Then followed the words, beautifully simple, and beyond the harsh touch of criticism, of the friend tried and trusty, the companion in numberless scenes of triumph and disappointment, the sharer of his hopes and aspirations, the friend still nigh as he closed his eyes on this life, and thus he spoke :-"I feel that I cannot address the House on this occasion; but every expression of sympathy which I have witnessed has been most grateful to my heart. But the time which has elapsed since I was present, when the manliest and gentlest spirit that ever tenanted or quitted a human form departed this life, is so short, that I dare not even attempt to give utterance to the feelings by which I am oppressed. * * * ***"I have only to say that after twenty years of most intimate and almost brotherly friendship with him, I little knew how much I loved him until I found that I had lost him." What a grand dénouement to a noble story,-a life disinterestedly pure, unselfishly ambitious, active, and philanthropic, and a grave heaped with the regrets and mournful tributes of his sorrowing fellows, a requiem chanted with equal eagerness by political rivals, and toiling and sorrowing men for whom he had helped to make juster laws. We need not praise Mr. Cobden. The highest praise that can be given to any man is to follow in his footsteps. If we admire his career, let us step into the ranks and march with the noble host to do battle with antiquated folly and traditionary error. But though we would not praise him, the following chaplet, intended for another more illustrious but not nobler bier, is so truthful that we offer no apology for quoting it : "We have lost him! He is gone: NAM DER. The Reviewer. Recent British Philosophy; a Review, with Criticisms, including some Comments on Mr. Mill's Answer to Sir W. Hamilton. By DAVID MASSON. London and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. As a critic of great depth and power, as a historian competently furnished with copious knowledge of facts and a fine expository tact, as a biographer of singular industry and enormous patience, as an editor at once judicious and independent, and as a professor of much energy, ardour, and thoroughness, David Masson has made himself well known; and even in the wider fields of politics it is consistent with our information to assert that he is a man of mark. In this volume he appears as a philosopher, not as an expounder of original views, but as a recorder and a reviewer of the thoughts and opinions held by the most notable of the contributors to the advancement of "recent British philosophy." The substance of this book was delivered as lectures at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, but it is throughout largely increased in bulk and in accuracy of reference, and contains a very good supplementary review of the progress of speculative thought in Britain from the days of Coleridge and Bentham to the present time. The first chapter contains "A survey of thirty years," in about as many pages, including a "conspectus of recent writers and writings." Little of importance is said in the introduction, and the conspectus is by no means so complete as it might (perhaps we should say, ought to) have been. If Lowndes, McCosh, and Wilkinson be deemed worthy of note and comment, Professor G. Boole, Professor W. A. Butler, and Dr. J. G. MacVicar ought not to have been omitted. If it was found advisable to introduce the names of Professors Veitch, Baynes, and Arnold, those of Professors Cairns, Spalding, and Hoppus might have been added. If B. H. Smart, P. C. MacDougall, and Henry Calderwood require record, Richard Congreve, Charles Bray, and Peter Baynes deserved it equally. We might add too, as not unworthy of note, Thomas Hope, Thomas Doubleday, J. R. Morell, F. Heywood, and J. M. D. Meiklejohn, translator of Kant; J. W. Blakesley, biographer of Aristotle; P. E. Dove, author of the "Theory of Human Progression;" F. Espinasse, biographer of Voltaire; Sir A. Grant, George Moore, Wm. Maccall, Wm. Smith (Gravenhurst), J. R. Beard, Wm. Fleming, &c. Such names ought not to be absent from a conspectus which includes Combe, Bailey, Rogers, Taylor, and Buckle._Even the conspectus itself is incomplete in its references, e. g., Lewes' "Aristotle," Veitch's "Translations of Descartes," Morell's " "Logic," 66 &c., are not mentioned. All the more is this a relevant matter, because the conspectus professes to be "statistical and not critical," for incomplete statistics is worse than incomplete criticism. The second chapter treats of "The Traditional Differences: how repeated in Carlyle, Hamilton, and Mill.” "The differences among philosophers hitherto may be resolved ultimately into (1), a difference of psychological theory, accompanied by (2), certain differences of cosmological conception, all subject to or ending in (3), a difference in respect of ontological faith," p. 30. There are, in the first, experimentalists and transcendentalists; in the second, nihilists, materialists, natural realists, constructive idealists, pure idealists, and advocates of absolute identity; in the third there are noumenalists and phenomenalists. These various forms of the outcome of thought are sketched and differenced with some accuracy and great boldness of touch. In relation to these three differences Professor Masson reviews Hamilton, Carlyle, and Mill, placing the two former in the ranks of the transcendentalists, and naming the latter an experimentalist. He refuses to allocate the cosmological conception of Carlyle, but he gives Hamilton to natural realism and Mill to constructive idealism. They both negative ontology, but Hamilton has ontological beliefs, while in Mill these are repressed, or rather unexpressed. "The result historically is that, during the greater portion of the last thirty years, the most prominent rival leaders in formal or systematic British speculation have been two philosophers, one of whom may be described as a transcendental natural realist, forswearing ontology, but with much of the ontological passion in his temper; and the other as an empirical idealist, also repudiating ontology, but doing so with the ease of one in whom the ontological feeling was at any rate suppressed or languid," p. 166. The third chapter considers the effects of recent scientific conceptions on philosophy." 66 66 Not a new scientific discovery can be made, not a new scientific conception can get abroad, but it exercises a disturbing influence on the previous system of thought, antiquating something, disintegrating something, compelling some readjustment of the parts to each other, some trepidation of the axis of the whole. Sometimes the action is almost revolutionary," p. 168. This thesis is fully illustrated, and the tendency noted of science to lead to materialism or idealism; at the same time he thinks he perceives a "blind struggling towards a logic that should profess to unite the two extremes, and intervolve the thought of nothing, inextricably, by a law of the intellect, with the thought of absolute being,” p. 232. Chapter fourth shows us the "latest drifts and groupings." The parties grouped are (1), Thomas Carlyle, Isaac Taylor, Dr. Whewell, Dr. Newman, Mr. Maurice, and Professor Newman, who "have inwound their speculations with theological questions and controversies," at whom, therefore, Mr. Masson considers it inexpedient to glance as their merits demand; (2), the British Comtists-Lewes, Miss Martineau, and Mr. Buckle; (3), Professor Bain and Mr. Herbert Spencer: (4), Hamiltonians--Mansel, McCosh, Lowndes, Cairns, Fraser, Veitch, Baynes; (5), Professor Ferrier and J. H. Stirling; (6), Swedenborgianists and Spiritualists; and a section is devoted to a consideration of Mill and Hamilton, founded on the recently published examination of the philosophy of the latter by the former. In this he says, "Mr. Mill's estimate of Sir William Hamilton's intellect and of the worth of his services to British thought seems to me lower than was to be expected from so fit a judge, p. 302. One of Sir Wm. Hamilton's peculiar points he touches off finely, viz., "his preference for philosophy, considered as a gymnastic for the soul, over philosophy considered as a purveyor of available truths. The toil, the labour, the pain of philosophizing seemed to him valuable, apart from any teachable results," p. 308. Professor Masson thus explains Mr. Mill's philosophical place and stand-point: "Mr. Mill cosmologically is now a cogitationist. The ultimate fact of the phenomenal world, as recognized by him, is neither matter nor mind, in any present sense of these terms, but a cogitation or coagulation of phenomena which may be called feelings, out of which cogitation or coagulation it has happened, in virtue of the laws regulating it, that there is now that stupendous fact of all present or at least of all human-sentiency, the instinctive furling off, in every conscious or perceptive act, of a conceived external world of possibilities from a conscious and persisting personality. If we stop at this fact-which we may do for most practical purposes our cosmological system may be that of the new Constructive Idealism; but if we persevere in the analysis, we end in cogitationism," p. 345. Prof. Masson advances the following objection to Mr. Mill's philosophy: "He provides no room or function whatever for belief as distinct from knowledge." If we assert a deity it must be as a legitimate inference from the phenomena of our experience; if we predicate certain attributes or actions of this deity, these also must be rational inferences from the facts that come within our observation, investigated according to the ordinary principles of reasoning. In other words, if theism and theology are to sustain themselves at all, it can only be by the à posteriori argument, and not by any form or forms of the à priori one," p. 394. Many other ideas of worth and moment are given in the course of his critique. Is this excursus in philosophy, then, such as to warrant us in awarding to Professor Masson an equal place as a philosopher to that which he has already acquired as an historian, biographer, politician, critic, &c. We hesitate to affirm so. He possesses and manifests insight, but we do not think it is philosophic insight. The argumentation of philosophy he can use and represent, but he does not seem to have wrought out within his own soul a scheme of thought a system of philosophy. As the work of a spectator of the philosophic strife, however, it forms a good and trustworthy report and criticism. The Topic. IS THE OUT-DOOR EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN REPREHENSIBLE? AFFIRMATIVE. THE out-door employment of women is reprehensible. 1. It withdraws them from their domestic duties, on the proper fulfilment of which so much is dependent, and which cannot be neglected without family suffering ensuing, both physically, mentally, morally, and pecuniarily. The youngest children are left in the care of one not much older than themselves. In addition to suffering from bad nursing, they are often drugged with narcotics, and are thus in various ways injured for life. The good old adage, “A stitch in time saves nine," is disregarded. Clothes mending is neglected, and poverty, rags, and distress are the consequences, to an extent which is not counterbalanced by the wages of out-door employment. Proper food is not provided for the family, who suffer physically in consequence. By the absence of the mother proper restraints are removed from the children, and moral deterioration is the result. Sufficient time is not afforded for keeping the home clean, and physical injury and mental debasement follow. The home is not made so comfortable for the husband as it should be, and he is driven to the alehouse or some other hurtful place of resort for comfort. 2. It operates against the employment of men, who are necessarily displaced by the employment of women. This is one cause of so many men being unoccupied. Thus the right condition of things is turned upside down. Men are set at liberty that their place may be occupied by women, who are taken from their proper sphere, which men cannot fill. In a right arrangement of things both men and women would have their appropriate employment,-men out of doors and women within doors. 3. The daily mingling of large numbers of men and women together is attended with demoralizing effects. In these large numbers there are some who are greatly depraved, and whose influence depraves others.-S. S. Out-door labour performed by women ought most certainly to be kept as much as possible out of the usages of society. Home is woman's sphere. The rough and toilsome labours of agriculture or of the fictile manufactures are not fitted for their frames, still less for their moral nature is the rude conduct often indulged in among out-door labourers. The poetry of the hayfield reads very nicely; but those who have witnessed the reality, and those who know the pernicious influences floating like a moral miasma over the new-mown hay, will hesitate before they assert that anything can be more reprehensible than field labour for women, except those forms of out-door work which are practised in the pottery, at the coalpit head, and in the brickfield. Any wage labour engaged in by women lessens the entire wages of the whole of the labourers engaged in that particular line of industry; as the tendency is always to draw down wages to the lowest point while women, lured on by the hope of higher wages, are led to engage in unfeminine labour. The distinctions of sex thus get obliterated in the association of those labourers, and the unsexed workers vie with each other in profligacy and vice. The home is injured in every way, and society has thrown upon it continually a spawn of illegitimacy, pauperism, and the heathenism of our complex social system continues to increase, so that wo |