The grave of Hamlet, as seen in Denmark, is to the back of the mansion of Marienslust, about a stone's throw; you catch a view of the sea between a contiguous clump of trees planted in a circle, and it is noted by some scattered square stones of small size, which appear to have once served for a cenotaph, and which stand on a knoll or rising mound covered and surrounded by beech-trees. I could learn nothing of their history-they seem little respected or thought about by the inhabitants of Elsinore, but pious and romantic pilgrims have conveyed away considerable portions of them, and a few years will probably witness their total dispersion."

Such are favourable specimens of this light and lively work. To those who may contemplate a journey through the regions in which such glimpses have been taken, they will furnish hints, as regards routes, localities, and galleries of art; in respect of the last of these objects, however, chiefly as surface notices that may enable them to arrive at safer and more weighty conclusions for themselves than those which form the staple of Mr. Standish's speculations. One thing it may be particularly wise to bear in mind, viz. that the North is recommended for winter and the South for summer-visiting and travelling.

46

ART. VIII.-Man, in His Physical Structure and Adaptations. By ROBERT MUDIE, Author of "The Heavens," The Four Seasons," "The British Naturalist," &c. &c. London: Orr and Co. 1838. MAN has been the subject of innumerable books, and, no doubt, will continue a fertile theme for thousands of writers yet unborn. Directly or indirectly he may be said to be the object of all our spelations. His relation to the things and creatures around him, and to the Supreme Governor of the Universe, independently of his position in the van and at the head of all the beings which inhabit the earth, must for ever render him the grand rallying point for all philosophy. Mr. Mudie says in his preface, that "the real condition of Man can be known only from the study of the power, the wisdom, and the goodness of God, as displayed in the phenomena of nature." But, however much of truth may be in this we venture to assert that by inverting these terms a doctrine not less important and intelligible may be advanced, viz. that the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator can be known or judged of only or fully by us as displayed in the real condition of Man; so true do we find it that it is next to impossible to utter any proposition of a serious character which has not our being, our interests, or our destinies, in some way deeply involved and strongly recognised.

But all important as the subject of man is to man, and necessarily universal as it is, so long as he cannot be separated from the purposes or displays of any one phenomenon which can be witnessed by our race, it is quite possible to mystify by a multitude of words, by a diffuseness of arrangement and illustration,

not to speak of apparent paradoxes and inversions, such truths and facts as all may easily comprehend and act upon. We suspect that Mr. Mudie cannot on the present occasion stand exempted from this charge of verbosity and conglomeration. We suspect few will have patience even to read the volume from beginning to end, ingenious, brilliant, and eloquent though he often be; or, at least, should any one have the perseverance to do so, we question very much if any clear conception of the author's doctrines will thence be obtained. The pertinency and the tendency of a great portion of the work, will, we fear, be dimly perceived; while the painful conclusion will remain, that an extreme measure of self-complacency, and an air of acuteness and originality, along with truisms and abstruse metaphysics, have spoiled a hearty and generous purpose-perplexity combining with what is disagreeable to the general injury of the performance.

Mr. Mudie, we believe, has the honour of being what is understood by the phrase self-taught; and a high honour it is, especially when the superiority of this kind of education has been evidenced and illustrated by so many beautiful, engaging, and useful volumes as he has written. It is manifest from his several books that he is a man of great activity, of keen and close observation, and of an earnest temperament. He is conscious of his duties and responsibility as an author, and he uniformly has the happiness and the benefit of his species before his eyes. He thinks for himself, and despises the servility of those who dare not oppose the dogmas of the schools; nature and the Bible being his great text books. But with these text books such a mind and such habits as we have glanced at and supposed, will with far more likelihood of success employ themselves in descriptions of scenery, in the details of natural history, and in garnishing such narratives with affecting, rich, and arousing reflections, than in constructing a system of mental and moral philosophy. We really think, judging from the specimen before us, that although it be the first of a series of volumes which the author says are his favourites above all others that he has written, yet that in all probability they will be relished the least by the popular reader; while by him who has studied in academic halls, they will be deemed confused, overloaded with irrelevant or loosely connected matter, and with needless discussions, refutations, &c. Besides, the part before us is composed in one of the worst possible styles for philo sophical disquisition.

We find it would be a labour not much less bulky than his volume itself in its results, were we to endeavour to set Mr. Mudie right where we think he is wrong-to show him that he often guesses when he supposes he is demonstrating-or were to undertake the task of pointing out how frequently he repeats that which is universally known, in an egotistic and peculiar style that alone confers upon the matter the appearance of ingenuity and discovery. In

justice to him as well as in support of our own general observations, we shall, after letting him explain the object of the work, extract a few passages, without any particular regard to their connection; a connection which it would not always be very easy to establish or elucidate,

"The argument for which I have endeavoured to prepare the way," says our author, " is, that the human body is organized and adapted for purposes which cannot have their complete fulfilment in the present life. This," he continues, "will lead to the consideration of Intellectual Man in a second volume; and, as the doctrine of Intellect, and its necessary consequence, Immortality, are the foundation of morality in the individual, and of good order in society, two more volumes will be required to complete the whole subject, though each of the four will, by the avoiding of the formality of system, be an entire book without the others." Or his general scheme and analysis may be taken as more fully explained in the following order :

"We shall consider Man in four separate points of view, to the first of which we propose to confine the sequel of the present volume.

First, Physical Man. Under which designation we shall consider the structure, adaptations, and senses of the body, with some hints for the culture and improvement of the last; though, in the course of doing this, we shall probably be obliged to make some short and occasional references to other parts of the general subject.

'Secondly, Intellectual Man. This will carry us to a much greater length than the former, because this is the part of the compound nature of Man by means of which what has been once known, or in any way experienced by the individual, returns again when it is required, and often when it is not wanted, in what we call memory or suggestion.

Thirdly, Moral Man. In the first and second divisions of this subject, according to the method proposed, we shall necessarily be restricted, in a great measure, to that which Man is capable of doing and knowing, without much, if any, reference to the pleasurable or the painful effects which it may have upon the individual or others; but in this division we shall have to consider the emotions, in which chiefly our happiness or our misery lie, and which have reference to those with whom we are more intimately and personally connected, as well as to ourselves.

"Fourthly, Social Man. Under which we shall have to consider the reciprocal duties which subsist between the individual and that society of which he forms a part, the obligations which he owes to the society of which he thus is a member. In this department it will be necessary to analyse the principles of many of our most popular subjects of conversation and attention; governments, and their influence; legislation, in its temperance and its intemperance; national churches, systems of education, and institutions of various kinds, with their real and supposed uses, and the abuses to which they are all more or less subject."

There does not appear to us, on the face of the announced pur

poses of the author or of his scheme, to be much promise of satisfaction. That the human body is organized and adapted for purposes which cannot have their complete fulfilment in the present life, is a proposition, for instance, that will lead any reasoner upon evidence, separate from the dicta of Revelation, far beyond his depth. We anticipate, too, and indeed have before us some proofs for believing, that Mr. Mudie will involve himself in the question about the materiality and immateriality of the soul, and the arguments thence presumed to arise on the subject of immortality-topics which to say the least of them lead uniformly to repulsive, if not most inconclusive reasoning.

Our author's preliminary chapters are devoted chiefly to a consideration of the value of self-knowledge, an acquisition, which throughout a bare portion of the volume, it is endeavoured to be proved, is peculiar to man among terrestrial creatures. At the sanie time not a little space is wasted, we think, not only upon this point, but in an attempt to limit the application of Lord Bacon's celebrated aphorism that "knowledge is power." An example of Mr. Mudie's defining talent, and correcting propensity, in the exercise of a sort of mental pride, not at all agreeable in its manner, may here be introduced.

"We admit that knowledge is power;' but the aphorism is expressed in terms too general for being applicable to any one practical use. We must know what the knowledge is,' and ' to whom' it is said to be power, otherwise the aphorism may not only be not true, but its opposite may hold, namely, that knowledge is weakness'-the absence or the destruction of power. As this is an elementary matter, which meets us at the threshold of our investigation, and as it is equally applicable to every spe cies of knowledge that we can obtain or desire, whether of ourselves or of anything else, it must be carefully examined.

"Now, as to knowledge being power,' that is saying nothing, unless we understand what we mean by power. But there is nothing which we can call power that can be palpable to any of the senses as a separate subject of investigation. The power is a quality of some agent, and yet it is not perceptible in that agent as those qualities are to which we ascribe no power. The shape, colour, consistency, and all the common distinctions of objects which are perceptible by the senses, are not powers. No substance and no state of a substance is in itself a power; the power is shown in the change from one state to another, and unless we actually have seen a similar change take place, or are informed of it upon testimony which commands our belief, we know nothing about the power that may have been exerted in the case.

"It is true that we have a general feeling of power, as inseparably connected with everything we observe or hear of. In this sense we feel that which has placed things in the condition, posture, and situation in which we find them, and it is a general or short expression for an agent, and the action or effect produced by that agent. As such it is a mental feeling, and not a perception by the senses; and therefore we may con

clude that no inhabitant of the earth save Man has any feeling of power, even in this very vague and general sense.

"But this general feeling is not knowledge, though it is unquestionably an element of that compound feeling which constitutes the desire of knowledge, and by doing so puts us in the way of the attainment of it. If the use of our senses is accompanied by even the faintest glimmering of thought, this feeling of power invariably takes the lead. We see the furnishings of a room, the flowers and shrubs of a garden, the streets and houses of a city, the crops on the fields, the wild plants on the waste, the waters of the sea, the clouds in the atmosphere, and the heavenly bodies in the sky; we hear sounds, we smell odours; the states of the atmosphere, the conditions of our own bodies, and the influences of our desires and fears, our exultations and depressions, all have an influence upon our feelings; and in each and all of these, and in every case that can be named or imagined, we have a feeling of power, a feeling that some agency has had and exerted, the power of producing those effects which are thus palpable to our senses or our general feeling.

"Some have denied the existence of this feeling, upon the ground that there is no object of the senses which answers to it; but this species of argument, when followed out, leads to the denial of all knowledge, and to that of all the subjects of that knowledge. Our knowledge of a thing is not the thing itself, neither has it the slightest resemblance to it, even when it is of that kind which follows instantly upon sensation. Thus our knowledge of a triangle has not three sides and three angles, whether there be the figure of a triangle before our eyes or not; and our knowledge of gunpowder would never of itself propel a cannon bullet, or blast a rock. It is the same in every other case; there is something wanting; and if we rested with the simple fact of the knowledge, the reverse of Lord Bacon's aphorism- Knowledge is not power,'-would be the truth."

Afterwards it is asserted,

"These observations will tend to show that the aphorism is not an absolute truth; but that knowledge is power only when it points out the power, the means of putting that power in operation, and farther shows us that we have the command of those means and the capacity for applying them. All these, then, are necessary in order to make it actual power in our hands; but they are regular steps, and each of them, considered in itself, is so much done. If we know the power, we are obviously in a better condition than if we were ignorant; and if we know the means, we are better still; because then we can know whether we have or have not the command of them; and if we have not, this knowledge may put us in the way of obtaining it at some future time. Thus, though it is only when perfect that knowledge comes up to the full encomium involved in Lord Bacon's aphorism, yet every stage and degree of it is in so far good."

Really this seems to be fighting for nought, to be a battle between words, and between certain ideas attached to them of the author's own imagining,—to be a smothering and labyrinthic process which VOL. 11. (1838.) No. IV.

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