And again observe: no man who still affects even so abstract a phrase as "the Laws of Nature," has yet emerged from this second, or metaphysical, stage, into the positive third. For, Law is the subtle but supersubtle, the delicate but supposititious "abstract entity," which metaphysics gratuitously superadds to concrete fact, and which, as imaginary and potentially misleading, is nehushtan to the iconoclastic protestantism of positive science.

What, then, is the third phase-what is this positive philosophy, so revolutionary in its policy, so exterminating in its decrees?

It is that phase in the development of Humanity, social and individual, in which the mind, rejecting as futile all speculation about cause and principle and essence, limits its inquiry to phenomena, and to their unvarying relations, simply with a view to the mastery of their laws. Positive Philosophy is, therefore, defined to be, the Explanation of the Phenomena of the Universe. The WHY it declines to scrutinize, as something far above out of its reach. The How it sedulously and solely investigates. "The positive stage," says Mr. Lewes, "explains phenomena by ascertaining laws, laws based on distinct and indisputable certitude gathered in the long and toilsome investigation of centuries; and these laws are not only shown to be demonstrable to reason, but accordant with fact; for the distinguishing characteristic of science is, that it sees and foresees. Science is prevision. Certainty is its basis and its glory." In this "recognition of invariableness" lies the "germ of science," because on it alone can prevision of phenomena depend-prevision being the test of knowledge.

in the supernatural, and some in the metaphysical stage," with minute self-contradictory subdivisions.) First: the mathematical sciences-since in them the ideas dealt with are the most entirely abstract possible in positive philosophy," for no where else are questions resolved so completely, and deductions prolonged so far with extreme rigor"these deductions involving the greatest possible number of results from the smallest possible number of immediate data. Astronomy comes under this section, and is the only fundamental science (out of the five) which is allowed to be really and finally purged of all theological or metaphysical considerations-the only one thoroughly established as positive, and satisfactorily fulfilling the axiom that every science has prevision for its object. Second: the science of Physics, which, says Comte, did not begin definitely to disengage itself from metaphysics, and become really positive, until after the great discovery of Galileo on the fall of heavy bodies, and which is therefore considerably behind Astronomy (positive so many centuries ago) in its scientific precision. The positivists enlarge on the conception of a "luminiferous ether"-that "prevailing hypothesis" almost universally accepted by men of science in England-as illustrating the adulteration, by metaphysical myth, of the study of Physicsany such assumed fluid being in reality no more than one of the old entities materialized, a mere personified abstraction, a trifle lighter than air, and only to the dreamer giving "confirmation strong," while to the waking man it is obnoxious as standing a shadowy Third: pretence between him and the sun. Chemistry-a science where the complexity of phenomena is greatly augmented its Now, all the sciences, physical and social aim being, to find the properties of all the this is a capital characteristic of M. Comte's compounds of all (given) simple substancesphilosophy-all are to be regarded as its study especially interesting, as compenbranches of one Science, and so to be inves- sating for deficiency in the "prevision of tigated on one and the same Method. The phenomena" by "the power of modifying student must therefore arrange the sciences them at our pleasure.' Here, too, metaaccording to their dependence on each other; physical parasites are denounced, in the beginning with the "simplest (most general) shape of "inherent vital forces," &c., hypophenomena, and proceeding successively to theses which positivism cannot away with. the most complex and particular." By Fourth: Physiology, or Biology, or the which rule, the following will be the order science of Life-the necessary basis of psyin which he studies the five sciences involved chology, and to the development of which M. in the positive method-for it is peremptorily Comte contributes "a new cerebral theory." enforced, as a fundamental condition to suc- Fifth: Social science-its principle being cess in such study, that the sciences should that social phenomena are inevitably subbe learned in this their natural order, to the jected to natural laws, in accordance with infringement of which rule is ascribed the the axiom of Leibnitz, "The present is preg-as a statical science, present incoherent aspect of scientific culture, nant with the future;" ("some sciences being in the positive, some investigating the laws of coëxistence, (which

VOL. XXXI. NO. I.

characterize the idea of social Order,) and as quotes a passage to show that Comte regards a dynamical, the laws of succession, (which atheism as the dregs of the metaphysical pertain to the theory of Progress.) "Soci- period, a period for which his scorn is incesology thus unites the two equally fundament- | sant. But does that passage, does any pasal ideas of Order and Progress, the radical sage in the maestro's opera omnia imply any opposition of which" constitutes "the prin- regard less scornful for theism? Is not the cipal characteristic symptom of the profound idea of a God as obnoxious to him as the perturbation of modern society." And logical disproof of One, both schemes being whereas hitherto there has been a division equally removed from positive science, and kept up between physical laws and moral by it scouted as futile waste of time, and laws the former being monopolized by one mischievous waste of brains? Atheist may set of teachers, and the latter by another be a hard name in our terminology; in Mr. M. Comte claims to have healed the breach, Comte's it is only an unmeaning one, and one and identified the interests, by his foundation not worth the pains of earning. Theism of social science. is not "positive" enough. Atheism is a great deal too negative. In short, the whole subject had better be dropped-it pertains to the two first phases of progress, the theological and metaphysical, and they are presumed to be "shelved" for ever and a day.

Such, in rough and ragged outline, is Positivism. Such the philosophy which, if destined to dominion, must sweep away the landmarks of our old cherished convictions in theology, metaphysies, and Heaven (to speak anti-positively) knows what. It is called by Mr. Morell an enormous system of materialism, grounded on great research; rejecting all causes as useless and vain ; making the idea of power the lingering relic of an age of hypothesis; that of mind or spirit but a continuous attempt to personify the law of man's intellectual being; and that of God, when viewed theologically, a fruitless attempt to account for the existence of the universe, when viewed philosophically, but the highest abstraction of causality, which must give way in this age of positive science to the simple idea of a general law.

Is, then, M. Comte an atheist ? So affirm

"the general." While some "positively" call him very religious, and his system the only truly religious science. What says Mr. Lewes to the imputation of atheism? Most "positively" he denies it. An incautious reader, he allows, dipping here and there into M. Comte's deep places, might suppose him an atheist, but an attentive reader must, on the contrary, be "strongly impressed by strongly impressed by the forcible and scornful rejection of atheism so often there recurring." And Mr. Lewes

In reply to the damaging remark by Sir W. Hamilton, that it is rather surprising Comte should begin to be taken up in England just as he is being given up in his own country, Mr. Lewes asserts, that, so far from his reputation declining in France, it is now beginning to assume importance, and to attract the adhesion of France's most markworthy physiologists, Beraud, Robin, Littre, Verdeil, &c., while the demand for his voluminous works of it self speaks volumes. The circulation of Mr. Lewes's epitome, and of Miss Martineau's ampler performance (in John Chapman's Series,) will be some criterion of the interest England takes in Positivism. Is the game to be, Follow the Leader?

แ

With reference, however, to Mr. Lewes, we are not at liberty to overlook his protest against the charge of atheism; nor should we omit to mention his earnestly enforced and consistently iterated tenet, that "the intellectual aspect is not the noblest aspect of man," and that never will there be a philosophy capable of satisfying the demands of Humanity, until the truth be recognized, that

man is moved by his emotions, not by his ideas; using his Intellect only as an eye to see the way," his Intellect being, in a word, the servant, not the lord of the Heart; and Science a dull bagatelle, "unless it subserve some grand religious aim; unless its issue be in some enlarged conception of man's life and destiny." He hesitates not to declare his preference of the primitive spontaneous conceptions of the Deity to the modern deification of Intellect, which is but a part, and that not the noblest part, of our nature. There is genuine heart in most of what Mr. Lewes indites, which is scarcely true, so far as we can judge, of the discussions of his "guide, philosopher, and friend," the exprofessor of the Ecole Polytechnique, or of the lucubrations in general of his company of disciples.

Whatever be the tendencies of Positivism, however fatal to all our fondest and firmest opinions and sentiments, by all means give it a frank and full hearing-although it cannot surely reproach those who would cry it down, with the warning, μNTOTε xaι OЕOμaxos Eugente. To call attention to a little volume which ably and succinctly portrays its

*The only Etre Supreme considered possible by M. Comte is-what? "The Collective Life of Humanity." Venite exultemus!

44

For nature's secrets, the First Innating Cause
Who, making curious search
Laughs them to scorn, as man doth busy Apes
When they will zany men."

Which verses we will, however incongruously, tag
with those of Milton's "god-like angel mild," who
taught our first father that there are problems inso-
luble by such as he, "suppress'd in night, to none
communicable in earth or heaven," though quite
"Enough is left besides to search and know.
But knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite, to know
In measure what the mind may well contain;
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind."

From the British Quarterly Review.

LUDWIG TIECK.*

Ir is well known that the literature | been stimulated to their best development of the Germans owes much of its greatness, and much also of its littleness, to the influence of foreign nations. They have had seasons in the history of their literature, in which, like children, they have been the mere imitators of some neighboring member of the family of nations. But as with children, the exercise of the imitative faculty soon awakens other powers, and is the first step to spontaneous action, so has it been with Germany. Her own capabilities have ever

(1.) Die sämmtliche Schriften von LUDWIG TIECK. 20 Bände. Berlin: G. Reimer.

(2.) Die Romantische Schule, in ihrem inneren Zusammenhange mit Goethe und Schiller. Von HERMANN HETTNER,

by the reäction which succeeds an era of servile imitations. There is little indeed to be said in favor of the first Gallomania which seized the Germans; yet with all its gold-laced buffoonery, its triviality and pedantry, it did ward off from the nation a horrible death by suffocation, from the accumulation of that stagnant literary atmosphere which even the sword-thrusts of Gottsched and Bodmer failed to disturb-failed probably because these heroes girded on no weapon trenchant than a paper-cutter. The heavy, didactic tone of the German authors of that generation fell on the public ear like a long sermon on a summer afternoon upon the tympanum of an elderly lady; some sudden influence from without was necessary to restore con

more

Filled with admiration of the French example, they felt what they might become with such freedom, were it theirs. Songs like those of Schiller and of Körner kindled their enthusiasm to the wildest height. Humanity was no longer the watchword;-Freedom, or Germany, sounded in its place. On the other hand, numbers looked with indifference or contempt, not only upon these demonstrations, but upon the events which had given rise to them. Goethe had many companions in his continued aversion to politics, and in his disgust at those social disturbances which seemed to him to originate only in the machinations of unprincipled agitators. Like him, also, Herder and Jean Paul, without the taste, and probably without the aptitude requisite to grapple with great social questions, devoted to efforts purely literary their best energies. A partial exemption should be admitted in favor of Jean Paul. His Morning Gleams for Germany, and his Political Discourses in Lent, were an attempt to rouse the fallen spirit of his countrymen-a sign at least, that, unlike Goethe, his warmer heart looked on a battlefield as something more than a munificient contribution to the science of osteology. But these compositions were the brilliant sallies of a subtle fancy, the loose thoughts of a man of books and a man of dreams; their language was that of the educated few; they abound in poetry and humor, in rhapsody and satire; they contain nothing simple, nothing practical. Wieland, as a Universalist, had tilted at all parties in their turn. The school of the Romanticists, whose political ideal was the middle age, looked with dread upon the Revolution, its unsettling influence, and the danger with which it threatened the reigning powers. Germans, not cosmopolitans, they were concerned for the stability of the State and of the Catholic Church, and anxious above all things for quietude. With them Edmund Burke was the prince of statesmen.

sciousness. This came with the events of | country.
the first French Revolution. There is no
subject for which the Germans have so little
natural capacity or pred lection as the science
of politics. They wall themselves in with
their domestic tranquillity, dusty learning or
artistic dreams, till social questions are, in
conversation, a far more intolerable subject
than even the weather. A Bechuana would
be found more intelligible than a political
economist. Hence it is only to an increased
acquaintance with the classics, with literature
and manners in France and England, that
we may
attribute such signs of life as have
appeared in this direction of later years.
Previous to the French Revolution, all the
lesser German powers were under the vir-
tual rule of Austria and Prussia, much as
they are at the present day. But the influ-
ence of men like Joseph the Second and
Frederick the Great, however much of cos-
mopolitan cant may have mingled with their
real work, had a humane and manly element,
for which we may vainly look to-day in the
same direction. The relation between the
people and their sovereigns was every where
peaceable and friendly. The people had no
idea of oppression or of caprice as a thing
to be complained of; it was to them inevita-
ble as plague or small-pox. Then, for other
classes, the Emperor Joseph had his grand
theory of humanity, the pet plaything of the
courts, on which they lavished those fine
feelings and fine phrases which fashionable
philosophers announced in language so grace-
ful, and political enthusiasts embodied in ac-
tion so disastrous. It had become the fashion
to be no longer a German, but a cosmopoli-
tan, to embrace humanity instead of only the
"Vaterland." The virtue of patriotism was,
for the time, extinct. Speculative theories
of universal brotherhood were to regenerate
the world without noise or difficulty. In the
midst of this calm the tempest awoke in
France, and scattered over Germany the first
seeds of political life. It came upon many
of these speculators like a cry of fire in the
night; and in the spirit of the man who, thus
roused, reminded his landlady that he was
only a lodger, they turned round disgusted
at the tumult, and went on studying or sleep-
ing as before. It was not, in their view, an
event to affect "humanity." Such men for-
got that, in waters so much troubled, wave
must follow wave till they whitened with
their foam the inmost bay of the most distant
shore. But others ceased to think abstract-
edly of the universe of men as their brethren,
and began to remember that they had a

Amidst these new excitements, of great public peril and anxiety, Ludwig Tieck grew into manhood. For any satisfactory account of his early or of his later years, it is as yet premature to hope. He was born at Berlin in 1773, one year later than his friend Wackenroder. They grew up together, and their friendship lightened the troubles and enhanced the delights of theirsuccessive terms in the Friedrich- Werderschen Gymnasium.

In 1792, Tieck was freed from its restraint, and doubtless, like other youths, hailed that day as the happiest of his existence, which

saw him leave Berlin for the freedom and man- | less, selfish course, driving him to the last bood of university life. At Halle he wrote extreme of hatred against his fellow-creapoetry with his friend, and studied jurispru-tures, whom he has perpetually ill-treated, dence. In 1795, he published his first novel, and, notwithstanding his boasted wisdom. William Lovell, and many would be the has never understood. His language, often hours of anxious hope and busy cogitation, overflowing with forcible poetic images, is in committing his first vessel to the winds the utterance of an intense, impassioned naand waves of criticism. Wackenroder's ture, wandering without helm or compass. Herzensergiessungen, &c., appeared in 1797, The remembrance of the book is like that of but the same year in which Tieck rejoiced in some passionately wild Adagio, and the keyhis friend's success, he had also to mourn his note, through every modulation, is, "he who death. Tieck afterwards edited his principal perfectly knows himself will hold mankind remains. At the close of his academic for monsters." Tieck has spoken of this course, Tieck travelled throughout England work as "the mausoleum of many cherished and Italy, reaping much advantage from griefs and errors." It is a chaos of sentiliterary intercourse, as well as from the new ments, many of them characteristic of the world of observation thus opened to him. In Romanticists generally, showing how Tieck 1819, he returned to Germany, and some had come under the influence of their modes six years afterwards was appointed counsel of thought, and had adopted their views of lor of court, and one of the directors of the life. At the same time, however, in the Dresden theatre. In 1842, he was invited character of Lovell he censures indirectly by Frederick William of Prussia to his pal- some of their wilder extremes. It is not ace of Sans Souci, and made that neighbor- our purpose to enter further upon the plan of hood his frequent residence until his death this story, or of Tieck's other early novels, in 1853. Abdallah and Peter Lebrecht.

The former, like William Lovell, is obviously the production of an undeveloped period, distracted with unanswered questions, social and moral. But, like the first novels of Goethe, it told with force upon the contemporary waste of commonplace. What is there which ought not to have come like a godsend upon readers accustomed only to stories of shallow feeling, of goodness with

ness? The numerous lovers of fiction had great cause for gratitude on their deliverance from such bookmakers as Miller of Ulm, J. G. Miller of Itzhoe, Jünger, Grossmann, and Bretzner, who, from the influence they had gained over large uneducated numbers, were a stumbling-block in the way of all enlightenment and true taste.

William Lovell is a novel in the form of letters interchanged between its various characters, and by this epistolary method, (if method it may be called,) the story is made to bound like an India-rubber ball from hand to hand, till readers of but moderate perseverance are well-nigh driven to despair. He presents us with letters of every imaginable species-the sensible, the philosophical, the amusing, the rhodomontade, the lover's let-out strength, or of sentiment without goodter and the lawyer's, the letter of the old friend and of the old servant. The hero appears at the commencement of the story as an enthusiastic, excitable Englishman, full of sensibility and extravagance. Every letter glows with high-wrought sentiment and rhetorical exaggeration. His views of men and things are purely subjective. He judges all actions and opinions from his own internal standard, viewing them as noble or despicable, right or wrong, according to the state of mind which fortune or misfortune may have induced at the date of that particular letter. He passes under the control of each successive acquaintance, till at last, under the pressure of adverse circumstances too rough for his feeble will, and guided by the wild counsels of a certain Italian named Rosa, he plunges into every excess, sinks deeper and deeper in shame and guilt, and while at once impiously skeptical and childishly credulous, strives to stifle conscience by the bravadoes of a misanthropic and sensual Epicureanism. Retribution follows his heart

Two years after the publication of William Lovell appeared Peter Lebrecht and Peter Lebrecht's Marchen. In 1797, Tieck produced his dramatic versions of the old popular tales, Bluebeard and Puss in Boots. Of these we shall speak presently. In 1798 appeared the novel which he had commenced shortly before the death of his friend Wackenroder, The Wanderings of Franz Sternbald. We are unwilling to tell this story at length, since we should spoil the pleasure of some who may be induced, we trust, to read the work itself. It is certainly one of the most excellent novels in the German language. The beauty of the characters, the poetry of the style, the conversations upon