Weekly national intelligencer., 1851-11-08

the introduction OF words whose vagueness is limit
ed by no conceivable meaning-words which, as
the clown says in Shskspeare's Twelfth Night,
have become very rascals since bonds dsgraced
them, and have grown SO false that one is 10th to
prove reason with them.o Bishop Berkeley, in
critcizing the new-dscovered calculus of Newton
and Leibnilz, said that their mathematical differen-
tals were the mere ghosts of departed quantities !;
and, in peruslng the dim and shadowy language of
the German metaphyscians, we can detect nothing
save the fitting and evanescent ghosts of departed
ideas, SO that, like the man in Plato's cave, we
must content ourselves with looking at mere sha-
dows while our back is turned 10 the light.
To returnfrom our DEPRESSION twoud thus seem
that the science of mind rests precarious foun-
dation, and we have but reflect on the once over
shadowing reputation of Hobbies and Locke in Eng
land, of Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibntz on
the continent in order to realize how unstable has
been the fame Of its votares or, to come down TO
later period, il is evident that the cautious school
of Scotch metaphysicians is rapidly being cast into
the shade by the prodigious shadows projected
across all Europe from the German philosophy,
where the fame of Kant has paled before that of
Fichte, while Fichte has been superseded by Sche-
ling, who, in turn, has been displaced by Hegel,
who seemed for time, like the rod Of Moses, to
have swallowed up all the small fry of metaphy-
sicians, when To- he has since his death been dvid-
ed into host of Hegelians on the right hand and
the eft, each conending and quarrelling about the
exposition of that system which their master said
on his death-bed no two men in Germany under
stood. And, after ALL where are the trophies OF
mental science Though professedy prosecuted
in modern times by certain of its professors, ac-
cording to the Baconian method Of analysis and
induction it has not been enriched by any such dis
coveries as have enabled us to develop new re-
sources of power in the realm of mind, as physi-
cal science has done for us in the domsin of ma
ture; nor have even the barren and admitted facts
in psychology been so cnmulativeas in natural phi
losophy. In physics, the philosopher of one gene
ration mounts to higher discoveries on the shonl.
ders OF those who preceded him, and the discove-
res Of one age become but stepping for the
next. But in mental science it is far otherwise.
Here there is constant attempt to settle the fun
damental principles of the science on new basis
now on sensation, now on consciousness, now on
experience, and now on intuition. The philoso-
piers of antiquity do not seem to have attempted
so much to enumerate and classify the powers of
he mind as to develop certain themes of abstract
speculation, such as the beautiful and the good the
notions of entity and non-eny, the nature of par
ticuar and universal ideas, the conceptions of time
space, eternity, and SO forth and the schoolmen
of the middle ages followed their example, with
greater minuteness in the divisions of theit
subjects, and more tedious subtlety in their dis
QUESTIONS.
Bacon is not more the father of modern natural
science than he is of mental, for it is the method
of analysis which he expounded that has given
aim and direction to all subsequent thinkers. Des-
cartes, however, first attempted to do for mind what
Bacon had done for matter; and from the pregnant
philosophy of the gentleman, soldier, mathema-
tician, and sage" have sprung Maebranche in
France, Spinoza in Holland, Berkeley in Ireland
and Leibnitz in Germany. "For more than half
century," says Victor Cousin, g he reigned in all
Europe" and it requires but little perspcacity TO
trace the vision in God Of the Pere Malebranche,
the idealism Of Berkeley, the God-intoxication'
az Novalis prQlancly calls il. Of Spinoza, and the
pre.established harmony Of Leibniiz to the teach
ings Of Renes Descartes.
Benedict Originally Baruch) Spnoza was born
in Amsterdam, November "a, 1852. His parents
were Portuguese Jews, and of course instructed
him in all the wisdom of rabbinical lore, for which,
however, he early began to manifest disresh, in
somuch that at the age Of twenty years he renounc-
ed the Talmud, and, what was worse, the Bible ef
his fathers. His contumacy and unbeliet finally
procured his expulsion from the synagogue; ; after
which he passed his time as quietly as possible in
the manual labor of polishing optical glasses, and
in the study of metaphysics, sometimes shutting
himself up in the same room for months, supply
ing the natural wants Of the body at four and half
sous per day, drinking only one quart of wine per
month, and relaxing his mind from severer pursuits
in the study of insects, smoking occasionally, says
the simple Colerus, one of his bographers, pipe
of tobacco, or else, when he wished still further to
refresh his mind hunting up spiders, which he pit
ted in battle with each other, or sometimes cast
flies into their webs, and would watch the struggle
that ensued with so much pleasure that he could
scarcely contain himself for laughter. All this
Herr Orelli finds above all praise; this, says he,
was realizing indeed the phosophic and contem-
plative life of the sage! Especially his entomolo-
gical studies, we suppose, beyond all dispute.
Spinoza died of asthma disease which Hegel
wittily says seems to pervade his philosophy, de-
privng its wheeling body of all life and energy.
He died February %, 1877.
Spinoza commenced his philosophical career by
the publication of work in which he attempted to
demonstrate geomerically the Cartesian principles.
He next issued theological treatise, entitled
Tractaus Theologico-politcus," of the most skep-
tcal tendency. The "Ethca," which contains
what he was wont TO style " inca phiiosophia" was
not made public until after his death, when it was
issued by his friends Louis Meyer and Jarrig Jel
les, though il had been communicated previously,
to many individuals in the confidence of private
friendship, while yet in manuscript Another
posthumous treatise, under the title Of De Intel
iect0s Emendatione, though left incomplete, seems
TO have been commenced at an early period in his
philosophical studies, and contains in embryo the
method and substance Of his whole system as more
consecutively developed in his Ethics" Spinoza
has attempted in his Ethica'' to subject metaphy-
sizes to the rigor of geometrical demonstration. The