German Rationalism. By Dr. K. R. Hagenbaeh, Professor of Theology
in the University of Basle. Translated by Rev. W. L. Gage and Rev.
J. H. W. Stackenburg. (T. and T. Clark.)—This is an abridgment of the original work, which we have not seen, but do not doubt that Professor Tholtick of Halle gave the editors very sound advice when he recom- mended that course of proceeding. The stream of rationalism origin- ating with the English Deists of the seventeenth century passed through the Encyclopasdiits to Germany, and thence has returned "to plague the inventor," as many would say. The author of this work takes a more moderate view, and the translators in an appendix admit that Hegel, for instance, certainly believed his philosophy to agree with Christianity, whether it does in fact or does not. The activity of religious thought at least indicates religious life, and extreme views are always sobered down to truth as they win over the mass of cultivated minds.
The form in which this history of German rationalism is cast is biogra- phical, as indeed every history of philosophy must be. The editors' work is extremely well done.
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