Contemporary Literature [pp. 395-424]

412 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. LApril,
descent by different streams, they spring from a common elevated source;
that the race has a unity of origin; that instead of beginning as a grade of
monkeys, and with a religion of fetishism, they were created in the image,
and with the knowledge and worship, of the one living and true God.
Half Truths and the Truth. Lectures on the Origin and Development
of Prevailing Fon~s of Unbdief, etc. By Rev. J. M. MANNING, D.D.,
Pastor of the Old South Church, Boston, and Lecturer on the Relations of
Christianity to Popular Infidelity, at Andover Theological Seminary.
Boston: Lee & Shepard. Error is made specious to a large extent by
the truth there is in it; but its truths are only " Half-Truths;" the whole
truth is in Christianity. This is the general idea under which Dr. Manning, in these Lectures, discusses in a very effective, candid and popular
way, the subject of Pantheism, especially in its modern phases. It is on
the whole an able and excellent treatise; the best of the kind to put, for
example, into the hands of young men, who are likely to be led astray
by Pantheism in its literary forms. Scientific refutations of Pantheism
abound; a work was needed to strip off the specious gloss with which it
is invested by those who retail the poison, sugar-coated, in essays, lectures
and reviews.
Dr. Nilanning is a student and thinker. He has investigated the subjects on which he writes. But he turns his knowledge to use. Almost
any reader could get from this volume a fair idea of the real principles of
Spinoza, and of the pantheistic theories in the later German philosophy,
as well as of the underlying sense of Carlyle's hero-worship and of Emerson's mystic oracles. But he can also obtain an insight into the men and
the tendencies they represent, as the latter come out in literature, art and
life. And this is just what many need to see. The author is eminenily
candid; he calls no hard names; he rests the truth on its own merits; he
gives clear expression to the contrast between truth and error. We might
differ from him on some questions of interpretation, for example as to
J~ant and Hegel; nor are we convinced that Theodore Parker was pan- theistic in his tendencies, etc. But the work is conscientious and well
done. The concluding chapter on the Strength and Weakness of Pantheism is an excellent summary.
The ScIence of ~sthetics; 0)', the Nature, A~nds, Laws, and Uses
of Beauty. By HENRY N. DAY. New Haven: Chatfield & Co. We
receive this volume just as we are going to press, and cannot now do
much more than announce its publication, and commend it to the atten tion of all who are interested in ~sthetic studies. It is, in fact, the first
systematic attempt, in American or English philosophy, to bring all the
topics that belong to ~sthetics into a single treatise, developed out of
the essential idea and laws of the beautiful itself. Such works abound in
Germany and France, but somehow the English mind has not yet got
hold of the subject in its truly scientific form. Professor Day attempts