The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Religion." And for ourselves, we have not the least idea of abandoning
these honored words either to superstitious formalists or handsome
scoundrels.
We have no such respect for the Devil as Mr. James has expressed for him,
even when transformed into the gentleman and utilized for beneficent
purposes. Nor do we see how the gap in Mr. James's argument is to be
closed up, while he avows his belief in the eternity of the hells, and yet
holds that we are _ab intra_ the unqualified creations of God. Again, we
should take exception to his favorite position, or, rather, the batteries
he opens from it, that saints and scoundrels are not different in the
sight of God, allowing the sense which alone, of course, he intends,
different _in se_.
But the merits of the book, as one of the noblest and profoundest
contributions to philosophy which have been produced, are undeniable. Mr.
James possesses two qualities in very rare combination, the power of
subtile metaphysical analysis and the power of picturesque representation,
so that, while he tasks the thinking faculty of his readers to the utmost,
he chains their attention by the fascination of his rhetoric. His sturdy
honesty is everywhere apparent, and his success the most complete which we
have yet witnessed in rescuing Philosophy from her degrading bondage to
Sense, and restoring her to the divine service of Revelation.
_The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, with Remarks on
Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation._ By SIR CHARLES LYELL,
F.R.S., Author of "The Principles of Geology," "Elements of Geology,"
etc., etc. Illustrated by Wood-Cuts. 8vo. Philadelphia: George W. Childs.
Human bones from time to time have been discovered associated with those
of extinct hyenas and cavern-bears, and specimens of them were in the
Museum of the Garden of Plants in Paris as long ago as 1829; but there was
then a doubt among geologists as to the human bones being coeval with the
bones with which they were associated, it being supposed that they might
have been washed into crevices of the rocks in which the bone-breccias are
found, and there, being incrusted with carbonate of lime, had the false
appearance of being as ancient as the fossil bones of extinct animals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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