Reowe des Deux Mondes.—Epicharmus, the greatest of Dorian comic poets, who is credited with the reformation of the Syracusan stage, and the introduction of mythological and philosophical subjects to replace the gross buffoonery of the prehistoric comedy, furnishes M. Jules Girard of the Institute with the text for a long and elaborate, but not generally interesting, article in the 16th of August number. He is said to have been the inventor of the "parasite" who plays so important a part in the later Greek comedy. Little remains whereby-to form an independent judgment of his merits as a writer. His extant fragments are few and short, and we are therefore compelled to trust to the criticism of comparatively modern Greek and Roman authors. Even his date is doubtful, but he was born probably about the middle of the sixth century B.C. The island of Cos was his native place, and he came of a family of physicians. Driven to emigrate, or carried by his father who was so driven, he found a refuge in Sicily, where for many years he presented the curious spectacle of an apostle of philosophy disguised as a comic author. To him is due the terse and comprehensive rule of life, Remember to be distrustful", which Prosper Mérimés' adopted as his motto, and which few, it must be confessed, ever forget without regretting it.—English readers will hardly care for a review, however excellent, of Lord Minto's Life and Letters, which has already been well threshed out by British monthlies and quarterlies, The generous words in which the author, M. Duparquet, closes his paper are, however, well worthy of being reproduced. "Bitter recollections cannot fail to be associated in French minds with the memory of one who was Governor of Corsica during the English occupation of that island, and by whom as Viceroy of India the expedition was organised which snatched from us the Isle of France and Bourbon.
But whatever may be our feelings we should blame ourselves did they prevent us from acknowledging the existence in a departed enemy of those qualities which have ever secured the respect and generous sympathy of all nations to whom truth is dear."—The interest of the number before usconcentrates itself in an article by M. Vacherot, of the Tastitute, on the three stages which, according to Comte, mark the development of the human sumd in relation to its environment.
The strength and weakness of the Comtist doctrine are very fairly set forth. One point which is systematically ignored by the opponents of positivism, and often forgotten by its advocates, is, that the positive school, while denying the possibility of knowledge extending beyond phenomena, does not deny that there is a universal reality, an absolute and infinite transcending all the limits of human powers of understanding. In other words, it declares that whatever may underlie and cause phenomena is inaccessible, but in asserting this it admits a belief in a universe which transcends human conscious To this M. Vacherot does full justice. Comte founded his system on Bacon, who indeed is the only master he acknowledges. But so far as the law of the three stages is concerned, Turgot enunciated it or something almost exactly equivalent to it, forty years before Comte was born. Very few people read metaphysics now-a-days, but those who do, merely learn from the example of their authors what they might learn with less trouble from the principles of positivism, namely that speculations, however ingenious, when based on 4 prion grounds are absolutely valueless from a practical point of view. Theology and metaphysics have had their day. They have searched for and failed to find expression for the absolute. Theology begins by a dogmatic statement. Metaphysics reject this statement whatever it may be, and proceed by methods of criticism hich have never been acknowledged as valid by theologians. Positivism rejects every unverifiable hypothesis, and shuts off the domain of human its of the actually or potentially empirical. These then are the three stages in intellectual development—the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific, or, to render the contrast more marked by a dichotomous division—the metempirical and the empirical. But now the question arises whether, either in the individual or in the race, these stages are absolutely distinct. M. Vacherot thinks not; and in fact the positivist school has always left a door of escape open from the rigour of its formula, by acknowledging the impossibility of reducing the emotions to the rules derived from observation of the intellect. The nature-worships which we meet among barbarous tribes and at the dawn of civilisation in Asia, Egypt and Europe, are instances under the rule. A religion such as Christianity, arising largely out of an elaborated philosophy, has the reason for its existence in emotional requirements. It is true that individuals and entire societies sink back into a true theological stage while professing Christianity, and even degrade their religion into fetischism. But these instances of reversion need not affect the truth of the theory ofa historical development through time. It is true also that even in the stage, metaphysical and quasi elements may be detected, But in the first place, the stages must necessarily overlap to some extent, and in the next, 'M. Vacherot neglects the division of Comte's theological period into fetischism, polytheism and monotheism. These are not necessarily developed one out of the other, but, however progress may be made or reached, it is clear that monotheism must involve metaphysical and perhaps even scientific conceptions, No race, fur instance, could be monotheists without possessing the idea of order in the universe, for it is this alone which postulates the existence of one over-ruling mind. The conception of a kosines-shaping power would probably have been in all cases long floating and indistinct, until at length some one person gave definite form to it, On the other hand, this leaves unexplained a very important phenomenon, namely, that the farther we go back in the religious history of the highest (Indo-European) races, the smaller appears to have been the number of the gods worshipped. Wo suspect, although we do not now propose to expand Buckle's theory, that in tracing the growth of religious, the most important consideration is the nature of the human family concerned, as affected not only by its innate peculiarities but by its persistent natural surroundings. Turning now to the metaphysical stage, reached invariably by the more cultured of a race at a period when the less cultured are still plunged in fetischism or something little removed from it, Vacherot reproaches Comte with identifying metaphysics with the barren discussions of meaningless terms which made up the so-called scholastic philosophy, and the general worthless of which is made only more evident by the brilliant exceptions furnished by St. Thomas, St. Anselm, and perhaps some half-dozen more. Through the entire stretch of Greek philosophy speculation was never divorced from science, a proposition which is true enough, but the term " science" in it is not used in Comte's sense. It is quite certain that a metaphysical way
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.