Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/581

Rh Charming was so impressed by the work, that he sought the author out, made his acquaintance, and found that, notwithstanding his "few advantages of early education," he gave better promise of ability to grapple with a profound metaphysical problem, and make more progress in its analysis, than any of the regulation scholars with whom he was acquainted. An authoritative critic speaks as follows of Mr. Hazard's first work, the essay on language:

The essay was not more worthy of attention from the circumstances under which it was written than from the interest and freshness, if not the absolute originality, of some of its thinking. The tone of the first essay is that of a refined and elevated idealism in its underlying philosophy and in the moral earnestness of its practical spirit. The essay was highly esteemed in those days of transcendental aspiration, and excited a very general curiosity among the eager seekers after new truths and new prophets. Unlike many of the effusions of the taught and untaught seers of those effervescing years, this essay was in every line clear, analytic, and severely reasoned. It was, however, as characteristically idealistic in its philosophical spirit as it was imaginative in its poetical and ethical portraitures. The essay put Dr. Channing upon the quest to discover its author, and this discovery led to a friendly intimacy between the two till the death of the philosophic divine, which was commemorated by an affectionate yet discriminating essay from his philosophic protegé and friend.

Yielding to the earnest injunction of Dr. Channing, Mr. Hazard early in life took up the question of free-will, and published the results of his studies in two solid volumes, "Freedom of the Mind in Willing, etc." (1864); and two letters on "Causation," and "Freedom in Willing," addressed to John Stuart Mill (1869). Those who desire to become familiar with Mr. Hazard's reasoning in its full elaboration must consult these works; in the volume before us the results are necessarily much epitomized.

Into the merits of the great question of free-will we can not, of course, here enter. It is alleged that modern science, by its vast extension of the idea of natural law, has strengthened the conceptions of necessity and fatalism at the expense of moral freedom, But determinism never had a more powerful champion than Jonathan Edwards, and he certainly did not draw his inspiration from modern science. Mr. Hazard takes broad issue with Edwards. Professor Huxley, a leading "automatist," and representing the latest science, admits that "volition counts for something"—but the philosophical question is, For how much? Nobody claims that the will is unlimited. The title of Mr. Hazard's book, "Man a Creative First Cause," seems rather startling at first, but it is because of our theological connotations of the term "creative." His obvious implication is of the mind willing and working in its own sphere, where we properly speak of creative genius and originating capacity. Indeed, Mr. Hazard explicitly says: "Exterior to itself, it (the human mind) may not have the power to execute what it wills; it may be frustrated by other external forces, since in the external the ideal incipient creation may not be consummated by finite effort. But, as in our moral nature the willing, the persevering effort, is itself the consummation, there can be no such failure; and the mind in it is therefore not only a creative but a supreme creative first cause.

Mr. Hazard's book is tersely and vigorously written, and takes a somewhat wide range both of philosophical and practical suggestion. The author has a sturdy faith in the value of metaphysical studies for practical utility as a mental training, and also in their disciplinary power for the formation of human character. This view is incidentally presented, and we only regret that he has not more fully and formally developed it. Such a discussion would be valuable to education, and we are not without hope that Mr. Hazard may yet find it practicable to give fuller expression to his views and reasonings upon the subject.

has long been wanted a first-class work on this interesting subject, treated with reference to the requirements of ordinary intelligent readers. It has, of course, been familiar in a certain way to the anatomists who have dissected the vocal structures with reference to pathology and surgery, and given the representations of the parts in their text-books. But the