losi signt 01 in ine DOOK. AUU uin r 11017 oiuy eigtii 

 months ago, in the French translation, say, in the ' 

 plainest terms : It is this necessity of things, this '' 

 occult but permanent connection, this periodical 

 return in the progress, development of formation, 

 phenomena, and events, which constitute Nature 

 submissive to a controlling power ? Physics, -as the 

 name itself implies, can only deduce the phenomena 

 of the physical world from the properties of matter ; -- 

 the highest aim of experimental science is therefore 

 to ascend to the existence of the laws, and progres- 

 siyely to generalize the same. Whatever lies beyond :h wiL 

 is no object for physical demonstration, it belongs to of thf 

 another order of more elevated speculations. Im- ^ >l oo 

 marmel Kant, one of the lew philosophers whom no 

 one has yet accused of impiety, has, with rare sagac- 

 ity, indicated the limits of physical explanation in his 

 i renowned Essai sur la Theorie et la Construction rpi 

 des Cieux. Koenigsberg, 1T55." I 1 M 



Humboldt regarded the doctrine of a personal cents 

 God as lying beyond the sphere of " physical de- 

 monstration," and therefore not properly to be in- prr 

 eluded in .the Kosmos. It would not follow from 



this that he was an atheist. Yet we think The 

 Tribune is correct in pronouncing Humboldt an in- 

 fidel, according to the more recent developments of cen 

 Infidelity. He had no faith in Christianity as a 

 historical system, as a supernatural revelation, or 

 as a divinely-appointed system of redemption, nslatea 



Thus, when he had road Bauer's critical attempt 

 to prove the HOB -authenticity of the Gospel, he 

 wrote : 



" Bruno (Bauer) has found in me a preadainitical 

 concert. When I was a boy, the very Court-preach- 

 ers taught like him. 1 had to join the Church under 

 a minister who also taught us that the evangelists 

 had left some memoranda which, at a later period, 

 Jiad been used as material for fictitious biographies 

 (woraus man spdter Bio^raphieengedichtet.) Many 

 years ago I wrote : ' All positive religions consist of 

 three distinct parts a code of morals which is nearly 

 the same in all of thero, and generally very pure ; a 

 geological chimera, (rve gcologique,) and a myth or 

 a little historical novel, it is the last named of the 

 three elements which, in the course of time, acquires 

 the greatest iiDpoitance.' Again; speaking of Strauss's 

 'Li.'e of Jisus,' which he calls a 'remarkable book,' 

 he says (April 6, 1842:) 'The critical method of 

 Straus's is excellent. Besides, the book is valuable 

 in giving the entire dogmatical history of the times, 

 ana especially in uncovering the crafty tricks of those 

 thcologjaris who, following the ways of Schleiermach-- 

 er, profess to believe in all forms of the Christian 

 myth, and are pompously followed to the grave by 

 royal carriages, while they slyly substitute a so- 

 called philosophical explanation to all those myths. 

 What 1 dislike in Strauss is the flippancy with wtiich 

 he asserts the generation of organic beings from in- 

 organic matter, of man from Chaldean mud (Ur- 

 scfilamm.) That he thinks lightly of the nebulous 



rrvolfova I JJf.ni on T)inore<n\ hovnnrl flip rrratra T oauil 



luslin, 



25, 



authoi 

 Har- 

 i 25. 



i, au 

 " &c 



N oo. 



onio 



Leech, 



oo 



