From: The Dial, Vol. III, No. III (Jan. 1843)
Author:
Published: E. P. Peabody 1843 Boston
THE death of Dr. Channing at Bennington in Vermont, on the 2d October, is an event of great note to the whole country. The great loss of the community is mitigated by the new interest which intellectual power always acquires by the death of the possessor. Dr. Channing was a man of so much rectitude, and such power to express his sense of right, that his value to this country, of which he was a kind of public Conscience, can hardly be overestimated. Not only his merits, but his limitations also, which made all his virtues and talents intelligible and available for the correction and elevation of society, made our Cato dear, and his loss not to be repaired. His interest in the times, and the fidelity and independence, with which, for so many years, he had exercised that censorship on commercial, political, and literary morals, which was the spontaneous dictate of his character, had earned for him an accumulated capital of veneration, which caused his opinion lo be waited for in each emergency, as that of the wisest and most upright of judges. We shall probably soon have an opportunity to give an extended account of his character and genius. In most parts of this country notice has been taken of this event, and in London also. Beside the published discourses of Messrs. Gannett, Hedge, Clarke, Parker, Pierpont, and Bellows, Mr. Bancroft made Dr. Channing’s genius the topic of a just tribute in a lecture before the Diffusion Society at the Masonic Temple. We regret that the city has not yet felt the propriety of paying a public honor to the memory of one of the truest and noblest of its citizens.
The French papers have announced the death of Baron Degerando, author of an excellent History of Philosophy, but more generally known in this country by his work on Self-Education.
From Germany, we have received letters rich in details on the Universities and Professors, and a copy of Schelling’s Introductory Lecture at Berlin. We translate, below, the entire lecture, although its interest, to our disappointment, is that of position and not of thought. Yet it will have value for those who have watched the progress of German philosophy since Kant, whether with that earnest expectation which awaits the perfect development of human thought on the highest themes, or with that what next? kind of curiosity which loves to see the mill of human ingenuity going, and cares little whether the product be an Identitäts-Philosophie or a spinning-jenny. One good thing we note, Das Heil da Deutschen ist in der Wissenschaft.
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