Lowell Lectures. The Problem of Human Destiny; Or, the End of Providence in the World and Man
By , D. D. New York : James Miller.
THE publication of a second edition of this thoughtful, genial, and eloquent volume enables us to correct the omission of not noticing it on its first appearance a few months ago. Originally prepared as a course of lectures for the Lowell Institute, and repeated with marked success in various cities of the Union, the mode of treatment is of course popular rather than scientific. The subject is necessarily complicated with the problem of evil ; but the design is not so much to attempt a new solution of the problem as to present, in a vivid and impressive form, certain invigorating and consoling truths which relieve the weight of its burden. The most comprehensive definition of evil, to all minds which are forced, by the contradiction involved in the affirmation of two Infinites, to deny its essential existence, is that which declares it to be imperfect good. But as this definition implies that evil characterizes all grades of created being, and includes the saint singing in heaven as well as the savage prowling in the woods, it carries with it little help or satisfaction to the practical will and conscience. Dr. Dewey takes up the problem at one or two removes from its purely abstract essence, and fastens on its concrete manifestations, and the compensations for its existence in the system of the world. The leading ideas he aims to inculcate are these : that the system of the moral world is a system of spontaneous development, having for its object human culture ; that man, being free, must do, within the sphere of his permitted activity, what he will, and therefore is free to do what is wrong ; that, in order that his growth may be free and rational, the system of treatment under which he lives must be one of general laws, and not of capricious expedients ; and that there are two restraints on his wild or pernicious activity, —one inward, from his moral nature, the other outward, from material Nature. After illustrating these at considerable, though by no means tedious length, Dr. Dewey proceeds to exhibit the adaptation of the material world to human culture, — the physical and moral constitution of man, and the complexity of his being, — the mental and moral activity elicited by his connection with Nature and life, — the problems of pain, hereditary evil, and death, which affect his individual existence, — the problems of bad or defective institutions and usages, religious, political, and warlike, which affect his social existence, — and the testimony of history to human progress, and to the principles of human spontaneity and divine control which underlie it.
But this bare enumeration conveys no impression of the richness of the author’s matter or the fineness of his spirit. The volume is full of interesting facts, gathered from a wide range of thoughtful reading, literary, historical, theological, and scientific, and of facts, too, which are associated with thoughts and related to a plan. The judgments expressed on all the vital questions which come up in the discussion of the theme bear the impress of genuine convictions. They are not merely the assent of the understanding to propositions, but of the soul to truths ; and many must have been subjected to the test of personal experience as well as mental scrutiny. The first requisite of a work on the problem of human destiny is, that it should kindle the reader into sympathy with human nature, and lodge in his mind an abiding conviction of the reality of human progress ; and this requisite Dr. Dewey’s volume satisfies better than many treatises of more scientific exactness and more ambitious pretensions.