If the authorities which we have cited be deemed antiquated, and later lights be referred to as having reversed all their decisions and cast them entirely into the shade, we can only answer with a sigh at the constant revolutions and changes by which the physical sciences are characterized; while at the same time, strangely enough, they are often recommended, in contrast with metaphysical and literary pursuits, as containing solid and permanent knowledge, — indeed, the only solid and permanent knowledge there is in the world. If these authorities have grown antiquated in six or eight years, what confidence can we put in the authorities which have succeeded them? What will they be worth six or eight years hence?

The author of the Cosmos says, in his preface:

"It has frequently been regarded as a subject of discouraging consideration, that whilst purely literary products of intellectual activity are rooted in the depths of feeling, and interwoven with the creative force of imagination, all works treating of empirical knowledge, and of the connection of natural phenomena and physical laws, are subject to the most marked modifications of form in the lapse of short periods of time, both by the improvement in the instruments used and by the consequent expansion of the field of view opened to rational observation, and that those scientific works which have, to use a common expression, become antiquated by the acquisition of new funds of knowledge, are thus continually being consigned to oblivion as unreadable. However discouraging such a prospect must be, no one who is animated by a genuine love of nature, and by a sense of the dig nity attached to its study, can view with regret any thing which promises future additions and a greater degree of perfection to general knowledge."

While we call the attention of others to the facts stated in the former part of this paragraph-facts which must be well known to every person familiar with large modern libraries — we cordially subscribe for ourselves to the sentiment contained in the latter.

In estimating the value of the results of physical as of every other science, it is of the highest moment to distinguish facts from theories, premises from conclusions. Facts never become antiquated; it is theories and hasty conclusions that are continually passing into oblivion. Facts are irresistible. Against them it is useless, as it is absurd, to reason.

But theories, because they profess to be founded upon facts, are not at once to be assumed as supreme and impregnable, and to demand instant and unconditional submission. Theories without facts, are utterly baseless and worthless. Theories with facts, may have an insufficient foundation, may be ill-adjusted to it, or ill-constructed upon it, and thus be destined to be swept away by the next movement of the elements, or abandoned as untenable by the next step of onward progress.

Neither are all facts of equal value; on the contrary, the immense majority are unworthy of note or record. They can be duly distinguished, rightly and fully estimated, and set in effective array, only by a logical intelligence-a a quickseeing and far-seeing, a truly theoretic, mind. And without the controlling action of such a mind, not only may the induction of facts be insufficient or irrelevant or incongruous, but their very significance cannot be apprehended or interpreted; and without an intelligent, rational interpretation, facts themselves are dumb and dead.

When, therefore, the physiologist, or geologist, or the cultivator of any other department of science, is sure that his induction of facts has been sufficiently extensive to include. all apparently conflicting elements; that those facts have been well-sifted and well-digested; that they have been rightly and fully interpreted, and all those of a contradictory aspect satisfactorily harmonized; and that the theory or general conclusion drawn from them is legitimately deduced at every step; and when that theory has borne the test of years or centuries, growing stronger the more it is examined and assailed; then, and not till then, may he demand that his theory shall be recognized by all reasonable men, and that with it all the departments of human thought and belief, whether in literature, science, or religion, shall be conformed and harmonized.

ART. IX. The Memoir and Writings of JAMES HANDASYD PERKINS. Edited by WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING. Boston: Crosby & Nichols. 1851. 2 vols. 12mo.

MORALISTS of the old school were wont to draw a strongly marked distinction between personal and social duties, as if the two classes rested on different bases of obligation, and were capable of being separated, not only in ethical discussion, but in actual life. Until recently, what is called personal virtue had the precedence. The purpose and the effort to do good were not essential to a high reputation for excellence. A large measure of selfishness and penuriousness, contracted sympathies, bigotry, intolerance, self-isolation, were hardly deemed blots upon a character, especially if to freedom from vice, and systematic habits of business and care for one's own household, there were added the decencies of religious profession and observance. The tendency of our own times is towards the opposite error. Doing good is regarded as of more importance than being good. Men think of themselves as beneficent machines, rather than as souls endowed each with an independent existence and destiny. Conscience is made an external organ, and its province is to ferret out the sins of classes and communities, not to detect one's own moral infirmities. Philanthropy is deemed not only the first, but almost the sole, duty. Men, who never learned to subdue their own passions, occupy the van in the assault on the inveterate wrongs and evils of the body politic. We know some people who, when a stranger is named, ask in their cant phrase whether he is a reformer, (not whether he needs reformation,) and who think that they fully know his character, when they have learned to what benevolent societies he belongs, and at what kinds of public meetings he makes speeches. Things have now reached such a pass, that almost every cause of humanity that deserves championship is in the hands of the very men whose services are a perpetual disservice; while informal and miscellaneous modes of influence are all that remain for those, whose self-discipline fits them to be the guides and helpers of their brethren.

Meanwhile, personal excellence and social usefulness are

inseparable, and bear so close a proportion to each other, that the one may invariably be assumed as the measure of the other. A good man is every day and hour throwing off proof impressions of himself. He is enacting, not playing, the philanthropist in his labor, in his traffic, in his casual intercourse, in his home life, in the very scenes and transactions. in which he makes the least show of benevolent intent. His mere presence creates a purer moral atmosphere. An obscurity or retirement can no more suppress his beneficent agency, than linen garments can smother fire. He can make his virtue inefficient only by becoming a voluntary recluse, and then he ceases to be good. One's usefulness depends on his quantity of character, and is enhanced by every accession of purity and strength, by every finer touch and richer hue of spiritual beauty. Nay, the very traits of the inward life, which if genuine are hidden, and of which a show is made only by those that lack them, those habits of thought and feeling which ally the soul to God and heaven, — pass as factors into the sum of operative benevolence, and are transmuted into the utilities and amenities of common intercourse. Nor is this law for the expression of character materially affected by what is called a more or less favorable position. Could outward means and opportunities have well been less ample than they were in the case of John Pounds, the cobbler, in his stall ten feet square? Yet we can hardly conceive that any exaltation or enlargement of his sphere could have made him more useful. Indeed, the power of example bears an inverse proportion to the capacity of active benevolence. One who occupies a conspicuous place, and has the ability to perform signal services for others, discourages imitation, except on the part of the very few who move on the same social plane. On the other hand, he who has neither the full purse, the ready tongue, nor the fluent pen, and who therefore is scarcely conscious of doing good to others, may present an example which no beholder need despair of attaining, a goodness which seems within the reach of all, because self-nurtured and unpropped from without, a beneficence which none are too poor or ignorant to

copy.

An indefinite or fluctuating position might appear least of all propitious as regards usefulness; but it is, in fact, injurious

to the perspective, rather than to the actual power, of character. The man who has a permanent post of business or professional duty is a well-known, trustworthy, calculable element in the current moral force of society, a fixed luminary of registered magnitude and lustre; but for that very reason, his beneficent agency has its limits, which are but seldom and casually overpassed. On the other hand, he who seems never to find the right niche, and the phases of whose outward life are hardly less numerous than his years, though less distinctly recognized in his influence, may give a succession of fresh impulses to successive circles of his fellowmen,-impulses which outlast his immediate agency, and are still propagated when he is forgotten. His unsettled life may indefinitely multiply his opportunities and enlarge his sphere, while his virtue is made more venerable, lovely, and attractive, at once by its diversified manifestation, and by its having passed the frequent test of vicissitude and disappointment.

But we are disposed to regard this unsettled, desultory, vacillating mode of life, as the result less of circumstances than of character. Some men are nomadic by constitution; and to this type belong not a few of the loftiest minds and the noblest hearts. No one, who would lead a true life, is conscious of fully reaching his aims and embodying his conceptions. Every profession and condition has its untoward circumstances, its malign influences, its distasteful associations, its belittling drudgery, its defective standards. Every position, too, has its demands so intense, so vast, so various, as to give the consciousness of incompetency, and to suggest the yearning for a sphere of duty more favorable to self-culture and unembarrassed influence. It is, no doubt, the part of wisdom to make a truce with one's aspirations, to be and do all that he can in the place where his lot is cast, and to content himself with its resources for increasing excellence and usefulness. But some good men are by the necessity of their nature morbidly sensitive to the straitnesses and disadvantages of their present condition. They are impatient of obstacles which will not yield to a first assault, of a standard which they cannot elevate by immediate effort, of taskwork which seems fruitless as to the higher ends of their spiritual being. They imagine that limitations and necessities, which are inevitable conditions of human existence, are their