internal structure of the earth; history of organisms, their first origin, and developments; the surface, its forms, and their influence on animated life; the gradual rising and sinking of the surface in Sweden; the tides; circulation of water on the earth—springs, cold, warm, mineral, artesian—rivers, seas, ocean currents, evaporation and condensation; glaciers; the atmosphere, climate, weather, winds, storm-clouds; organic life on the earth, its nature, differences, origin of the differences, original production, creation, first appearance; man, his origin, races, forms, phrenology, &c. These letters offer, as we have already said, in a pleasing and attractive form, a condensed and comprehensive view of what is now known with reference to the sciences treated. The letter upon Man is especially interesting. Professor Cotta belongs to those who think the human race to be "the gradual perfection, through thousands of generations," of a lower order of creatures. "The human individual," he says, "even now, in the embryonic state, passes through the condition of various sorts of animals. The most eminent anatomists have shown that before birth we for a time resemble a polypal animal, then for a time a fish, next a reptile, till at last appear the characteristics of a mammalia. This is a fact which bears strongly in favor of our view. The genesis and development of the entire species seem to be here condensed in the growth of the individual." But while setting forth this peculiar view, Professor Cotta, with true German comprehensiveness, takes care to give a fair statement of opposing doctrines, and evinces nothing like a narrow dogmatism. The second volume, like the second volume of the Cosmos, is that which will most interest and delight the general reader. It contains thirty-two letters, mainly on the following subjects: the view of nature in general; the religious view; the various forms of the religious view; the æsthetic view; the inward connection of the æsthetic enjoyment of nature with its artistic representation; the scientific view as empirical science and natural philosophy; the relations of the various views of nature to each other; the poetic comprehension of nature among the Indians; the poetic comprehension of nature among the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans; the Christian contemplation of nature; German poetry in the middle ages; Italian poetry; the poetic comprehension of nature in modern times; the representation of nature by painting, and its gradual appearance in the history of art; the physiognomy of plants in connection with the physiognomy of nature in general; description of several plant formations; general outlines of the animal world; history of the physical view of the universe; natural science among the Phenicians, the Greeks, at the time of the Ptolemies, at the time of the Roman Empire, and in the middle ages; natural history of modern times, Bacon, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton; the mechanical doctrine of modern physics; the dynamic view of nature; Fichte's doctrine, and the natural philosophy of Schelling and Hegel. This volume, as will be easily understood, gives at once a history of religion, philosophy, art, literature, and science, in their relations to the outward universe. For instance, under the head of natural science among the Greeks, we have among other things an account of the doctrine of the Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle; in treating the middle ages, Professor Schaller speaks of the Scholastics, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Giordano Bruno, and Paracelsus. One of the most interesting parts of the whole is that on the poetic view of nature among the Hindoos, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Germans, and Italians, the historical statement being every where illustrated by copious quotations of admirable passages from the poets of those nations. The strictly scientific portions are illustrated by excellent engravings, and are free from mere technicalities. Sold in New-York by R. Garrigue.
The Vestiges of Creation has been translated into German by Charles Vogt, a savan who in late years has become noted as a radical politician. The translation is highly praised. Published at Brunswick.
The translation of Hegel's Aesthetik into French is now nearly completed at Paris, the fourth volume, which is devoted to the consideration of music and poetry, having just been published. One volume more will complete the work. The translator is M. Charles Bénard.
The Human Race and its Origin.—Under the title of Histoire Générale des Races Humaines, M. Eusebe-François de Salles has just published at Paris an elaborate work on Ethnography, for which he had prepared himself by long and careful personal observation of most of the races on the globe, his travels having extended into nearly all climes and regions. He takes the ground of the descent of the entire human family from a single pair, created adult and perfect in mind and body, not by any simple evolution of nature, but by a direct act of the Divine Being. The paradise or home of this pair he places to the north of India and the east of Persia. All the varieties of men now existing he attributes to the influence of climate and circumstances. "The first light of history," he says, "shows us the human family in possession of a language, and of a certain degree of science, the inheritance of the past. Its aptitudes, its passions, and outward circumstances, may increase this inheritance, keep it the same, or diminish it. In peoples enervated by luxury and by doubt, in tribes softened by too favorable a climate, or separated too long from the stronger and better educated masses,—in a family or a couple exiled by a catastrophe, a shipwreck,—we are to seek the origin of the decline into the various degrees of corruption, barbarism, the savage state, and brutality. Imagine a boat from the coast of America, or from the South Sea Islands, cast by a tempest on some unknown shore or some desert island. A few young persons, a few children, alone escape from the shipwreck, knowing imperfectly the language, the arts, and the family traditions of their parents. Such is the origin of the unfortunates sometimes met with, who are ignorant even of the use of fire." Against the spontaneous generation of the human race in several localities he argues at length as an utter absurdity, the point of his argument being, that isolated couples so produced would be unable to resist the inhospitality of nature without miraculous aid, and one miracle, he contends, is more admissable than ten or a dozen. But the chief grounds upon which he labors to establish his doctrine are the similitude of the most ancient traditions among all branches of the human species, the affiliation and analogy of languages, and the identity of organization and equality of aptitudes. He finds similar traditions among the Hebrews, the Chaldeans, the Phœnicians, the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Chinese, the Thibetans, the Scythians, and the Americans. In the theogonies and cosmogonies of the Aztecs of America, he says that the traditions of ancient Asia are plainly to be found, while some vague traces of these primitive narratives are to be found even among the savages of Oceanica, and the most barbarous and miserable negroes of western Africa. To the negroes he devotes perhaps the most careful and learned portion of the work. Starting from the discovery of M. Flaurens as to the pigmentum or coloring matter of the skin, he contends with great force that nothing but the gradual influence of climate, giving a greater and greater intensity to the action of this coloring matter, which exists in every race and every individual, has caused the essential difference between whites and blacks. For, he argues, there is no other difference between them than that of color, all the other features, such as the prominent mouth, the woolly hair, the facial angle, being in no wise exclusively peculiar to the Africans. And so, after having gone over the entire race in detail, proving the identity of organization in every division, M. de Salles concludes that the primitive complexion was olive, somewhat like the color of unburnt coffee, and the original men had red hair. On the affiliation of languages he reasons at great length, with a striking affluence of curious and learned detail. Languages, he remarks, become more and more complicated and perfect as we ascend toward their origin. Next he considers the modifications by which the present races of men have departed from the first family, and in so doing he takes up every people that has ever been known. America, he thinks, was first settled by Mongol emigration, with religious traditions, between the eighteenth and the fifteenth century before our era: then, six or eight hundred years later, there was a second emigration of Hindoo races, with traditions of architecture. With the Bible and the facts of geology as his starting point, he demonstrates the falsity of the Egyptian, Hindoo, Chinese, and Mexican chronologies. The six days of creation he takes as so many great epochs; the deluge he places at five thousand years before Christ.
In our account of this book we have not strictly followed the order of the author. Thus he makes the direct miraculous creation of man the concluding topic of his book, and treats it not without a certain poetic elevation as comports with such an event. We have aimed only to give the outlines of his doctrine, and for the rest recommend those of our readers who are interested in such studies to procure and read the work.
Joachim
