Walker, P: Princeton Review, Vol. 14

Excerpt from The Princeton Review, Vol. 14: April, 1842

The second work upon the list is by a young German professor of our own day. In every thing but mental eul tivation, he and Calvin may be said to be antipodes. 'with out a tincture of religious feeling, without any faith what ever in the divine authority of scripture, without a belief even in the possibility of prophecy or miracle, but with an unlimited and undisguised ambition to discover something new at every step, it may be readily conceived that Dr. Tuch, with all his talent and learning, which are very considerable, has produced a work having no other points of resemblance to the one which we have just described, than such as a community of subject rendered wholly unavoid able. The good pointsof the work are to be looked for in its literary character exclusively. His mind is lively, per spicacious, and inventive, but exhibits the same absence of capacity to reason, in the strict sense of the term, which has now become so common a defect among the partisan writers of Germany, and which may be regarded as a natural re sult of the incessant straining after novelty, to which the best minds of that gifted race are now habitually trained. Again and again we have observed in Tuch's performance an elaborate detail of imaginary arguments, in favor of some monstrous paradox, succeeded by the statement of Oh jections, ivhich the common sense of every reader feels to be conclusive, but which the author summarily sweeps away by simply saying that they certainly have 110 weight. And we do not hesitate to say that this description is justly applicable to a large proportion of the pretended reasonings by which the truth of scripture is attempted to be over thrown. Whatever ingenuity may be expended in the statement of reasons, the conclusion almost always rests at last upon the feeling of the author, which is pretty sure to lean in one direction. This abuse or destitution of all.

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