them on his own self-culture, he fixes them on God, on duty, on humanity, and warms and kindles, enlightens and directs, every one to bold and vigorous efforts for truth and progress. Self-culture, the redemption and sanctification of the individual heart, will follow as a natural and necessary result.

But we have extended our remarks beyond what we proposed, because the subject is one of vital importance, and on some points of which, we are fully satisfied that we have often spoken too hastily, without due deliberation, and on which we have been still more mistaken by others. We trust we have now expressed ourselves so clearly and distinctly that we shall not be again misapprehended on these points. It will be seen that for the foundation of our faith and our general tendencies, we take our stand with those who do not accept the transcendental theology. We go for progress; not in truth, for truth is immutable, but in the knowledge of the truth; and that truth is no innate property of our souls. We are not born in possession of it. We obtain a knowledge of it only by a sincere and earnest study of man and the universe, the Bible and the life of Jesus. We have no wish to separate ourselves from common humanity. We go with our brethren. Their traditions. are ours; their God is our God; their faith is our faith; and all we ask of them is to permit us to labor in common with them for a more perfect understanding of the Gospel, and a more complete realization of the great truths, in both man and men, in the individual and society, in church and state, in industry, science, and art, in the whole sphere of man's life and activity.

LEROUX ON HUMANITY.*

[From the Boston Quarterly Review for July, 1842.]

M. LEROUX, though but recently known in this country, has for some time held a very high rank among the literary and scientific men of France, and indeed of Europe. He first distinguished himself, we believe, by his contributions to the Revue Encyclopédique, which was in its day one of the ablest, if not the very ablest, of European periodicals. He is now one of the principal conductors of the Encyclopédie Nouvelle, a philosophical, scientifical, literary, and industrial dictionary, intended to render an exact account of the present state of human knowledge; a work which owes much of its value and distinctive character to his contributions; and which, judging from the names of those engaged in it, must be a work of no ordinary literary and scientific merit, and proper to be consulted as an authentic record of the doctrines and aspirations of la jeune France.

We can claim no great familiarity with the writings of M. Leroux, having read but two or three of his productions; but from what we do know of him, we feel warranted in saying that he is one of the most remarkable men of our times. He possesses talents of a very high order, various and profound learning, a rare philosophical insight, and rich poetic fervor. Few men can read him without being warmed and instructed. He is a true lover of his race, a firm friend of liberty and equality, and a bold champion of social and religious progress. He is a democrat in the highest, as well as the lowest, sense of the word. He is no mere speculative philosopher. He is sincere, deeply, almost terribly in earnest; and sometimes he speaks to us in the thrilling tones of the prophet, and makes us tremble before the awfulness of the preacher. He evidently regards himself as a man of destiny, to whom God has given a work to do, and he aspires to be the founder of a school, if not even of a religion, the school, if not the religion of Humanity.

*De l'Humanité: de son Principe, et de son Avenir: où se trouve exposée la vraie définition de la Religion; et où l'on s'explique le sens, la suite, et l'enchaînement du Mosaïsme et du Christianisme. Par PIERRE LEROUX. Paris: 1840.

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At bottom, however, M. Leroux belongs to, and continues the school of Saint-Simon, though in some senses modifying, and in others, rejecting its teachings. This in the minds of many of our countrymen will not tell to his advantage. Saint-Simonism is not in the best possible odor, perhaps because it is so little understood. The Saint-Simonian school was a great school, and may be justly regarded as one of the profoundest and richest schools to which the race has given birth. Saint-Simon is worthy to be mentioned with Pythagoras and Plato, St. Augustine, Descartes, and Leibnitz. He was one of those providential men whom God raises up at distant intervals in the world's history, specially endows, and sends among us to disclose a loftier ideal, and to initiate us into a higher order of life. Saint-Simon will be to the church of the future very nearly what St. Augustine has been to the church of the past. He has been in our day the truest interpreter of the thought of Jesus, the first since Jesus to comprehend the social character of the new Covenant, which God has made with man, to reinstate, if we may so speak, humanity in its rights, and give it in our systems of religion, its due place and influence. Christianity may now become what in the Augustine "City of God" it was but imperfectly, the Religion of Humanity, and without losing for that its character of the Religion of God.

Of course, we have no sympathy with the follies and extravagances of the Saint-Simonians; nor with their mistake of confounding Christianity with the Catholic Church; nor with their substitution of immortality in humanity for immortality as individual men and women; nor with certain pantheistic tendencies which they have not escaped, but which are in fact no necessary elements of the school. There was an original vice somewhere when they passed from a school to a sect. During the life and influence of Bazard, one of the most distinguished men they were ever able to claim, a man of large intelligence and much practical sagacity, they advanced with great rapidity, and threatened to become the dominant party in France. Bazard was a salutary restraint upon the bolder, profounder, more religious, but impracticable Enfantin, and prevented the school from breaking entirely with the existing social organization. But after, in a fit of disgust or discouragement, he had foolishly and impiously shot himself, all went wrong with the Saint-Simonians, and their meetings were soon suppressed

by the strong arm of civil power. As an outward, visible society, the school, or sect is we believe, no longer extant. Père Enfantin, at the last advices, was in the service of Mehemet-Ali; and the twelve apostles that went even to the gate of the harem of the Grand Turk, in search of a woman worthy to become the mère suprême, have returned, reported their ill success, and vanished in thin air; yet the school is not dead, nor will it speedily die. The more we penetrate its spirit, the more are we struck with its inherent vitality. Its doctrines, in a modified form, freed from the extravagances and technicalities of the sect, are the only doctrines really making any progress in Europe, or even in this country. Its pantheistic tendencies must be abandoned, its dreams of an hierarchical organization of the race must be indefinitely postponed; but its fundamental principles, as modified by time and inquiry, will rule the future, and justify the confidence expressed by their early expositors.

Saint-Simonism, regarded in its elements, its fundamental principles, is at present the true Weltgeist, the real spirit of the age. Men hit upon it without knowing it, and advocate its doctrines without knowing or suspecting their ori gin. In this fact we may read the evidence of its soundness, of its adaptation to the wants of our epoch, and of its future destiny.

Saint-Simonism is superior to all its rival schools in the fact that it has an ideal, and therefore is not merely speculative. The Hegelian school is erudite and profound; and, though we are far from pretending to an intimate acquaintance with it, we know enough of it to know that it contains a large share of truth; but it is merely speculative; it proposes no ideal, does not prophesy, does not legislate for the future. The French eclectic school, founded by Cousin, is an admirable school, a great school, rich in learni. g and original psychological researches, earnest, sincere, explaining with great truth and clearness the past and the present; but it is dumb before the future. To the questions, What has been? What is it is prompt with an answer, and an answer which is by no means to be despised; but to the question, What ought to be it has no answer. It has no ideal. It cannot tell what we must do in order to inherit eternal life. It is therefore sufficient only for those rare individuals, who are satisfied with themselves and with men and things as they are; who aspire to nothing better, holier, wiser, or more beautiful; who are contented merely to speculate as ama

teurs on the past and the present. But these individuals, however estimable they may be, and however admirable and desirable may be their cool, philosophical indiffer ency, which converts them, to use the language of a popular preacher, "into statues of tranquility with forefinger pointing to heaven," toward which they move not, are far from constituting the bulk of mankind. Humanity is no mere amateur. It is terribly in earnest. It is with it always a matter of life or death. It cannot be satisfied with mere dilettantism. It does not, cannot feel itself here merely to speculate on its appearance in time and space, and on what passes on round about it and within it. It feels itself here to act, to live; and it demands a practical philosophy, a Religion, able and prompt to answer the ever-recurring and tormenting question, What shall I do to be saved?

Humanity lives only on condition that it aspires, and it aspires only on condition that it has an ideal. Prophets and Messiahs redeem and sanctify the race by giving it new and loftier ideals. The true ideal of humanity is no doubt intrinsically, eternally, and universally the same, though it enlarges ever as the race advances, and therefore seems to be always changing. In seeking, in laboring to realize this ideal humanity finds its life. This is its life. The Jews lived only so far as they succeeded in realizing the ideal which Moses gave them. Jesus enlarged and generalized the ideal of Moses, translated it out of Judaism into humanity, and therefore of Jews and gentiles made one; and this enlarged and generalized ideal the race, since his coming, have been laboring to realize. So far forth as we have realized it, we have lived a true life, and a life in some sense, nay, literally, derived from Jesus, who in giving us this ideal, which, by his intimate relation with God, he had himself realized, and making us aspire to its realization, has become the father of the new age, the life of the world, the redeemer and the sanctifier of humanity.

The ideal of Jesus has never, in its fulness and beauty, been the ideal of the race. The church has embraced his ideal as interpreted by St. Augustine, with which she was content till the times of Martin Luther and John Calvin. Since then she has been seeking an ideal rather than the realization of an ideal; and hence her apparent want of faith, and the critical and atheistical tendencies of modern society. None of the philosophers have given us any substitute for the Christian ideal as interpreted by St. Augus