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wish to elevate their condition. There has, however, been a considerable increase in their trade within the last ten years. But we have no means of forming an exact estimate of its present value, or of its relative gain, as Mr. Herndon was able to obtain fewer statistics than could be desired. His meteorological observations were very full and valuable, and his chart of the Amazon, and those of its tributaries which he ascended, is admirably minute and clear. But the difficulty of obtaining reliable information on some other points must be a sufficient apology for the absence of statistical tables of the population and trade of the different places on the river. He obtained some valuable tables, however, in regard to the trade of Pará and one or two other places. By these statements we find that in 1846 the exports from the United States to Pará amounted to $235,105, and in 1851 they had risen in value to $425,484; thus showing a gain of more than eighty per cent. in five years. In 1846 our imports thence amounted to $182,742; in 1851 they were $476,210, or a gain of more than one hundred and sixty per cent. If our trade with a single place at the mouth of the Amazon shows so great an expansion within this brief period, it is scarcely possible to overestimate its value when this whole great basin shall be opened to our commerce, and the eastern part of Peru shall thus be brought into more direct communication with this country.

According to the larger map accompanying Mr. Herndon's volume, the Amazon is navigable as far as Santiago, at the very foot of the Andes, and a considerable distance above the point at which his survey commenced. For most of the distance, the river is of great width and of unusual depth, and little expense would be required in improving the channel. Between the frontier of Peru and the ocean the principal places are Egas, Barra, at the mouth of the Rio Negro, Obidos, Santarem, and Gurupá, all of which are centres of communication with the surrounding districts. Their aggregate population__is small, consisting of civilized Indians and whites. Our author gives us but little information in regard to their social, intellectual, and religious condition. But it is doing little injustice to say, that most of them are ignorant, uncultivated, and superstitious. Yet so far as the

priests exert an influence, it is doubtless wholesome in restraining their rough passions, and inducing them to lead more active lives. Money is scarce, and not sought for, as it is among more civilized people. Indeed, in some of the small places it seems to have hardly any value. The houses are rudely built and poorly furnished; and on the whole, the social condition of the people must be regarded as very low.

Such must necessarily be the case so long as Brazil continues to pursue her narrow policy in regard to the free navigation of the Amazon. For her own interest,

in developing the resources of her immense territory, this policy should be forsaken; since it is evident that her people have not sufficient ambition and energy to do for themselves what needs to be done. Vast tracts of rich land are lying uncultivated by man, because they are not occupied by people of vigorous and active characters, anxious to raise their children to a condition in life better than their own, and because there are no means of cheap and convenient communication with the great marts of the world. To Peru the free navigation of the Amazon would be of incalculable advantage. Much the larger portion of her territory lies east of the Andes, and communicates with the ocean only across lofty mountains of difficult and often dangerous passage. Yet her soil is drained by the grandest river system in the world, and vessels loaded on the Atlantic might penetrate the interior of the country, and discharge their cargoes almost at the foot of the Andes.

To other nations, and especially to the United States, the opening of the Amazon would also prove of great advantage. It would furnish new employment for our vessels, and introduce new consumers of our manufactured products. Though the demand for coarse goods for exportation to South America is by no means small, it would be vastly enhanced by bringing the inhabitants of this great valley and of the eastern parts of Peru into direct contact with American enterprise. It should be the settled policy of this government at all times to develop our internal resources to their fullest extent, and to open new channels of foreign commerce for the disposal of our surplus productions. Far wiser will it be for us, by a righteous dealing with delicate questions at home and

by avoiding intermeddling with the domestic politics of other countries, to use every endeavor to increase our prosperity, power, and wealth as a nation, by a wise domestic legislation and by peaceful negotiations with other states. Two great objects are beginning to force themselves upon the attention of this generation, - the construction of a chain of railroads between our Atlantic and Pacific borders, and the acquisition of the free navigation of the Amazon by an honorable treaty; and both are worthy of serious consideration. In the accomplishment of these objects, we shall almost double our foreignand domestic trade, and the most ardent and hopeful advocates of progress may find sufficient employment for their young energies, without violating our constitutional obligations through a mistaken sense of duty, or departing from the settled policy of the founders of our government at every call of a rampant patriotism.

We cannot take leave of Mr. Herndon's volume without expressing the gratification we have derived from its perusal. Though not marked by those qualities which we are accustomed to demand in a practised writer, the style is simple and perspicuous; and the variety and extent of information contained in it show how faithfully the writer performed the duty assigned him. In every respect the work is highly creditable to that arm of the public service which has already undertaken so many enterprises for the benefit of science and the commercial interests of the country.

C. C. S.

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ART. III. MISS MARTINEAU'S COMPEND OF COMTE'S POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY.*

It is but a few years since a review of Comte's original work appeared in this journal,† and to that we refer the reader who wishes to see an abstract of the contents of that bulky and unwieldy publication. We notice the

* The Positive Philosophy of AUGUSTE COMTE, freely translated and condensed by HARRIET MARTINEAU. London: John Chapman. 1853. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 480, 561.

†Christian Examiner for March, 1851.

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present translation, partly because we wish to add a few words upon the inexhaustible topic of the book, and partly because a respectful notice is due to the labors of one who so long time held an honored position among the writers. of our own denomination.

We must, however, confess that Miss Martineau's writ ings were never to our individual liking; and that in the Preface to this translation her style is less to our taste than ever. The Preface opens with a gratuitous charge of hypocrisy brought against all those who are making substantial additions to human knowledge. She declares there is "no doubt in the minds of students of his [Comte's] great work, that most or all of those who have added substantially to our knowledge for many years. past, are fully acquainted with it, and are under obligations to it which they would have thankfully acknowledged, but for the fear of offending the prejudices of the society in which they live." "Whichever way we look," she adds, "over the whole field of science, we see the truths and ideas presented by Comte cropping out from the surface, and tacitly recognized as the foundation of all that is systematic in our knowledge."

Now this language appears to us to assert but two things, and both assertions are false. It asserts that Science is indebted to Comte; whereas, he can at most claim only to have benefited Philosophy. Miss Martineau appears to think that the "truths and ideas" which Comte recognizes in Science, have been by him presented to Science. Her error in regard to Comte is the same as the error of historians, and men of letters in general, with regard to Bacon, when they attribute to Bacon an influence over physics which in fact he has exerted only over metaphysics. Comte and Bacon are philosophers and critics of a movement which neither of them fully comprehend, and to which neither of them give direct aid.

The second assertion in the language which we have quoted from Miss Martineau's Preface is, that scientific men conceal, through fear of shocking prejudices, their obligation to Comte. As they are under no obligations to him, they cannot conceal them; but, waiving this point, the grave charge of hypocrisy, thus gratuitously brought against men of science, is a moral offence, a wholesale slander, condemned by the spirit of Comte's philoso

phy as distinctly as by the precepts of Jesus; and its utterance shows that Comte's neophyte has not yet passed the full term of her novitiate.

The Preface closes with several pages of eulogy on Science, very edifying from one whose whole tone of mind, to judge from her previous works, betrays a lack of scientific training. She says that theologians and metaphysicians are no judges of the work. But Comte himself says, "We may talk for ever about the [Positive] method, and state it in terms very wisely, without knowing half so much about it as the man who has once put it in practice upon a single particular of actual research, even without any philosophical intention." By Comte's own rule, therefore, there are many theologians better qualified to judge of his critique on Science than Miss Martineau can claim to be.

Miss Martineau's translation and condensation is, we presume, well done. We have not taken the pains to make a direct comparison with the original, but, so far as our recollection serves, she preserves all the essential ideas of the author, and she certainly presents them in a dress much more attractive than that of the interminable sentences of the original,- in every phrase newly guarded against misconstruction, qualified, and qualified anew.

We deny, in toto, the great law of Comte, that each individual, and the race, passes through the three states of theological, metaphysical, and positive, and assert that his conception of this law has led him to a misconception of every subject of Science, from Geometry up to Sociology.

We deny the law. It does not hold in the case of individuals, nor of the race. The true law, which Comte so constantly misrepresents under the form of his three successive stages, is simply the law of successive development. The theological state is first developed, but it remains even when the positive state is reached. It appears otherwise to Comte only through the accident of his living in France, and to Miss Martineau through the misfortunes of her personal history, which she has revealed to us in her publications following that of her "Life in a SickRoom." There are examples, scattered throughout the world, of persons who, by nervous disease or inherited idiosyncrasy, are destitute of religious faith; but their opinions have no more weight in showing the non-exist

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