The Sun.
London, England, 1846-03-16 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

KNIGHT'S BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY OF
PHILOSOPHY. Series from Bacon to the present
day..

This volume embraces Berkeley's Idealism, Hume's
Sceptism, and many other " isms," to which such men
as Condillac, Reid, Cant, and Fichte gave a temporary
interest, though only to a very small portion of the com-
munity. The subject is extremely uninteresting, for it
exhibits men, of great minds we admit, disputing about
subjects which are beyond their comprehension, and
occasionally quarrelling with each other, merely because
the language of the one is unintelligible, or misunder-
stood by the other. They fight with shadows, and, as
far as common readers can judge, would all be of the
same way of thinking, if they haft words sufficiently
definite to explain their meaning. It is necessary, how-
ever, to know something of these wars of ideas which
have made such a noise in the world, and the present brief
outline of that. nets held by those of modern times, drawn
up by Mr. E. H. Lewes, will be found well calculated for
the purpose. The result would lead to the conviction

that the men called metaphysicians have hitherto been
a most unprofitable race, and that the vortices of Des-
cartes, and the vagaries of Hegel, of which, in the
words of Dr. Ott, "absurdity is the basis," are just as
useful to society as all the rest put together. Mr.
Lewes, who seems to be of the same opinion, thus con-
cludes his remarks on the History of Philosophy :
" Modern philosophy staked its pretensions on the one
question: Have we any ideas independent of experier se ? This
was asking, in other worth, Have we any organum
philosophy?
" The answer always ends in a negative. If any one,
therefore, remain unshaken by the accumulated proofs this
History affords of the impossibility of philosophy, let him
distinctly bear in mind that the first problem he must solve
is, Have we ideas independent of experience? Let him solve
that ere he begins to speculate.
" And now, reader our task is done."

SCOTLAND—ITS FAITH AND ITS FEA-
TURES. By the Rev. Francis Trench. 2 'Ms.
This is a book without pretensions, and therefore it
disarms criticism. We cannot well conceive, however,
what objects the writer had in view, fir it gives little
or no new insight into either the faith or the features
of Scotland. We have, it is true, a long and tedious
account of the Auchterarder case and its results, with
an outline of the speeches made in the General Assembly
of the Free Church, held at Inverness last year ;
but all the details respecting these have already
been fully reported in the newspapers, from which, in-
deed, the reverend author admits he borrowed them.
And, as regards the features of the country, and the
habits of the people, the information is exceedingly
scanty, the remarks in general have no novelty, and we
search in vain for anything like a description of the sys-
tem of agriculture for which Scotland is so celebrated,
or any statistical details which can show that the country
has any peculiarities whatever. It is, in fact, a simple
diary which the writer made in his pony chaise, or at
the inns where be stopped on his way, interspersed oc-
casionally with amusing anecdotes, and with devout
meditations, which exhibit all the features of a sincere
Christian and a man of amiable dispositions.