The Young Student and Writer's Assistant.

5. Solomon, the son-of-David's wisdom, &c. Here Solomon and son of David may be regarded as two nouns in apposition; and as the idiom of the language only admits of the possessive sign in the last case, it is added to David. A better, 37. Which is greater, the product of 17 and because more definite, form would be, The wis-5, or the product of 292 and 123, and what is the dom of Solomon, &c.

13. How is the deficiency compensated for? 14. Compared with other nations the condition

Perform Exercise 4, in the May No., 1854, of England with regard to minerals? Vol. V., p. 193.

Literature.

LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.

Our oldest poet is Mr. Rogers, now in his 90th year. Our oldest historian is Mr. Hallam, in his 74th year. Our oldest critic is Mr. Wilson Croker, in his 75th year. Our oldest novelist is Lady Morgan, but we shall conceal her ladyship's age. Our oldest biographer is Mr. Britton, in his 83rd year. Mr. Leigh Hunt was a poet, with a printed volume of his effusions in verse, more than half a century ago, and is now in his 71st year.

European Philosophy.

BY SAMUEL NEIL,

AUTHOR OF THE ART OF REASONING," THE ELEMENTS OF RHETORIC," ETC. THE IONIC SCHOOL-THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE-ANAXAGORAS. THE watchful survey of the gradual evolution of the processes of "the inner life" gives to the thinker joy unspeakable. There is a tempting fascination in philosophy which great minds cannot resist. The problems it propounds, and the methods it employs for their solution, are alike full of intense interest. In the old ages of the world the thinker voyaged alone, unhelmed and compassless, through the strange seas and yet unfathomed waters of speculative philosophy. In all the grand sublimity of solitude, guided but by the newly-lighted lamp of a noble purpose, despite of the misty shroudments of superstition, these primal excursions were undertaken. It is easy for us, in self-complacent egotism, to smile at their follies, confute their errors, and plume ourselves in prideful selfsufficiency on our superiority to them. But, put the question honestly, how much less foolish than they would we have been, had they not constructed charts for our behoof, and erected lighthouses here and there for our guidance, in that limitless expanse? Here the white light of truth beams out; there the green glare of uncertainty counsels caution; and yonder the red lights warn of certain danger. We have all these helps, besides being beneficiently surrounded by an horizon of holier light and purer lustre, and hence have little cause for self-gratulation, and still less for the contemptuous smile or the scornful negligence with which we treat the philosophy of olden times.

In the old world the only instruments of observation and experiment were the senses— the inheritance of what might be called capitalized thought was small-and hence there was greater difficulty in the working out of the problems of the reason than we can now rightly estimate. And in so far as we underrate these difficulties, we must fail to comprehend aright the true position and status of the thinkers of the past. Given, the senses as the sole, unaided instruments of investigation, and their impressions as the phenomena to be explained, there seems nothing more natural than the direction which philosophic inquiries in these ages took in making the mind, its powers and activities, chief factors in the product knowledge—and in endeavouring by an acquaintance with

"The subtle ways

Of intricate but instantaneous thought,"

to unriddle the mysteries of nature, and satisfy the earnest soul hungering after wisdom. To be truly wise requires that Man, Nature, and God, should, in their whole essence and relationships, be accurately known and felt; but it is in phenomena alone that the outward and higher and grander noumena, by which all is ruled, to which all is subject, and in which all lives, are displayed and made knowable. Through our own sensations, Nature is known; through our own reason, the Deity is apprehended; and hence, to know ourselves truly is to have the key to all other knowledge. From this stand-point the philosophy of

66

the Ionic school looked out upon all things, and through this they saw, as through a glass darkly," glimpses of several truths. In our previous papers we have explained the steps taken by Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, in the search after truth. A new thinker succeeds them; let us hear him.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.-ANAXAGORAS (500-428 B.C.), the pupil and successor of Anaximenes, was born at Clazomenæ, near Colophon, in Lydia. He was of noble lineage, and his wealth was princely. Hereditary honours could not satisfy him; he wished to be a noble in virtue of his own achievements. He rightly regarded the statesman's office as less honour-worthy than that of the thinker; and sought in the pursuits of philosophy a preeminence greater than statesmanship afforded. When reproached for his apparent apathy regarding the interests of his native country, he, pointing to the heavens, replied, "I have the greatest love for my native land." When he saw that the management of his patrimonial estate prevented the entire devotion of his soul to the contemplation of Nature and Thought, he relinquished it to his relatives, and migrated to Athens, then the chief city in Greece, that held out peculiar inducements to those who desired to pursue an intellectual life. Here he developed and taught those doctrines which gained him the title of "The Intelligence" (Noug). His most distinguished pupils were-Pericles, the statesman; Euripides, the dramatist; and Archelaus, the tutor of Socrates. It was a grand era in Athenian history, that. Athens was just in the transition state-now the chief of the allied Greek cities, and shortly after-when the triumphs of Miltiades, Leonidas, Cimon, and Themistocles had added Marathon, Thermopyla, Salamis, and Mycale as words of glory to the Greek nationalities-to become the queen and mistress of them all. The Dionysiac theatre afforded culture to the minds and tastes of the people, by representing the dramas of Æschylus and Sophocles; statues and temples rose around in magnificence and beauty; and the poems of Homer were read delightedly by, and formed the theme of much refined discourse among, the literary men of the day. Philosophy was much cultivated, and a general activity of thought prevailed. For a time Anaxagoras taught his doctrines in peace, and pursued his inquiries unmolested. There arose, however, about the year 432, a faction in the Athenian state, whose object was to oppose Pericles. This they attempted to effect, in the first instance, by trying their strength in the prosecution of his known friends. They fixed on the beautiful, learned, and calumniated Aspasia, the illustrious architect and sculptor Phidias, and the philosopher Anaxagoras. Anaxagoras had made himself obnoxious to the envious by his superiority, to the religious by his tenets, to the enthusiastic politicians by his well known indifference to national patriotism, and to all these for having been the teacher of him who had now become-chiefly, it was thought, by his instructions—the foremost man in all the state. Two charges were, therefore, brought against Anaxagoras—either of them sufficient in Greece to compass the end this faction had in view-viz., unbelief in, and impiety towards, the Gods of the state; and Medism, i. e., a favourable leaning towards the Persians. For these crimes he was first imprisoned, and then condemned to death. It is difficult to say whether he escaped the poison cup through the intercession of Pericles or by flight, so different are the accounts handed down to us by ancient writers. Lucian, the satirist, in his "Dialogues," represents "the father of Gods and king of men" as launching a terribly destructive thunderbolt at Anaxagoras, which Pericles

bravely turns aside from his aged friend; but Plutarch accuses the great statesman of forgetfulness, if not faithlessness, to his instructor, and asserts that when Anaxagoras saw himself neglected, he lay down calmly determined to starve himself to death. On hearing of this resolution, Pericles flew to his prison, and besought him to live, if not for the love of life, yet for the good his counsel might do the state. Whereupon Anaxagoras, uncovering his face, hitherto moodily rolled up in his robe (xλaïva), said, “O Pericles! those who desire to see by the light of a lamp, must put oil in it, to make the light burn." Whether he fled from prison, or had his sentence commuted to banishment, the Areopagus seems not to have been fully satisfied, and hence they put his two sons to death. When he was informed of this cruelty, in his retreat at Lampsacus, he remarked, "Nature had long ago passed on the judges, on them, and on myself, the same sentence;" and when some one asked him if he did not regret the loss of Athenian society, he replied, "It is they who have lost me." At length, borne down by sorrow, poverty, and old age, he sickened, and when on his death-bed, the people of Lampsacus, who loved him well, asked if he would like to have his body conveyed to his native Clazomenæ; he replied," There is no occasion for that; all places are alike near to the world to which I am going." A few days after, the senate asked how he would wish his memory to be honoured, and he requested that "they would allow the day of his death to be held as a holiday by the schoolboys of Lampsacus." Shortly after he expired, and another great man was added to the treasure-house of Death.

Aristotle characterizes Anaxagoras as a profound and cautious thinker; and so, indeed, he was; but he was also a man of extensive culture and rare acquirements. He wrote a work on "The Perspective of the Theatre," and occupied the prison-hours before his trial in writing on "The Quadrature of the Circle." His treatise "On Nature," of which we have many fragments extant,* seems to have consisted of closely-reasoned and well-compacted aphorisms upon phenomena and their causes, rather disconnected in style, but firmly knit by thought.

EXPOSITION.-The notion of a unique element from which all things forth-formed themselves, or were forth-formed, had hitherto satisfied the wants of speculation. But how from this One can the All proceed? and how does the All become the Many? The orderly evolution of all things from one primal element in different states and modes seems inconceivable, when we reflect upon the infinity of different things which exist. What processes are sufficient to explain the conditions and causes which give origin to them all? For if they all proceed from the same element, and are governed by the same laws, all things must either be similar, or on their way towards similarity, or the laws of their transformation must be very numerous, and their actions intricate and confused. It is more probable, therefore, that there are special and peculiar elements fitted to produce, by proper combinations, each sort of object; different kinds of perfectly similar elementary particles, each sort of which, when combined by the natural attraction of like for like, formed one particular substance; and hence, he says "in all things there is a part of the

* See Schaubach's "Anaxagoræ Clazomenii Fragmenta." Leipsic, 1827, which contains all the fragments relating to the life and philosophy of Anaxagoras which are to be found in the classics of Greece and Rome. The matter in inverted commas in the text consists of translations of some of those fragments.