Fraser's Magazine, 1870 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Fraser's Magazine, 1870

The scholar of the present day notes this spe'culative precision as a Sign of the infancy of philosophy, and measures the antiquity of a. Religion by the boldness and enor mity of its assumptions of particular knowledge in the realm of the Unknowable. Nevertheless, he has only to look around him to perceive how large a part of man kind is still prone to follow the teachers who approximate most nearly the attitude of omniscience. Swedenborg gossiping with the angels; Comte assigning the sun and moon their grooves and nu dertaking to engineer human his tory; Fourier pigeon-holing the universe in his French cabinet; the spiritual mediums 'interview ing departed Spirits at their tea tables, and fairly slapping the shades of 'heroes and prophets on the back with joyous familiarity; the popular divines bringing all mysteries down to a rhetorical zodiac around their pulpits: these are the recognised builders of the only new sects and systems of which our age can boast. With the bones of theories and explana tions bleaching all along the track by which the human mind has journeyed, we still find the multi tude adoring their calves, and steadily demanding for their leaders those who can most glibly fable of the inefiable.

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