LITERARY NOTICES. 



119 



writers we have in the pages of this maga- 

 zine an authoritative and all-sided presen- 

 tation of metaphysical questions, such as 

 can be otherwise obtained only by ransack- 

 ing extensive libraries. An important feat- 

 ure of the magazine is the considerable 

 space it devotes to the criticism and inter- 

 pretation of the works of art, poetic, dra- 

 matic, musical, pictorial, architectural, etc. 



The first article of the July number of 

 this magazine is an addition to the volumi- 

 nous literature of Shakespearean criticism, 

 byD. J. Snider. In an acute and ingenious 

 analysis of " The Tempest" the author aims 

 to show that this drama is a profound phil- 

 osophical study of two worlds, the real and 

 the ideal. As it is latterly the fashion for 

 lawyers, doctors, and scientists, to find every 

 thing in Shakespeare as fast as it is discov- 

 ered elsewhere, so the present writer would 

 seem to assume that the poet had anticipated 

 the last results of German metaphysics. Will 

 not this vein at length give out? Daniel 

 Wilson has lately been over the same ground, 

 and devoted a solid volume to prove that in 

 " The Tempest " Shakespeare has anticipated 

 the modern doctrine of Evolution. Among 

 the questions debated by the schoolmen of 

 the middle ages, the following is reported : 

 " Was Adam, while yet without sin, ac- 

 quainted with the ' Liber Sententiarum ' of 

 Peter Lombardus, Bishop of Paris ? " It 

 would seem to be an open question with 

 many of our later commentators and school- 

 men, whether Shakespeare may not really 

 have been acquainted with the works of Dar- 

 win and Hegel ! " The Music of Color," the 

 second article, is an ingenious and instruc- 

 tive statement of the analogies of light and 

 sound as explicable on the wave-theory. 

 Many efforts have been before made to find 

 harmonic relations between the spectrum 

 and the gamut, but the results have been 

 regarded as unsatisfactory. The present 

 writer presses the analogy in many particu- 

 lars, and is confident that it will ultimately 

 be fully established. In the third article 

 Prof. Vera treats of " Ideas as the Essences 

 of Things." He takes the high Platonic 

 ground of independent and eternal ideals, 

 saying : " The force that produces the plant, 

 and according to which the plant grows and 

 dies, is its idea. The real and absolute 

 germ is not the individual and external germ 



we touch and see, but the idea by which 

 the external germ is created and endowed 

 with the necessary force for its growth and 

 preservation." " Thoughts on the Intellect " 

 is a translation from one of the powerful 

 works of Schopenhauer, in which that pesti- 

 lent old pessimist puts the entire philosophy 

 of things in the following nut-shell : " The 

 laws and powers of Nature, together with 

 matter in which they inhere, constitute here 

 the given, and consequently the absolute 

 real, taken generally ; but regarded spe- 

 cially, as innumerable suns and planets, 

 floating in infinite space. These are there- 

 fore, as the result, everywhere, nothing but 

 balls, a part of which are shining, the rest 

 illuminated. Upon the last, life has un- 

 folded itself in consequence of a process of 

 putrefaction, which, in gradual succession, 

 produces temporary organic beings, rising 

 and perishing through generation and death 

 according to the laws of Nature governing 

 the power of life, which, like all the others, 

 make up the reigning (and from eternity to 

 eternity) existing order of things, without 

 beginning or end, and without giving ac- 

 count of themselves. The highest point of 

 this succession is occupied by man, whose 

 existence also has a beginning, in its course 

 many and great miseries, few and parsi- 

 moniously-granted joys, and after this, like 

 every thing, has an end ; after which, it is 

 as if it never had been." 



Mr. Stephen Pearl Andrews contributes a 

 paper on the " Revisal of Kant's Categories." 

 He is the author, as is well known, of an 

 elaborate philosophical system which he de- 

 nominates " Universology," and one of the 

 features of which is a universal language. 

 Mr. Andrews is a philosophical linguist, and 

 his studies have brought him to the conclu- 

 sion that there can be no comprehensive 

 and perfected system of philosophic thought 

 that does not include some means of sys- 

 tematic security against the errors which 

 arise from the defects of language and the 

 multiplicity of tongues. In the present 

 paper he takes the " categories " arrived 

 at by the transcendental analysis of Kant, 

 and seeks for those elements and conditions 

 of the structure of language which corre 

 spond to these categories. He says : " The 

 three categories of quantity are Unity, Mani- 

 foldness, and Universality, which are no 



