Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1851-11-15
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.

NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.
Spinozas Leben und Lehre Nebst einem Abrisse der
Schelne schen uDd Hegeschen Phlosophie Won Conrad
Won Orelli. Professor Gymnasium in Zurich. (Spi-
noza's Life and Doctrine with a sketch of Schellipg'
and Hegels Philosophy, BY Conrad Won Oreli, &c
Pantheism. says Victor Cousin, the great ex-
FOUNDER of Eclectcism in philosophy, is the ascrip-
ZION OF Divinity to the All, to the great whole OF
external nature and of mind, considered as God.
The Universe God, as st. Simon terms his ideal
Deity, is the god Of pantheistc dolatry. That
much of what is called pantheism at The present
day is only disguised and !" sugared" atheism,
will not il is presumed, be contested by any student
of the varying phases which the modern philosophy
and the rationalistic theosophy of Germany has
successfully assumed; for it is to Germany, the
land of wide and varied and profound eruditioD,
that look for the most authoritative and original
Developments in all departments Of human research.
But there is much in the history of panheism that
inclnes us to believe that il is the eldest of all the
the unaided wisdom Of man to The simpler faith of
antiquity, however, this universal deism some
thing more and better than wrangling and cispu-
tatious theology; for in those times, as conrasted
with poly theism, pan,hesm was as much its supe-
rior as is Christianity i'll our day when cOntrasted
with the revived pantheism which stares at US from
behind the ysors of German logomachists. The
origin and prevalence of this religious system in
those countries which ancient scripture and modern
ethnography alike prove to have been the cunabula
GENTS humane, sufficiently attest its antiquity, so
that oorAainIy i~~e'5h ~s~i.-< sie P-~-
theists in terms similar to those with which the old
Egyptian priest is represented in Plato's Timaeus
to have addressed Scion: when speaking dispsrage-
ingy OF the Greeks, he told him they were all
g mere children in understanding" and taxed them
with possessing no ancient faith grounded on old
tradition, and no science rendered hoary by time"
The religion of Egypt, the mother of science and
civilization, seems to have possessed pantheistic
element as the substratum Of its esoteric prin-
cples, while in its exoteric or popular forms it
stopped to the most grovelling and debasiDg poly
iheism, deifying alike the onion among vegetables
and the sacred crocodile among animals it was
the panihestic side Of the Egyptian religion which
taught that common principle ran through all
nature, and t" linked in bonds of brotherhood the
beetle and the man.
Among the doing Soofees of Persia, and the
contemplatve Brahmins Of India, panheism seems
to have been the highest religious development;
and of the Greeks, Pythagoras seems to have been
the recognised expounder to his counrymen of this
oriental theology. Virgil, in his " Georges" al
ludes to the Pylhagorean philosophy, in lines fami
liar to every school-boy:
Esse spibus partem dvinae ments ct baustus
AetheTeos dixere: Deum namque ire per
Terrasque, tactusque msris, coeunque protundum.
Hnc Fecudes, armaia. vros, genus omne ferarum;
Quemque sbi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas
Scilicet hue reddi dende, &C resoIua referri,
Omna mor locum sed viva voare
Sideris in numerum, stque alto succedere colo.
If our readers will pardon the pedantry of ano-
ther quotation from later Latin poet, we will
venture to ranscribe the following from Lucan's
Pharsalia:
Est ne Del sedes nisi terra ct pontus ct aer,
Et c9!um, ct virtus Superos guild quaerimus ultra
Jupiter quodcunque vides quoJcurque movers Lib 9.
During the middle ages, under the long preva-
lence of the Aristotlelan philosophy, when men
seemed intent on frlttering away all knowledge into
endless and infnitessmal subdivisions, rather than
the discovery or conception Of wider grnrr ALI
cations, the name of pan,heism was scarcely ever
mentioned, except by way of allusion to few OF
the great Stagyries obiter dicta; as for instance
to the passage in which he asserts that wasps do
not, like bees, partake Of the divine nature, and
few others of similar tenor.
Our readers all know that there are those who
profess to believe in the doctrine of human per-
fectibility, and who fancy that they can descry in
the dim vista of futurity the reinstatement of tina,
golden age which the poets have feigned to be al
ready past and though for the present these 'reaIms
in arcady" seem, like those which Eneas sought
in Italy, to be semper cedenfia retro we are
confidently assured that "the progress will
eventually overtake them; for it is part of the
creed of these sanguine theorists that humanity in
the aggregate is making constant advancement to-
wards the "grand climacteric y which awaits it in
the full development of mans destiny. We hope,
on some future occasion, to examine more closely
into the merits of this historical progress of the
species towards ideal perfection, but for the pre-
sent must con6ne attention to one of those phe-
nomena in the world of mind which seems rather
to initiate against at least the continuity Of this
necessary development. According to DR.. Cans,
the italian philosopher Vico is the first who enun.
of history follow a law as fixed and necessary as
those which obtain in the physical world but the
whole subject has since been expanded and philoso-
phized upon by Montesquieu, Bossuet Leibnitz Les
sing, Kant Fchte, SchelliDg, the Scheges, Schiller,
William Won Humboldt, Cores, Stefens, Rosen-
krant, and last, though by no means least, that
greatest of Suabians," George William Frederick
Hegel and he who wishes to study the philosophy
of history, in its latest and purest form, cannot do
better than consult the pages of this Coryphaus of
German metaphysic.
In our preceding article on Spinoza and his sys-
tenn we took occasion to make favorable refer
ence TO the able translation of Spinoza's works bv
NJ. Emile Salsset From some remarks in the
Avant-propos' of the first volume of NJ Sais-
sets translation, we given very clearly to un-
derstand that he belongs to this school of necessta-
ran progresslsts IN history and philosophy. Ap-
parenty ANXIOUS to hin oIf from,