PREFACE. THIS book is in reality what it appears to be,-a correspondence between two friends. The responsibility for its publication is mine. For some years, I had been taking a stronger and stronger interest in Mr. Atkinson's views on a group of subjects which I had been contemplating from my youth up, with incessant curiosity, and, till of late, slight satisfaction. Last year, I asked him to permit me to inquire of him, in some sort of sequence, about his researches into the nature and position of the Human Being; and the replies I have received seemed to me to require of us both the discharge of that great social duty,—to impart what we believe, and what we think we have learned. I therefore suggested the publication of our letters. Among the few things of which we can pronounce ourselves certain, is the obligation of inquirers after truth to communicate what they obtain: and there is nothing in the surprise, reluctance, levity, or disapprobation of any person, or any number of persons, which can affect that certainty. It may be, or it may not be, that there are some who already hold our views, and many who are prepared for them, and needing them. It is no part of our business to calculate or conjecture the reception that our correspondence is likely to meet with. The one of us has earned, and the other has received, some knowledge, and both of us have thence come to entertain views which we value ; and the first duty belonging to the privilege is to impart what we believe to be true. It will at once occur to every considerate reader, that to establish by evidence and argument the facts and conclusions contained in these Letters would require many volumes. If we put out only one, its contents must be merely expository; and such, and nothing more, is the character of this volume. It has neither the compass, nor the order, nor the relative proportion, of a treatise. I believe that it has substance and connection enough to make it of value in its actual shape. Such as it is, we send it forth in the hope that we shall be corrected where we are wrong, enlightened where we are dim or blind, and sympathized with by those who estimate truth and freedom as we do. AMBLESIDE, HARRIET MARTINEAU. MOTTOES. "To generate and superinduce a new nature, or new natures, upon a given body, is the labour and aim of human power: whilst to discover the form or true difference of a given nature, or the nature to which such nature is owing, or source from which it emanates (for these terms approach nearest to an explanation of our meaning), is the labour and discovery of human knowledge."-Bacon: Novum Organon, A. 1, Book 2nd. "It is our office, as faithful secretaries, to receive and note down such (laws) as have been enacted by the voice of Nature herself: and our trustiness must stand acquitted, whether they are accepted, or by the suffrage of general opinion rejected. Still, we do not abandon the hope that in times yet to come, individuals may arise who will both be able to comprehend and digest the choicest of those things; and solicitous also to carry them to perfection."—Bacon: Anticipations of the Second Philosophy. "The true end, scope, or office of knowledge, I have set down to consist not in any plausible, delectable, reverend, or admired discourse, or any satisfactory arguments, but in effecting and working, and in discovery of particulars not re A vealed before, for the better endowment and help of Man's life.”—Bacon: Interpretation of Nature. Concerning the publication of novel facts, there can be but one judgment; for facts are independent of fashion, taste and caprice, and are subject to no code of criticism. They are more useful, perhaps, even when they contradict, than when they support, received doctrines; for our theories are only imperfect approximations to the real knowledge of things."-Sir H. Davy. "The state of the speculative faculties, the character of the propositions assented to, essentially determines the moral and political state of the community, as we have already seen that it determines the physical. Every considerable change historically known to us in the condition of any portion of mankind, has been preceded by a change of proportional extent in the state of their knowledge, or in their prevalent beliefs."-Mill: System of Logic. "The deep philosopher sees chains of causes and effects so wonderfully and strangely linked together, that he is usually the last person to decide upon the impossibility of any two series of events being independent of each other; and in Science, so many natural miracles, as it were, have been brought to light, . . . . that the physical inquirer is seldom disposed to assert, confidently, on any abstruse subjects belonging to the order of natural things; and still less so, on those relating to the more mysterious relations of moral events and intellectual natures."-Sir H. Davy: On Omens. "The Ancients, whose genius was less limited, and whose philosophy was more extended, wondered less than we do at facts which they could not explain. They had a better view of Nature, such as she is: a sympathy, a singular correspondence, was to them only a phenomenon, while to us it is a paradox, when we cannot refer it to our pretended laws of motion."-Buffon. |