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tical colleges, were put on the same footing as all other establishments, the University having a shrewd guess that, if left to themselves, they would prove formidable rivals. The little seminaries established in the country were to be removed to the towns, and their pupils were obliged to attend the lyceums or colleges (Decree of 15th November 1811).

V. The Restoration.-Hardly had Louis XVIII. been called to the throne, when he confirmed M. de Fontanes in the functions of grand master, which he had exercised under Napoleon, and, two days later, the grand master sent down a circular to the rectors, ordering, 1st. That the pupils shall no longer be distinguished by companies, but by studies; 2d. That the signal for the exercises shall be given by the ringing of a bell (it had been hitherto given by the beat of the drum); 3d. That the dress of the pupils shall continue to be uniform in all establishments, but that it shall no longer have the military form; 4th. That the cockade, being more especially reserved for the military, it will be better that the pupils do not wear it; but, if they desire to do so, it can only be the French cockade decreed by the Government."

Louis XVIII. would fain have broken up the University, and had even issued orders to that effect, but the distress of the financial department saved it. Several important modifications were introduced, which turned the barracks back into the convent. However, the University did not cease to be true to itself. "It had the same characteristics, the same defects, the same merits, as under the empire. When it was subjected to important modifications, under the action of dominant ideas, it bent its head for the time, and did not fail to return afterwards to its former modes of action. It was thought that all was lost, when Messrs Guizot's, Villemain's, and Cousin's courses of lectures were shut up, but this was merely a political accident, much rather than a university revolution. An ultramontane ministry closed them, M. de Martignac reopened them. M. Royer-Collard, and after him M. Cuvier, exercised a preponderant influence in the University. Mere literary and scientific teaching could not but make progress under these men, even during the Restoration. . . . . It must be confessed that they did not in anywise relax the rigour of the monopoly, and that they did nothing for elementary teaching. In this double respect they did neither better nor worse than the Imperial University. The result was that the clergy, with their usual finesse, despairing on the one hand of destroying the University, and on the other, of making it an instrument of domination, endeavoured to create a rival beside it. This was the work of the reactionary party under the Restoration" (pp. 70, 71).

...

The ordinance of 5th October 1814, took the little seminaries out of the jurisdiction of the University, and restored them to the bishops, with exemption from university tribute, and from paying anything for the degree of bachelor, and with the faculty of receiving legacies and donations. Thus these schools not only escaped the University's control, but received privileges which the University itself did not enjoy. It may be said that, at that time, there were two universities in France, the one clerical, freed from all constraint, and exempted from

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all taxes; the other lay, under the yoke, and besides that, attacked incessantly by the Ultramontane party, as the enemy of religion, and by the Ultra-royalists, as the enemy of the throne.

The Jesuits, who had been banished under that name, reappeared under that of Fathers of Faith, re-established their colleges, and, among others, that of St Acheul, near Amiens. In 1814, this establishment reckoned 250 pupils, and 860 in 1825. But St Acheul, along with all the other Jesuit establishments in France, passed once more into the hands of the University, by the decree of 16th June 1828. Thus ended the dispute between the University and the clergy under the Restoration.

It would not be fair to say that nothing was done under the Restoration for elementary instruction. Plenty of laws, and good ones too, were made, but money was not forthcoming. It was decided that every commune should provide for the instruction of the children inhabiting it, and that indigent children should receive it gratis. But the budget, destined to encourage authors to compile good elementary books, to recompense schoolmasters, and to found model schools, amounted to the ridiculous sum of 50,000 frs. (£2000) for the whole of France. On the 14th February 1830, an ordinance raised the budget to 300,000 frs. (£12,000). Such is the last word of the history of public instruction under the elder branch of the Bourbons.

VII. Public Instruction under Louis Philippe. The University reigned supreme during the whole period of his government. "The accession of the younger branch," says our author, "was in a manner the accession of the University. The spirit of the Government, and that of the University, were not different in anything; it was on both sides a very real and rather exclusive authority, moderately exercised, and placed at the service of liberal ideas. The constitution of the University, from 1830 to 1848, was what the First Consul had given it. The modifications of the Restoration had been merely ephemeral. This great body was armed with an absolute monopoly. . . . It believed that its monopoly was universally useful, to the State, to the family, and even to liberty. It did not give way, except in regard to elementary instruction." The law of 1833 took up this subject. It obliged the communes to found schools, and to provide instruction gratis for the indigent. It furnished the Government with the means, and imposed upon it the duty of watching over and ameliorating elementary instruction. The authorisation of the University was no longer required by the private teacher, and serious guarantees of existence were given to the public teacher. In fine, a budget of 1,000,000 frs. (£40,000), the establishment of a normal school in each department, and the creation of special inspectors, completed this admirable legislation. .C. DE F.

To be continued in our next.

XIII. CRITICAL NOTICES.

Philosophical Papers: I. Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Logic. II. Reply to Mr Mill's Third Edition. III. Present State of Moral Philosophy in Britain. By JAMES M'Cosa, LL.D., formerly Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, Queen's College, Belfast, now President of New Jersey College, Princeton, U.S. London: Macmillan & Co.

1868.

These papers have been laid before the British public by Dr M Cosh, on his leaving this land and going to occupy a new sphere of labour at Princeton in the United States of America, in the hope that they may stimulate inquiry in regard to the important philosophical subjects discussed.

In the first paper, "Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Logic," Dr M'Cosh observes, that "it is a remarkable circumstance, that the revived taste for logical studies in our age has proceeded from a restoration of the old Aristotelian logic, by two distinguished men, both reformers in their way, but both devoted admirers of the analytic of Aristotle." He refers to Dr Whately and Sir William Hamilton, the former of whom, in his " Elements of Logic," the publication of which, in 1826, formed an era in the history of the study of this branch of philosophy in Great Britain, successfully defended the Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophy against the objections of Principal Campbell, Dugald Stewart, and others, and the latter of whom, by the deeper and more philosophic spirit which characterised his philosophical researches, completed the reaction, and introduced into this country the logic which had sprung up in Germany, founded largely on the metaphysics of Kant's "Critick of Pure Reason," though not directly taught in that work. In the review of Sir William Hamilton's Logic, Dr M'Cosh's object is to point out wherein it is defective or erroneous, that whatever in the Aristotelian and Scholastic logic, or in the reformed systems of Kant and Hamilton is valuable, may be retained, and that whatever in them is fallacious may be rejected.

In the second of these papers, which is a reply to Mr Mill's strictures in the third edition of his "Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy" on Dr M'Cosh's work, entitled "An Examination of Mr J. S. Mill's Philosophy," the questions at issue between the combatants, who represent two rival schools of philosophy, are clearly seen. The paper affords a summary, not indeed of the points in dispute between Mr Mill and Sir William Hamilton, but of the fundamental principles of the theory of Mr Mill, and of its objectionable character considered philosophically, morally, and religiously. His system, which is now favourably regarded by a large part of the thinking public, has not the merit of originality, though presented in a new garb, but is that of Hobbes, Hartley, Hume, and Brown, revived. It is the same as the "positive philosophy" of Augustus Comte, whose influence in this country has been so powerful, so that positivism has come to designate the system as well as the older name of idealism.

Sir William Hamilton taught that in perception we are immediately conscious of the mental affection and of the external object or, as he expresses it, of an ego as perceiving, and of the existence of a non-ego, or of something different from ego, as perceived. Mr Mill, on the contrary, holds that in perception the mind is not conscious of anything beyond itself-beyond its own modifications; that "all we are conscious of may be accounted for without supposing that we perceive matter by our senses, and

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that the knowledge and belief of it may have come to us by the laws of our constitution without being a revelation of any objective reality." Thus, all the properties which have been regarded as purely material, he regards as purely mental; and, according to this doctrine of nescience, we can know nothing of the nature of things. Dr M'Cosh elaborately proves how unfounded is this theory as to the source whence the notion and belief of matter come to us. As to Sir William Hamilton's doctrine-the consciousness of an ego in perception, for the belief of which Mr Mill affirms there is no ground, Dr M'Cosh admits "that an abstract Ego is not given in self-consciousness;" but he holds that "the concrete Ego is, that is to say, the Ego as thinking, feeling, or in some other way acting;" "that we are conscious of self in every mental act, conscious of self-grieving in every feeling of grief, of self-remembering in every act of memory."

The two principal elements out of which Mr Mill generates all our ideas, are sensation and association. Dr M'Cosh regards his doctrine relating to the power of association to generate new ideas and to produce belief, in fact to take the place of judgment or the comparison of things, as the most fatal of all the errors in his speculations. He complains that Mr Mill “never tells us precisely what association can do and what it cannot do. He everywhere ascribes to it, in language derived from material action, a chemical power: two ideas coming together may generate a third, different from either of the original ones. This is making association a source of new ideas. In other words, he gives to mere association a power which the a priori philosophers have given to the intellect; and surely, with much more justice, for even on the supposition that association is the occasion of the new idea, the new idea must proceed from some mental capacity joined with association.”

Dr M'Cosh animadverts on a very dangerous opinion affirmed by Mr Mill, that the principles of arithmetic and geometry regarded as most certain, may be falsehood in other circumstances, in which it may hold true that 2 x 2 make 5, that parallel lines meet, &c.; an opinion which, by denying that there is any fixed and positive truth, and by divesting man of the power of reaching it, draws after it logical and practical consequences which may well create distrust of the whole system of the sensational philosophy, and excite our surprise that it has gained so great ascendency over many thinking minds.

In short, Dr M'Cosh complains of Mr Mill's omissions, of certain points on which he has not deigned to meet him. Among other things, he says under this head: "I had examined his genesis of our idea of moral good, and his whole utilitarian theory. I had invited him to say whether he thinks a conclusive argument for the existence of God could be constructed on his principles. It is curious that, while he has seen fit to meet me on other points, some of them in no way essential to my argument, he has not noticed these all-important criticisms."

The third of these papers, "The Present State of Moral Philosophy in Great Britain in relation to Theology," was read by the author before the Triennial Ecumenical Meeting of the Evangelical Alliance, held at Amsterdam, August 1867. In it he describes the pernicious character of the sensational philosophy of which Mr John Stuart Mill is the most distinguished living representative, and the progress which it has unhappily made within the past few years, and which it still threatens to make among our educated young men; but he concludes with the confident hope, that when the British public, who "have always been peculiarly sensitive as to the practical tendency of every philosophic doctrine, begin to see that this new philosophy tends to undermine the fundamental principles of morals, they will turn away from it with loathing."

We cannot refrain from embracing this opportunity of expressing our

high sense of the services rendered to the cause of Christianity and of sound philosophy by Dr M'Cosh, now that he has left us and bidden us farewell, and our regret that he should have been allowed to go to another part of the world, at a time when his services were never more needed at home. It argues the want of a due appreciation of the importance of having the minds of our educated young men imbued with a sound speculative philosophy, when greater encouragement is given in another land than in his own to a man of world-wide reputation, whose eminent abilities, displayed in treating questions in this department, and especially in meeting the greatest masters of the sensational school of philosophy, justly entitled him to occupy one of the highest places in our universities.

Misread Passages of Scripture. By J. BALDWIN BROWN, B.A. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 27 Paternoster Row. 1869.

Interpretations of texts of Scripture, which are transmitted by tradition from one age to another, must sometimes, when tested by an accurate exegesis, be set aside, not always, it may be, on the ground of teaching what may be in itself erroneous, but on the ground of not correctly explaining what is the mind of the Spirit in these particular passages. Whoever, therefore, aids in detecting and eliminating current erroneous interpretations, as well as in confirming and establishing correct ones, renders a valuable service to the cause of sound scriptural exposition. In this volume, which is the production of an earnest and vigorous mind, the author impugns, for the most part, with a force which carries conviction to the mind, the accuracy of some generally-received interpretations of Scripture. He has carefully studied the subjects handled, and he expatiates upon them with no common eloquence, freshness, and originality. The subjects are the Kingdom of Christ; the Dues of Cæsar and of Christ; unto this Last will I give, even as unto Thee; Law and Life; the Lost Birthright; no Place of Repentance; the Curse of the Ground; the Easily Besetting Sin; and the Law of Abstinence.

The Sabbath of Scripture. By the Rev. JOHN KELMAN, M.A., St John's Free Church, Leith. Edinburgh: Andrew Elliot, 17 Princes Street.

1869.

"In the autumn of 1867," says the author, "the public mind in Leith was considerably stirred in connection with the Sabbath question, by the running of steamers for pleasure on the Lord's day, between Leith and Aberdour. I felt it, therefore, to be my duty to deliver at intervals a series of discourses on the subject." In this volume, in which these discourses have been almost entirely recast, the author exhibits, in a compact and continuous form, what the Scriptures teach respecting the Sabbath, from its institution in Paradise, through the successive announcements of heaven respecting it, both in the Old and New Testament. The objections most current in the present day against the divine authority of the Sabbath, or against its Christian observance, especially those founded on its alleged Judaical character, and on the example and personal teaching of Christ, he takes up and answers in a popular and most effective manner. From the strong tendency which exists in this age of mammon-worship to secularise the Sabbath, beneficent as is the institution, the public mind needs to be constantly turned to the question; and the work before us is well adapted to promote clear and scriptural views of the nature of the Sabbath, of the foundation on which its obligation rests, and of the way in which it ought to be observed.

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