If there is one department of knowledge more than another in which a
contemptuous disregard of the meditations and theories of distant
periods and nations is misplaced, it is in the philosophy of
man,--which can have no adequate breadth of basis till it reposes on
the consciousness and covers the mental experience of the universal
race; and to construct which out of purely personal materials, is like
attempting to lay down the curves and finish the theory of terrestrial
magnetism on the strength of a few closet experiments. No man, however
large-thoughted and composite his mind, can accept of _himself_ as the
type of universal human nature. It will even be a great and rare
endowment, if, with every aid of exact learning and unwearying
patience, he is able to penetrate the atmosphere of others'
understanding, and to observe the forms and colors which the objects
of contemplation assume, when beheld through this peculiar medium.
Simply to avail one's self of the experience of mankind, and know what
it has really been, demands no little scope of imagination and
versatility of intellectual sympathy. When these qualities are so
deficient in a thinker that he cannot well achieve this knowledge, it
is a great misfortune to his philosophy; when the want is such that he
does not even desire it, it amounts to an absolute disqualification.
Without, therefore, pledging ourselves to the eclectic principles
which prevail in the present school of philosophy in France, we must
beware of the intolerant dogmatism of Bentham in England, sanctioned,
as we have seen, by one of the masters of the antagonist metaphysics
in Germany. Indeed, it will be a chief purpose of all my lectures to
enable you to profit by the light of other minds; in every province of
the vast region which we shall explore together, to indicate the paths
which they have traversed before, nor ever to turn away from their
points of discovery, without raising some rude monument at least of
honest and commemorative praise. To introduce you to the works, to
interpret the difficulties, to do honor to the labors, to review the
opinions, of the great masters of speculative thought in every age and
in many lands, will be an indispensable portion of my duty;--a task
most arduous indeed, but than which none can be more grateful to one
who loves to trace, through all their affinities, the indestructible
types of truth and beauty in the human mind; and to mark the natural
laws, connecting together the most opposite continents and climes of
thought, as parts, successively colonized and cultivated, of one great
intellectual world. But in addition to the study of the several
classes of psychological and moral doctrine as they present themselves
in the _order of science_, it will be important to spread out the
literature of philosophy before us in the _order of time_; to gain an
insight into the natural development of successive modes of thought on
speculative subjects; to notice the action and reaction of philosophy
and practical life; to ascertain whether opinion on these abstract
matters really advances into knowledge and has any determinate
progression, or whether it oscillates for ever on either side of some
fixed idea, or line of mental gravitation. In short, having surveyed
our subject systematically, we shall go over it again chronologically;
and call upon philosophy, when it has recited its creed, and revealed
its wisdom, to finish all by writing its history.
The hints given in Mr. Martineau's frequent references to the bearing
of scientific knowledge and laws upon theological speculations are
very important. We adduce a single example.