and, in general, confined themselves to teaching their peculiar tenets to all who chose to attend to them; the modern, many of them, have rested upon a nega. tive basis, and been much more industrious to prevent the tenets of others than even to propagate their own. In tendency, the former were constitutive, the latter destructive. In method, the one (to speak technically,) was synthetic, the other analytic. But a system or creed of the latter character, we are assured by history as well as principle, is one of the least fitted to attach to it many or ardent followers; nor is it greatly to be commended, perhaps, upon more essential grounds. Here then, is the leading cause of the disuse into which the term School in the acceptation in question, has been falling gradually in modern times; as well as of the decline, in fact, of those doctrinal associations based upon unanimity of real conviction, and bound together by rational deference to intellectual authority, which were denoted by the name. One still hears, now and anon, of the Cartesian and the Baconian "Schools" of philosophy; but it is only to contradistinguish the innovations of these modern reformers from the ancient systems which they in part supplanted; not that the philosophies of Bacon and Des Cartes are held as integral bodies of doctrine, or have many disciples, at once ardent and intelligent, at the present day. The latter, whose genius, predominantly synthetical -alone perhaps in modern Europe erected a "School" to resemble those of antiquity-is now, indeed, but a name; although we should be surprised if he, like others, has not a philosophical revival, as soon as the nature and true method of the moral sciences come to be at all as well understood as are those of the physical. Bacon has still some professed followerspersons, chiefly, who perhaps never read the Novum Organum--because his method of inquiry is more in the negative or ana lytic spirit of the era. And here, in fine in the unequal success of these two equally able system-founders, as well as the growing neglect even of the more popular of the two-we have a double demonstration of the agency above ascribed to the negative tendency of modern philosophy, in producing the decline of what have been called Schools, or their degeneration into sects, parties, and that still more homeopathic division of cliques."

It is not the present purpose to censure

this tendency, nor go into the trite question of preference between the analytic and the synthetic methods of philosophizing

which may be regarded as the symbols, severally, of that tendency and its opposite. Upon this matter we should be of the opinion of Archbishop Whately and others, that neither is to be preferred to the entire exclusion of the other: that they are not competitive, but concurrent, instruments of knowledge. We cannot, however, omit a passing protest against the blind cant of the day upon this subject. "We have now no schools of philosophy or science," says some living example of the "march of intellect," because we own no "masters," admit no "dictation;" because it is an age of "free inquiry," when reason has dethroned authority, and every man forms his own opinions, not receives them, as formerly, upon the ipse dixit of another, &c., &c. On the contrary, for our part, we are almost ready to affirm that there was more originality of thought and independence of opinion, as of cordial, living conviction, in the very midnight of the middle ages. But what is still more discreditably distinctive of the present age, is, that it refuses to do what is really in the power of the generality-it does not adopt opinions; or if it do, it lacks integrity of purpose or vigor of faith enough to adhere to them." The saying, What's every one's business is no one's," applies to this universality of opinion-forming. Have these people ever been told-for such could not have reflected- what it is to form an opinion-what a multitude of principles and considerations go to compose even the slightest upon which they act in their ordinary affairs? It is with opinion on this subject, as often with religion, where most pretended, least practised. In this matter the multitude are, in truth, what they always have been, as some one has irreverently expressed it, "like dogs in a village; if one bark, all bark without knowing why." But this observation has been so forcibly, and, what is rarer still, so frankly asserted by a thinking writer on "The American Drama," in a late number of this Review, that we take the liberty of bringing him to our support, in a position perhaps equally paradoxical and unpopu lar.

"This general opinion is the most equivocal thing in the world. It is never self-formed. It has very seldom indeed an original development. In regard to

the work of an already famous or infamous author, it decides, to be sure, with a laudable promptitude; making up all the mind that it has, by reference to the reception of the author's immediately previous publication;-making up thus the ghost of a mind pro tem-a species of critical shadow that fully answers, nevertheless, all the purposes of a substance, until the substance itself shall be forthcoming. But, beyond this point, the general opinion can be considered that of the public, only as a man may call a book his, having bought it, &c."

But we are not moralizing upon the age. We have simply desired, in developing its analytic tendencies, to signalize, upon a broad scale, what we deem the leading characteristic, in its excess as in its excellence, of the class of writers known as the Scotch School. Whether this be a quality alike exceptionable in both the cases, or at all in either, will, however, probably appear from the following survey of a few of the most synthetical or systematic of the writers in question. To say the Scotch School is to say the Scotch intellect. This people seems to have carried its proverbial clannishness into the abstractions of mindeven the analytic and dispersive mind we have just assigned them. One, then, would serve for a type of the whole nation.

To begin with Adam Smith-ab Jove principium. Confessedly, the Wealth of Nations is without unity of plan; it evinces remarkably little even of that casual arrangement which results from a connection of kindred between the details of the same subject. Of this, as in fact of every other Scotch book that we can at this moment call to mind, the criticism might be summed up in the simple formula: want of creativeness-want of constructiveness. It would not be unfair to describe the work in question, a collection of disquisitions upon the principal topics of an unexplored science; sometimes but remotely, if at all, connected with each other; poured forth as they may be supposed to have fallen under the occasional investigations of the author-highly important all of them, and able as important, and graced by a style of peculiar animation and perspicuity. But not having been selected with much reference to logical method, or disposed in subjection to any definite plan, they must be regarded as standing nearly upon their isolated merits, and are

to be valued rather as having furnished, the first, a rich storehouse of materials, not merely quarried, but also cut to the hand of succeeding architects, than as presenting themselves anything like either a complete or a symmetrical structure of politico-economical science. Smith's book, indeed, looks as if it were a mere register of his researches, which he was yet to dispose into form; nor is there any apparent preparation whatever for the "public," except the language and illustration, in which it is accurate and abundant.

Yet the Wealth of Nations"-aside from the preeminent importance of its matter is after all what the ladies call delightful" reading. Yes; and the reason of this is well worth exploring for its own sake. But it will also, we think, prove the quality noted to be like those agreeable defects, by which the ladies themselves are said sometimes to captivate, and must redound rather to the condemnation than the credit of a book like this-scientific in character and didactic in purpose. The thing happens in this wise. The reader is without preamble introduced to the most diminutive process of mechanical art-pin-making. He is led through the minute analysis of its unexpected complexity. He knows at no step of his progress whither or to what the next may bear him-conscious of motion, but ignorant of direction as well as of destination. But he is not, we may be sure, on this account the less, but much the more, delighted, on beholding the principle of the Division of Labor unfolding its multifarious branches from a source so despicable; like the umbrageous oak from an acorn, like the eartho'ercanopying vine from the cumminsized seed of the parable. His bewilderment has a charm which a knowledge of the principles that govern the operation would have impaired or prevented as a walk, when we know not and care not whither, is, for this very reason, called a walk of pleasure. Such is the state of excited curiosity, which scarcely at all remits in the perusal of the book in question; such is the character of the analytic method of instruction; such, (and this will probably be startling to some of our readers,) such is the principle, likewise, of epic and dramatic poetry.

Accordingly, if to please were the object, and not principally to instruct; if Dr. Smith were writing an epic poem or a novel, where the reader, led through

a winding path of agreeable amazement, was to be astonished by the final eduction of "great things from small"-the rise or fall of states and dynasties, from the pique of some goddess, still woman enough to be whimsically cruel, or the no less capricious resentment of a love-mad barbarian-in such case, he would have been quite right in his exclusive adoption of the analytic method of exposition; and would, indeed, have been sig nally commendable for the dramatic skill evinced in the management of this pinmaking plot; for no epical artisan could, with Aristotle himself at his elbow, have drawn the curtain more cunningly over the future-have more artfully avoided any disclosure that might anticipate the catastrophe-than our philosopher eludes all reference to the principles of the phenomena he is unfolding. But the consideration of pleasure should here, of course, be incomparably subordinate. The object of the dramatic writer is to defer explanation as long as possible, consistently with sustaining the interest of the audience or reader; that of the didactic, on the contrary, to explain as early as possible, consistently with the full and fundamental intelligence of the learner. And if the author of the Wealth of Nations has interchanged these purposes" doing those things which he ought not to have done, and leaving undone those things he ought to have done" we do not impute to him the meritricious merit of having had such a design (which would have been in him but a demerit the more, as the fact is a defect in his book); we only account it an effect of the mental constitution of his countrymen, which the great genius of Smith was insufficient to overcome, and an evidence of what may be expected from the exclusive employment of the analytic process, to which the Scotch writers, in all sorts of composition, seem to be universally addicted.

Some of our readers may smile, or stare, (according to the proportions of conceit,) incredulously, at the intimation of a resemblance between an epic poem or a play, and a problem in algebra or an experiment in chemistry. Yet it is a fact that both the processes are conducted in the same way and the latter is not less delightful to the cultivated curiosity of the scientific mind, than our dramatic contrivances to the popular feelings. It is, that analysis, which is the mode of procedure in both, is, in fact, the primi

VOL. II.-NO. IV.

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tive, the purely natural mode of gaining our knowledge, and therefore the most pleasing. And here, by the way, is the principle of pleasure in all the æsthetical arts. It is nature that we love in them, however deep or disguised. Their effect is to retrace to us vividly the experiences of early and unsophisticated youth; their triumph to transport us back to that real paradise of innocence, hope, love, poetry, from which it is literally but too true that we have "fallen by knowledge." What is the object of the science of Perspective, for example-the principal instrument of more than one of the Arts ? Simply, to teach (or rather, unteach) us to see external objects with the eyes of our infancy. Even in poetry-the least natural, perhaps, of the fine arts-the figurative language which is one of its most efficient resources, what is it but a recurrence to the crude expedients of the savage, contrived to supply the poverty of his vocabulary by the extravagance of his imagination? So that, it appears, the highest refinements of our boasted civilization are no more than the faithful rehearsals of the imperfections of what we call the "barbarous" ages, whether of the race or the individual! So true is it that nature alone is the veritable civilization; that it is nature that lends their interest to all our contrivances, whether addressed to the sympathies or the understanding of our fellow-men. It is this benign mother who has strewn a charm alike over the ways to true pleasure and to true knowledge-which, rightly pur sued, would be found the same. And hence (to close this short, for a sentimental, digression) the well-known maxim of Horace,

in medias res, Non secus ac notas, auditorem rapere,", &c.

differs but in object, not at all in operation, from the not less celebrated axiom of Lord Bacon.

It is not denied that the analytic method is always the principal-as it has been observed to be, originally and naturally, the only-mode of discovering knowledge. But to impart, and even to extend it with attainable dispatch and efficiency the synthetic must be brought, and brought early, to its aid. By this combination you give the learner (in the happy illustration of Bossuet) a hold of both ends of the chain of science; whereby he is enabled, even with shut eyes and by merely feeling along the intermediate