The Press. — London, England, 1856-12-06 00:00:00

DECEMBER 6, 1856. lisation; while the future, under the actual system, is misery by repression. The whole case is so fairly stated in this extract, that we are persuaded our readers will pardon its length. The question remains, what is to be done with India? If we persist in treating it as a conquered country, i n r e gar ding it as a military colony, there is great danger, whatever public works may be under taken, that the people, whose material prospe rity must in the long run bo inseparable from th e material prosperity of the country, will languish and decline under our rule. There may be danger in the opposite system,—in holding, that is, the government of India in trust for the benefit of the people ; in consi dering that the country belongs substantially to those who inhabit it ; and in endeavouring by every means in our power to cultivate their faculties, and to improve their physical and social state. But where our duty is so clearly traced out, no thought of eventualities should prevent our fulfilling it The material and moral well-being of one hundred and thirty millions of people is too sacred a charge to be sacrificed either to purely selfish interests or to timid fears. That policy should be unhesita tingly pursued which promises most advantage to the people. In India the Government is all-powerful—all measures of amelioration must proceed from it ; and it is for this coun try, with the fate of India in its hands, to seriously consider what system of government can best be administered there. The states. man who shall take up this great question with earnestness and reverence, devoting to its solution all his faculties, and appealing to the enlightened genius of this country to sup port him, would become the great man of his age. The harvest to be reaped is abundant ; the labourers are but few. It is instructive, in following Mrs. Speir through her history of the ancient life of India, to mark the numerous passages indicative of the good disposition of the people of India, and of their capacity for the highest arts of life. In their epic poems the highest and most generous virtues are inculcated ; their codes, though disfigured by most singular distinctions as to caste, are most urgent in commanding reward for the good, punish- ment for the bad, and the observance of strict rules of justice. Such industrial arts as agriculture, banking, and various kinds of manufactures, were held in honour in the earliest periods of their history. Insu rance of goods, travelling either by land or sea, was known long previous to the Christian era. Thousands of years ago the natives of India had discovered means by which the colourable matter of the InOigo plant " might " be extraeted, oxygenated, and precipitated from all the other matters combined with it." Their skill in the manufacture of iron and steel was still more remarkable : Dr. Royle expresses astcnishment that " a primitive people could have overcome the difficulties of smelting iron and of forging steel," and that the difficulties were overcome at a very remote period we have evidence. . . It has lately been discovered that the far-famed Damascus blades were of Indian steel manufactured in the west of India. . . The Hindu method of boiling iron and green leaves and wood together in a closed crucible appears to excel even the methods most approved at Glasgow and Sheffield, for Mr. Heath sass, "that iron is converted into cast steel by the natives of India in two hours and a half, while at Sheffield it requires at least four hours to melt blistered steel." . . . . From the countries on the Indus also came some of the most beautiful specimens of arms exhibited in the Crustal Palace in 1t351, where'' a dagger with pearls let into the centre of its blades," " a dagger containing another within it," and "a dagger open. mg With tive blades," were all sent by the Rajah of Pattiala. which is a Sikh principality within the province of Delhi. In another art, the granite rocks in the now " silent quarries of Bijanugur still . show dis " tinctly the marks of the chisels that hewed " out the huge blocks with which the grandest "of old Indian cities was constructed." The elaborate splendour of their architecture is well known. In the science of astronomy they were peculiarly skilful. " The lofty dial and extraordinary mural instruments for as ,. tronomical purposes near Delhi immortalise the memory of the Raja Jeyor Jaya Sing, who reigned from 1699 to 1743 " In metaphysics Hindoo philosophers anticipated the specula tions of the most subtle German investigators. I n medicine the high attainment of Hindoo Practitioners, was attested by the flourishing THE PRESS. schools in Calcutta and other places. " And," concludes Mrs. Speir : That India has not lost her ancient skill in arts and manufactures, we have had ample evidence in the exquisite muslins, embroideries, shawls, and kincobs, the dyes and scents, the magnificent carved furniture, the gold and silver filagree, the trophies of jewelled arms, and other attractions of the Indian department of our Great Exhibi tion in 1851, and that of Paris in 1855. We have dwelt on these details, because there is a dispositicn on the part of the modern school of Indian politicians to depre ciate the capacity of the native character. From this disposition Mrs. Speir is not quite free. She thinks that the learned and gene rous Rammohun Roy and the sagacious and open-minded Dwarkanath Tagore are no more average specimens of Hindoos than Robert Burns or Robert Bloomfield are of British ploughmen. Granted. But because the agricultural class does not every day produce eminent poets, is it, therefore, unfit for the ordinary and indispensable work which it has to perform ? The Hindoo character is singu larly docile, and it is, besides, both ingenious and patient. It wants force for the higher enterprises of life, but it is peculiarly adapted to succeed in trading and commercial opera tions, and in all industrial arts. It has, also, when fair opportunity is afforded, a great faculty of acquisition; and this desire of pro perty in every shape may be made, under a generous system of government, a lever for raising the social state of the people, and for developing the resources and increasing the wealth of the country. . . _ The volume of Mrs. Speir is beautifully printed and illustrated. She has been careful to collect her materials for the ancient life of India from the most authentic native sources, and has produced a volume in which research and reflection are happily blended with—so far as the subject with allow—a popular style of treatment. Media'val Philosophy; or, a Treatise of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century. By F. D. Maurice, M.A. London : Griffin and Co. WE cannot attempt within our present limits more than a purely descriptive notice of Mr. Maurice's new volume. A scientific examina tion of the doctrines there expounded would be foreign to our office ; while to test the accuracy of Mr. 'Maurice's statements would involve an inquiry, not indeed out of the critic's province, but wholly beyond the scope of the journalist. In the second volume of this series Mr. Maurice had concluded his account of the later Greek philosophers, and, in order to make each department complete, had brought down his inquiries some years later than the commencement of the volume before us. He now turns his attention to the Latin philoso phers, or Feh o olm en properly so called, and, retracing his steps fur about a century, intro duces us first to the writings of Boethius. Boethius was the founder of the mediaeval scholasticism. Born of a distinguished Roman family, and Minister to Theodorie the Goth, he grafted on to the speculative character of Greek philosophy the practical tone both of his race and his profession. His " Quadrivium," which formed the basis of medieval educa tion, consisted of astronomy, geometry, arith metic, and music. He was also the great cham pion of what is commonly known as the scho lastic logic. He declared in favour of the most decided form of Realism—that, namely, which holds that universals (or, at least, as Mr. Mansel qualifies it, genera and species) are substances, and not mere notions ; awl he also boldly maintained the exclusive utility of deduction in the discovery of truth. The prominent figure in Mr. Maurice's second chapter is Johannes Scotus, or John the Irishman ; but before making us more particularly acquainted with that worthy, he offers his readers some valuable observations on the general aspect of the age. He contends that the study of logic, in spite of its abuses, was of inestimable service in the cause of intellectual culture : If he [the student of rhetoric] had not been reminded by his studies that words themselves are subject to laws ; it lugic and grammar had not become the principal and most characteristic parts of his culture ; be would have 1169 been more liable than he was to abuse them as mere instru ments of his craft . After a long criticism of the opinion advanced by M. Guizot on the creed of Johannes, Mr. Maurice proceeds to give his own exposition of his tenets. In his works is to be found the completest exhibition of Christian Pla tonism. His doctrine of " primordial causes " is exactly that of Plato's Nisi, accommodated to the revealed notion of God. But there is another point in the teaching of Johannes which wo doubt not has contributed largely towards the favorable verdict passed on him by Mr. Maurice. He denies the eternity of punishment : Wherefore ( says the Doctor), if evil and death and misery is repugnant to the nature that has been so formed, neither is constituted in Him who is the cause of all things. I wonder on what principle you deliberate and hesitate, thinking that evil and the death of eternal torments can remain for ever in that humanity the whole of which the Word of God took into Himself and re deemed. In the third chapter, embracing the tenth and eleventh centuries, Lanfranc and Anselm, successively Primates of England, are chosen as representative men. We are now approach• ing a period in which the Church assumes a more prominent position in connection with philosophy ; and accordingly we find that Lanfranc and Anselm were both monks. The mind of the former was imbued with the notion of law and obedience. Though au Italian by birth, he thoroughly adopted the Norman temper : He was maintaining not only what seemed to him, but what really was, the great secret of the power which the Norman scholar, as well as the Norman warrior, was exer cising in that day. All his victories were owing to his caring more for the commands of the superior than fur any judgment of his own. An amusing anecdote is told of Lanfranc'a humility : While he was reading aloud one day at the table, the presiding monk, who was probably a Norman, and, like Herlwin, knew more of swords than of the quantities of words, corrected him for sayin g docere. The learned Italian immediately shortened the middle syllable, " knowing," his biographer says, " that he owed more obedience to Christ than to Donatus ; that it was not a capital crime to violate prosody, but that not to obey one who commanded him in the name of God, was a serious error." As neither, however, of these two schoolmen helped either to introduce any new doctrine, or settle any controverted one, in the moral and metaphysical philosophy of their day, we shall hasten on to the twelfth century and the memorable heresies of Abelard. The two points in which Abelard was at variance with the orthodoxy of the day were in logic, the nature of universals ; in theology, the nature of the Trinity. The doctrine in vogue among the Realists of the twelfth cen tury was that the universal exists in every individual—that is, that there is a certain universal essence of humanity, in virtue of which man is what he is, which exists in every individual equally, who differ indeed in the qualities which make one man Socrates and another Plato, but in no other way. Abelard's objection to this theory is, says Mr. Maurice, " obvious and plausible," but he does not give us his own opinion of its real value. Why may not Socrates, says Abelard, in this case be at Rome and at Athens at the same time ? For, whatever the universal thing receives, it receives in its whole quantity ; and, therefore, when the universal man receives the form of Socraticity, wherever man is Socrates must be. This objection certainly is plausible, but it seems to us to beg the question at issue. Why are we to believe that whatsoever the universal thing receives it receives in its whole quantity? This is a point, at all events, which Mr. Maurice should explain ; but he does not. A subsequent modification of realism, adopted by his antagonist, William of Champeaux, was answered by Abelard with equal ingenuity; but the above specimen will probably satisfy our readers. His own opinions, though certainly not identical with the naked nominalism of later times, appear, as far as we can judge from Mr. Maurice's ex position, to have very little in common with the modern theory of conceptualism. But we must take the opportunity of observing that Mr. Maurice, never, perhaps, a very lucid critb:, has in this volume added to the diffi culty of understanding him by writing too exclusively from his own intellectual standing- • ■