The first number of Volume III. of the "Journal of Speculative
Philosophy" comes to hand, printed in fair type, with promise of
attracting attention from thinkers at home and abroad. And it is a
significant fact that the most appreciative notice yet taken of this
Journal comes from Germany, and is written by the President of the
Berlin Philosophical Society. Nor less remarkable that this first
attempt to popularize Philosophy, so far as practicable, should
date from the West, and show an ability in dealing with speculative
questions that may well challenge the attainments of thinkers
everywhere,--the translations showing a ripe scholarship, and covering
almost the whole range of historic thinking.[8]
[Footnote 8: "Nothing is more interesting in the history of the human
mind than the tendency of enlightened souls in all ages to gather
in clusters, as in the material world crystallization goes on by
the gathering of individual atoms about one axis of formation. Thus
the schools of Greek Philosophy, the Pythagorean, the Eleatic, the
Peripatetic, the Alexandrian, were human crystallizations about a
central idea, and generally in a given locality,--as Samos, Athens, or
the Lucanian city of Elea, where Zeno learned lessons of Parmenides,
and whence they both journeyed to Athens in the youth of Socrates, and
held their "Radical Club" at the house of Pythodorus in the Ceramicus.
The Schoolmen and the Mystics of the middle ages clustered together in
the same way about Abelard. Thomas Aquinas, Occam, Gerson, Giardano
Bruno, the early Italian poets, rally in groups in the same way; so
do the Elizabethan Dramatists, the Puritan Politicians, the English
Platonists. Coming nearer our own time, there are the Lake Poets of
England, the Weimar circle of genius, in Germany, the Transcendental
Idealists in Concord and Boston, and finally, the German American
Philosophers of St. Louis, concerning whom we now speak. In all
these Schools and Fellowships of the human soul, a common impulse,
aided by accident of locality and other circumstances, trivial only
in appearance, has led to the formation of that strictest bond,
the friendship of united aspirations. New England has so long been
considered the special home of ideas, that it may surprise one to
learn that St. Louis, on the Mississippi, has become the focus of a
metaphysical _renaissance_; yet such it has become. A few Germans,
New Englanders, and Western men gathered there, having found each
other out, began to meet, expatiate, and confer about Kant and Hegel,
Fichte, and Sir William Hamilton. Soon they formed a Philosophical
Society, and by and by, having accumulated many manuscripts, they began
to publish a Magazine of "Speculative Philosophy." At first, this
publication came out semi-occasionally, but finally settled down into
a regular Quarterly, with contributors on both sides of the Atlantic,
and from various schools of metaphysical thought. The January number
is, indeed, a remarkable production. Every article is good, and most of
them profound; no such collection of striking varieties of philosophic
thought has been made public for a long time as this. The Journal
is edited by William T. Harris, LL.D., Superintendent of the Public
Schools of St. Louis."
F. B. SANBORN,
_in "Springfield Republican," March, 1869._]
England, too, has at last found a metaphysician that Coleridge would
have accepted and prized. And the more that he follows himself in
introducing philosophy from Germany into Britain. James Hutchison
Stirling's fervor and strength in advocating Hegel's ideas command the
highest respect. Having had Schelling's expositor in Coleridge, we now
have Hegel's in Stirling; and, in a spirit of catholicity shown to
foreign thought unexpected in an Englishman, promising not a little in
the way of qualifying favorably the metaphysics of Britain. Nothing
profound nor absolute can be expected from minds of the type of Mill,
Herbert Spencer, and the rest,--if not hostile, at least indifferent
to and incapable of idealism; naturalists rather than metaphysicians.
It will be a most hopeful indication if Stirling's book, the "Secret of
Hegel," find students among his countrymen. Cavilling there will be,
of course, misapprehension, much nonsense uttered concerning Hegel's
Prime Postulates. But what was thought out fairly in Germany, must find
its way and prompt comprehension in England; if not there, then here
in New England, out of whose heart a fresh philosophy should spring
forth, to which the German Hegel shall give impulse and furtherance.
The work has already begun, with Harris's publishing the thoughts of
the world's thinkers, himself familiar with the best of all thinking.
I look for a more flowing, inspiring type of thought, Teutonic as
Greek, of a mystic coloring transcending Boehme, Swedenborg, and freed
from the biblicisms of the schools of our time. Hegel's secret is that
of pure thought akin with that of Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, the
ancient masters in philosophy. The One is One out of whose womb the Not
One is born to perish perpetually at its birth. Whoso pronounces PERSON
apprehensively, speaks the secret of all things, and holds the key to
all mysteries in nature and spirit.
For further encouragement, moreover, we are promised a translation
of the complete works of Plotinus, by a learned contributor to the
"Journal," who has qualifications for that service unsurpassed,
perhaps, by any on this side of the Atlantic.