It is delicious in this age of hurried bookmaking, to run across a
thinker. It gives one the same kind of sensation that comes to the
sportsman, when a monarch of the glen crosses his path. Bookmakers
are as many as leaves of the Adirondacks after the hasty gallop of a
mountain storm; thinkers are scarce. When, then, amid the leafy mass,
one discovers the rare bird hiding from vulgar gaze, an irresistible
desire to find his lurking place seizes the observer. This lurking
place may be old to many; it was only the other day that I discovered
it,—when a friend placed in my hands “Phases of Thought and Criticism,”
by Brother Azarias. This book, the sale of which has been greater
in England than on this side of the water, is one of suggestive
criticism—a criticism founded on faith. The author holds with another
thinker, that “Religion is man’s first and deepest concern. To be
indifferent is to be dull or depraved, and doubt is disease.” Each
chapter of his book expresses a distinct social and intellectual force.
Each embodies a verifying ideal; for, continues the author, “the
criticism that busies itself with the literary form is superficial, for
food it gives husks.”
While the author will not concede that mere literary form is the all
in all that our modern masters claim, yet he would not be found in the
ranks of M. de Bonniers, who declares that an author need not trouble
himself about his grammar; let him have original ideas and a certain
style, and the rest is of no consequence. The author of “Phases of
Thought,” believes first in the possession of ideas, for without them
an author is a sorry spectacle. He also believes that an attractive
style will materially aid in the diffusion of these ideas. Many good
books fall still-born from the press, for no other reasons than their
slovenly style. Readers now-a-days will not plod along poor roads,
when a turnpike leads to the same destination. The grammar marks the
parting of ways. Brother Azarias rightfully holds that good grammar is
an essential part of every great writer’s style. Classics are so, by
correct grammar as well as by original ideas. This easy dictum of the
slipshod writers—that if an idea takes you off your feet you must not
trouble yourself about the grammar that wraps it, is but a specious
pleading for their ignorance of what they pretend to despise.
The great difference between this book and the many on similar subjects
is in the manner of treatment. It starts from a solid basis; that
basis the creed of the Catholic Church. The superstructure of lofty
thought reared on this basis is in a style at once pellucid and crisp.
The author is not only a thinker rare and original; he is a scholar
broad and masterly.
Believing that his Church holds the keys of the “kingdom come,” and as
a consequence, a key to all problems moral and social that can move
modern society, he grapples with them, after the manner of a knight of
old, courteously but convincingly. His teaching is that, outside the
bosom of the Catholic Church jostle the warring elements of confusion
and uncertainty. In her fold can man find that rest, that sweet
peace promised by the Redeemer. Her philosophy is the wisdom worth
cherishing, the curing balm that philosophers vainly seek outside her
pale. To the weary and thought-stricken would this great writer bring
his often and beautifully taught lesson, that the things of this world
are not the puppets of chance, nor lots of the pantheistic whole, but
parts of a well-ordered system, governed by a paternal being, whom
we, His children, address in that touching prayer, “Father, who art
in Heaven.” From that Father came a Son, not mere man, not only a
great prophet, not only a law-giver, but the true Son of God, equal
to the Father, from all eternity, whose mission was, to teach all men
that would listen, the way that leads to light. That this identical
mission is, and will be continued to the consummation of the ages by
the Catholic Church. That in the truth of these things, all men, who
lovingly seek, will be confirmed, not that mere intellect alone could
be the harbinger of such truths, for, as he has so well put it:—“Human
reason and human knowledge, whether considered individually or
collectively in the race are limited to the natural. Knowledge of the
supernatural can come only from a Divine Teacher.”
One may be convinced of every truth of revealed religion, and yet not
possess the gift of faith. That gift is purely gratuitous. If, however,
the seeker humbly and honestly desires the acquisition of these truths,
and knocks, the door of the chamber of truth shall be opened unto him,
for this has the Saviour promised. That door once opened, the Spirit of
God breathes on the seeker, it opens the eyes of the soul, it reveals
beyond all power of doubt or cavil, or contradiction, the supernatural
as a fact, solemn, universal, constant throughout the vicissitudes of
the age. While the author fashions these lofty truths on the anvil of
modern scholarship, the reader finds himself, like the school children,
in Longfellow’s poem, looking in through the artist’s open door full
of admiration, fascinated by burning sparks. Pages have been written
about the ideal, defining it, in verbiage fatiguing and elusive.
It is a trick of pretended scholarship, to hide thought with massive
word-boulders. What a difference in the process of this rare scholar?
A flying spark from his anvil lights up the dullest intellect. It is
a stimulus to the weary brain, after wading through essays as to what
constitutes an ideal, to have the gentle scholar, across the blazing
pine logs, on a winter’s night, say: “A genius conceives and expresses
a great thought. The conception so expressed delights. It enters men’s
souls; it compels their admiration. They applaud and are rejoiced that
another masterpiece has been brought into existence to grace the world
of art and letters. The genius alone is dissatisfied. Where others
see perfection, he perceives something unexpressed; beyond the reach
of his art. Try as best he may, he cannot attain that indefinable
something. Deep in his inner consciousness he sees a type so grand and
perfect that his beautiful production appears to him but a faint and
marred copy of that original. That original is the ideal; and the ideal
it is that appeals to the aesthetic and calls forth men’s admiration.”
What a divining power has this student, in plummeting the vagaries of
modern culture!
“Every school of philosophy has its disciples, who repeat the sayings
of their masters with implicit confidence, without ever stopping to
question the principles from which those sayings arise or the results
to which they lead.” These chattering disciples will affect to sneer
at the Christian belief, while they lowly sit at the feet of one of
their mud gods singing “thou art the infallible one.” They will not
question their position simply because “these systems are accepted not
so much for truth’s sake as because they are the intellectual fashions
of the day.” Such men change their philosophy as quickly as a Parisian
dressmaker his styles. It may yet be shown by some mighty Teuton that
vagaries in philosophy and dress are closely allied, and that the
synthetic philosophy of Herbert Spencer is responsible for the coming
of crinoline. What a delightful thrust at that school of criticism
that singles out an author or a book as the very acme of perfection,
seeing wisdom in absurdities and truth in commonplace fiction, is given
in these lines: “Paint a daub and call it a Turner, and forthwith
these critics will trace in it strokes of genius.” With a twinkle in
his eye he asks, “Think you they understand the real principles of
art criticism?” You will be easily able to answer that question when
you have mastered this pithy definition of true criticism, be it of
literature or of art, “that it is all-embracing.” It has no antagonism
to science so long as she travels in her rightful domain. When “science
has her superstitions and her romancings as unreal and shadowy as those
of the most ephemeral literature, then it is the duty of criticism to
administer the medicine of truth and purge the wayward jade of her
humors.”
To such a mind as that of the author of “Phases of Thought,” with its
thorough knowledge of the art of criticism and its perfect equipment,
the separating of the chaff from the meal of an author becomes not
only a pleasure but a duty. This is best seen by a perusal of Chapter
III, dealing with Emerson and Newman as types. With a few masterly
strokes the real Emerson, not the phantom or brain figment of Burroughs
and Woodberry and the long line of fad disciples, passes before us.
Not an inch is taken from his stature. His intellectual beauties and
defects, so strongly drawn, but confirm the reader in the truth of the
portraiture. One catches not only a glimpse of the man, but the springs
of his soul-struggles. Emerson in his hungry quest for intellectual
food, ranged through the philosophies of the east and west, purposely
ignoring that of the Catholic Church. This sin cost him whole worlds of
thought hidden from his vision. Newman had the same hunger to appease,
but where Emerson turned away Newman, ever in search for truth, kept
on, and found it in the Catholic Church. The analysis of these two
minds is done in a masterly way. Azarias has no prejudices. If he puts
his fingers on defects and descants on their nature and treatment, he
will, no less, point out beauties and lovingly linger among them. He is
a knight in the cause of truth, and would not herd with the carping
critics. He will tell you that Emerson’s mind was like an Æolian harp.
“It was awake to the most delicate impressions, and at every breath
of thought it gave out a music all its own,” and that the reading of
him with understanding “is a mental tonic bracing for the cultured
intellect as is Alpine air for the mountaineer.” The pages of this book
teem with thought clothed in language whose sparkling beauty is all the
author’s own. From such a book it is difficult to select. Emerson has
well said, “No one can select the beautiful passages of another for
you. Do your own quarrying.” I abide by this quotation, and should ask
every lover of the beautiful and true to buy this fecund book.
Patrick Francis Mullaney, better known as Brother Azarias, was born
in Killenaule County, Tipperary, Ireland, June 29th, 1847. Like the
majority of eminent men that his country has given birth to, he came
of its noble peasantry. The old tale was here enacted. The parents
left the land of their birth in search of a home in our better land.
This found, Azarias joined them. At the age of fifteen he joined the
Christian Brothers. That great Order gave free scope to his fine
abilities. In 1866 he was chosen professor of mathematics and English
literature at Rock Hill College, Maryland. He continued in this
position for ten years. At the expiration of his professorship he
travelled a year through Europe, collecting materials and writing his
“Development of Old English Thought.” On his return he became president
of Rock Hill College, holding that position until recalled to Paris by
his Superior in 1866. After an absence of three years Brother Azarias
returned to the States as professor of English literature at the De
La Salle Institute, New York. This is not only an important position,
but it gives leisure, and that ready access to the great libraries, so
prized by literary men.