Mr. Bancroft's
glittering generalizations do not always seem to us to wear the sober
livery of truth. For instance, on page 500 we read: "The most stupendous
thought that ever was conceived by man, such as never had been dared by
Socrates or the Academy, by Aristotle or the Stoics, took possession of
Descartes on a November night in his meditations on the banks of the
Danube." It may be coldness of temperament, it may be the chilling
influence of advancing years, but we cannot admire statements like
these, and we are constrained to think them exaggerated and extravagant.
And on the next page Mr. Bancroft says: "Edwards, Reid, Kant, and
Rousseau were all imbued with religiosity, and all except the last, who
spoiled his doctrine by dreamy indolence, were expositors of the active
powers of man." It is certainly an ingenious mind that finds a
resemblance between Edwards and Rousseau. What exactly is the meaning of
"religiosity," we cannot say; but if it be used as a synonyme of
religion, we demur to the assertion that Rousseau was imbued with
religion,--Rousseau, who in his youth allowed an innocent girl to be
ruined by accusing her of a theft which he himself had committed, and in
his ripened manhood sent to a foundling hospital the children he had had
by his mistress,--whose life was despicable and whose moral creed seemed
to be summed up in the doctrine that every natural impulse is to be
indulged.
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