ought, in a healthy state, to enter the eye and produce the proper impression, find, if one may so say, their path already occupied in the middle, and cannot pass this point to reach the brain. M. Taine gives a very ingenious illustration of this view. He likens the production, say, of a visual impression to the ringing of a bell by a wire. The natural course of things, when there is nothing out of order with the machinery, is that the stimulus should commence at the extremity of the wire, and be conveyed to the bell, there to produce the sound. But conceive that the wire gets agitated in any other way at some point between, the same effect would be produced as before ; and if this action was more than very slight, it would be quite in vain to attempt to ring the bell at the same time by its wire. The machinery would, so to say, be pre-occupied with the unnatural action.

We have thus touched, in a somewhat desultory way, upon a few points illustrative of M. Taine's view of Mental Philosophy, which is a view, as we have said, now assuming considerable prominence. It will readily be understood that when an author is thus dealing with subjects which are made a matter of profound professional study, no one who has not had a correspond. ing professional education can speak with confidence upon the details of his special treatment. If M. Taine had been solitary or original in the view he takes of Psychology, we should have hesitated to attempt a review. But this does not appear to be the case, at any rate as regards most of his work. The views are those of a recognized school, which stands out in clear daylight, and which has already undergone a considerable amount of criticism and opposition. We do not, of course, recommend him to our readers as a perfectly safe guide. What may be his views on other points, or how far in the direction of materialism he may himself push his conclusions, we do not know. It is the first considerable philosophical work of his with which we have made acquaintance, his previous literary productions hav. ing chiefly lain in the direction of art.

We have occupied so much space already that we have no time to say more in conclusion, than to repeat, in a few words, the caution with which we commenced-a caution which all sound thinkers on the subject have always kept in mind. No amount of physiological explanation is ever to be regarded as doing more than telling us something about the accompaniments of our ideas. No nervous action clearly is an idea ; the two things are generically distinct, and one can never be resolved into the other. M. Taine himself seems to entertain a peculiar view of his own about the nature of the connection between these two orders of phenomena; but the more their properties are reflected on, the more clearly will it be seen that

each is entirely sui generis, and that when any attempt is made to resolve one of them into the other, the difficulty is not so much to refute the attempt as to understand what it really means.

THE SPEAKER'S COMMENTARY. The Holy Bible according to the Authorized Version (A.D. 1611), with an Explanatory and Critical Commentary, and a Revision of the Translation by Bishops and other Clergy of the Anglican Church. Edited by F. C. Cook, M.A., Canon of Exeter. Vol. I., in Two Parts. London: John Murray. 1871.

(Fourth Notice.) The Introduction to the Book of Deuteronomy bears indications of the writer's effort to compress within narrow limits the results of much reading and investigation. We think, however, considering the great importance of the subject, and the confident assertions of the negative critics respecting the late date of this Book, that Mr. Espin would have done well to have entered at somewhat greater length upon the nature of the critical evidence on which these assertions rest, and then to have shown how, in this instance, as in the case of the socalled “ second Isaiah,” our opponents have left us little more to do, with a view to the refutation of their arguments, than to adduce in parallel columns their mutually destructive admissions, assumptions, and allegations.

The Book of Deuteronomy is not so much, as it is popularly regarded, a recapitulation of the laws and ordinances contained at greater length in the three preceding Books of the Pentateuch, as it is, in the words of Luther, “a compendium and summary of the whole law and wisdom of the people of Israel, wherein those things which related to the Priests and Levites are omitted, and only such things included as the people generally required to know.” Without pledging ourselves to the verbal accuracy of this description of the Book of Deuteronomy, it is obvious, upon a careful examination of its contents, that the description is not only substantially true, but further, that a just appreciation of the nature and design of the Book supplies the key to the solution of many of the alleged inconsistencies between this and the preceding portions of the Mosaic writings.

The fact that the addresses which form the substance of the contents of this Book were delivered within the space of ten days, at the close of the eventful forty years' wandering in the wilderness, imparts to them, as Mr. Espin justly observes, “an unity of style and character” which is strikingly consistent with the alleged circumstances of their delivery.

We are somewhat at a loss to understand Mr. Espin's meaning when he speaks of the modifications observable in the regu. lations contained in the Book of Deuteronomy as suggested “ by longer experience or altered circumstances.” If, as we presume, in the words last quoted-viz., “altered circumstances” – Mr. Espin alludes to such modifications of the wilderness regulations as arose out of the termination of the protracted wanderings, and the prospect of the permanent occupation of the land, we entirely agree with him that, just as in the parallel case of the ritual of the first Passover in Egypt as compared with that of all subsequent Passovers, so also in some other similar instances, altered circumstances both demanded and were met by corresponding changes in the law. We are unable, however, to extend this alteration of legislation to any changes which owed their origin to the “ longer experience” of the human legislator; such changes being, in our judgment, incompatible with the Divine original of the whole of the Mosaic law-a law which we regard as bearing from first to last the direct impress of the mind of the Eternal Legislator, though adapted in a marvellous manner to the weak and sinful nature, and also to the altered external circumstances, of those upon whom it was enjoined.

We are fully prepared to believe that we have failed in our endeavour to comprehend the precise idea which Mr. Espin intended to express in the words “longer experience ;'* but we regret the ambiguity of the expression the more when it is viewed in connection with another sentence in the Introduction, which, though equally consistent, as we fully believe, with the orthodoxy of the writer, appears to us, especially when read in the connection to which we have alluded, capable of being wrested to a meaning very different from that which Mr. Espin designed to express. The words are as follows:-" It is thus quite in keeping that the various commandments are given in Deuteronomy as injunctions of Moses, and not, as before, directly in the name of God. Deuteronomy is an authoritative and inspired commentary on the law, serving in some respects also as a supplement and codicil to it.” (p. 792.)

It seems to us that these words fail to convey an adequate * Mr. Espin employs similar lan- laws." We are quite willing to give guage in another part of his Introduc- the writer credit for the soundness of tion to the Book, when he speaks the opinions which he intended to ex. (p. 799) of the enactments contained press in both these passages, but we in it as “supplementary or explana think the language which he has emtory of earlier laws,” and such as ployed in both fairly open to an inter"might well be suggested by a short pretation which we believe he would experience of the working of those repudiate as earnestly as ourselves.

impression of the truth which the Book of Deuteronomy itself so emphatically, and so repeatedly enforces, viz., that Moses ever represents himself, not in the character of a mere human legislator, but as the chosen medium for the communication to the people of the revealed will of God. Moreover, it appears to us that the distinction here drawn by Mr. Espin would, if admitted, create a yet greater difficulty in the way of the reception of the view which he seems to advocate. For whilst it is quite possible to conceive that the injunctions of the earlier books, if given by Moses as the result of his own experience, might be subsequently repealed or modified by Divine authority, it is hard to conceive how any commandments given in the earlier books “ directly in the name of God,” could be repealed or modified by any subsequent injunctions which proceeded from Moses as the result of “a short experience of the working of those laws.”

We altogether agree with Mr. Espin, that the internal evidence of the Book of Deuteronomy corresponds, in the most striking manner, with the historical circumstances already noted of its composition, and that, "as regards authorship, it is generally allowed that Deuteronomy must, in substance, have come from one hand.” Leaving for the present out of the question the consideration of the four concluding chapters, it may, we think, confidently be alleged that the Book is cast, as Mr. Espin observes, "in one mould,” and “that its literary characteristics are such that we cannot believe the composition of it to have been spread over any long period of time.” (p. 793.)

And yet, strong as is the internal and external evidence, as it presents itself to our own mind, of the Mosaic origin of the Book of Deuteronomy, that origin has not only, in common with all other ancient landmarks, been rudely assailed by the advocates of the “higher criticism," as it is now too commonly represented; but it is regarded, to use the words of Bishop Colenso, as “ among the most certain results of modern scientific Biblical criticism,” that Deuteronomy was the production of a late period of Jewish history, being composed, in his opinion, "after the captivity of the Ten Tribes,” and “before the time of Josiah's Reformation."'*

The arguments commonly adduced in support of this preposterous theory are, in our judgment, for the most part, either so entirely removed from the ordinary limits of theological controversy as to require no reply; or so mutually destructive that no other confutation is necessary than to present them side by side to the eye of the reader of ordinary sense and education.

* See “The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically examined,” Part iii., p. 613.

Vol. 70.-No. 408.

We will give a few specimens of the arguments to which we allude.

I. Passages are adduced by the "higher critics” from the Book of Deuteronomy, in which, as is well known to every one who is acquainted with his Bible, allusions are made to a particolar place in the promised land which God should choose to set His name there; and inasmuch as (1), the existence of predictive prophecy is denied by our opponents in toto, and (2), it is assumed that the place thus chosen must of necessity have been one and the same at all times*; it follows, as a matter of course, from these premises, that the passages in question must have been written after the building of Solomon's Temple.

Again, passages occur in the Book of Deuteronomy in which allusion is made to the multiplication of wives, of horses, and of treasure by Israel's future kings, and to the results which should follow in the estrangement of their hearts from the service of the one true God; and, for the reason already assigned, such allusions can be admitted by our opponents in no other than an historical sense, and, consequently, in these, as in the passages already alluded to, the stand-point of the writer must, in their estimation, have been at an age subsequent to the reign of Solomon.

Such, when divested of their specious but transparent disguise, appears to us a fair representation of one class of arguments, if arguments they may be called, which have been employed with a view to establish the late date of the Book of Deuteronomy.

II. A second class of arguments consists of a comparison of the contents of this Book with portions of the other Books of the Pentateuch, which, it is asserted, were written “not earlier than the times of Samuel, David, and Solomon,”tand of inferences drawn, as the result of this comparison, in support of the later date of Deuteronomy, which, as it is unanswerably argued, if the premises be admitted, could not be earlier, and was probably later, than the age of Solomon.

Now, it will suffice, in reply to this second class of arguments, which is adopted by the older school of “the higher criticism,” to confront its supporters with the representatives of the more modern school, who, as Mr. Espin has observed, “ see no less certainly in Deuteronomy the primæval quarry out of which the writers concerned in the production of the preceding books drew their materials” (p. 793), than their predecessors