of the popular mind, and in the efforts of his ruder predecessors; and who, by giving to the materials already existing their third and finished form, appropriates them for ever, and perpetuates their glory and

his own. Such was Homer, who, like

his own Ulysses surveying many men and many cities, was enabled to collect the popular poetry of his country,-poetry more varied from the moral situation of Greece than ever existed before or after, and filled the inexhausted stream of his inspiration from a hundred springs. It is not wonderful that works which were enriched from such various sources, should

in their turn be a fresh source of endless variety, and that the diversified forms of poetry should be traced to Homer, as all the prismatic colours are refracted from the light of the sun."-pp. 32-34.

Beautiful and eloquent as is the principal part of this extract, the illustration of the peculiar excellence of the Grecian dialects from the Scotch verses of Burns, is one of the least appropriate, and most objectionable parallels the author could have found. For neither is it true that Burns's verse had, on account of the Scottish dialect, the freshness of youth-nor did the contemporary English writings bear the strong marks of the decay of age. The charm of Burns's muse to Scotchmen was rather the revival of a dying dialect, and to Englishmen his dialect had no charm, either as a youthful or an aged one; since it was utterly unintelligible without the aid of a translation, and interested partly on the ground of the novelty of such barbarisms, shaped and pared into harmonious verse, and, partly, because such novelties were connected with a genius altogether enchanting and rare. The dialect in which his muse sang, instead of having the freshness of youth, and charming all readers, when the contemporary English writers bore strong marks of the decay of age, was the temporary revival of an uncouth phraseology, and an artificial resurrection of antiquated idioms, which, even to Scotchmen, were not half intelligible; which no genius but that of Burns would have attempted to revive, and which no one, since his day, has dreamt of renovating-though they will live in his writings, and in them alone, as a bright and sparry incrustation formed upon decaying relics of antiquity, or upon the vile fragments of straw and stones, and such like rubbish.

In the comparison which the author enters into between Grecian and Roman literature, he displays considerable ingenuity, and a highly respectable acquaintance with the characteristic features of each. The following paragraphs will, no doubt, interest and de