established there emanates a
separate claim, in each particular science of the order already
indicated, to a sublime dictatorship. And chiefly is this claim valid
in Moral Philosophy; for it was his province, the first of all men,
clearly to reveal, as a scientific fact certified by demonstration,
the divine eminence of the practical above the merely speculative
powers of man,--the fulfilment of which mission justly entitled him
to all the privileges incident to the vantage-ground thus
gained,--privileges widely significant in a survey of that field where
chiefly these practical powers hold their Olympian supremacy, the
field of Moral Philosophy.

Nothing could have afforded us a better excuse for a _resume_ of Kant,
in this connection, than the new work of Dr. Hopkins. Of the many
treatises on Moral Science with which the reading world has been
flooded and bewildered since the time of Coleridge, there is this one
alone found worthy of being ranged along-side of the works of the
old Koenigsberg seer,--the one alone which, like his, deals with
the grander features of the science. It is the best realization
objectively of Kant's subjective principles that has yet been given.
But how, the plain English reader will ask, are we to understand from
this the place which the new work takes in literature? Not readily,
indeed, unless one has already taken the trouble to examine such of
Kant's treatises as have found their way out of German into hardly
tolerable English, and has, moreover, reflected upon the importance of
the principles therein established. But, of those who will read
this notice, not one out of fifty has had even the opportunity
for examination, not one out of five thousand has really taken the
opportunity, and, of those that have, one half, at least, have done so
independently of any philosophic aim, and have therefore reflected to
very little purpose on the principles involved. Therefore, what the
reader could not or has not chosen to do for himself we will do for
him, at the same time congratulating him that there is now placed in
his hands as complete and perfect a structure outwardly, in the work
under notice, as the groundwork furnished by the old master was, in
its subjective analysis, simple and profound.

Those who approach human nature, or the nature outside of us, with
a reverence for reality, will give precedence, after the manner of
Nature, to those powers which are predominant and determinative; a