Catherine Lefevre came forth from the ruin at about seven o'clock

in the morning. Louise and Hexe-Baizel were yet sleeping; but

day--the brilliant day of the mountains--already flooded the

valleys. Far below, through the blue depths, forests, gorges,

rocks, were outlined like the mosses and pebbles of a lake

beneath its crystal waters. Not a breath stirred the air, and

Catherine, as she surveyed the grandeur of the scene, felt a

sense of peaceful calm--of repose, greater even than that of

sleep, steal over her. "Our miseries, our unrest, and our

sufferings are but of a day," she thought. "Why disturb heaven

with our groans? Why dread the future? All these things endure

but a moment. Our plaints are as those of a butterfly when the

leaves fall; they do not keep winter away. Time must end for all;

we must die that we may be born again."

Thus mused the old woman, and she no longer feared what might

happen. Suddenly a murmur of voices filled her ears; she turned

and saw Hullin with the three smugglers, all earnestly talking,

on the opposite side of the plateau. They had not seen her, so

deeply did the subject of their conversation interest them.

Old Brenn, at the edge of the rock, with a short, black pipe

between his teeth, his cheeks wrinkled like a withered leaf,

short nose, grey moustache, bleared eye-lids, half-closed over

reddish-brown eyes, and long great-coat sleeves hanging by his

sides, gazed at the different points Hullin was showing them

among the mountains; and the other two, wrapped in their gray

cloaks, stepped forward or backward, shading their eyes with

their hands, in deep attention.

Catherine walked toward them, and soon she heard:

"Then you do not think it possible to reach the foot of the

mountain?"

"No, Jean-Claude; there is no way of doing so," answered Brenn;

"those villains know the country thoroughly, and all the paths

are guarded. Look! there is the meadow of Chevreuils along that

lake; no one ever even thought of watching it; but see, they are

there. And yonder, the pass of Rothstein--a mere goat-path, where

a man is scarcely seen once in ten years--you see a bayonet

glisten behind the rock, do you not? And there, where I have

climbed for eight years with my sacks without ever meeting a

gendarme, they hold that too. Some fiend must have shown them the

defiles."

"Yes," cried tall Toubac, "the fiend Yegof."

"But," said Hullin, "it seems to me that three or four stout men

might carry one of those posts."

"No; they are supported by each other; and the first shot fired

would bring a regiment upon us," replied Brenn. "Besides, if we

got through, how could we return with provisions? It is

impossible!"

There were a few moments of silence.

"Nevertheless," said Toubac, "if Hullin wishes it, we will try

all the same."

"Try what?" cried Brenn. "To lose our lives trying to escape, and

leave the others in the toils? But it is all the same to me; if

the others go, I will. But as for talking about returning with

provisions, I say it is impossible. Which path will you take

going, and which returning? Promises will not do here; we must

act up to them. If you know a way, tell us. For twenty years I

have beaten the mountain with Marc. I know every path and pass

for ten leagues around; but I see none open now except through

the air."

{757}

Hullin turned, and saw Mother Lefevre a few paces away, listening

attentively.

"You here, Catherine!" he exclaimed. "Our affairs wear an ugly

look."

"Yes; I understand. There is no way of getting a supply of

provisions."

"Provisions!" said Brenn, with a strange smile. "Do you know,

Mother Lefevre, for how long we are supplied?"

"For a fortnight, at least," replied Catherine.

"For a week," said the smuggler, shaking out the ashes of his

pipe on his nail.

"It is true," said Hullin. "Marc-Dives and I believed that an

attack would be made on Falkenstein; we never thought the enemy

would besiege it like a fortress. We were mistaken."

"And what is to be done?" asked Catherine, growing pale.

"We must reduce each one's ration to half. If Marc does not

return in a fortnight, we shall have no more. Then, indeed, we

must see what is to be done."

So saying, Hullin with Catherine and the smugglers, their heads

drooping, took the path to the notch. They reached the descent,

when, thirty feet beneath them, they saw Materne climbing

breathlessly among the stones, and dragging himself along by the

bushes to increase his speed.

"Well," cried Jean-Claude, "what has happened?"

"Ah! there you are. I was going to look for you. One of the

enemy's officers is coming along the wall of the old _burg_,

with a little white flag. He seems to desire a parley."

Hullin, directing his steps toward the slope of the rock, saw,

indeed, a German officer standing upon the wall, seemingly

awaiting a sign to ascend. He was two musket-shots off, and

further away were five or six soldiers, resting on their arms.

After gazing a moment at the group, Jean-Claude turned, saying:

"It is a flag of truce coming to summon us to surrender."

"Fire on him!" cried Catherine; "we have no other answer."

The others all seemed inclined to do so, save Hullin, who,

without speaking, descended to the terrace, where the rest of the

partisans were gathered.

"My friends," said he, "the enemy sends a flag of truce. We know

not what he wants. I suppose it is a summons to lay down our

arms; but it may be something else. Frantz and Kasper will go to

meet him. They will bandage his eyes at the foot of the rock, and

lead him hither."

No one having any objection to make, the sons of Materne slung

their carbines on their backs and departed. At the end of about

ten minutes the two tall hunters reached the officer; there was a

rapid conference between them, after which all three began to

climb to Falkenstein. As they ascended, the uniform of the German

officer, and even his features, could be clearly seen. He was a

lean man, with ashy flaxen hair, tall, well knit, and resolute in

movement and appearance. At the foot of the rock Frantz and

Kasper bandaged his eyes, and soon their steps were heard beneath

the vault. Jean-Claude went to meet them, and himself untied the

handkerchief, saying:

"You wish to communicate with me, sir. I am listening."

{758}

The partisans stood some fifteen paces off. Catherine Lefevre,

nearer, knitted her brows; her bony figure, long, hooked nose,

the three or four locks of gray hair which fell by chance upon

her hollow temples, and down on her wrinkled cheeks, her tightly

pressed lips, and fixed gaze, seemed first to attract the

officer's attention; then the pale and gentle face of Louise

behind her; then Jerome, with his long, yellow beard and cloak;

and old Materne leaning on his short rifle. He looked at the

others, and at the high, red vault, with its colossal mass of

granite hanging over the precipice, and covered only with a few

brambles. Hexe-Baizel, behind Materne, her long broom of twigs in

her hands, her outstretched neck and feet, on the very, edge of

the rock, seemed to astonish him.

He himself was the object of much attention. His attitude and

bearing, long face, finely-cut bronzed features, clear gray eye

and thin mustache, the delicacy of his limbs, hardened by the

toils of war, all bespoke aristocratic lineage; and he had, too,

a look of shrewdness mingled with that of the man of the world,

the soldier, and the diplomatist.

But this mutual inspection was only the work of an instant. The

officer began, in good French:

"Is it the Commandant Hullin that I have the honor of

addressing?"

"Yes, sir," replied Jean-Claude.

The officer glanced hesitatingly at the circle around.

"Speak out, sir," cried Hullin; "let all hear you. Where honor

and our country are the subject, no one in France is out of

place; our women understand the words as well as we. You have

some propositions to offer me. In the first place, on behalf of

whom?"

"Of the general commanding-in-chief. Here is my commission."

"Very good. We are listening, sir."

Then the officer, raising his voice, proceeded in a firm tone:

"Before I begin, commandant, permit me to say that you have

performed your duty magnificently; you have forced your foes to

admire you."

"As for duty," answered Hullin, "we merely did what we could."

"Yes," added Catherine, in short, dry tones; "and since our foes

admire us on that account, they will admire us much more in a

week or two, for the war is not yet ended. Marc is to come!"

The officer turned his head toward her, and stood as if stupefied

at the savage earnestness imprinted upon the old woman's

features.

"Those are noble sentiments," said he, after a few moments'

silence; "but humanity has its rights, and to spill blood

uselessly is only doing evil for the sake of evil."

"Then why do you come to our country?" cried Catherine, and her

voice seemed like the eagle's shriek. "Begone, and let us alone!"

Then she added:

"You make war like robbers: you steal, pillage, burn. You all

deserve to be hanged. We ought to throw you over the rock, for

the sake of the example."

The officer turned pale, for the old woman seemed ready to

execute her threat; but he soon recovered himself, and continued

calmly:

"I know that the Cossacks set fire to the farm-house opposite

this rock. They are pillagers such as follow all armies, and this

one act proves nothing against the discipline of our troops. The

French soldiery often did the same in Germany, and particularly

in the Tyrol; and, not satisfied with robbing and burning the

villages, they shot pitilessly all the mountaineers suspected of

having taken up arms to defend their homes.

{759}

We might make reprisals. It is our right to do so; but we are not

barbarians; we understand that patriotism is grand and noble,

even when wrongly directed. Besides, we do not make war on the

French people, but on the Emperor Napoleon. Therefore, our

general, on learning of the conduct of the Cossacks, publicly

punished that act of vandalism, and moreover, decided that the

proprietor should be indemnified."

"I ask no indemnity of you," interrupted Catherine rudely. "I

wish to live with my wrong, and to avenge it!"

The officer saw the hopelessness of trying to bring the old woman

to terms, and that it was, besides, dangerous to reply. He

turned, therefore, to Hullin, and said:

"I am charged, commandant, to offer you the honors of war, if you

consent to surrender your position. You have no provisions, as we

are well aware. A few days from now, you will be compelled to lay

down your arms. The esteem the general bears you alone impelled

him to offer you these honorable conditions. Longer resistance is

useless. We are masters of Donon; our _corps d'armée_ is

passing into Lorraine. The campaign will not be decided here; so

that you have no interest in defending a useless position. We

wish to spare you the horrors of famine upon this rock. Decide,

commandant."

Hullin turned to the partisans, and said simply,

"You have heard. I refuse the conditions; but I will submit, if

all accept the enemy's propositions."

"We all refuse them," cried Jerome.

"Yes; all, all!" repeated the others.

Catherine Lefevre, till then so stern, happened to glance at

Louise, and then her firmness gave way. She took her by the arm,

and leading her to the officer, said:

"We have a child among us; is there no means of sending her to

one of her friends in Laverne?"

Louise had scarce heard the words when, throwing herself in

Hullin's arms, she cried affrightedly,

"No, no! I will stay with you, Father Jean-Claude! I will die

with you!"

"Go, sir," said Hullin, with bloodless lips, "tell your general

what you have seen; tell him that Falkenstein we will hold to the

death! Kasper, Frantz, lead back the officer."

The last seemed to hesitate; but as he was about to speak,

Catherine, pale with wrath, cried,

"Go, go! You are not yet so sure of us as you think. It is the

villain Yegof who told you we had no provisions; we have enough

for two months, and in two months our army will have swept you

from the earth. Traitors will not always flourish, and then woe

to you!"

As she grew more and more excited, the officer judged it prudent

to withdraw. He returned to his guides, who again put on the

bandage, and led him to the foot of Falkenstein.

Hullin's orders regarding the provisions were carried out the

same day; each one received a half-ration. A sentry was posted in

front of Hexe-Baizel's cavern, where the food was kept, and the

door barricaded. Jean-Claude ordered the distributions to be made

in presence of all, to avoid injustice; but all these precautions

did not save the unhappy patriots from the worst horrors of

famine.

{760}

Chapter XXV.

For three days food had been entirely wanting. Still Dives gave

no sign. How often during those long days of agony did the

mountaineers strain their eyes toward Phalsbourg! How often did

they listen to the low murmur of the breeze, thinking it bore

upon it the sound of the smuggler's footsteps!

In the midst of the torments of hunger, the nineteenth day since

the arrival of the partisans on Falkenstein dragged away. They no

longer spoke to each other; but seated on the earth, their

fleshless faces gazing at vacancy, they passed hours as in a

dream. Sometimes they would turn sparkling eyes upon each other,

as if ready to satisfy their hunger at the expense of a comrade's

life; then all would again sink into a gloomy calm.

Once Yegof's raven, winging its way from peak to peak, came near

this scene of misery; but old Materne brought his rifle to his

shoulder, and the bird of ill omen flew back at its utmost speed,

uttering mournful cries, and the old hunter's piece fell

harmless.

And now, as if the horrors of hunger were not enough to fill the

measure of their misery, they only opened their lips to accuse or

threaten each other.

Louise was delirious; her great blue eyes, instead of living

objects, saw spectres fleeting over them, sweeping the tree-tops,

and lighting upon the old tower.

"Food--food at last!" would she cry.

And then the others, carried away by fury, shrieked that she was

mocking them, and bade her beware.

Jerome alone remained calm and collected; but the great quantity

of snow he had eaten in his pangs kept his body and bony face

covered with a cold sweat.

Dr. Lorquin knotted a handkerchief around his waist, and drew it

tighter and tighter, pretending that he thus satisfied his

cravings. He sat against the wall of the tower with closed eyes,

which from hour to hour he opened, saying,

"We are at the first, second, third period. Another day, and all

will be over!"

Then he would deliver dissertations on the Druids, on Odin,

Brahma, Pythagoras, quoting Latin and Greek, all announcing the

approaching transformation of the people of Harberg into wolves,

foxes, and all sorts of animals.

"I," he cried, "I will be a lion! I will eat fifteen pounds of

beef a day."

But soon recollecting himself, he continued,

"No, I would rather be a man. I will preach peace, brotherly

love, justice! Ah my friends! we suffer for our own faults. What

have we been doing on the other side of the Rhine for the last

ten years? By what right did we place masters over those nations?

Why did we not rather exchange thought, feeling, the products of

our arts and industry with them? Why did we not meet them as

brothers, instead of trying to enslave them? We should have been

well received. How they, poor wretches, must have suffered during

ten years of violence and rapine! Now they are avenging

themselves. God is just. May the malediction of heaven fall on

those who divide nations to oppress them!"

After a few moments of excitement like this, he would sink

exhausted against the wall, murmuring:

"Bread! only a morsel of bread!"

{761}

Materne's boys, seated among the bushes, their rifles at their

shoulders, seemed awaiting the sight of game, which never

appeared; but the thought of their eternal resting-place

sustained their expiring strength.

A few, in the agonies of fever, accused Jean-Claude of being the

author of their misery in bringing them to Falkenstein.

Hullin, with more than human energy, yet came and went, watching

all that passed in the valleys, but speaking no word.

Sometimes he would advance to the very edge of the rock, with

jaws pressed firmly together, and flashing eyes, to see Yegof

seated before a great fire on the meadow of Bois-de-Chênes, in

the middle of a troop of Cossacks. Since the enemy's arrival in

the valley of Charmes, this had been the fool's constant post;

and from it he seemed to gloat over the agony of his victims.

The tortures of hunger in the depths of a dungeon are no doubt

terrible; but beneath the open sky, with floods of light pouring

down on every side, in view of help, in view of the thousand

resources of nature, then no tongue can paint their horrors.

At the end of this nineteenth day, between four and five in the

evening, the weather became cloudy; huge masses of gray vapor

rose behind the snowy peak of Grossmann; the setting sun, glowing

redly like a ball of iron just taken from the furnace, threw a

few last gleams through the thickening air. Deep silence reigned

on the rock. Louise no longer gave any sign of life; Kasper and

Frantz still sat motionless as stones among the bushes. Catherine

Lefevre, huddled on the ground, clasping her knees within her

withered arms, her features hard and rigid, her hair hanging over

her ashy cheeks, her eyes haggard, and lips closed tight as a

vice, seemed some ancient sibyl. She no longer spoke. That

evening, Hullin, Jerome, old Materne, and Doctor Lorquin gathered

around the old woman, that all might die together. They were all

silent, and the last glimmer of twilight fell dimly upon the

group. To the right, behind a projection of the rock, the fires

of the Germans sparkled in the abyss. Suddenly the old woman,

starting as from a dream, murmured a few words, unintelligible at

first.

"Dives is coming!" she continued in a low tone; "I see him; he

sallies from the postern--to the right of the arsenal. Gaspard

follows him, and--"

She counted slowly.

"Two hundred and fifty men, National Guards and soldiers. They

cross the fosse; they mount behind the demi-lune. Gaspard is

talking to Marc. What is he saying?"

She seemed to listen.

"'Hasten! Ay, hasten; never was more need of speed! They are on

the glacis!"

There was a long silence; then the old woman, suddenly springing

to her feet, rose to her full height, and with arms outstretched,

and hair flying wildly about her head, shouted:

"Courage! Strike! kill! kill! kill!"

She fell heavily to the earth.

Her terrible cry had awakened all; it might have awakened the

dead. New life seemed breathed into the besieged. Something

strange and unearthly seemed to fill the air. Was it hope? life?

I know not; but the entire party came crawling up on all fours,

like wild beasts, holding their breath that they might listen.

Even Louise moved slightly, and raised her head. Frantz and

Kasper dragged themselves on their knees, and strange to say,

Hullin, casting his eyes toward Phalsbourg, thought he saw the

flashes of musketry, as if a sortie were being made.

{762}

Catherine resumed her first attitude; but her cheeks, lately

rigid as a marble mask, now quivered, and her eye again grew

dreamy. The others listened; their lives seemed hanging on her

lips. Thus a quarter of an hour passed, when she again spoke

slowly:

"They have passed the enemy's lines; they are hastening to

Lutzelbourg; I see them. Gaspard and Dives are in the van with

Desmarets, Ulrich, Weber, and our friends of the city. They are

coming! they are coming!"

She was again silent. They listened long, but the vision had

vanished. Minutes followed minutes that seemed centuries, when at

once Hexe-Baizel's sharp voice arose:

"She is a fool! She saw nothing. I know Marc. He is mocking us.

What is it to him if we perish! So long as he has his bottle of

wine and his dinner, and his pipe after, what does he care? O the

villain!"

Then all was silence again, and the wretches whose hearts were

for a moment animated with the hope of speedy deliverance, again

sank back in despair.

"It was a dream," thought they:

"Hexe-Baizel is right; we are doomed to die of hunger."

Night had fallen. When the moon rose behind the tall firs,

shedding her pale light on the mournful groups, Hullin alone

watched, although fever was burning his vitals. He listened to

every sound from the gorges. The voices of the German sentries

called their _Wer da! Wer da!_ as the rounds passed the

bivouacs; the horses neighed shrilly, and their grooms shouted.

At last, toward midnight, the brave old man fell asleep like the

others. When he awoke, the clock of the village of Charmes was

striking four. Hullin, at the sound of its far-off vibrations,

started from his stupor, opened his eyes, and, while he gazed

upward trying to collect his senses, a dim light like the flare

of a torch passed before his eyes. Fear seized him, and he

muttered:

"Am I going mad? The night is dark, and yet I see torches!"

The flame reappeared; he saw it more clearly; he arose and

pressed his hand for some seconds upon his brow. At last, risking

a glance, he saw distinctly a fire on Giromani, on the other side

of Blanru, flinging its red glare in the sky, and throwing black

shadows from the firs on the snow. Suddenly he remembered that it

was the signal agreed on between Pivrette and himself to announce

an attack; he trembled from head to foot; a cold sweat poured

from his forehead, and groping through the darkness like a blind

man with arms outstretched, he stammered:

"Catherine! Louise! Jerome!"

But no one answered; and after wandering thus, feeling his way,

and often thinking he was moving on when he made not a step, he

fell to the ground on his face crying,

"My children! Catherine! They are coming! We are saved!"

There was a dull murmur; it seemed as if the dead were awakening.

There was a short peal of laughter. It was Hexe-Baizel, crazed

through suffering; then Catherine cried:

"Hullin! Hullin! Who spoke?"

Jean-Claude, overcoming his emotion, shouted in a firmer voice:

"Jerome, Catherine, Materne, all of you! Are you dead? Do you not

see yonder fire on the side of Blanru? It is Pivrette coining to

our rescue!"

{763}

At the same instant a crash rolled like a tempest through the

gorges of the Jaegerthal. The trump of judgment could not have

produced a greater effect upon the besieged. At once all were

awake and listening.

"It is Pivrette! It is Marc!" cried broken voices, sounding

hollow as those of skeletons. "They are coming to save us!"

They tried to rise. Some fell back sobbing; they could no longer

weep. A second crash brought all to their feet.

"It is the volley of a platoon!" cried Hullin; "our men are

firing by platoon too! We have soldiers in line! Long live

France!"

"Mother Catherine was right," said Jerome; "the men of Phalsbourg

are coming to help us; they are descending the hills of the

Sarre, and Pivrette is attacking by way of Blanru."

The fusillade was, in fact, commencing on both sides at once,

toward the meadows of Bois-de-Chênes and the heights of Kilberi.

Then the two leaders embraced, and as they groped about in the

darkness, seeking the edge of the rock, the voice of Materne

shouted:

"Take care! the precipice is there."

They stopped short, and looked down, but saw nothing; a current

of cold air, from the depths beneath, alone told them of their

danger. All the surrounding peaks and valleys were buried in

darkness. On the sides of the opposite slope, the flashes of the

musketry glanced like lightning, now lighting up an aged oak, or

the black outline of a rock, or mayhap a patch of heather,

covered with forms rushing hither and thither. From the depths,

two thousand feet below, rose a confused murmur, the clattering

of horse-hoofs, cries, commands. Now the call of a

mountaineer--that prolonged shout which flies from peak to

peak--rose like a sigh to Falkenstein.

"That is Marc!" said Hullin.

"Yes, it is Marc cheering us," replied Jerome.

The others, near by, with necks outstretched and hands on the

edge of the cliff, gazed wistfully. The fire continued with a

rapidity which told of the desperation of the fight; but nothing

could be seen. How those poor wretches longed for a part in the

struggle! With what ardor would they have hurled themselves into

the combat! The fear of yet being abandoned--of seeing the

retreat of their rescuers--made them speechless.

Soon day began to break; the pale dawn shone behind the dark

peaks; a few rays of light fell into the shadowy valleys, and,

half an hour after, silvered the mists of their depths. Hullin,

glancing through a break in these clouds, at last understood the

state of affairs. The Germans had lost the heights of Valtin and

the field of Bois-de-Chênes. They were massed in the valley of

Charmes, at the foot of Falkenstein, one third of the way up the

slope, so that the fire of their adversaries might not plunge

from above upon them. Opposite the rock, Pivrette, master of

Bois-de-Chênes, was ordering an abatis to be raised on the

descent to the valley. He rushed hither and thither, his short

pipe between his teeth, his slouched hat pulled down on his ears,

and his rifle slung behind him. The blue axes of the wood-cutters

glanced in the rising sun. To the left of the village, on the

side of Valtin, in the midst of the heather, Marc-Dives, on a

little black horse with a trailing tail, his long sword hanging

from his wrist, was pointing out the ruins and the old path over

which the wood-cutters were wont to drag their trees.

{764}

An infantry officer and some National Guards in blue uniforms

listened. Gaspard Lefevre alone, in advance of the group, leaned

on his musket and seemed meditating. His mien told of desperate

resolve. At the top of the hill, two or three hundred men, in

line, resting on their arms, gazed on the scene.

The sight of the fewness of their defenders chilled the hearts of

the besieged; the more so as the Germans, outnumbering them seven

or eight to one, began to form two columns of attack to regain

the positions they had lost. Their general sent horsemen in every

direction with orders, and the lines of bayonets began to move.

"The game is up!" muttered Hullin to Jerome. "What can five or

six hundred men do against four thousand in line of battle? The

Phalsbourg people will return home, saying, 'We have done our

duty!' and Pivrette will be crushed."

All thought the same; but what filled the measure of their

despair was to see a long line of Cossacks debouch at full speed

into the valley of Charmes, the fool Yegof at their head

galloping like the wind, his beard, the tail of his horse, his

dog-skin and his red hair streaming behind. He gazed at the rock,

and brandished his lance above his head. At the bottom of the

valley he spurred toward the enemy's staff. Reaching the general,

he made some gestures, pointing to the other side of the plateau

of Bois-de Chênes.

"The villain!" exclaimed Hullin. "See! he says Pivrette has no

abatis on that side, and that the mountain must be turned."

A column indeed, began its march at once in the direction shown,

while another pressed on toward the abatis to mask the movement

of the first.

"Materne," cried Jean-Claude, is there no means of sending a

bullet after yonder fool?"

The old hunter shook his head.

"None," he answered; "it is impossible; he is not in range."

Even as he spoke, Catherine uttered a wild cry, a scream like

that of a falcon.

"Let us crush them!" she shrieked--"crush them as we did at

Blutfeld!"

And the old woman, but a moment ago so feeble, seized a fragment

of rock which she lifted with both hands; then, with her long

gray hair floating in the wind, her hooked nose bent over her

compressed and colorless lips, and her wrinkled cheeks rigid as

iron, she rushed with firm steps to the edge of the cliff, and

the rock cleft the air.

A horrible clamor arose from beneath, through which could be

heard the crash of broken branches; then the enormous mass

rebounded a hundred feet outward--dashed down the steep slope,

again flew out into the open air, down, down, falling full on

Yegof, and crushing him at the general's feet! All was the work

of a moment.

Catherine, erect on the edge of the cliff, laughed a long,

rattling laugh.

Then the others, those phantoms, spectres, as if a new life had

been given them, dashed over the ruins of the ancient burg,

shrieking:

"Death! Death to the Germans! Crush them as we did at Blutfeld."

Never did eye behold a scene more terrible. Wretches at the gates

of the tomb--lean, fleshless as skeletons found again their

strength and their courage. They blenched not; each man seized

his fragment of rock, hurled it over the precipice, and rushed

back to find another, without even waiting to see the effect of

the one he had thrown.

{765}

No pen can paint the terror of the Kaiserliks as this storm of

rocks dashed down upon their heads. All turned as they heard the

crashing bushes and trees, and at first stood gazing as if

petrified. Raising their eyes, they saw others, and still others,

rushing down, and, above, figures like spectres appear and

disappear, hurling missiles of death into the air; they saw

around them their crushed and mangled comrades--lines of fifteen

or twenty men stricken down at once. A wild cry echoed from the

depths of the valley to the peak of Falkenstein, and despite the

commands of their leaders, despite the hail of shot that began to

pour from right and left upon them, the Germans, careless whither

they went, fled anywhere--anywhere to avoid the horrid death that

smote them there.

In the thick of the rout, however, the Austrian general succeeded

in rallying a battalion and brought it in good order to the

village. Calm and collected amid disaster and death, he seemed

worthy his high rank. He turned gloomily, from time to time, to

gaze on the falling rocks, which still ploughed bloody furrows

through his column.

Jean-Claude observed him, and in spite of the intoxication of

victory, and the joy of having escaped the horrors of a death by

famine, the old soldier could not restrain his admiration.

"Look," he cried to Jerome, "he does as we did on the retreat

from Donon and Grossmann. He is the last to retire, and only

yields his ground foot by foot. Truly there are brave men of all

countries!"

Marc-Dives and Pivrette, witnessing this turn of fortune,

descended among the fir-trees to cut off the enemy's retreat; but

the effort was in vain. The battalion, reduced one half, formed

square behind the village of Charmes, and then retreated slowly

up the valley of the Sarre, halting at times, like a wounded and

hunted wild-boar turning upon his tormentors, whenever the men of

Pivrette or from Phalsbourg pressed them too closely.

Thus ended the great battle of Falkenstein, known among the

mountains as the Battle of the Rocks.

Chapter XXVI.

Scarcely had the fight ceased, when, toward 8 o'clock,

Marc-Dives, Gaspard, and some thirty mountaineers, bearing

baskets of food, reached the peak of Falkenstein. What a

spectacle awaited them there! The besieged, stretched on the

earth, seemed dead. In vain they shook the bodies and shouted in

their ears; no answer came. Gaspard Lefevre, seeing his mother

and Louise lying motionless with teeth fast locked together, told

Marc, in his agony, that unless they recovered he would blow out

his brains with his own musket. Marc replied that every one was

free to do as he pleased; but that for his part, he would do no

such thing on Hexe-Baizel's account. At length, old Colon placed

his basket on a stone. Kasper Materne suddenly sighed, opened his

eyes, and, seeing the food, began clacking his teeth like a

famished fox.

They knew what that meant, and Marc-Dives passed his flask under

the nose of each one, which was sufficient to resuscitate them.

They wanted to devour all the provisions at once; but Doctor

Lorquin had sense enough remaining to warn Marc not to listen to

them, for the least excess would be sure death. Each one

received, therefore, only a small piece of bread, an egg, and a

glass of wine, which restored their powers singularly. Then they

placed Catherine, Louise, and the entire party on sleds, and

descended to the village.

{766}

Who could describe the enthusiasm and emotion of their friends,

when they saw them arrive, more meagre than Lazarus risen from

his grave! They were gazed at, embraced, hugged, and every

new-comer from Abreschwiller, Dagsberg, Saint-Quirin, or anywhere

else, had to repeat the ceremony.

Marc-Dives was obliged twenty times to relate the story of his

journey to Phalsbourg. Luck had been against the brave smuggler.

After having almost by miracle escaped the bullets of the

Kaiserliks, he fell, in the valley of Spartzprod, into the middle

of a troop of Cossacks, who robbed him of every thing. Then for

two weeks he had to roam about the Russian posts, which

surrounded the city, drawing the fire of their sentries and

running the risk dozens of times of being arrested as a spy,

before he was able to enter the works. Then the commandant

Meunier, fearing from the weakness of the garrison, at first

refused all help, and it was only at the pressing entreaty of the

inhabitants of the city that he at length consented to detach two

companies for the purpose.

The mountaineers, listening to this recital, could not cease

admiring the courage of Marc, and his perseverance amid so many

perils.

"What would you have me do?" asked the tall smuggler of those

loudest in their praises. "I only did my duty; would you have me

leave my comrades to perish? I knew that the task was not an easy

one; those rogues of Cossacks are sharper than custom-house

officers; they scent you a league off like crows; but no matter,

we got the better of them this time."

At the end of five or six days, all the lately besieged were on

their feet again. Captain Vidal, from Phalsbourg, had left

twenty-five men at Falkenstein, to guard the ammunition. Gaspard

Lefevre was of the number, and the brave fellow came every

morning down to the village. The allies had all passed into

Lorraine; none were seen in Alsace, except around the fortresses.

Soon the news came of the victories of Champ-Aubert and

Montmirail; but the evil days had come upon us, and, in spite of

the heroism of our army and the Emperor's genius, the Germans and

Russians entered Paris.

This was a terrible blow for Jean-Claude, Catherine, Materne,

Jerome, and all the mountaineers; but others have related the

history of these events; they form no part of our story.

Peace concluded, the old farm-house of Bois-de-Chênes was rebuilt

in the spring; wood-cutters, sabot-makers, masons, and all the

workmen in the country round lent a hand in the work.

About the same time, the army having been disbanded, Gaspard

trimmed his mustache, and his marriage with Louise took place.

The wedding-day was all the heroes of Falkenstein and Donon

gathered, and the farm-house received them with open doors, and

windows too. Each one brought a present to the couple--Jerome, a

pair of little shoes for Louise; Dives, packages of smuggled

tobacco for Gaspard; each one according to his means.

Tables were set even in the barns and sheds. How much wine,

bread, and meat, how many pies and puddings were disposed of, I

know not; but what I do know is that Jean-Claude, filled with

gloom since the entry of the allies into Paris, cheered upon that

day and sang the old song of his youth as gayly as when he set

out, musket on shoulder for Valmy, Jemmapes and Fleurus.

{767}

The echoes of Falkenstein took up the old patriotic air--the

grandest, noblest ever heard by man. Catherine Lefevre beat time

on the table with the handle of her knife; and if it be true, as

many maintain, that the dead come to listen when we speak of

them, our slain must indeed have rejoiced, and the King of

Diamonds foamed on his red beard.

Toward midnight, Hullin arose, and addressing the bridegroom and

bride said:

"You will have brave children; I will dance them on my knees, and

teach them this old song; and then I will follow those who have

gone before me."

He embraced Louise, and linking arms with Marc-Dives and Jerome,

went to his own little home, followed by all the wedding guests

singing their grand old song. Never was a finer night known;

millions of stars sparkled in the dark blue sky, and a low murmur

arose from the bushes at the foot of the slope where so many

brave hearts lay cold. All felt at once rejoiced and sad. At

Jean-Claude's door they shook his hand and gave him good night;

then, scattering in little parties to right and left, sought

their villages.

"Good-night Materne, Jerome, Pivrette, Dives," cried the brave

sabot-maker cheerily.

His old friends turned and waved their hats, and said among

themselves:

"There are indeed days when it is a joy to be in this fair world.

Ah! if there were no pestilence, nor war, nor famine; if men

understood, loved, and helped one another; if wrongs and distrust

were unknown--what a paradise would be ours!"

----------

Porter's Human Intellect. [Footnote 281]

[Footnote 281: _The Human Intellect; with an Introduction

upon Psychology and the Soul_. By Noah Porter, D.D.,

Clark Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics in Yale

College. New York: Scribner & Co. 1868. 8vo, pp. 673.]

In returning to consider this elaborate volume more in detail, we

would remark that its author has designed it as a text-book for

college students in the class of philosophy, and has proceeded,

in writing, on the presumption that they for whom he writes have

not the slightest knowledge of the subject. Hence his pages are

filled with matters which those who have made some proficiency in

the science of the human understanding, and are not wholly

ignorant of philosophy, properly so called, are already masters

of, and which they cannot even read without great weariness of

the body, and do not deem it worth their while to read at all.

They feel that to be able to understand the author, it is enough

to consult his principles and method, and his definitions of the

several topics he takes up and discusses. They have neither the

patience to read carefully through a huge volume which is,

nine-tenths of it, filled with what is for them mere baby-talk.

But the author does not, in composing his work, begin by stating

and defining his theses, and then proceeding to elucidate and

prove them; but attempts to begin where he supposes the infant

begins, and proceeds as a learner, not as a master.

{768}

Consequently, we are compelled to read his book from the

beginning to the end, or not be sure of his doctrine on any one

point.

It is true, the author sometimes attempts definitions, but they

are seldom scientific, rarely embrace his whole thesis, and

nothing else, and are pretty sure to mislead the unfortunate

reviewer who relies on them. He seldom abides by his own

definitions. In one place he defines consciousness a power, and

in another he makes it an act. Sense-perception is defined to be

the power by which the intellect gains the knowledge of material

objects; then we are told that the object perceived is not the

material existence, but "a joint product of the material agent

and the sentient organism," a psychical transcript of the

material object; while in another part of his work we find him

denying that what the mind perceives is such transcript, and

refuting, by plain and solid reasons, those who maintain that it

is. A really scientific definition is a definition _per genus

et per differentiam_; Dr. Porter sometimes gives the

_genus_ and forgets the _differentia_, and sometimes

gives the _differentia_ without giving the _genus_. He

also adopts a terminology in many respects not familiar to us,

though it may be to others, without the necessary explanation of

the terms he uses: and even when the terms he uses are such as we

are familiar with, they are used in a sense to which we are not

accustomed. We cannot tolerate _subject-object_, for subject

and object are distinct, and stand the one over against the

other. The subject in thought is never the object, and the object

is never the subject. Grammar teaches so much.

_Object-object_ says no more than simply object. Every

object is object, and no object is more or less than object. The

object is always real; for it is causative, since in the act of

thought it resists the subject, and becomes a counter-pressure.

We dislike _percepts_ and _concepts_; for they are

intended to imply that they exist, as it were, independent of the

subject and the object, and that the product of subject and

object may itself be object. We protest earnestly, in the name

both of philology and philosophy, against calling existences,

which are nothing except by the creative act of God,

_beings_, and still more earnestly against so calling the

products of second or third causes. This might pass with the

Gentiles, who substituted generation for creation, but is

inexcusable in a Christian philosopher. We know the schoolmen did

so, but they are not to be commended for it. They speak of _ens

simpliciter, ens secundum quid, ens reale_, and _ens

possibile_, and even of _ens rationis_, as if being, the

creations of being, mental abstractions, and the creations of

fancy and imagination could be all of the same genus or placed in

the same category! There is a philosophy in language which can

never be disregarded without more or less injury to the

philosophy of things.

The professor's method and technology render his work exceedingly

difficult to be understood without as much study as would be

necessary to construct the philosophy of the human mind without

it; and therefore if we should happen at times to miss his

meaning, he must blame himself. He is far more intent on

explaining the processes of the mind in knowing than on setting

forth what it knows. These processes have no interest for us; for

they really throw no light on the power or fact of knowledge. We

want to know what the author means by philosophy, and what is its

value, and we therefore want him to speak as the professor, not

as the pupil.

{769}

We have no disposition to waste our time and weary the flesh,

even, in reading the mass of stuff which he writes and which

tells us nothing we want to know. But enough of this.

The professor divides, not very scientifically, his work into

four parts.

Part I. treats of Presentation and Presentative Knowledge;

Part II., of Representation and Representative Knowledge;

Part III., of Thinking and Thought-Knowledge; and

Part IV., of Intuition and Intuitive Knowledge.

He says, p. 77, "The leading faculties of the intellect are

three: the presentative or observing faculty, the representative

or creative faculty, and the thinking or generalizing faculty.

More briefly, the faculty of experience, the faculty of

representation, and the faculty of intelligence." But experience

is not a faculty; it is the result of the exercise of all our

faculties, and a source of intelligence. Intelligence, as a

faculty, is the intellect itself; as a fact, it is

indistinguishable from experience, which is improperly restricted

by some psychologists of the inductive sort to the knowledge of

the external world through the senses, but extends to all

acquired knowledge, whatever the faculty exercised in acquiring

it or the object perceived. The real distinction is not between

experience or empirical knowledge and intelligence, but between

empirical knowledge or experience and the ideal principles which

are given intuitively by the Creator, and neither acquired nor

developed by the soul's own action. Distinctions should be real,

not arbitrary or abstract.

We are able to know objects of various kinds and sorts, but the

knowing is always the same fact, and by the same cognitive

faculty, whatever the object known, the order to which it

belongs, or the means and conditions of its cognition. The

learned professor's division, making four sorts of knowledge,

since he makes intuition empirical, or an act of the soul,

appears to us, therefore, without any real foundation. All

knowledge or actual knowing is presentative, and is in all cases

by direct contemplation of the object in the light of ideal

intuition. Demonstration only strips the object of its envelopes,

removes the _prohibentia_, and presents it to direct

contemplation. In the longest chain of reasoning, each link is,

in the empirical sense, intuitively apprehended. The apprehension

is always immediate, and the several mental processes serve only

to bring the subject and object together, face to face. These

processes, however named or whatever their character, never

extend the matter of knowledge beyond the objects presented.

The presentative faculty the author subdivides into consciousness

and sense-perception. But consciousness is not a presentative

faculty, nor a faculty, nor a subdivision of a faculty at all. It

is simply the recognition of the soul, as reflected from the

object, of herself as subject. At most, it simply presents the

subject of the thought. Sense-perception presents only material

or sensible objects. The professor's doctrine is then that of

Locke, who derives all our ideas from sensation and reflection,

and confines all our knowledge to sensibles with the soul and her

operations. Reflection only operates on the sense-perceptions

without extending the matter of knowledge beyond them. This is

pure sensism, which we are somewhat surprised to find held by an

eminent professor in Yale College.

{770}

Does Dr. Porter know his doctrine is sensism, and therefore

materialistic? He says, though not truly, we apprehend the soul

in consciousness as a spiritual being, but is the soul the only

non-sensible he means to assert?

But, as we showed in our former article, the soul recognizes

herself only as subject, and therefore only as the correlative of

object. She knows her own operations only in the same

correlation. Take away the object and you lose the subject or

fact of consciousness. This, we fear, the professor does. He

defines, p. 131, sense-perception to be "an act of objective

knowledge, in which the soul knows and only knows;" but adds, "if

the soul knows, it knows some _being_ as its object. But

what being does it affirm? We answer, The being which, is the

joint product of the material agent and the sentient organism.

... In perception proper we do not know the excitant apart, nor

do we know the organism apart, only the result of their joint

action. This we know as an object, with which the mind is

confronted both as a sentient and as a percipient." But as there

can be no thought without the conjunction of the intellective

subject and the intelligible object, if the mind does not

apprehend 'the material object itself, there can be no such joint

product as pretended, and, consequently, no object at all. The

object then vanishes, and leaves only the subject, which is, we

need not say, pure idealism. As the subject is the correlative of

object, and recognizes itself only in thinking the object, if the

object vanishes, the subject, too, must vanish, and leave behind

it only the _sensation transformée_ of Condillac. But as

sensation, however transformed, is still sensation, and as

sensations are incapable of standing alone, or of subsisting

without the subject, the sensations themselves must go, and

nihilism alone remains--the result to which all psychologisms and

ontologisms are necessarily tending, and in which Sir William

Hamilton says all philosophy necessarily ends, if we may trust a

passage which we saw quoted from him not long since in _The New

Englander_, by a Princeton professor, in a striking article on

_The Present State of Philosophy_, in which the writer has

well stated the problem presented, but which he neither solves

nor attempts to solve; a problem, the solution of which is in the

ideal formula, or the real synthesis of principles of things and

of science, of which he seems never to have heard.

The professor draws a proper distinction between sensation as

feeling and sensation as perception, but we cannot agree with him

that sensation as feeling is an affection of the soul. Those

psycho-physiologers make a great mistake who call the body

"_The House I live in_." The union of soul and body is too

intimate for that. I am not soul, as distinguished from the body,

nor am I body, as distinguished from the soul; but I am the union

of the two. A General Council defines the soul to be "forma

corporis," the informing and animating principle of the body. Yet

there is a distinction between them. We can predicate of the one

things which we cannot of the other. There is, indeed, no

sensation without thought, or an act of the soul; but the

sensation itself, as distinguished from the perception, is felt,

not merely localized, in the body, not in the soul. When I feel

the twinges of the gout, I feel them, not in my soul, but in my

toe. We must distinguish two classes of affections, frequently

confounded; the one sensible, of the body, the other spiritual,

of the soul.

{771}

The sensible affections or emotions, such as joy and grief,

sorrow and delight, pain and pleasure, are of the body animated

and informed by the soul. They indeed imitate in the sensible

order the affections of the soul, but have in themselves no moral

character. Hence, the masters of spiritual life make no account

of what is called sensible devotion, and see in it nothing

meritorious, and no reason why the soul, in its itinerary to God,

should seek it. But very different is the other class, often

called by the same name, and which may or may not be accompanied

by sensible emotion. This difference is at once understood by all

who have learned to distinguish between the love of the senses

and the love of the soul, the love Plato meant when he

represented the soul, in his fine poetical way, as having two

wings, intelligence and love, on which it soars to the empyreum.

This love, in one degree, is chivalric love, which the knight

cherishes for his mistress whom he worships as a distant star; in

a higher degree, it is heroic love, a love that braves all

dangers for the beloved, whether friend or country; in a still

higher degree, and informed by grace, it is charity or saintly

love, with which the saint burns and is consumed as he

contemplates the Beauty of Holiness, or "the First Good and the

First Fair." This is not sensible love, and its glory is in

struggling against the seductions of the senses, or the flesh,

and by the grace of God winning the victory over them, and coming

off conqueror through Him who hath loved us and given his life

for us.

The professor has entered largely into the physiology of the

senses, and the joint action of the soul in the fact of

knowledge, and the process of the mind in forming what he calls

_percepts_; but as all he says under these heads, whether

true or not true, throws no light on the intellectual act itself,

we pass it over, and proceed to his Part II., Representation and

Representative Knowledge.

"Representation or the representative power," the author says, p.

248, "may be defined in general [that is, _the genus_] the

power to recall, represent, and reknow objects which have been

previously known or experienced in the soul. More briefly, it is

the power to represent objects previously presented to the mind."

Clearly, then, representation adds nothing to the matter

previously presented by the presentative power. But the author

continues: "It is obvious that, in every act of this power, the

objects of the mind's cognition are furnished by the mind itself,

being produced or created a second time by the mind's own energy,

and presented to the mind's own inspection. It follows that

representation, in its very essence, is a creative or a

self-active power."

We cannot say that this is obvious to us. The definition of

representation given by the author makes it what, in the language

of mortals, is called memory; and we have never learned that

memory is a creative power, or that in memory the mind creates

the objects it remembers. To recall or to reknow is not to

create. Even that the soul is self-active--that is, capable of

acting from itself alone--is by no means obvious; nay, is

impossible, unless we take the soul to be the first cause,

instead of merely a second cause; and, even if it were

self-active, it would not follow that it creates. God is

self-active because self-existent, or being in its plenitude; but

he is not necessarily a creator. He has infinite scope for his

infinite activity in himself, and he is free to create or not to

create as he pleases.

{772}

That the mind does not in memory create the objects remembered,

is evident from the fact that the facts remembered are, as the

author himself admits, facts or objects previously known or

experienced. The fact of memory, or the fact remembered, is the

same fact that was known in presentation, accompanied by the

recognition of it as an object previously present and known, and

not now known for the first time. There is no creation a second

time any more than there was the first time, or when the object

was presented.

The professor says, p. 251, "The objects of the representative

power are .... mental objects. They are not _real things_,

nor real percepts, but the mind's own creations after real

things. They are spiritual or psychical, not material, entities;

but in many cases, they concern material beings, being psychical

transcripts of them, believed to be real or possible." Does he

mean this as a true description of the facts of memory? Probably

not. Then his definition needs amending, for it does not include

all that he means by representation. His definition includes only

memory; but his description includes, beside memory, reflection,

fancy, and imagination, things which have nothing in common

except the fact that the mind operates in them all on matters

which have been previously presented. Reflection and memory are

in no sense creative faculties; fancy and imagination are

sometimes so called, but even they do not create their own

objects. Reflection is the mind operating on the ideal principles

re-presented in language, and in their light, on the facts of

experience in their synthetic relations with them. Memory is

simply, as a faculty, the power to retain and to re-present, more

or less completely and distinctly, the facts of experience. Its

objects are those facts themselves, not a mental representation

or transcript of them. The author confounds re-presenting with

representation. In the one, the object previously presented is

re-presented, or presented anew; in the other, the object itself

is not presented for more elaborate consideration, but a certain

mental transcript, image, or resemblance of it, which is the

product of the mind fancying or imagining, yet is never its

object in correlation with which it acts. This distinction alone

upsets the author's whole theory of science, or

_Wissenschaftslehre_, and renders worse than useless more

than nine-tenths of his volume. His whole theory is vitiated by

confounding representation, in the sense of showing or exhibiting

by resemblance or similitude, with the etymological sense, that

of re-presenting, and in taking the representation as the object

of the soul in the intellectual act, which it never is. Neither

reflection nor memory represents, in his sense of the word, the

objects previously presented; they only re-present them.

In point of fact, we never know anything by mental

representation; for we either know not at all, or we know the

thing itself. Representation only replaces the phantasms and

intelligible species of the schoolmen, for ever made away with,

we had supposed, by the Scottish school of Reid and Hamilton, and

the professor himself has given excellent reasons for not

accepting them. Plato, indeed, asserts that we know by

similitude, but in a very different sense. The idea is impressed

on matter as the seal on wax, and the impression is a perfect

fac-simile of the idea; and by knowing the impression, we know

the idea impressed. But he never made either the idea or the

impress of it on matter the product of the mind itself.

{773}

He makes either always objective, independent of the mind, and

apprehensible by it. In other words, he never held that the mind

creates the similitude by which it knows, but, at most, only that

by observation the mind finds it. The peripatetics never, again,

made their phantasms and intelligible _species_ mental

creations, or represented them as furnished by the mind from its

own stock; but always held them to be independent of the mind,

and furnished to it as the means of apprehending the object. If

they had referred their production to the mind itself, they would

have called the species _intellective_, not

_intelligible_ species. The soul has, indeed, the faculty of

representation; but in representing its correlative object, it is

not the representation, but the thing, whatever it may be, that

it attempts to represent. The _product_ of the mind may be a

representation, but the _object_ of the mind is not. In all

the imitative arts, as poetry, painting, sculpture, the artist

seeks to represent, but operates always in view of that reality

of which he produces the representation or resemblance.

The author himself distinguishes memory from representation,

though very indistinctly. "Representation," p. 303> "recalls,

memory recognizes." Here he uses representation in the sense of

re-presenting; for what is recalled is not the mental

representation or semblance, but the object itself; so, really,

there is no representation in the case, and the professor should

not have treated memory under the head of representation. "I see

a face, and I shut my eyes and picture it to myself." This is not

an act of representation, but of memory. There is a

re-presenting, but no representation, in memory; for, so far as

the fact is not reproduced in memory, there is no memory, but

simply fancy or imagination. The objects of reflection are simply

the objects originally presented with only this difference, that,

in presentation, the fact of consciousness is myself as subject

knowing, whereas in reflection it is myself as subject

reflecting, and, in memory, myself as subject remembering.

Fancy and imagination are, in a loose way, called creative

faculties; but properly creative they are not. Creation is

production of substantial existences or things from nothing that

is, without any materials, by the sole energy of the creator.

Fancy and imagination can operate only on and with materials

which have been or are presented to the mind. Fancy is mimetic

and simply imitates imagination, as throughout the universe the

lower imitates the higher, as the universe copies the Creator, or

seeks to actualize the type in the Divine mind; and hence St.

Thomas says, _Deus similitudo est omnium rerum_. God creates

all things after the type or ideal in his own mind, and _idea

in mente divina nihil est aliud quam essentia Dei_. Hence, man

is said to be made after the image and likeness of God, _ad

imaginem et similitudinem_, though he is not the image of God;

for that is the Eternal Word, who, St. Paul tells us, is "the

brightness of his glory and the express image of his substance,"

or being. (Heb. i. 3.) Fancy is mimetic, and plays with

sensations and sensibles; but though it combines them in its own

way, as a winged horse, the objects combined are always objects

of experience. Imagination is of a higher order than fancy, and

operates on and with objects of experience, sensibles,

intelligibles, and the ideal principles intuitively given. It

sweeps through the whole range of creation, descends to hell, and

rises to heaven; but its objects are always those which have been

presented to the mind, which it can only arrange and combine in

new forms of its own.

{774}

But the representations it produces are its products, not its

object. In producing them, the mind has a real object as its

correlate, as in presentation. Let the professor, then, abandon

the absurdity which runs through his book that a mental creation

or representation is the object of the soul in producing it. The

object of the soul is the object whose activity joined to its own

produces it.

Take the artist. The object in his richest and sublimest

productions is the beautiful which he sees, which is his soul's

vision and his soul's love, and which he seeks to express on

canvas, in a statue, a temple, an oration, a poem, or a melody.

Tell us not, as so many aesthetic writers do, that the artist

projects from his own soul, or creates the beauty which he

struggles to express in his work, and which he can never express

to his satisfaction. The ideal infinitely transcends the

expression. The soul contemplates the beautiful, but does not

create it. The beautiful, as Plato somewhere says, "is the

splendor of the Good." It is the splendor of the True and the

Good, that is, of God; though Gioberti, in his _Del Bello_,

seems to divorce it from the ideal, and, while asserting the

reality of the object, would appear to resolve the beautiful into

the subjective impression on the sensibility, produced by the

apprehension of the object, which supposes that beauty exists

only for sensible existences. It is as real as God himself, and

as objective as the ideal formula. It is the divine splendor,

inseparable from the Divine Being. Everything God has made

participates, in a higher or lower degree, of beauty, because it

participates of being; but beauty itself in its infinity is only

in God himself, which exceeds all the power of men and angels to

represent. The artist, by the noetic power of the soul, which, if

a true artist, he possesses in a higher degree than ordinary men,

beholds, contemplates, and loves it. It is; as we have just said,

the vision of his soul and the object of his love. He detects it

in creatures, in the region of fancy, in the mind, and in the

soul itself, and adores it in the ideal. The power of detecting

it in sensibles is fancy; in the ideal, is imagination. In

seeking to represent it or express it in his productions, it is

the real, the objective, he seeks to express or embody. He may

form in his mind a representation of it, but that representation

is not the object of the mind in either fancy or imagination, nor

is it a pure mental representation, not only because it is formed

after the real, but because it is formed only in conjunction with

the activity of the real. [Footnote 282]

[Footnote 282: The artist ought always to be highly moral and

devout, but whether so or not depends on the motive with

which he acts, or purpose for which he seeks to embody the

beauty he sees. The relation of aesthetics to ethics, of art

to religion is easily understood. Art is not, as some Germans

would persuade us, religion, nor is the culture of art true

religious worship. Art may be licentious, and is, when it

embodies only the sensual passions and affections of our

nature, and the more so in proportion to the exquisite touch

and skill in the execution. In no case can the brilliancy and

perfection of the execution atone for the moral deformity of

the object represented. Art which appeals simply to the

senses, and inspires only sensible devotion, is not

necessarily immoral, but is not positively moral or

religious. But art which seeks to embody or express the

ideal, the splendor of the real, the true, the good, whether

as presented in the ideal intuition, or as participated by

the creatures of God, can hardly fail to be moral and

religious in its effect as well as in its ideal. God is

worshipped in spirit and in truth, even worshipped in his

works, for he enters into all his works as their cause, and

their being is in him. We praise God in his saints, in all

his works of nature or grace. The art is not the worship, but

it is an adjunct to worship, and hence religion in all ages

has called into its service the highest and richest forms of

art.]

{775}

These remarks are sufficient to show that all that Dr. Porter

says of the faculty of Representation is, when not confused or

false, of no moment. He darkens instead of elucidating his

subject. We pass on, therefore, to his Part III., on Thinking and

Thought-Knowledge.

The mental operations treated by the author under the head of

Thinking and Thought-knowledge, are those which Locke calls by

the general name of reflection, and are conception, abstraction,

or generalization, judgment, reasoning, deductive and inductive,

and scientific or systematic arrangement. They are not faculties,

but operations of the mind. The proper English name for the

faculty on which they depend, so far as usage goes, is not

thought, nor the power of thought--for every intellectual act,

whether representative or presentative, is a thought--but

_understanding_ or _reason_. The old word was

understanding, but it is objectionable, because it includes,

according to present usage, only the intellectual activity of the

soul, and implies nothing of voluntary activity. Reason is the

better term; for it combines both the intellectual and the

volitive activity of the soul.

The objection of the professor that "reason is used for the very

highest of the rational functions, or else in a very indefinite

sense for all that distinguishes man from the brute," does not

appear to us to be conclusive. Every intellectual act, the

highest as the lowest, is thought, an act of one and the same

thinking faculty. The objects and conditions of knowledge may

vary, but the faculty of knowledge does not vary with them.

Reason is not used in a more indefinite sense when used for all

that distinguishes man from the brute, than is thought as used by

the professor. Man is well defined to be _animal rationale_,

or rational animal; but this does not mean that man is animal

_plus_ reason, but the animal transformed by reason; and

hence there is a specific difference between the sort of

intelligence which it seems difficult to deny to animals, and the

intelligence of man. All human intelligence is rational, the

product of reason. Coleridge and our American transcendentalists,

after Kant, attempted to distinguish between understanding

[_Verstand_] and reason [_Vernunft_], and to restrict

understanding to that portion of our knowledge which is derived

through the senses, and reason to an order of knowledge that

transcends all understanding, and to which only the gifted few

ever attain. But they have not been successful. Knowledge of the

highest objects, as of the lowest, is by the same faculty, and we

may still use reason in its old sense, as the subjective

principle of all the operations the professor calls thinking.

The word _reason_ is, indeed, used in an objective as well

as in a subjective sense. As subjective, it is a faculty of the

soul; the objective reason is the ideal formula, and creates and

constitutes the subjective reason. Cousin distinguishes between

the two, but as between the personal and the impersonal--a mere

modal distinction, not a distinction of substance. He identifies

the objective reason with the [Greek text] or Word of God, while

it is really identical with the ideal formula, which embraces

both being and existences, united and distinguished by the

creative act of being, as explained in our former article. This

asserts a distinction of subject and of substance between the

objective and subjective reason asserted by Cousin. In the

objective reason, God, in the subjective, man, is the actor; and

there is all the difference of substance between them that there

is between God and man, or between real, universal, and necessary

being, and finite, contingent existence.

{776}

They ought not to be both called by the same name, and we

ourselves rarely so call them. We ourselves call the objective

reason the ideal formula, or, briefly, the ideal; yet good

writers and speakers do use the word in both senses. They say,

"Man is endowed with reason," or has a "rational nature," in

which they employ the term subjectively. They say, also, of such

an assertion, "It is unreasonable, or it is contrary to reason;"

that is, to the truth, or principle of things, in which they use

it objectively, as they do when they speak of the principles

affirmed in the ideal formula, and call them the reason,

necessary and absolute ideas, or the principles of reason; for

nothing necessary or absolute is or can be subjective.

We ourselves use the word in a subjective sense, and understand

by it the faculty of reasoning, or the subjective principle of

all our mental operations. It is not a simple power, but a

complex power, embracing both the percipient and volitive

capacities of the soul. In every rational operation of the soul,

there is both perception and volition, and it is this fact that

distinguishes reason from the simple power of perception, or

intellectual apprehension. We _see_ and we _look_, and

we _look_ that we may _see_; we _hear_ and we

_listen_, and _listen_ that we may _hear_. The

_looking_ and the _listening_ are peculiarly rational

acts, in which the soul voluntarily, or by an act of the will,

directs her intellectual capacities to a special intellectual

purpose or end. This voluntary activity, or direction of the

capacity to know, must not be confounded with free will; it is

the _voluntarium_ of the theologians, distinguished, on the

one hand, from spontaneity, and on the other, from the _liber

arbitrium_, or free will, which is the faculty of electing or

choosing between right and wrong, and implies, whichever it

chooses, the power to choose the contrary. It is the principle of

all moral accountability. The _voluntarium_ is a simple,

voluntary activity, or power of directing our attention to this

or that intellectual object, or of using the cognitive power in

the service of science. The reason may be defined, then, the

soul's faculty of using her intellectual and volitive powers for

the explication and verification of the knowledge furnished by

presentation.

With these preliminary remarks we proceed to consider some of the

mental operations which give us what Professor Porter calls

Thought-Knowledge. We do not question the fact of these

operations, nor their importance in the development of our

rational life; what we deny is, that they are a power or faculty

of the mind, and that in performing them they are objects of the

mind, or that they add anything to the matter of our knowledge.

The professor says, p. 383, "The power of thought [reason] as a

capacity [faculty] for certain psychological processes, is

dependent for its exercise and development on the lower powers of

the intellect. These furnish the materials for it to work with

and upon. We must apprehend the individual objects by means of

the senses and consciousness [pure sensism] before we can

_think_ these objects." So in consciousness and

sense-perception we do not think, and we must apprehend sensibles

before we can think them! To intellectually apprehend an object

is to think it. Intellectual apprehension and thought are one and

the same fact. The professor continues, "We can classify,

explain, and methodize only individual things, and these must

first be known by sense and consciousness before they can be

united and combined into generals."

{777}

Here are two errors and one truth. The first error is in

regarding consciousness as a cognitive power or faculty, and the

second is in confining the individual things to sensibles, or the

material world. We know in presentative knowledge not only the

sensible but the supersensible, the intelligible, or ideal. The

ideal principles cannot be found, obtained, or created by the

mind's own activity, and are apprehended by the mind only as they

are given intuitively by the act of the Creator; but being given,

they are as really apprehended and known by the mind as any

sensible object; nay, are what the mind apprehends that is most

clear and luminous, so luminous that it is only by their light

that even sensibles are mentally apprehensible or perceptible.

The one truth is that the objects of the soul in her operations

must first be known either by perception or intuition before they

can be classified, explained, and methodized. Hence the

operations of which the author treats under this head do not

extend our knowledge of objects. They are all reflective

operations, and reflection can only re-present what has already

been presented.

The professor is right in maintaining that only individual

objects are apprehensible, if he means that we apprehend things

only in _individuo_ or _in concreto_; for this is what

we have all along been insisting on against him. Things are not

apprehensible in general, but in the concrete. Hence Rosmini's

mistake in making the first and abiding object of the intellect

_ens in genere_, which is a mere possible _ens_, and no

real being at all. It is simply conception or abstraction formed

by the mind operating on the intuition of real being, which never

is nor can be abstracted or generalized. Yet the author has

argued under both presentative knowledge and representative

knowledge that the mind, sometimes with, and sometimes without,

anything distinct from and independent of itself, creates its own

object; and that the object, as well as the act, may be purely

psychical. Thus he tells us that in sense-perception we do not

perceive the material thing itself, but the joint product of the

material agent and the sentient organism; and that in

representation the object represented may be unreal, chimerical,

and exist only in the soul, and for the soul alone. And he dwells

with great unction on the relief and advantage one finds in

escaping from the real world to the unreal which the soul creates

for herself. True, he says that whatever the object, real or

unreal, abstract or concrete, it is apprehensible only as an

individual object; but the unreal, the chimerical, the abstract,

is never individual. Why does he call conceptions

_concepts_, if not because he holds the conception is both

the act and the object of the mind in conceiving? And does he

hold the concept to be always individual, never general?

Conception, in his system, is always a generalization, or a

general notion, formed by the mind, and existing only in the

mind. How, then, can it be an object of the mind? He says truly

the object is individual, but "the concept (p. 391) is uniformly

general." And yet, in the very first paragraph on the next page,

he calls it an object of cognition! Farther on, he says, "The

concept is a purely relative object of knowledge," whatever that

may mean; and in the same section, section 389, he speaks of it

"as a mental product and _mental object_.'" To our

understanding, he thus contradicts himself.

{778}

Yet we hold that whatever the mind cognizes at all, it cognizes

in the concrete, as an individual object. And therefore we deny

that the ideas of the necessary, the universal, of necessary

cause, and the like, which the author calls intuitions, and

treats as first principles, necessary assumptions, abstract

ideas, etc., are abstractions, mental conceptions, or

generalizations; for there are no concretes or individual objects

from which they can be abstracted or generalized. As we really

apprehend them, when affirmed in the ideal formula by the divine

act, and as we cannot apprehend what is neither being nor

existence, as the author himself says, though continually

asserting the contrary; and as every existence is a finite

contingent existence, they must be real, necessary, and universal

being. They cannot be generalizations of being; for nothing is

conceivable more general and universal than being. Being, taken

in its proper sense, as the _ens simpliciter_ of the

schoolmen, is itself that which is most individual and, at the

same time, the most general, the most particular and the most

universal. These so-called necessary ideas, then, are being; and

in apprehending them as intuitively affirmed, we do really

apprehend being. Hence, as being, real and necessary being, is

God, whom the theologians call _Ens necessarium et reale_,

God, in affirming the ideal formula, intuitively affirms himself,

and we really apprehend him, not as he is in himself, in his

essence, indeed, but as being, the ideal or the intelligible,

that is, as facing our intelligence; or, in other words, we

apprehend him as the subject of the judgment, _Ens creat

existentias_, or as the subject of the predicate existences,

united and distinguished by his creative act, the only real, as

the only possible, copula.

The author makes man the analogon of God, and, indeed, God in

miniature, or a finite God, and gravely tells us, p. 100, that

"we have only to conceive the limitations of our being removed,

and we have the conception of God." But as we are not being, but

existence, we are finite and limited in our very nature; remove

the limitations, and we are not God, but nothing. Eliminate the

finite, says Père Gratry, and you have God, in the same way and

by the same process that the mathematician has his

infinitesimals. But this process of elimination of the finite

gives the mathematician only the infinitely less than the finite

number or quantity, and it would give the theologian not the

infinitely greater but the infinitely less than the finite

existence. Besides, the process could at best give us not God in

his being, but a mere abstract God, existing only as a mental

generalization. The universal cannot be concluded from the

particular, nor the necessary from the contingent, because,

without the intuition of the universal and the necessary, we have

and can have no experience of the particular and the

contingent--a fact we commend to the consideration of the

inductive theologians.

As the conception is always general, it can never be the object

of the mind in the fact of thought. It is a product of the mind

operating on the individual object or objects with which the mind

has thought, and is never the object itself. The same may be said

of generalization, abstraction, and every form of reasoning. But

if this be so, in what are conceptions, abstractions, etc.,

known? If they are known at all, they must be objects of

knowledge; if not known at all, how can we think or speak of

them?

{779}

They are known in knowing their concretes, as the author himself

tells us. As concepts, abstractions, generalizations, or general

notions, they do not exist in nature, and cannot be known or

thought. But they exist as qualities or properties of things, and

are known in knowing the things themselves. Thus we know round

things; all round things have the same property of being round;

we may, then, consider only this property common to all round

things, and form the general conception of roundness; but we do

not see or apprehend roundness, and the object of thought is

always the round thing. So of all so-called universals that are

abstractions, conceptions, or generalizations. The object known

is the concrete; the abstraction, abstracted from it, being

nothing, is not known or even thought.

But Cousin, in his _Philosophie Scholastique_, has very

properly distinguished general conceptions or general notions

from genera and species. The former are real only in their

concretes, and knowable only in them; the latter are real, and

actually exist _a parte rei_. Genus has relation to

generation, and is as real as the individual, for it generates

the individual. Hence, we cannot agree with Leibnitz, when he

makes the genus or species consist in resemblance, and declares

that resemblance real. The individual does not merely mimic the

genus, but is produced by it. The genus is always causative in

relation to the species, and the species, in relation to the

individual. The intelligible is always causative in relation to

the sensible, which copies or imitates it. The genus is not the

possibility of individuals, nor are they its realization. It is

not a property or a quality of men as individuals, for it is, in

the order of second causes, the cause producing them, and

therefore cannot be generalized from them, or be a general notion

or conception, like roundness, the generalization or abstract of

round. Without the genus there could be no generation, as without

a generator there could be no genus. Yet, though genera and

species, the only universals, properly so-called, are, as the old

realists held, real, existing _a parte rei_, and are

distinguishable from the individuals, as the generator from the

generated, the species from the specificated; they are not

separable, and do not exist apart from them. Adam was an

individual, lived, acted, sinned, repented, and died, as an

individual man; yet was he the generic, as well as individual,

man; for he was the whole human race, and the progenitor of all

men that have been born or are to be born.

But while we adopt, in relation to genera and species, the

doctrine of the mediaeval realists, we hold with regard to other

so called universals with St. Thomas, who says they exist _in

mente cum fundamento in re_. The _fundamentum in re_ of

conceptions, abstractions, and generalizations is precisely the

individual objects apprehended by the mind from which reason

abstracts or generalizes them. The only point which we now make

against the author is that the object of thought or knowledge is

not the conception or notion, but the object from which the

reason forms it; and that in it nothing is thought beyond that

object. Philosophy has been divested of its scientific character,

made infinitely perplexing and most difficult to be understood,

as well as utterly worthless, by being regarded as the science,

not of things, but of these very conceptions, abstractions, and

general notions, which, apart from their individuals or

concretes, are pure nullities.

{780}

We insist on this, because we wish to see philosophy brought back

to the real, to objects of experience in their relation to the

ideal formula; and our principal quarrel with the professor is,

that his philosophy is not real, is not the science of realities,

but of conceptions and abstractions.

We can hardly pause on what the professor says of judgment and

the proposition. We can only remark in passing that every

thought, every perception, even, is a judgment--a judgment that

the object thought or perceived is real or really exists. Every

affirmation is a judgment, and every judgment is an affirmation;

for denials are made only by affirming the truth denied. Pure

negations are unintelligible, present no counteraction to the

mind, and cannot be thought. "The fool hath said in his heart,

God is--not." It is only by asserting that God is that we can

deny that he is. Every negation is the contradiction of what it

affirms. So-called negative judgments are really affirmative. We

do not mean that denials cannot be made, for we are constantly

making them; but they can be made only by affirming the truth;

and the denial that transcends the truth affirmed in the denial

is simply verbal, and no real denial at all. Universal negation

is simply impossible; and hence when we have shown that any

system of philosophy leads logically to nihilism, or even

universal scepticism, we have refuted it. Logicians tell us that

of contradictories one must be false; but it is equally just to

say, that of contradictories one must be true; for truth cannot

contradict itself, and only truth can contradict falsehood.

But we pass on to Reasoning, which the professor holds to be

mediate judgment, and to which we hold all the reflective

operations of reason may be reduced. What a mediate judgment is,

we do not know. Reasoning may be necessary as the means and

condition of judging in a certain class of cases, but the

judgment itself is in all cases direct. The error of the

professor here, as throughout the whole of this Part III., and,

indeed, of his whole treatise, is that he treats every question

from the point of view of conception, or the general notion,

instead of the point of view of reality, as he cannot help doing

as an inductive psychologist.

Reasoning is a reflective operation. It operates on the matter

presented by ideal intuition and experience; it clears up,

explains, verifies, and classifies what is intuitively affirmed,

together with what experience presents. Its instrument is

language. We can think without language, and so far De Bonald was

wrong, unless he understood, as the professor does, by thought,

an act of reflection; but we cannot reflect or reason without

language of some sort to re-present to the mind's contemplation

the ideal or intelligible intuition. This re-presentation is not

an act of the soul herself, nor the direct and immediate act of

the Creator, as is the ideal intuition. It is effected only by

language in which the ideal or intelligible is embodied and

represented, and of which it is the sensible sign or

representation. In other words, the ideal is an object of

reflection only as taught through the medium of language; for we

must bear in mind that man is not pure spirit or pure

intelligence, but spirit united to body, and that he must have

some sort of sensible representation in order to reflect.

{781}

Hence the peripatetic maxim, _nihil est in intellectu, quod non

prius fuerit in sensu_, which does not mean that only

sensibles are cognizable, but that nothing can be reflectively

thought, or as the Italians say, re-thought, (_ripensare_,)

without sensible representation. That God is, can be proved with

certainty by reason; for we have immediate intuition of that

which is God in the intuition of real and necessary being; but we

cannot reach the conclusion that the intuitively affirmed object

really is God without reflecting on the intuition, and this we

cannot do unless it is re-presented or held up to our

contemplation in language, or without its being sensibly

represented by the word God. Language is the necessary instrument

of reason; we cannot reason without it, and only rational

existences have language properly so called. No animal deprived

of "the discourse of reason" has even articulation.

Those philosophers, or pretended philosophers, who regard

language either as a human invention or as the spontaneous

production of human nature, have never duly considered its office

in the development of thought, and in the rational operations of

the soul. Men could not have invented language without

reflection, and without language they cannot reflect. It needs

language to be able to invent language. The other theory is no

better. The soul does not secrete language as the liver secretes

bile, for language has in it more than human nature. The

spontaneous productions of nature may be less than nature, but

cannot be more. There is a philosophy in language broader and

deeper than human thought, a philosophy that embraces elements

which are known only by revelation, and which human nature does

not contain. All language is modelled after the ideal formula.

Its essential elements are subject, predicate, and copula, or the

noun, adjective, and verb. The verb and adjective may be, and

often are, combined in the same word, but they can be resolved

always into the predicate and copula. The copula is always the

verb _to be_, or its equivalent in other languages than our

own, and this verb is the only verb in any language.

The verb _to be_ is precisely the name of God himself, the

SUM QUI SUM. We cannot make, then, a single assertion but by the

Divine Being, and he enters as the copula into every one of our

judgments without which no affirmation can be expressed. But God

is supernatural, and is the author of nature; the ideal formula

which is repeated in every judgment is not contained in human

nature, is not in the human mind as in its subject, but is above

our nature, and by affirming itself creates our nature, both

physical and intellectual. How then could our nature, operating

simply as second cause, produce spontaneously language which in

its essential nature expresses what is beyond and above itself?

Men, especially philosophers, or rather theorizers, have

corrupted and still continue to corrupt language, as we can see

in the book before us; but we have never yet heard of any one by

the spontaneous action of nature secreting or producing a

language, or of any one having a language without being taught

it. Yet nature is all to-day that it ever was, and as fresh, as

vigorous, as prolific. Even the fall has not deprived it of any

of its primitive faculties, capacities, properties, or

tendencies. If language is a spontaneous production of human

nature, we ought to have some instances of children growing up

and speaking a rich and philosophical language without having

ever learned it.

{782}

For ourselves, we have a huge distrust of all those theories

which assume that nature could and did do in the past what she

does not and cannot do in the present. Our _savants_ employ

themselves in seeking the types of domestic animals in the wild

races; why not seek the type of the wild races in the domestic?

Why suppose man could and once did domesticate races which he

finds it difficult, if not impossible, to domesticate now? We do

not believe much in the modern doctrine of progress, but we

believe just as little in the wonderful superiority of nature and

men in ante-historical times, which is sometimes assumed,

especially by the champions of progress.

Language is neither a human invention nor a natural production,

but was created by God himself and infused into man along with

the affirmation of the ideal formula, when he made him and placed

him in the Garden, and it has been perpetuated by tradition, or

by being handed down from father or rather mother to child. It

comes to us from the hand of the Creator; he who made man gave

him speech. We can explain the origin of language in no other

way, as we can explain the origin of man only by saying with the

catechism, God made him. As language is the instrument of reason,

and re-presents to his contemplation the ideal which the Creator

fitted it to symbolize, its corruption or confusion has a most

disastrous effect on philosophy. It was confounded at Babel, and

men lost the unity of speech, and with it the unity of the ideal,

and were dispersed. The Gentiles lost the unity of language, and

they lost with it the unity of the ideal, or the copula of the

divine judgment, and labored to explain, as our modern

_savants_ are laboring to explain, the existence and laws of

the universe without the creative act of God. Language, corrupted

re-presented to the ancient Gentiles, and as it does to our

modern physiologists and psychologists, the ideal only in a

mutilated form, and hence the fatal error of Gentilism and of

modern so-called science, which asserts pantheism. It is

necessary, in order to have a true philosophy, to have some means

of preserving the purity and infallibility of speech, and at no

former period was such means more necessary than it is now.

The instrument of reasoning is language; its form is the

syllogism, which is given in the ideal formula. All the matter of

knowledge is given in presentation, and the syllogism does not

advance it; but it explains, distinguishes, arranges it according

to the real relations of the objects known, clears up what is

obscure, and verifies what is uncertain, doubtful, by reducing

the whole to its principle or principles. The principle and model

of the syllogism are in the ideal. Being and existences are the

extremes, and the creative act is the _medius terminus_. The

major represents being, the minor existences, and the middle term

produces the conclusion. To this regular form of the syllogism

every form of argument is reducible. If the major is universal,

and the minor is proved, the conclusion is necessary and

apodictic.

The modes in which reason operates are two, deduction and

induction, or analysis and synthesis. Induction is simple

analysis, or what Kant calls analytic judgment, and simply

dissects the subject, analyzes it, and brings out to our distinct

view what is in it. It is never illative, but always explicative,

and enables us to distinguish the part in the whole, the property

in the essence, or the effect in the cause.

{783}

Dr. Porter entirely mistakes it in supposing it to be an

imperfect induction. There is nothing inductive in it. Induction

is what Kant calls a synthetic judgment _a posteriori_, and

adds an element not contained in the subject analyzed. In

synthetic judgments _a posteriori_, the added element is

taken from experience; in synthetic judgments _a priori_,

the added element is from the ideal formula, intuitively given,

or rather, the ideal formula is that into which what Kant calls

synthetic judgments _a priori_ are resolvable. The syllogism

is used in deduction and in induction; yet it is not properly

either, but is productive. As being creates existences, so the

major through the middle term unites the minor to itself and

produces the conclusion. Such men as Sir William Hamilton and J.

Stuart Mill, who reject the middle term, and hold the major may

be a particular proposition, are misled by their philosophy,

which excludes the creative act of God both from the universe and

from science. No man who has a false or defective philosophy can

understand logic as a science. Pantheism, which excludes the

creative act, is the supreme sophism. It is not easy to say what

Dr. Porter's views of logic, either as a science or as an art,

really are.

The chief complaint against the professor here is, that he makes

reasoning turn on the laws of the mind, on conceptions, and

general notions, and reflecting, as logic, only the relations and

forms of the creations or products of the mind, instead of the

relations and forms of things. He studies everything from the

point of view of the mental act, instead of studying them from

the point of view of the ideal intuition, which is the point of

view of God himself. He therefore gives in his science, not

things as they are, but as the mind conceives them.

The conceptions and general notions play, no doubt, an important

part in the process of reasoning, but they play not the chief

part, nor do they impose upon logic the laws it must follow. The

categories are not general conceptions or general notions, formed

by generalizing individuals or particulars. M. Cousin assumes

that he has reduced them to two, substance and cause, or being

and phenomenon: but as with him substance is a necessary cause,

and as phenomenon is only an appearance or mode of substance, his

reduction is really to one, the category of substance, which it

is needless to say is pure pantheism. They, however, may be

reduced to the three terms of the ideal formula; for whatever is

conceivable is being, existence, or the creative act of being.

The categories are not, then, merely formal, simply conceived by

the mind _cum fundamento in re_; but are the ideal

principles of things themselves. Take the categories of space and

time, which seem to puzzle the author as they have puzzled many

greater and wiser men than he. Space is ideal and actual. Ideal

space is the power or ability of God to externize his act, that

is, to create or act _ad extra_; and actual space is the

relation of coexistence of his externized acts or creatures.

Ideal space pertains to being, is being itself; actual space

being a real relation between creatures, and, like all relations,

really existing in the related, comes under the head of

existences, and is joined to being as well as distinguished from

it by the creative act. The reason of space and time is the same.

Time also is ideal and actual. Actual time is the relation of

succession, and ideal time is the ability of God to create

existences that, as second causes, are explicated and completed

successively, or reach their end progressively. Ideal time is

God. Actual time is creature, since all relations really exist in

the related. The difficulty which so many eminent men have felt

with regard to these two categories, evidently reducible to the

terms of the ideal formula, grow out of their attempt to abstract

them, the ideal from God, and the actual from the related,

whether existences or events. Take away the body and the space

remains, says Cousin. Certainly; because the intuition of the

ability of God to externize his act--that is to create--remains.

So of time. So of the infinite lines of the geometrician. No

actual line is infinite, and the conception of its infinity is

based on the intuition of the infinite power or ability of God,

the real ground on which the line, when conceived to extend

beyond the actual, is projected.

There are various other points presented by the learned professor

in this part and in Part IV. on which we intended to comment, but

we have exhausted our space and the patience of our readers. We

have said enough, however, to show that he recognizes intuition

only as an act of the soul, and therefore, however honorable his

intention, since he fails to recognize ideal intuition, which is

the act of God, he fails to get beyond experience, to extend

science beyond the sensible or material world with the operations

of the soul on sensations, and therefore cannot be followed as a

safe guide in the philosophy of the human mind. He has learning,

industry, and even philosophical instincts, but is ruined by his

so-called Baconian method.

----------

{784}

Heremore-Brandon; Or,

The Fortunes Of A Newsboy.

Chapter VI.

I could not tell you one half the projects Dick formed and

rejected as entirely hopeless before he at last succeeded in

inducing a gentleman who had been very kind to him to make an

offer to Mr. Brandon of some place in his office, which, while it

would not be more than, with his now broken energies and failing

health, he could easily perform, if he had the disposition, would

give him something to help him live upon.

Soon after this offer was made and (with much grumbling) finally

accepted, Dick, without really seeking it, found himself becoming

known to Mr. Brandon; and, thanks to the patience with which he

listened to that gentleman's railings against the world, and his

own hard fortunes in it, taken into favor. It was a very sad

sight for a hopeful, self-respecting, God-fearing Catholic like

Dick to see this querulous man, from whom all vigorous spirit

seemed to have fled, brooding over his losses, instead of holding

up his head, and bravely going forth to make the most of what was

left; a sad thing to hear these miserable repinings in which

there was never a thought of gratitude for the long years of

comfort and plenty with which God had blessed him.

{785}

But Dick bore it patiently, and sought in every way which his

simple experience could devise to draw him from his despondency;

to inspire him with some trust in God. It was, however, without

any apparent success, other than greater condescension from Mr.

Brandon, who, at last, weak and nervous, would gladly avail

himself of Dick's young strength in his walks home.

And so, in time, that which had seemed the impossible came to

pass very naturally. Mr. Brandon urged Dick to enter the house,

and he was received as a guest in Miss Brandon's home. Home it

must be called, I suppose; though it was a dreary, desolate room,

with "boarding-house" stamped in glaring letters all over the

grey walls and badly-assorted furniture. Even Dick could realize

that it must be a very different home from any which Miss Brandon

had ever seen before; for it was far different from the only

pretty rooms _he_ had ever entered--those dear, clean, sweet

rooms at Mrs. Alaine's.

"Mr. Heremore, Mary," was his introduction, accompanied by a

patronizing wave of Mr. Brandon's hand. Do not be surprised; you

know I have never said--not even in his days of prosperity--that

he was a gentleman--"Mr. Heremore, Mary; a young man who has

thought it not worth while to be unkind and disrespectful to an

old man who has lost every thing."

"I have heard my father speak of you often," said Mary very

quietly; but in such gentle tones that Dick wondered how any man

could count himself poor--knowing _her_.

"I really felt very nervous," Mr. Brandon further explained,

"about coming home alone. I have been so very uncomfortable

to-day. But that's of no consequence, of course, _now_."

"I am very glad you brought Mr. Heremore," Mary answered readily,

and with more warmth than before; and I am sure he was very

careful of you."

After that, conversation became somewhat easier; although Dick

felt half like an impostor, and could not do much to second Miss

Brandon's efforts to make the hour go by pleasantly. She had

several albums and scrap-books of engravings with which she tried

to entertain him; but to do his best, he could think of little

else than the languid, weary manner which had replaced the quick

steps and stately sweetness he had known of old. When Mr. Brandon

left them for a few minutes, she turned with animation and said:

"Mr. Heremore, I must thank you for your kindness to my father. I

would not have him suppose I consider it kindness, but in my

heart I know it is, and I know you mean it as such. Since things

have gone wrong with him, he seems to have changed his whole

nature; he does not appear to have any courage to stand against

the tide. I suppose it would have been very different if Mrs.

Brandon had lived; a wife would have kept his spirits up as no

one else can."

"I know," stammered Dick, not knowing what to say under the gaze

of her beautiful eyes, "I know--that the death of your mother

last summer--"

"Mrs. Brandon, you mean," she interrupted in her quietest tones,

"that is, my father's second wife. This Mrs. Brandon was not my

mother; my own mother died long ago." This so coldly that, for

some inexplicable reason, Dick fancied she was glad to correct

him.

{786}

"You were in the carriage at the same time," said Dick, feeling

that he must say something.

"Yes," answered Mary, "but I remember little about it; as soon as

we found the horses were running away, Mrs. Brandon became very

much alarmed, and almost before I could say a word to her, we

were thrown out, and were both picked up senseless. She was not

conscious of anything again. All these things together have

completely unnerved poor papa, and I really feel very grateful to

any one who is interested in him. His old friends have received

but little encouragement to visit us here, although it is only a

fancy of papa's, I am sure, that they feel any difference, and he

is often quite lonely."

Mr. Brandon soon returned, and seeming to wish his daughter's

undivided attention, Dick rose and said, "good-night."

It need hardly be said that he was after this more

enthusiastically devoted to their fortunes than ever before. He

spent a few hours there at different times during the winter and

spring, and soon found himself at ease in that dreary room; but

as he knew Mary better, his reverence for her, while it

diminished not in the least, became a deep and fervent feeling,

which kept her always in his thoughts. She, too, seemed to regard

him with very kindly feelings, and the sympathy between them was

so strong that it bore down many of their differences of

association and education, and each was astonished to find an

unexpectedly ready understanding in the other. But as yet Dick

had said nothing of the little girl on the steps who gave him her

candy one cold Christmas morning years ago.

Once at New-Year's, and again on the 22d of February, holidays on

which he was free, Dick had been down to the cottage in the

country, and had seen Rose and the boys skate and make

snow-houses, and spent two of the coziest, happiest evenings of

his life around the bright fire, talking pleasant talk with those

dear people, among whom alone he realized the faintest idea of

the word home. Now time had gone by so rapidly that he was to

spend a whole week there as he had the year before. But not

exactly the same; for the last time he had been there a clear,

bright day in February, when they were all coming home from the

skating-pond together--it had chanced that he and Rose had fallen

far in the rear of the children, who, having skated since one

o'clock in the keen air, professed themselves "ever so hungry,"

and, as Dick would not hurry with them, walked off in disgust,

each declaring to the other that they didn't like Mr. Dick, half

so much this time as before; he was "no good" at all.

"What a magnificent day!" Dick said, for about the tenth time, as

he tramped by Rose's side through the crisp snow, just as the sun

was going down in one great glow before them. "I think I never

saw a more splendid winter day in all my life."

Not thinking of any addition to this speech, and not being able

with truth to contradict it, Rose kept on her way, her neat

little boots cutting the snow, and making, Dick thought, the most

delicious music there ever was. Rose looked especially charming

that afternoon; from the very crown of her head, with her wealth

of golden hair, only half hidden by her felt hat, to the dainty

little boots before mentioned, which her warm skating dress,

looped up, did not even affect to conceal, Rose was charming.

{787}

Dick thought that her very cloak seemed to nestle more lovingly

to her plump figure than another's would; and as for the tiny

muff, Uncle Carl's present, and the blue silk handkerchief

knotted around her neck, Dick was certain that Stewart never sold

anything half so pretty. So, if his lips talked about the

weather, it is hardly surprising that his eyes embraced another

subject; and I question if, when her demure glances met his gaze,

Rose needed words to tell her its meaning; for, after all, are

words, the dearest and sweetest that come from the lips, any

dearer or sweeter than those the eyes speak?

But whatever she knew, Rose was a true little woman, and showed

no sign.

"This is the place where Mrs. Brandon was thrown," she said, as

they passed a broad street cutting across the narrow road they

were following. "Just by those trees. They say the horses could

have been managed only for her screams; a woman who screams at

such a time must have very little sense."

"I think so," answered Dick, looking sadly toward the place Rose

pointed out.

"Miss Mary behaved wonderfully well," continued Rose, with one

quick look into Dick's face as they passed on. "She was perfectly

calm, and tried to quiet Mrs. Brandon. She was very much hurt

herself."

"Yes, so I have heard; she shows it, too; you would hardly

recognize her now, she is so thin and altered."

"But, of course, she is more beautiful for that," said little,

plump Rose, who had a great idea of delicate, fragile girls.

"Not more beautiful, exactly," answered Dick, who had not a great

idea of delicate, fragile girls, "but it makes one feel for her

more."

"I know you feel for her very much," said Rose.

"I have always honored her very much," answered Dick warmly. "It

almost seems presumption for me to say I _feel_ for her; but

I do, indeed I do."

"I am sure of it," Rose responded with great warmth, and then

there was silence for a long time.

Rose broke it with a little trembling in the first word or two at

her own audacity, but gathering courage as she went on: "I knew

you did when you were here last summer; then I heard of her

father's failure, and then it seemed more natural; and--now--I am

very glad for your sake. I hope you will be very happy. I do,

indeed."

Now, Dick was no fool, and when the strangeness of this speech

caused him to look harder than ever into the glowing but demure

little face by the side of him, he felt for the moment a great

inclination not to say a word; for provokingly innocent as she

looked, he did not believe she was at all so ignorant of the real

state of things. Rose felt the moment's hesitation, and, poor

little thing, got frightened at her own conjuring, which fright

so changed the expression of her face that Dick's hesitation

vanished, and he answered:

"Of course I know what you mean, Rose, although it is so strange.

I do not think of such a thing--it would be very strange if I

did. You know better, don't you, Rose?"

Rose looked up with a careless answer, but thought better of it,

and said nothing.

"You never did really think it, did you, Rose?" he added,

pursuing his advantage, and repeating it until there was no

escape for Rose, who had to answer truthfully, "No." She having

made this concession, he made one, and told her the story of his

boyish days, and of the Christmas day when he first saw Mary

Brandon.

{788}

He had not felt very easy about Rose's opinion of much he had to

tell her, and was greatly relieved when he saw all her assumed

carelessness depart, and that she listened to him with earnest

sympathy. He was so encouraged by the gentle, womanly interest

she gave him that he did not stop with the history of his boyish

days, but went on to narrate a later experience; very few words

sufficed for this. When he told it, Rose understood very well

why, if Mary Brandon were a queen upon her throne, she would be

no more than friend or sister to him.

After that, there seemed no more to be said; for they finished

the walk in the still winter twilight almost in silence.

That was in February, when Dick went down to Carlton to spend

Washington's birthday, and it inaugurated a new era for Will.

Rose had a sudden interest in the post-office, which was a long

walk from the cottage, and, in rainy weather or on very busy

days, was beyond her reach. I believe all her spare pennies went

into Will's coffers about that time, and I am sure all her cakes

and apples went into his possession; but, for all that, he was an

ungrateful page, and wished "there wasn't no post-offices in the

world," which opinion Will may alter when his own time comes.

This was in February, and it was now August, and Dick was going

down for a week, one whole week in the country. Rose was at the

gate as she had been a year ago; but she did not say "you are

welcome," as she had said before. The children took him into

favor when they found he had not come empty-handed, but had

brought the books for Will, the doll for Trot, and just such toys

for the rest as were most desired; and though many times in their

rambles Will did have his patience sorely tried by "Mr. Dick's

everlasting lagging," he was, on the whole, admitted to be an

acquisition. I believe, though, that Rose's bosom-friend, Clara

Hays, who was always urged to be of every party, and sadly

neglected when she got there, was the greatest sufferer; it is

not every day you see lovers who are perfectly well-bred and

considerate for everybody. My excuse for Rose and Dick is, that

they only had a week, and a week is such a short time when one is

very happy!

Dick's week was nearly at its end when his birthday, his

twenty-first birthday came, and his good friends made a little

rejoicing for him in their homely way. It was a very beautiful

August day, and was celebrated like a holiday by all the family.

Yet it was not exactly a cloudless day for Dick, though it was

the first birthday of his that had ever received the slightest

notice from any one, and ought to have made him radiantly happy.

He had received a present made for him with her own hands, with

no one could tell how many loving thoughts of him worked in it,

from his own dear Rose. His little table was covered with the

first keepsakes he had ever received from any one, and still he

was not happy. Among the treasures on his little table there

stood one--which reminds me that I should not have called the

others the first--from the mother whose face he could not

remember, and what might it not contain? Hitherto he had thought

but little of the box of which Carl spoke so slightingly years

ago; but now that the day of opening it had come, he grew really

afraid of it. He remembered stories of vengeance bequeathed from

the grave, of crimes to be expiated by the children of the

perpetrators years afterward, of fearful confessions of sin and

sorrow and wrong in countless forms; and Dick, in the first glow

of his first joyous days, did not know how he could bear even a

mist upon the rising sun of his happiness.

{789}

"Not until the last thing to-night," he said finally, laying down

the box and turning away from the table. "I will be happy to the

last minute," and he went down to ask Rose to walk with him in

the beautiful twilight after tea. It was earlier than he had

thought when he went down, and Rose was reading in the shadow of

the porch, or seeming to read, for a book was in her hand, and

not, as he supposed, engaged in getting tea.

"I did not suppose I should find you here," said Dick.

"Shall I go away?" she asked, looking up and smiling.

"Yes, do," he replied, sitting by her, "you know there's nothing

would please me better." But for all he tried to be gay, Rose saw

that the shadow she had observed over him all day was deeper than

before.

"Dear friend," she said, softened and made earnest at once,

"something troubles you to-day."

"Yes, dear Rose, I am troubled to-day in spite of all the

kindness shown me. My little box troubles me; I am afraid to open

it."

"Then the best thing is to do it at once, is it not? One only

makes such things worse by thinking about them."

"I know it. No, I will not open it now; I will have every moment

of happiness I can first."

"What happiness can it take from you? You will be yourself still,

let there be in it what there will. Our happiness is our own."

"O Rose!"

"O Dick! if we are good, are we not happy? And nobody can make us

bad against our will."

"But, Rose, this may tell me something that you--there is my

fear, Rose, it may take you away from me."

"Oh! no, Dick, dear Dick, how can anything take me away from you?

But even if it did, you know we always said, '_If it were for

the best_.' If it were not for the best, we would not wish it,

would we, dear? Yes, we could help wishing it; when the good God

saw it was not best, he would give us strength to bear it."

"I never could bear it," said Dick.

"Yes, you would; but I am not afraid. One should not be afraid of

one's own parents. Come, there is a long time before tea. We will

go up the hill where no one will interrupt us, and where we shall

be within call if we are wanted. Won't you get the box, Dick, and

we will open it up there? that is, if you want me with you."

"You make me brave, dear Rose. Perhaps, after all, it is

nothing."

So he did as she advised; and, seated a little back of the house,

the only spot in which there could be five minutes' reading

possible, he broke the seal, undid the wrapping, now yellow with

age, while Rose spoke a word or two of courage, then turned her

head a little away from him, and you may be sure prayed hard and

fast for strength and grace for both to hear whatever of good or

of evil was in store for them. Inside the wrapper Dick found a

tiny key with which he eagerly unlocked the little mahogany box

which was, perhaps, to make great revelations to him.

Then Rose drew still further away, from him, and with a more

earnest gaze watched the sun going down to the west; for they

were young, and many things that you and I would count the merest

trifles, were of great importance to them; neither thought of

anything worse than of something which should separate them.

{790}

Poor little Rose trembled lest he should find a will therein--as

she had read in story-books--that would make him too rich and

great for her to think of him; and Dick, to whom her love for him

had always seemed a wonder--so great was his reverence for her

and his own feeling of unworthiness--trembled lest he should find

some legacy of disgrace that would make it impossible for him

ever to see Rose again. So in silence and with wordless but

earnest prayers, they sat together in the softening August

sunlight, with hearts beating heavily for fear it might be for

the last time.

Chapter VII.

After all, there was not much in the mysterious box. A square

package, looking like a letter, folded in the old style, and just

fitting in the box, lay uppermost; upon the outside of which, in

a clear, round hand, was written the name _Richard

Heremore_. Before breaking the seal of this, Dick took out two

paper boxes, in each of which was a miniature, painted on ivory;

he glanced at one, then with an expression of intense relief, not

unmingled with something of awe, he, for the first time, turned

to Rose.

"Look, Rose," he said, in a low voice.

"Do you think this is your mother?" she asked, in a voice even

lower and more reverential than his, after a long, long look; for

it was a young and beautiful face, with clear eyes that looked

frankly at you, and that bore in every feature the unmistakable

stamp of true womanliness. 'Do you think this is your mother?"

"I cannot tell yet," said Dick; "but as _this_ is here, it's

all right; there's nothing more to dread now!"

But Rose did not answer. Her quick eyes had seen more than the

character; they had placed the original of that portrait in her

proper social sphere, and that--the highest.

The other miniature was of a man somewhat older, though not more

than twenty-five or thirty, if so much; but it was a face of less

character and less culture. Dick showed it to Rose, but neither

made any comment upon it. Dick then broke the seal of the letter,

and again Rose turned away her face. A few slips of paper fell

out as he unfolded the package; these he gathered up without

looking at them, and then, calling Rose's name once more, he read

in a low voice, from the yellow paper, his mother's letter:

"My Dear Child: I have put aside a few little things that have

been treasures to me, and as I may not live to see the day when I

can give them to you, I write a few lines with them, which

possibly may come to your eyes some day. A healthy, ruddy little

fellow you are, creeping around my feet and trying to climb up my

dress as I write, and I am so weak a woman that I may hardly

stoop to raise my darling to my lap. It is hard for me, seeing

you so, to write to you as a man; and what kind of a man I have

no way to judge. I fear I shall not live long enough to leave any

impression of your mother's face upon you; and what will become

of you, my own dear child, in this terrible world after I am

gone, I dare not think. You are so tender and good now that I

cannot realize that you will change; but you will have no one to

guide you. You put your arms up to me, your brown, hard little

arms, as if to beg me not to speak of this, and I will try to

believe that God will save you through everything; so that when

you read this, you will be one whom I would be proud to own if I

lived.

{791}

"You are my greatest comfort, and such a comfort! It seems as if

you knew everything, and could console for everything; and often

I think that for you I shall in some way find strength to

struggle on for a few years more. Dear child, I know not how much

or how little to tell you. I would like to write volumes for you,

that you might know me in the future days when no father, mother,

or brother will be near to help you in your troubles. But I can

only write a little.