ness of the religious sentiment. This is to some extent the doctrine of Benjamin Constant in his work-a great work too-De la Religion Considérée dans sa Source, ses Formes et ses Développements, and which is set forth with much eloquence and a good deal of learning, but without any sound philosophy or true reverential feeling, by Mr. Theodore Parker, among ourselves, in his huge volume entitled A Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion. But the religious sentiment is a fact of human life, not an element of man's nature, and, therefore, cannot be innate, that is to say, born with us. Man is not naturally religious, in the sense the lion is carnivorous, and the sheep gregarious, that is, by virtue of an indestructible and essential law of his nature. But inasmuch as religion, in some form, is a fact of the universal life of humanity, since no fact of life is the product of a single factor, it follows that everywhere the object of the religious sentiment, to wit, the Divinity, must be universally, to a greater or less extent, immediately or mediately present with humanity, and cognizable, or rather perceptible, by the human intelligence. The universal belief in God becomes therefore a proof of the fact that God is; as the universal belief in his providential intervention becomes a proof of that intervention.

They who question Providence, and undertake to explain all on the theory of development, the theory in vogue with our American transcendentalists, and which is reproduced in nearly all our works on education, proceed on the hypothesis that man natural aspires. This natural aspiration, the theatre being given, suffices for all. If this were so, a doubt might indeed be cast on the reality of providential intervention. Man, we admit, aspires, and is progressive because he aspires. But man is not naturally progressive, saving progress only as he is carried along with the onward course of the universe itself, which, as leaving him in the same relative position in the universe, is not recognizable by us as progress. Savage tribes are not progressive. Hence we infer that they do not aspire. If they did naturally aspire, we should sometimes see them by their own unassisted efforts coming out of the savage state, and indigenous civilisation springing up. But this is never the case. We have no record of a savage tribe emerging, by its own spontaneous efforts, from the savage state and coming into the civilized state. This is admitted by Constant, and asserted

by Niebuhr, either of whom on this point is a competent authority.

Moreover, the traditions of every civilized people-and we own that we are disposed to regard all traditions as of great historical value-uniformly ascribe the civilisation to foreign influence, never to indigenous and spontaneous effort. It is always a sacerdotal, military, or industrial col ony from a people already civilized; some providential man; some divine interposition, a Vishnu, a Buddha, a Thoth, a Bacchus, or a Ceres; a Minos, a Moses, a Pythagoras, or a Zoroaster, that quickens their faculties, commences their education, leads them out of the savage state, and sets them forward in the path of civilisation. The facts in the case, so far as we can come at them, prove that if man has the natural capacity to aspire, he does not naturally aspire; that is, not by the simple force of his nature. And this follows necessarily from the fact we have so often insisted upon, that man cannot perform a single act save in conjunction with an active force which is distinct from that active force which he calls himself. And that this other force is not external nature, is established by the fact already stated, that the savage, left to his own nature and the external universe, is not progressive, does not come out of his savage state. In order to make the savage aspire, a foreign influence is necessary; for he is, so far as we know him, naturally indolent, careless, improvident, averse to all exertion, shrinking from all continued effort. His chief luxury is to eat and to sleep. If the sense of hunger, or some outward circumstances, arouse him to a sudden effort, the immediate demand complied with, he relapses without delay into his former torpid state.

Taking this view, rejecting the theory of development, as worthy only of the genius of the author of the Doctrine and Discipline of Human Culture, and the Orphic Sayings,* and recognizing, as an unquestionable historical fact, that man and nature combined, are not sufficient to bring men out of the savage into the civilized state, civilisation itself becomes a proof, as religious people have always considered it, of the intervention of Providence in human affairs. History becomes then a proof of Providence, and a fortiori

* A. Bronson Alcott, whom a shrewd Englishman, lately come among us, is trying to persuade us to receive not only as the great man of Amer ica, but of the age, and who himself boasts of being to the nineteenth century what Jesus was to the first.

of the existence of God. Here is a fact which we commend to our natural theologians. They seek in the order, harmony, and beauty of nature the evidences of design from which they pass by induction to an original designer; without finding fault with them for this, though some question the value of their argumentation, we may tell them that in the course of history, in the passage of man from the savage to the civilized state, in the numerous facts everywhere recorded and everywhere attested, transcending the combined powers of man and nature, they may find evidence much more to their purpose, altogether more striking and more conclusive. The works of providence are a far better demonstration of the existence of God than the works of creation.

If we find in human history three agencies at work, namely, nature, humanity, Providence, we must bear in mind that these all three intervene and work after one and the same original law, type or model, eternal and essential in the infinite mind or Logos. This follows from the doctrine of correspondence which Swedenborg after Leibnitz, Leibnitz after Plato, and Plato after Pythagoras and Moses, insist upon, and which is reproduced by Schelling in his doctrine of the identity of the real and the ideal. We believe ourselves to have demonstrated that the original idea, or type, of all creation is eternal, essential in God the creator, and that it is represented by each order of creatures, and each individual creature, each in its own degree, and from its own special point of view. Creation is God himself revealing and realizing out of himself, his own eternal, consubstantial Word. Each creature speaking out from its own centre echoes it, and thus it continues to be echoed, though fainter and fainter, through all actual existence till we approach the infinite Void. Could we but hear the voice of the veriest grain of sand, we should hear the same Word that in the beginning said, "Let there be light and there was light," or that, clothed with flesh, over the wild tempestuous sea of Galilee, said to the winds and waves, "Peace, be still," or at the grave of Lazarus to the sleeping dead, "Come forth."

Now, inasmuch as the action of the three forces we have enumerated, do all follow one and the same original law, history, which is the product of their union, becomes, so far as its law is concerned, capable of scientific exposition. We shall also obtain the same general result, whether we undertake to explain it from the point of view of humanity alone,

nature alone, or Providence alone. This is wherefore Cousin, in dividing history into three epochs, and characterizing each epoch in the manner we have seen, is substantially correct. Wherefore, too, Bossuet seizing solely upon the providential, point of view, yet gives us the true law of history. But, this general exposition of history must not be taken for more than it is worth. It gives us after all only abstractions, the mere skeleton, not the living body, the warm flesh and blood of history. We cannot in this way arrive at the facts of history, but merely at the law which governs the facts; which facts, owing to the element of freedom, we recognize in both man and Providence, can be learned only empirically. The freedom of man gives to the course of history in a certain epoch or country a certain direction, which while it alters not the law of Providence, will yet determine in some sense the character of its application. The same Providence that interposes to assist and further, may now interpose to obstruct, and to chastise; and the actual facts of history must be different in the one case from what they would be in the other.

In conclusion, if we have made intelligible the thought with which we have written, we may say that the course of human history depends in no slight degree on the voluntary activity of individuals. Nature and Providence are in it, but men may by their wickedness pervert its course, though not with impunity; and by their wisdom, and virtue, and energy, they may aid it onward in obedience to the will of God, and the good of their race. Here we find, what theorists have denied us, the room, the motive, and the sanction needed for human virtue. The room is, in the space we allow in history to human freedom; the motive is obedience to God, and the welfare of humanity, which last must always receive damage from individual ignorance, vice or crime; and the sanction is in the ever present Providence to aid and reward us in well-doing, and to chastise us, or to cut us off, as a people, or as individuals, in evildoing. Here we are free to counsel, to warn, to rebuke. Humanity lives only in the life of individuals. Then let statesmen, kings, emperors, priests, philosophers, and scholars, nay, all individuals, whatever their degree, position, or ability, lose no time in making all possible efforts to enable and to induce all men, in public or in private, to live in strict obedience to the perfect law of liberty; and in making these efforts, let them know that God and nature work

with them, and they may do all things. And let them know also that if they will not make them, not only shall all humanity fare the worse, but the Judge of all the earth will do right, and will one day demand of them wherefore they have been unprofitable servants.

THE PRESENT STATE OF SOCIETY.*

[From the Democratic Review for July, 1843.]

Whatever the book he writes, Mr Carlyle may well adopt from Schiller for his motto, Ernst ist das Leben; for although he plays many pranks, and cuts many literary capers, which are not much to his credit, life with him is a serious affair, and he writes always with an earnest spirit, for a high, noble, and praiseworthy end. He may often offend our fastidiousness, he may often vex or disappoint us by the vagueness or defectiveness of his views, but we can never read him without having our better feelings quickened, and getting a clearer insight into many things. We have come even to like his style,-that is, in him and for him, though by no means in and for others. It is natural, free from all literary primness and affectation, sincere, earnest, forcible, -admirably adapted to all the varieties and shades of thought, and moods of mind of the writer; responding with singular felicity to all the natural undulations of the soul; and, when read aloud, to those of the voice. This is especially true of the History of the French Revolution,—a great work, and almost the only one in our language deserving the name of history, and before which your Robertsons, Humes, Mackintoshes, and brotherhood, shrink to their proper dimensions.

Carlyle is a thorough master of language. We know no writer, ancient or modern, who so clearly apprehends the deep significance of speech; or so fully comprehends the profound philosophy there is in the ordinary terms of every-day life. True is it, in more senses than one, that our only sure way of arriving at psychology is through the

*Past and Present. By Thos. Carlyle. Boston: 1843.