Every system of civilization is in some degree special.  None is universal; none represents purely the spirit of humanity; none contains all the possibilities of society.  Not being universal, none can be, in its form, perpetual.  The universal asserts its supremacy; all that is partial must be temporary.  The human spirit takes back, as it were, into its bosom each sally of civilization before pulsing anew.  Thus, even on their ideal side, civilizations have their law of limitation; and to know what this law of limitation definitely is constitutes now one of the great desiderata of the world.  We believe, that, ceteris paribus, the duration of a civilization is proportioned to its depth and breadth,—­that is, to the degree in which it represents the total resource and possibility of the human spirit.

Again, every system of civilization has a body, an institution, an established and outward interpretation of social relationship.  In respect to this it is mortal.  In respect to this it has a law of growth and decay.  In respect to this, moreover, it is subject to what we call accident, the chances of the world.  In fine, the bodies of individuals and of civilizations, the fixed forms, that is, in which they are instituted, serve the same uses and obey the same law.

Now a work which should deal in a really great and profound way with this corpus of civilizations,—­not spending itself in a mere tedious, endless demonstration that such corpus exists, and has therefore its youth and its age, but really explaining its physiology and pathology,—­such a work would be no less than a benefaction to the human race.  And in such a work one of the easiest and most obvious points would be this,—­that the spirit of civilizations has a certain power of changing the form of its body by successive partial rejections and remouldings; and the degree in which they prove capable of this continuous palingenesia is one important measure of their depth and determinant of their duration.

For writing such a work we do not think Dr. Draper perfectly qualified.  For this we find in him no tokens of an intelligence sufficiently subtile, penetrating, and profound.  He is, moreover, too heady and too well cased in his materialistic strait-waistcoat.  Nevertheless, his book carries in it a certain large suggestion; it contains many excellent observations; its tone is unexceptionable; the style is firm and clear, though heavy and disfigured by such intolerable barbarisms as “commence to” walk, talk, or the like,—­the use of the infinitive instead of the participle after commence.  Dr. Draper is an able man, a scholar in science, a well-informed, studious gentleman in other provinces; but he tries to be a legislator in thought, and fails.

De l’Origine du Langage.  Par ERNEST RENAN, Membre de l’Institut.  Quatrieme Edition, augmentee.  Paris.

It seems to be the law of French thought, that it shall never be exhaustive of any profound matter, and also that (Auguste Comte always excepted) it shall never be exhausting to the reader.  German thought may be both; French is neither; English thought—­but the English do not think, they dogmatize.  Magnificent dogmatism it may be, but dogmatism.  Exceptions of course, but these are equally exceptions to the characteristic spirit of the nation.