by rules totally independent of the cause from which those results arose, is to take security for our own ignorance, and to give evidence of nothing but our own folly. This has been done by the author whom we are now considering; and this has vitiated all his reasonings.

The more difficult and more interesting points in the subject of his great work are almost all of them thus perverted. Nor is there a single object looked at in the light of any other master-thought than that of the universal propensity of mankind to pursue what appears to them their own interest. The writer sees, in the institution of castes, and in all the laws which are explicable by that institution, (but which he does not so explain,) only the proofs that a people may be deluded to their own misery. He does not attempt to understand the historical idea of Hindoo society, which is necessary for expounding all its phenomena. Neither do we profess to understand it. But we at least see its necessity. The difficulties of the subject may, perhaps, (we speak in doubt and humility,) be explained, by supposing that the higher castes, the priestly and the warlike, were, in some distant age, the invaders and conquerors of India. One of those armies of soldiers, conducted by the wisdom of priests, which, at one period or other of a remote antiquity, have overrun the whole world, and produced changes, political and religious, as important to mankind as the greatest of the physical convulsions of the earth have been to the material globe. This notion, (we avow it to be nothing more,) as regards India, would give a purport and ulterior interest to the wonderful fact of the Sovereigns of that country having assumed to themselves, and still retaining, the rack-rents of the whole Peninsula. We confess that the hypothesis mentioned above, which we have no pretension to claim as our own, is the only one which occurs to our minds, as indicating a source copious and remote enough to

permit the deduction from it of all those wide and long and powerful currents which now mark the social surface of India. But, be this as it may, all we contend for is, that a grave, a learned, an able author, such as undoubtedly is Mr. Mill, was bound to furnish some explanation of the mysteries and hieroglyphics painted on the walls, amid which he leads us temporarily to inhabit. If he merely copies the inscription, instead of translating it, he does not fulfil his task. Or, to take a kindred image, if he affixes to the words which were written in one language the meaning which those sounds indicate in another, he commits an error not glorious to himself, and mischievous to the majority of his readers.

The one object of the long and elaborate chapters on the Hindoos, and of many subsequent casual allusions, is to determine the point in the scale of what the writer terms civilisation, at which the people he speaks of stood. But it is painful to feel, throughout, the impossibility of discovering in his pages any clear account of what "civilisation" is. Many of those things which thinkers of all parties would regard as helping to constitute civilisation, are, by him, uniformly spoken of as being merely its evidences. Many which, in our eyes, are accidental peculiarities, are, in his, the strongest proofs of it; and those which are held for its essence and life, by the believers in man's religious and moral nature, are, by him, either totally omitted, or treated with some indication of careless contempt. It seems probable, that if all he has said on the subject were brought together, he would be found to place the good and beautiful of a nation in the knowledge and practice of sound political economy and in an improved judicial system,-to the entire exclusion of every thing which comes home to men's feelings, of all improvement in the sense of duty, in reverence for truth, in love to God and man.

We are inclined to think that the majority of the political mistakes of

this reasoner, though the natural outgrowth of an erroneous and unhappy system of human nature, could not have existed to such a degree without an inattention to the spirit of history, a kindred product on the same system. Is it not melancholy that an Essay on Government" should have been written, however concise and compendious, in which we find no more than one or two cursory allusions to the experience of nations? And is not this fact a symptom of a general tendency to turn away the eye from all that is necessarily different in the circumstances of different communities to

shut from our contemplation that inner life of society which is perpetually working outward, and flinging off the slough and decay of its body; and as constantly drawing in to feed itself with, and assimilate them to its own nature, the resources and materials that surround it? There is a growth and progress of a people which acts from an interior law of its own, and makes the application to it at any period, of a merely abstract theory, a folly and an impossibility. Any man who should directly assert, that the same institutions are applicable to all countries, at every time, to the North American Indians, to the Arabs, the Hottentots, the Chinese, the English, -would not be a man to be answered, but one to be put in a strait-waistcoat. Yet, the reasonings of the "Essay on Government" are as universal as those of geometry, and if good at all, would be just as valid arguments for a Negro or an Esquimaux, as for a Parisian or a Prussian. To rest satisfied, therefore, with it, as with a sound political system, is quietly to repose on the pillow of an absurdity.

The chapter of the History on the Literature of India, ought to have been one of the highest interest and value. There are few things of the kind more curious, than the absence of all history, the general extravagance of the poetry, in connection with the occasional subtilty and sublimity of the philosophical doctrines, in the books of the Brahmins. Mr. Mill treats the

whole subject as contemptible. His criticism on the Hindoo works of imagination is, probably, not much too severe, though it exhibits no evidence whatsoever of critical science. But it is scarcely conceivable by what extravagance of Voltarian empiricism he should have been led to write as he has done about Indian philosophy. We doubt not, that, with some exceptions, it is absurd and stupid; and that the better portions of it are little understood or cherished by the vast majority of the Brahmins. But how did the Vedanti theory ever arise among such a people? Mr. Mill pretends to bring evidence that refined abstract speculations have always flourished among rude nations; but he brings no testimonies, none, at least, the vagueness of which does not make it entirely nugatory, to the existence of metaphysical science in any barbarous country, except, indeed, where it has been transplanted from the Athenian garden, or copied from the paintings of the Stoa. Nor can we be satisfied with the still more shallow device of asserting, that the "propensity to abstract speculations is the natural result of the state of the human mind in a rude and ignorant age;" (History of British India, vol. ii. p. 70, 8vo. edition;) or with the ludicrous impropriety of the attempt to support this statement by the authority of Condillac, who merely says, that children early learn to class many objects together from observation of their outward resemblances. Mr. Mill pretends that the Vedanti doctrine is utterly despicable and worthless, both as given by Sir William Jones and by Sir James Mackintosh. It would be easy for Mr. Mill to say the same of Plato. But one assertion is worth just as much as another; and we confess we cannot conceive how such a belief can have arisen, except from the partial perversion of some early and holy tradition, or from the force of a powerful and subtle mind, long accustomed to brood over its own consciousness. Now the difficulty, and it appears in our eyes a great one,

is, to discover in what way a theory so remote and transcendant, (however erroneous; and we are convinced, that if we have it in its integrity, it is erroneous,) can have been united to such gross and miserable follies as form the mass of Sanscrit learning. However, we can now pursue no further the examination of the chapter on literature, and must leave to the judgment of its readers its heap of irrelevant, ill-arranged, and uncompared authorities, its careless condemnation of things which the writer has not taken the trouble to comprehend, and its grave quotation from Voltaire, of the precious opinion, that the poetry of the Old Testament is completely worthless. But we

must turn, to say a few words of a chapter on religion, which is about as valuable, when compared with the theology of Isaiah, as is the poetry of the Pucell, when weighed against the book of Job.

We are very anxious that nothing we say should tend to excite a religious clamor against the writings now before us. To our fear of abetting this theological fury we would give up any thing, except candor. And we trust we shall save ourselves from being accomplices in so odious a result, by premising, that so far as we have seen, this writer has never said any thing against the truth of Christianity. If he had avowed himself to be a Deist or an Atheist, we should still feel nothing but regret, and should endeavor, as earnestly as possible, to show the cruelty, the folly, the criminality, of persecuting any man's conscience. The author attempts to account for the existence of religion in the world (independent of revelation) by saying, that "prior to experience and instruction, there is a propensity in the imagination to endow with life whatever we behold in motion; or, in general, whatever appears to be the cause of any event. A child beats the inanimate object by which it has been hurt, and caresses that by which it has been gratified." Now, in the first place, is this con

duct on the part of children any thing more than imitation ? If not, the analogy goes for nothing. But does the author really think that so universal and so permanent a power as (unrevealed) religion is to be accounted for by a sentence about a child whipping a foot-stool? And in the process which he describes, whereby from such an origin religion grows up, till at last the "ingenuity of fear and desire" invents "a higher strain of flattery," and men find out the unity of God, (see History of British India, vol. i. p. 295, 8vo. edition,) "in this process, can a calm and candid mind discover causes sufficient to produce all the different religions of the world, and all the strange varieties, Idolatry, Pantheism, and pure Theism?" No; whatever may be said as to natural religion, by those who exaggerate what needs no adventitious importance, the value, namely, of revelation, or by those who depreciate it from indifference to religion of all kinds, there must be at the root of the human mind a propensity, the strongest and best portion of our birthright, to believe in something higher and earlier than nature. The trouble is not to account for the existence of religion, but for the imperfection of it. And nothing can solve the difficulty but our knowledge of the feebleness of all the faculties of savages, and of the slightness of any tendency among them to refer particulars to universals, and exchange notions for ideas. To prove that religious feeling often exists in no shape but that of debasing superstition, is not to prove that man had better be without religion, but that his whole nature stands in need of improvement. It strikes us as extremely curious that Mr. Mill should not have been more impressed and interested by the strange mixture of true and false, of good and evil, found in the books of Indian theology, from which he quotes so largely. There are fragments of the most sublime Deism, and others of a beautiful Pantheism, mixed in wonderful confusion and in melancholy contrast with all

that is vilest and meanest in a miserable system of idolatry. How did these heterogeneous particles coalesce? How did the dust of corruption and the Spirit of God thus meet together? Whence this mingling of life and death? No such question as this occurs to the writer. It never suggests itself to him, that a great truth cannot have been the contemporaneous produce of the same mind as a host of errors, all of which that truth excludes. He does not inquire; he does not hesitate; he starts no hypothesis; much less does he search diligently till he has found the original key to the mystery. But he carelessly throws aside the whole matter with the observation, that improvement in the language of religion is no evidence of improvement in the idea: and most certainly it is no evidence with regard to those who employ it, but the strongest with regard to those who invented it. Had we space at command, could we publish a tithe of the pages in one of Mr. Mill's volumes, we would willingly consider these subjects at far greater length. As it is, we must now quit them; and we should much regret if, in doing so, we were to leave our readers under an impression more unfavorable to this teacher than is our own. is natural, in examining literary works of a speculative character, to dwell on those points with regard to which we

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differ from the author. But we beg our readers to remember, that we have judged Mr. Mill by the very highest of all standards, namely, by contrasting his performance with ideal excellence. He is obviously a person of unwearied diligence, of great acuteness, of a well-compacted and highlydisciplined intellect; and, above all, of a strong and large benevolence. The last of these merits we perhaps estimate at least as highly as some of those who would be louder and more indiscriminate in their applause. Nor do we overlook the merit of this writer in opposing himself, amid such a system as that which now prevails in England, to the many misdeeds of power. But such is our impression of the importance of principles, and of the principles more especially with regard to which we differ from Mr. Mill, that we should have outraged the strongest sense of duty, by concealing or qualifying our dissent from his doctrine. And no fear of being called what we should most abhor to be, persecutors, that is, and bigots, shall prevent us from raising our voices against a system which, in our view, would make reason, imagination, truth, and benevolence, mere instruments for supplying those wants which we have in common with the brutes, instead of their being the pow ers which wear the image of God, and are designed to raise us towards Him.

If ever piety looked altogether beautiful or noble in any one, it does so in Dr. Chalmers. In his case, religion is evidently an influence that has shed itself over the native character of the man, only to soften or subdue whatever about it partook of the harsh or the repulsive, and still more to exalt and refine all its loftier and better tendencies. He is a man of high genius, regenerated by an alchemy which is even more powerful than that of genius. Notwithstanding the generosity and overflowing kindliness of nature which have marked him from

his birth, his fervid and impetuous spirit was not, probably, originally exempted from that impatience and precipitancy which form the besetting disease of extreme sensibility, especially when excited by the consciousness of extraordinary powers; and some passages in his earlier history, indeed, are not yet altogether forgotten, which prove clearly enough that in those days his feelings were rather more than a match for his prudence. He used, at all events, as is well known, to be one of the most latitudinarian and unscrupulous of clergy

men; preaching with his characteristic zeal a very ultra-liberal theology to his flock on the Sunday, and very often, during the rest of the week, throwing off his black coat for a red one; for at that period the military epidemic was universal, and the reverend doctor had caught it in all its virulence. It has even been affirmed that he was wont occasionally to startle the villagers by exhibiting himself in his scarlet attire of a summer afternoon even immediately after descending from the pulpit-a manifestation of warlike ardor which those who know the feelings with regard to the sacredness of the Sabbath that exist among the Scottish peasantry, will readily believe must have excited no common sensation. The spirit of soldiership by which he was animated at this time breaks out with most amusing naïveté, in a work on the Financial Condition and Resources of the Country, which he composed while under its influence, and gave to the world through the medium of a provincial press. It is eloquently and powerfully written, though in somewhat a different, many will say a better style, than his subsequent works; and abounds in original views developed with infinite ingenuity and plausibility; but the direction of every shilling of the national wealth that can be spared after the population have obtained the absolute necessaries of life, to the manufacture and maintenance of soldiers, is not so much advocated by the author by dint of argument, as assumed throughout the volume, without any argument at all, to be the only policy a sane government would ever dream of pursuing. It is a production which we would recommend to the perusal of the coming generation, likely as they are to grow up, it is to be hoped, in the cool atmosphere of peace, in order that they may learn in some degree to conceive what was the state of the general mind in the stirring times of their fathers -in the days when clergymen carried muskets, and every village in the land bristled with bayonets.

22 ATHENEUM, VOL. 1, 3d series.

This was not, however, Dr. Chalmers' first publication. He had some years before printed an anonymous pamphlet in reference to a matter-the appointment of Mr. Leslie to the mathematical chair in the University of Edinburgh-which agitated for many months the whole clerical and literary world of Scotland; in which he gave still more reckless expression to the views he then entertained with regard to the obligations of his sacred office, by declaring that he knew no other duties a clergyman had to perform, except to write his sermon on the Saturday, and deliver it on the Sunday. But never ought this rash avowal to be alluded to, without mention being made at the same time of the manly and truly noble manner in which it was, many years after, retracted as publicly as it had been uttered.

The General Assembly of the Scottish Church, it may be necessary to inform our readers, is a deliberative body composed of deputies both from the clergy and the laity of the country, to the amount of between three and four hundred, which meets every year at Edinburgh, and continues its sittings for about a fortnight, for the final determination of all questions relating to the internal management of the Church that may be proposed by any of its members, or have been referred to its decision by the inferior ecclesiastical judicatories. Sanctioned as are the sittings of this body by the presence of an enthroned commissioner from the sovereign, who is always a Scottish nobleman, and surrounded as its proceedings are with not a little both of civil and military pomp, it presents-both from these external circumstances, and from the rank and talent of many of its members, among whom are always to be found, besides the clergy, a considerable proportion of the aristocracy, the judges, and the most distinguished names from the bar-a spectacle sufficiently imposing at least to the eye of a Scotsman, and not without interest to any over whose sympathies the aspect of popular institutions and the voice of