The Sienna races are a thoroughly unique spectacle—almost childish, like

many features of the Roman Carnival, to the over‐cultivated and

consequently over‐fastidious taste of this age. They take one back to the

days when men were more simple, when hearts did not grow old and faith was

strong. These childlike traits produced a race of men who were but

“children of a larger growth,” and, like children, amused with even a

small amount of pomp and show, heroes as they were. And a strange contrast

were the races of that 16th of August to the usual occupations of the

Siennese. Mr. Carlisle’s carriage passed beneath innumerable flags and

between gayly‐tapestried windows, as it drove to the amphitheatre‐shaped

piazza, the centre of which was already filled, while every seat placed

against the houses which bounded the square was occupied. The bright

colors worn by the peasant women, with their large Tuscan hats and the

more subdued dress of the men, produced an effect at once very peculiar

and very picturesque. A little cheer from the bystanders greeted Mr.

Carlisle’s party, as they appeared upon the balcony; for no other

decorations in all that vast piazza were so fine as those in which

Giovanni had shown so much skill, and surely no other ladies were as

beautiful. There was no appearance of heartache or disappointment on any

of the four faces which now looked out upon the crowd. We all, sooner or

later, learn to wear a mask before the world, and the interior life of

each one of us is often a sealed book to our nearest friends.

“Clara,” said Assunta, as they seated themselves after their survey, “you

seem to know more about the races than the rest of us. Please to enlighten

my ignorance.”

“I heard about them at the hotel last night,” replied Mrs. Grey; “so you

will find me very learned. Sienna is divided into seventeen wards; but

only ten take part in the race, and these are decided by lot. The victor

receives a prize and a sort of diminutive triumph, while the losers may

think themselves lucky if they only get a scolding from their respective

wards. The oracle has spoken, and further than this she is not informed.”

“The rest we shall now see for ourselves,” said Mr. Sinclair, “for I hear

the music which I suppose accompanies the procession.” And, as he spoke,

the band entered the piazza from a side street. Then followed, in turn,

the representatives of the different wards, each representation consisting

of two flags—the colors of the ward—a number of pages, the race‐horse led

by an esquire, and the man who was afterwards to ride the racer, on

horseback as a knight. The flag‐bearers, as well as all in each division,

wore exactly the colors of the flag of the ward, in costumes of the olden

time; and, as these flags were of entirely different combinations of

colors, and most of them very brilliant, the procession would have been

very effective without its peculiar charm. The flag‐bearers were men of

grace and skill, and from the moment of entering the square the flags were

in continual motion—waved above their heads, flung into the air, passed

under their arms and legs, and all without once touching the ground. It

was a very poetical combination of color and motion, and Mrs. Grey

impulsively clapped her hands with delight—a performance which her

dignified lover evidently looked upon as childish. After this part of the

procession came a large chariot drawn by four horses, with postilions, and

bearing the ten different flags tastefully arranged. This was the model of

the old Siennese battle‐car, which bore the standard, and was in

consequence the scene of the thickest of the fight. Upon it, in time of

battle, stood a priest, invoking by his prayers protection and success.

There also was the trumpeter, in readiness to give signals. A truly

mediæval picture was this chariot, with associations which carried one

back hundreds of years into the past. A band of music closed the

procession, which, after passing around the piazza, entered the court‐yard

of the Palazzo Pubblico. Here the knights exchanged their helmets and

plumes for jockey‐caps, and mounted their racers. As they emerged from

beneath the archway, and proceeded slowly towards the starting‐place,

across which a rope was drawn, Mr. Carlisle exclaimed, with a laugh in

which there was more sarcasm than merriment:

“Are you a judge of horses, Clara? If so, you, who yesterday announced

your jockey proclivities, must be greatly disappointed; for truly a set of

sorrier‐looking steeds I never beheld. The prize ought to be given to the

one that comes in last; for, where all are so slow, there would really be

no little exercise of skill in moving more slowly than a coach‐horse going

up‐hill, and yet moving at all.”

“I think, Severn,” replied his sister, “that your temper was not improved

by the fever. It is very disagreeable in you to inform me that the horses

are not Arabian chargers, for I never should have been the wiser.”

“Most men are disagreeable,” he retorted.

“George, you hear that, and do not resent it?” said Mrs. Grey indignantly.

“I leave that for you to do when you can, from experience of the contrary,

deny the charge. But the horses are starting on their three times round.”

And Mr. Sinclair leaned over the balcony with an air of interest.

“Why do the men carry those short sticks in their hands?” asked Assunta.

“I believe,” said Mr. Sinclair—for Mr. Carlisle became strangely

inattentive—“that the riders are allowed by rule to do all the damage they

can with the sticks, which are short, so as to limit somewhat their power;

for their aim is to knock each other off the horses.”

“The barbarians!” exclaimed Clara. “Oh! look, see how many are falling

back on the third round. It rests with the two now. I bet on the sorrel.”

“And he has won, Clara,” said Assunta.

The whole piazza was now in motion. Shouts greeted the victor, and the

defeated retired into obscurity.

“The modern Olympics are finished,” said Mr. Carlisle. “Shall we go?”

As they drove towards home in the red glow of the setting sun, Mr.

Carlisle said abruptly:

“Clara, when did you tell me that you and Sinclair intend to make each

other miserable?”

“I will not answer such a question, Severn. You are a perfect dog in the

manger. You will not marry yourself or let any one else.”

“If you wish to know,” said Mr. Sinclair, “when your sister intends to

make me the happiest of men, she has permitted me to hope that the end of

September will be the term of my most impatient waiting.”

“Then,” continued Mr. Carlisle in the same abrupt tone, “we had better be

on our way to Paris. We might start day after to‐morrow, I think.”

Mrs. Grey gave a little scream.

“Severn, you must be out of your mind. I thought you wished never to leave

Sienna.”

“I am weary to death of it; but that is not all. I have business matters

to arrange, and the preparation of your _trousseau_ will no doubt occupy

weeks.”

“But it will be so warm in Paris,” persisted Mrs. Grey.

“Do people whose hearts are filled with love and their minds with coming

matrimony think of weather, then? I thought such sublunary interests were

left to those whose hearts were still unthawed. However, there are fans

and ices enough in Paris to cool you off. I will write to‐night to engage

rooms.” And then Mr. Carlisle relapsed into silence and abstraction.

Assunta understood well enough the cause of this change in the plans; but

she was powerless to act, and could only submit. It, indeed, made little

difference to her.

“George,” said Clara to her lover, as they were strolling down the avenue

in the moonlight, “can you imagine what is the matter with Severn? I never

saw him in such a mood.”

“Disappointed in love, I should judge from appearances,” he replied

indifferently.

“Nonsense! He does not know the meaning of the word,” was the not very

intelligent reply of the lady.

To Be Continued.

Swinburne And De Vere.

The dramas _Bothwell_(94) and _Alexander the Great_,(95) which have so

recently come into the world side by side to challenge the attention of

that portion of it that speaks, or is supposed to speak, the language of

Shakespeare, offer all the contrasts that might be expected from their

subjects, as well as from the known thought, tone, and tendency of their

respective authors. One writer has taken for his chief character a great

Christian woman whose story, look at it as we may, is at least of the

saddest that was ever told; the other has chosen for his subject the

wonder of pagan history, the exemplar of pagan greatness, whose short

career is the condensation of all earthly glory and triumph.

It will be at once manifest that to a modern writer, as far as the

materials for the construction of an historical drama go, the life of

Mary, Queen of Scots, is beyond measure richer than that of Alexander. Her

story is religiously and politically one of the day. She is still on

trial, no longer before the narrow circles of York and Fotheringay, but

before Christendom. The question of her innocence or guilt, and the

consequent justice or injustice of her sentence, is debated as fiercely

to‐day as when alone she faced the sleuth‐hounds of Elizabeth in defence

of her honor and her life.

The final judgment of Christendom may be said already to be a foregone

conclusion in her favor, so fast is the long‐withheld evidence of her

innocence accumulating. But her life‐blood stains a nation and a religion,

or what called itself such, and the verdict that declares her “not guilty”

lays a terrible and indelible blot on them. Hence every nook and cranny of

history is searched, every historical cobweb disentangled, with an

eagerness and minuteness so thorough and complete that the reader is

better acquainted often with the history of Mary Stuart than with that of

the century in which he lives.

For a dramatist a most important point is thus at once secured. His

audience is interested in advance; and there is no further care for him

than to make a judicious use of the wealth of material at his disposal.

And surely to one with a soul in his body never did a more fitting subject

for a tragedy offer itself than Mary, Queen of Scots. The only difficulty

would seem to be a right selection from a great abundance. The scenes and

characters, the very speeches often, are ready made. Time, place,

circumstance, are ripe with interest. The march of events is terribly

rapid. The scene is ever shifting, and with it the fortunes of the queen.

All the passions are there at strife. Plot and counterplot, tragedy within

tragedy, love and hate, jealousy and wrath, hope and fear, the basest

betrayal and the loftiest devotion, surge and make war around this one

woman, and are borne along with her in a frenzied whirl to the terrible

end, when the curtain drops silently on that last dread scene that stands,

as it will for ever stand, in startling relief, far out from the dim

background of history.

The name of Alexander the Great calls up no such interest as this. His

life would seem the least likely of subjects for a modern dramatist. Great

captains, such as the first Napoleon, may look to him as at once their

model and their envy; but happily such great men are few and far between.

Alexander might indeed have formed an admirable theme for one of the

lesser lights of the English Augustan era to celebrate in those sonorous

heroics whose drowsy hum might serve at need as an admirable soporific.

But he and those who lived and moved about him are out of our world; and

whether he conquered ten empires or fifty, whether he defeated Darius or

Darius him, whether he sighed for more or fewer worlds to conquer, is now

all one to us. The sands of the desert have buried or wiped out his empire

ages ago; the sands of time have settled down on his memory and half

obliterated it; and the mighty Alexander serves to‐day for little more

than to point a moral.

On the other hand, every scene and incident in which Mary, Queen of Scots,

figured is intense with dramatic force. She entered on her reign at what

might be called the dawn of modern history—a lurid dawn presaging the

storm that was to come and is not yet over. The Reformation was convulsing

Europe. It had just entered Scotland before her, and the raven that

croaked its fatal entrance was John Knox. In the person of this girl were

centred the hopes of the Catholic party for Scotland and England. Mingled

with the strife of creeds around her was the conflict of the great

Scottish families, whose miserable contentions rent and wrecked the

kingdom. Any chieftain who chose and thought himself strong enough drew

the sword when and for what purpose pleased him. More than half of

them—those of any note, at least—were in Elizabeth’s pay. Treason

constituted much of the political life of those days, while under and over

and among the fierce strife of political parties rang and resounded the

clangor and wrangle of the delirious sects that had just apostatized from

Rome. Such was the period when the helm of the most distracted state in

distracted Christendom was set in the hand of a gentle girl, who stood

there alone to guide it over unknown seas. All the tempest gathered

together its fury and broke over her head. This is the figure chosen by

the author of _Bothwell_ for the centre of his tragedy. It was a time and

a scene and a tragedy worthy the philosophic mind of a Shakespeare and the

terrible power of an Æschylus. Mr. Swinburne’s work scarcely gives

evidence of the combination of these qualities.

A subject of this kind, when attempted at all, suggests painful

reflections if failure, emphatic failure, is the result. A goose essaying

an eagle’s flight would scarcely present a more absurd figure. Mr.

Swinburne has fallen immeasurably below the level of a subject whose level

is greatness. Not because he has chosen to paint Mary, Queen of Scots, as

a fiend, is this judgment passed on his work. Milton has proved that Satan

can be converted by genius into the most powerful dramatic villain that

ever trod the stage. Lady Macbeth may thrill us with horror, but she never

causes us to yawn. The author of _Bothwell_ was at liberty, by the license

allowed to poets, to make his heroine wicked enough even to satisfy his

fastidious taste, and still have given us a drama that of its own force

and brilliancy and coherence would have extorted the admiration of the

unfortunate queen’s most ardent defenders. But even her heartiest haters

could not resist the tendency to nod over the cumbrous wickedness, the

very heavy villany, of _Bothwell_, which is simply a dilution of Froude

with a tincture of Swinburne, well watered and administered in the largest

possible doses, or, in plain English, a few scenes of the history of the

period stitched loosely together and set to measured lines of blank verse.

Five hundred and thirty‐two pages, with thirty lines to the page, in five

acts and sixty scenes, make a tragedy indeed. Such is _Bothwell_. Yet,

notwithstanding its alarming proportions, it only extends from the death

of Rizzio to the battle of Langside, thus omitting the scene that of all

others is the most thrilling and effective—Mary’s execution. This may have

been done with a purpose; for even malevolence falters there. Such an end,

preceded by her long captivity, so patiently borne, were she even as

wicked as Mr. Swinburne would make her, might almost expiate any crime, as

it sanctifies her innocence.

The entire first act, entitled “David Rizzio,” is absorbed by the murder

of the character after which it is named. As far as its necessary

connection with the drama goes, it might have been entirely and very

profitably omitted. It serves, indeed, to introduce many of the

characters, but to no special purpose that might not have been

accomplished in any of the other acts. The author forgets that he is not

writing history, but a drama. We do not want the minutiæ, everything that

everybody said at any time, in any place, and under any circumstances

while Mary, Queen of Scots, was living, which Mr. Swinburne seems to think

he was bound to give us, and in blank verse too, in _Bothwell_. We want

the situations, the great facts. What led up to them may be told or hinted

at in a few lines. Mr. Swinburne does not seem to have realized this, and,

as a consequence, his drama is crowded with scenes, incidents, and

personages that not only hinder, but are utterly irrelevant to, the main

action of the piece, if indeed the piece can be truly said to possess any

main action. Thus it takes the entire first act, consisting of five scenes

and _eighty‐nine_ pages, to kill Rizzio. At last he is happily despatched,

to the relief, it must be said, of the reader, who, already wearied, finds

the second act entirely devoted to a similar sanguinary operation,

performed on Darnley this time. With a nice sense, notwithstanding his

pronounced communistic sympathies, of what is due even to second‐hand

royalty of the Darnley order, Mr. Swinburne, regardless of the liberal

allowance of space allotted to the stabbing of Rizzio, feels it incumbent

on him to devote one hundred and forty‐seven pages and twenty‐one scenes

to the blowing up of Mary’s husband. Thus, although two hundred and forty

pages in all are given over mainly to the killing of these two characters,

the tragedy can be scarcely said to have begun, there being still three

dreary acts to face.

The question naturally suggests itself here, What in the name of common

sense, if not of tragedy, has Mr. Swinburne been doing with his space?

Perhaps we have reason to congratulate ourselves after all that he did not

pursue his unhappy victim into England, and insist upon murdering her

also; for it is impossible, in the contemplation of such an event, to form

even a wild conception of when and where Mr. Swinburne’s tragedy was

likely to terminate. The truth is, he is no dramatist at all; he is a

writer of speeches, good, bad, or indifferent, as may be, but no more.

Livy or Sallust have almost as just a title to be styled dramatists as Mr.

Swinburne; Homer far more so. Speeches form perhaps the least, certainly

the easiest, portion of a drama; and the speeches in _Bothwell_ are more

or less ready made. Mr. Swinburne cannot grasp a situation; he can only

write _about_ it. He cannot picture it to us in a few telling lines. He

cannot hint a future; he must foretell it in full, or wait until it comes.

He cannot content himself with leaving well alone. The Earl of Leicester’s

historic “nod” that meant so much is of course a very amusing caricature;

but the point of a caricature lies in the kernel of truth which it covers.

Perhaps the most necessary of dramatic faculties is the capability of

saying much in a little; and that faculty Mr. Swinburne does not possess

in the slightest degree. If anything, his special tendency lies in an

opposite direction; he says remarkably little in a very great deal.

Instead of mastering his material, he has become hopelessly embarrassed by

it, and, like the miser in the story, perishes from want in the midst of

the treasures piled up around him. His characters, instead of being moved

at his will, move him at theirs. When one, no matter of how great or how

little importance, opens his or her mouth, not even Mr. Swinburne himself

can say when it will close. Speeches pages in length are thrown into

anybody’s mouth on the slightest provocation, and all pitched more or less

in the same key. If Mary curses—for Mr. Swinburne is more liberal than

discreet in his distribution of strong language—she is not content with

one good, round, blasphemous oath once in a while, but must indulge in

half a dozen or so offhand. If Knox argues or preaches, he does so at as

great length almost as when in the flesh. One of his speeches fills

thirteen pages without a break. If the inevitable “first, second, and

third citizen” enter—who, for the manner of their speeches or the matter

of them, might with equal propriety be dubbed “first citizen” or “fifty‐

second citizen,” or anything else—they talk and talk and talk until they

talk themselves off, as they would beyond all doubt talk an audience out

of their seats. Almost two‐thirds of the play is to the reader simply

wearisome jabber, whose sense, like Gratiano’s “infinite deal of nothing,”

is as “two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff.”

The drama is so interminable that we can only call attention to the chief

character, which is not Bothwell, as the title would seem to imply, but

Mary, whose alleged amours with Bothwell form the groundwork of the piece.

As this article does not pretend to enter into an historical

investigation, this is not the place to advance reasons for disagreeing

with Mr. Swinburne’s estimate of Mary. One or two words, however, may be

permitted.

The story that forms the foundation of this play has been torn to shreds

by writers of every shade of opinion. Its truth, based mainly on the

“casket letters,” was never accepted even at the English court. Elizabeth

herself was compelled to acquit her cousin of all such scandalous charges.

Yet on this Mr. Swinburne, with the chivalry of a poet and the honesty of

a man who must have read history, builds his nauseous drama. Again, Mary

was, by all concession, a lady. High and royal spirit she had indeed, of

which in some notable instances she gave ample proof; but she has never

been accused of indulging in language unworthy the royal woman she was, or

savoring in any sense of coarseness. She was also a consistent and

practical Catholic, who knew her religion and how to hold it, even against

that fierce Calvinistic wolf, John Knox, to whom it were a happiness had

his insulted sovereign only meted out the measure he persistently

advocated for all Catholics. But she was too gentle‐natured to adopt means

of enforcing silence and obedience more congenial to the spirit of her

English cousin, who had a very summary manner of dealing with theological

difficulties. This much being premised, let us now look at the Mary of Mr.

Swinburne.

Here we have her in the very first scene of the first act. Rizzio is

pleading with her the recall of Murray:

QUEEN. “What name is his who shall so strengthen me?”

RIZZIO. “Your father gave him half a brother’s name.”

QUEEN. “I have no brother; a bloodless traitor he is,

Who was my father’s bastard‐born. By heaven!

I had rather have his head loose at my foot

Than his tongue’s counsel rounded in mine ear.”

This is only her fourth speech in the play. It does not seem to have

impressed Rizzio sufficiently; for, turning a page, we find her still

railing at the subject of her wrath in this vigorous style:

... “By my hand,

Too little and light to hold up his dead head,

It was my hope to dip it in his life

Made me ride iron‐mailed and soldieress.”

With occasional spurts of this nature the queen enlivens her somewhat

tedious colloquy of thirteen pages with Rizzio concerning Murray. She is

candid enough to say in one place of her half‐brother, whom the Mary of

history really believed in too long and too blindly for her own happiness:

“I am gay of heart, light as a spring south wind,

To feed my soul with his foretasted death....”

And again:

“Oh! I feel dancing motions in my feet

And laughter moving merrily at my lips,

Only to think him dead, or hearsed, or hanged—That

were the better. I could dance down his life.

Sing my steps through, treading on his dead neck,

For love of his dead body and cast‐out soul.”

Verily, a real Highland fling! And lest there should be any possible doubt

as to the meaning of “cast‐out soul,” this gentle lady pursues it to its

place, and gloats over its eternal torments in this Christian fashion:

“He shall talk of me to the worm of hell,

Prate in death’s ear and with a speechless tongue

Of my dead doings in days gone out....”

It is surely punishment enough to be condemned to carry on a conversation

of any kind with the worm of hell and in the ear of death; but to compel

even a cast‐out soul to perform this unpleasant duty “with a _speechless_

tongue” is punishment that passes ordinary comprehension. Doubtless,

however, matters are or will be altered for Mr. Swinburne’s special

convenience in the lower regions. Abandoning the wretched Murray to his

destiny, we look for other revelations of Mary’s character, although

something of her mettle may be gathered from the passages already given,

which have been taken almost at random from the first twenty‐eight pages

of the five hundred and thirty‐two. They are by no means the liveliest

specimens to be found.

It would display a lamentable lack of knowledge of nature supposed to be

human to imagine for a moment that the woman—if the expression is

allowable—revealed in these passages is likely to be at all squeamish or

foolishly coy about the profession of what Mr. Swinburne would probably

call her love for Bothwell. The insignificant facts that her own husband,

Darnley, and Bothwell’s wife, Jane Gordon, were still living, would

naturally weigh lightly as feathers in the balance against her desire.

Most of the scenes between the queen and Bothwell might be shortly

described as “linked foulness long drawn out.” Were they even word for

word true, it would still be a wonder and a shame to honest manhood that

they could be dwelt upon and gloated over by any writer at all. Horace

boasted of belonging to the “Epicurean herd.” Were he living now, he

would, we honestly believe, feel conscientious scruples at admitting Mr.

Swinburne into the company. Only such passages are quoted here as are

presentable and necessary to endorse our judgment of this drama.

Without even an attempt at disguise, Mary and Bothwell discuss the best

means of getting rid of Darnley. As a wife, expecting soon to be a mother,

and as a Christian woman, it is only natural that she should urge on the

not unwilling Bothwell in this style:

“_Would I were God!_

Time should be quicker to lend help and hand

To men that wait on him. . . . Were I a man,

I had been by this a free man.”

In the course of the second act she falls sick, as she believes, to death.

She makes her dying confession to the Bishop of Ross, who, it is to be

presumed, knew his religion. That being the case, it was somewhat rash in

Mr. Swinburne to put into his mouth a gross error. He assures the dying

queen that

“The man that keeps faith sealed upon his soul

Shall through the blood‐shedding of Christ be clean.

And in this time of cursing and flawed faith

Have you kept faith unflawed.

Have no fear, therefore, but your sins of life

Shall fall from off you as a vesture changed.

And leave your soul for whiteness as a child’s.”

Of course there is a sense in which this may be taken as correct. The man

that really keeps his “faith sealed upon his soul” and “unflawed,” acts up

to his faith and lives its life. But this is not what Mr. Swinburne means.

In several passages he is at pains to show that it is not. His meaning

simply is that because Mary held to the profession of the Catholic faith

the bishop assured her that her sins would be remitted. That faith alone

was sufficient for salvation was the heresy of Luther. We do not know

whether those useful little compendiums of Christian doctrine commonly

known as catechisms were much in vogue at the time. Had they been, Mary

would have found in hers the following question and answer, which would

have shamed the Bishop of Ross: “Will faith alone save us?” “No; it will

not without good works.”

It must be remembered, however, that Mr. Swinburne, and not the bishop, is

the real father confessor to his own penitent, and a very indulgent one he

makes. The queen says:

“I would have absolution ere I die,

But of what sins I have not strength to say

Nor hardly to remember.”

After all that has gone before, that reads remarkably like a wilful lie,

as Mr. Swinburne’s bishop might have hinted, particularly as she has

memory enough left to enumerate her virtues, which conclude with this:

“I have held mine own faith fast, and with my lips

Have borne him [God] witness if my heart were whole.”

Whereupon the worthy bishop takes occasion to repeat his blunder. Glossing

beautifully over her sins in a graceful sentence or two, the queen

proceeds to “remit all faults against her done,” and ends in this edifying

strain:

“I will not take death’s hand

With any soil of hate or wrath or wrong

About me, but, being friends with this past world,

Pass from it in the general peace of love.”

Just at this happy moment, by what would doubtless be considered “a stroke

of genius,” Murray is made to enter and announce the arrival of Darnley,

the unfortunate individual whose crime it is to persist in being Mary’s

lawful husband when she is in love with one who, by her own command, was

somebody else’s lawful husband. As may be supposed from what we know of

her already, the contrite queen greets the announcement as contrite queens

in similar situations are wont to do, thus:

“By heaven! I had rather death had leave than he.

What comes he for? To vex me quick or dead

With his lewd eyes and sodden, sidelong face,

That I may die with loathing of him?

By God, as God shall look upon my soul,

I will not see him.”

After this there is clearly nothing left for the bishop to do but

administer the last sacraments and bid the Christian soul depart in peace.

Luckily, however, at this critical juncture, and by another “stroke of

genius,” the well‐known tramp of Bothwell’s heel falls on the ear of the

dying queen, who immediately feels better, and bids her attendants “bring

him in.”

One more passage, and we have done with Mr. Swinburne’s Mary. Darnley is

not yet murdered; Bothwell is not yet divorced from Jane Gordon; he who

became James I. of England is about to be born; the queen has in the

preceding scene made the “confession” noticed above; the time, therefore,

was ripe for her to make the following declaration to Bothwell:

“I purge me now and perfect my desire,

Which is to be no more your lover—no,

But even yourself, yea, more than body and soul,

One and not twain, one utter life, one fire,

One will, one doom, one deed, one spirit, _one God:_

_For we twain grown and molten each in each,_

_Surely shall be as God is, and no man_.”

Were there such a thing as love in _delirium tremens_, surely this would

be an instance; only that Mary is perfectly cool and collected in making

so plain and definite a statement. And Bothwell is just the kind of man to

understand and appreciate the pleasant prospect held out for them both. He

responds cheerily, hopefully, and prayerfully withal:

“God speed us, then, till we grow up to God!”

The reader has probably seen enough of Mr. Swinburne’s Mary Stuart. It

will be clear to any impartial mind that beheading was far too easy a fate

for such a character.

In one thing at least has the author succeeded. He set out to paint a

monster, and a monster indeed he has painted in Mary. The question for the

reader to determine is whether his very full‐armed Minerva be an emanation

from the brain of this modern Jove or one who was a real, living woman. A

woman ravenous for blood, lost to all shame, hating even her unborn

offspring, blasphemous as Satan, cruel and pitiless as hell, brawling as a

drunkard, full of oaths and coarse expressions as a trooper—if this be a

true picture of Mary, Queen of Scots, of the woman who in her day drew, as

she still continues to draw, the hearts of all true men and honest women

to her side, then has the author done his work well and literature a

service. But if she be the opposite of all this—a woman cruelly murdered

and systematically wronged, at mention of whose name the heart of that

chivalry which is never dead, and will never die while Christian manhood

lives, leaps up—one is at a loss to father the writer’s monster on any

other than himself. Viewed in this light, it can only be looked upon as

the product of an imagination diseased, an intellect debauched, and a mind

distorted—the work of a man whose moral nature has gone astray, and to

whom consequently all that is true, pure, womanly, manly, godly, has lost

its significance and value.

From the Christian heroine to the pagan hero we turn with a feeling of

relief. The very title of Mr. de Vere’s drama challenges criticism. To

write about Alexander the Great is one thing; to make Alexander speak for

himself is another. The world, fashionable as it is to abuse its taste, is

discriminating in the conferring of titles that are universal. Local

magnates of greater or less magnitude are common enough; but men whom all

civilized nations in all ages have agreed to crown with _greatness_ are

very few and very far between. From the number of these the son of Philip

of Macedon probably stands out pre‐eminent In his brief career he

accomplished more than any human conqueror ever accomplished, and he

succeeded in leaving more after him. So complete and marvellous was his

success, and so gigantic his projects, while his means were

proportionately limited, that, beyond all possibility of doubt, the man,

young as he was, must have been a marvellous genius. Being so, he must not

only have done great deeds, but thought great thoughts. He must have been

fitted in every way to be a leader of men. This, perhaps the most

marvellous character in human history, is the one of all others whom Mr.

de Vere, with a courage which, if not justified by the result, can only be

looked upon as either rashness or folly, has undertaken to set living and

real before us, speaking the speech, thinking the thoughts, scheming the

schemes, dreaming the dreams of Alexander. Greatness thus becomes one of

the necessary standards by which we must judge Mr. de Vere’s work. If his

chief character is not great in thought and word, as we know him to have

been in deed, he is not Alexander, and this work can only be regarded as a

more pretentious failure than the other. If he is great in thought and

speech, where are the elements of his greatness to be found? In the brain

of the author, in the conception of the poet—nowhere else. For in this

case the speeches are not, as they were in the other, ready made and to

hand. The record of Alexander’s deeds we have; but Alexander we must

imagine for ourselves. What manner of man, then, is this that Mr. de Vere

has given us? is the first and most natural question to be asked.

Friend and foe alike are busy about him. At the opening of the play

Parmenio, the testy but honest‐hearted veteran of Philip, before Alexander

has yet made his appearance, in words where the admiration of the soldier

and the irritability and jealousy of old age are admirably blended, says:

“A realm his father owed me,

And knew it well. The son is reverent too,

But with a difference, sir. In Philip’s time

My voice was Delphic on the battle‐field.

This young man taps the springs of my experience,

As though with water to allay his wine

Of keener inspirations. ‘Speak thy thought,

Parmenio!’ Ere my words are half‐way out

He nods approval or he smiles dissent.

Still, there is like him none! I marvell’d oft

To see him breast that tempest from the north,

Drowning revolt in the Danubian wave.

The foe in sight, instant he knew their numbers;

If distant, guess’d their whereabout—how lay

The intermediate tract—if fordable

The streams—the vales accessible to horse:

’Twas like the craft of beasts remote from man.”

Antisthenes, the rhetorician, describes the man of action as a rhetorician

might:

“This king is valued past his worth:

He nothing says that’s sage, like Ptolemy,

Or keen‐edged, like Craterus. This I grant him:

_Sagacity supreme in observation_;

He sees with eye inspired. Seeing with him

Is Act and Thought, not sense.”

Arsinoë, the daughter of Darius, thinks that “he neither loves nor hates.”

He is royal‐faced, “albeit too eager‐eyed.” And Hephestion, the strong

friend on whom alone of all men Alexander leans, tells her of him:

“He loves not many, and himself the least:

_His purposes to him are wife and child_.”

“Free him from that conceit,” says Parmenio later on, “that he’s a god,”

“The man of men were he:

None like him we have had since Marathon.”

PHILOTAS. “I grant his greatness were his god‐ship sane,

But note his brow: ’tis Thought’s least earthly temple

Then mark, beneath, that round, not human eye,

Still glowing like a panther’s! In his body

No passion dwells; _but all his mind is passion,_

_Wild, intellectual appetite, and instinct_

_That works without a law_.”

PARMENIO. “But half you know him.

There is a zigzag lightning in his brain

That flies in random flashes, yet not errs.

Chances his victories seem; but link those chances,

And under them a science you shall find,

Though unauthentic, contraband, illicit,

Yes, contumelious oft to laws of war.

Fortune, that as a mistress smiles on others,

Serves him as duty‐bound; her blood is he,

Born in the purple of her royalties.”

And so they go on describing him, each in his own way; for, with

felicitous art, the presence of Alexander is made to permeate the drama,

yet so unobtrusively and unconsciously to all seeming that the mind of the

reader, though held fast on the chief character throughout, never wearies

of him. The extracts given, culled from here and there, point all in one

direction. They are consistent, however they may vary in expression, about

the man they describe. He is not like other men; he towers above them; he

stands alone. But even this only tells us what men say of him. It may mean

no more than any young‐lady novelist’s description of her hero, whose

biting sarcasm and brilliant wit are gifts that it was thought were buried

with Sheridan. All which we are willing to concede, only that by some

untoward accident the brilliant wit and biting sarcasm never appear on the

surface. How does Alexander speak for himself?

In literature, as in life, very much depends on the impression a man makes

on his introduction. Alexander’s introduction is happy and suggestive. He

meets us first at Troy when setting out on his expedition. Around him rise

the temples of the memorable dead who died in the Ten Years’ War. He is in

search of the fane of Achilles, his ancestor, as he claims. Aphrodite and

Helen have no attractions for him, upon whose mind “the wise Stagirite”

had impressed the high code of pagan morals, that the passions were “a

yoke which Action’s strenuous sons should scorn to bear.” He stands on

ground where heroes fought and strove for ten long years together, and the

question comes at once to his earnest mind,

“That ten years’ war, what fruit thereof remains?

What empire lives, its witness and its crown?

What shall we say? That those were common men

Made large by mists of Time? Or shall we rather

Conclude them real, and our age a fraud?”

His friend Hephestion is reminded by the fanes around, not of the

greatness, but of the littleness, of man and of the common ashes to which

we come at last. In what, had he the ear to hear it, had been for his

leader a solemn warning, he cries out:

“Alas! how small an urn

Suffices for the earth‐o’erstriding dust

Which one time shook the world!”

But Alexander cannot contemplate the end of men and things in this calm

fashion. To him, as to Achilles, death is “malign and intercepting.” It

bears no thought of peace or rest. He describes it as “that frustrate,

stagnant, ineffectual bourn where substance melts to shadow.” Far away in

“the dimness of the dolorous realm” he sees, though sad, “the

unvanquishable youth” of Achilles surviving and lamenting—

“Despite the embalm’d, purpureal airs and gleam

Immeasurable of amaranthine meads,

The keen, reviving, strenuous airs of earth,

And blasts from battle‐fields”—

that is the very breath of his nostrils—earth, life, action, with a

purpose in it, and the keen intoxication of occasional “blasts from

battle‐fields.”

But he is not a mere genius errant, a Don Quixote of conquerors, wasting

himself on windmills and flocks of sheep. He has a clear, resolute purpose

before his mind, to which he shapes all things. It is to make the world

one empire, which Grecian intellect should rule. The Governor of Sardis,

when the Granicus is won, he bids:

“Tell those realms

Betwixt the Euxine and Pamphylian Seas,

That Grecian galaxy of Lesser Asia,

That Argive choir in eastern exile sad,

That Doric garland on base Persia’s brow,

We came not here to crush them, but exalt;

This hand shall lift them to their first estate,

And lodge them mid the skyey heights of Greece.”

Such is his plan; and whatever crosses him must break before or bend to

that. Kings, empires, mighty cities, religion, customs and traditions,

commerce, all must yield before his indomitable will. Nothing is sacred to

Alexander, save what is sacred to Alexander’s plan. All things were

fashioned to his purpose, and existed only to be made subservient to him.

He gazes from the sea‐shore on Tyre of the ships, with its wealth, its

energies, its possibilities, and the little it has done with them, and

bursts forth:

“Wings without body! such—no more—is commerce

Which rests not upon empire! Commerce, ruling,

Disperses man’s chief energies, _but, ruled_

_By spirit heroic_, increase yields of thoughts

That give to greatness wider basis. Tyre!

How soon thy golden feathers forth shall fly

Upon the storm of War!”

Lacking the “spirit heroic,” Tyre’s opportunities and life have hitherto

been thrown away, as were thrown away the letters that Phœnicia gave,

useless to the inventors. He goes on:

“Men stumble thus on glories not for them,

The rightful appanage of the capable.

The empire I shall found shall tread the earth,

Yet over it go flying. From its vans

The twin‐born beams of Grecian Song and Science

Shall send perpetual dawn.”

Mr. de Vere’s verse is tempting to quote; but we must hasten on. Some idea

of his Alexander may be gathered from the passages given; but, as we said,

he permeates the book, and we must leave it to the reader himself to trace

the slow growth and development of this singularly‐rounded yet most

difficult conception. We do not believe that the author in this instance

has fallen below the level of his subject, high and remote as that level

was. A strong, resolute, far‐seeing character, possessed with the very

passion of empire, speaks to us in every line of _Alexander_. Many of his

sayings have almost the wisdom and the brevity of proverbs. “Time takes

still the conqueror’s side,” he tells Hephestion; and when that great‐

souled character puts the deep and solemn question, “_Is there forgiveness

for conquerors?_”—his answer is:

“Aye; but for half‐conquerors, none.”

Here is his policy told in a line:

“Strong hand makes empire; hand that heals retains it.”

When, in a light moment, he asks his generals, were gods their slaves,

what fortunes would they choose, and all cry out, “A kingdom!” he says

aside:

“Note this, Hephestion:

Imagination is economist,

And vastest ends move less the appetite

Than small things near and easier of access.”

Here is a truth for conquerors to ponder. In the height of his conquest he

is convinced that

“The vanquish’d must connive, or victory’s self

Its own grave digs in the end.”

All the littleness of greatness, all those surroundings that to small

minds stamp, if they do not constitute, greatness, are for him emptiness.

“To breathe applauses is to breathe that air

By breath of men defiled: I stand, and stood,

On the mountain‐tops, breathing the breath of gods.”

There is another aspect to his character at which we must glance. We have

called attention at the beginning to his jealous hatred of death. Life and

death are to him constant enigmas, to which he sees no solution. The only,

or at least the great, obstacle that he sees in the way of accomplishing

his dream and passion of empire is death. No human foe he fears; but the

fates. Time, he passionately says, is no friend of his. He has to build

his empire in few years. He is running a constant race with time, and

something seems to whisper to him ever that his years are few. In this,

too, lies an humbling fact. He, like others, is human and subject to

death. This inward struggle and rebellion against his humanity is

constantly going on. The thought, What am I? What do I? Who am I? Whence

come I? Where go I?—all these things for ever trouble him. He would be a

god; but he finds his loftiest aspirations bounded by a wall of flesh, and

beyond that—a blank.

With keen dramatic instinct and happy thought the author gives him the

opportunity of answering for himself these questionings. He visits the

temple at Jerusalem, and converses with the high‐priest. The truth is

unfolded to him, and the true God made known. He hesitates, and finally

rejects the truth. It clashes with his purpose.

“O’er all the earth my empire shall be just,

Godlike my rule,”

he promises the high‐priest; whose answer is the solemn rebuke:

“Young man, beware! God’s prophet

Awards thee Persia’s crown, but not the world’s:

He who wears that should be the Prince of Peace.

Thy portion lies in bounds. Limit and Term

Govern the world.”

This revelation tells on his character throughout the rest of the play. He

has no longer that blind confidence in himself, though his mind like a

vise holds to its resolution of founding the empire he was warned he could

not found. His iron will and indomitable energy overcome all obstacles;

but time is creeping on, and he feels it. To unite Persian and Greek

together, in order to win the Persian, he must be proclaimed a god; and a

god he is proclaimed. But the emptiness and mockery of the title are shown

with intense force in the workings of the king’s mind up to this madness.

He strives to argue himself up to godhead only by arguing godhead down to

him:

“A race of gods hath fallen:

Then Zeus in turn may fall. I find for gods

No thrones secure; _to man’s advance no limit_;

No certain truth amid contending rites;

No base for faith.”

He remembers the warning about limit and term, only to say scornfully,

“That’s for others:

To grasp a world for me is feasible;

To keep a half‐world, not.”

He turns further and further away from faith of any kind; his creed

resembles that of more modern conquerors:

“The man that empire founds

Must measure all things by the needs of empire.”

And the final outcome of his thoughts is this:

“This only know we—

We walk upon a world not knowable,

Save in those things which knowledge least deserve,

Yet capable, not less, of task heroic.

My trust is in my work: on that I fling me,

Trampling all questionings down.”

And yet the next moment he cries out:

“I sometimes think

That I am less a person than a power.

Some engine in the right hand of the gods,

Some fateful wheel that, round in darkness rolling,

Knows this—its work, but not that work’s far scope.

Hephestion, what is life? My life, since boyhood,

Hath been an agony of means to ends;

An ultimate end I find not. For that cause,

On‐reeling in the oppression of a void,

At times I welcome what I once scarce brook’d—

_The opprobrium of blank sleep_.”

There are many scenes of strong dramatic power in this drama—the death of

Darius, the quarrel with Parmenio, the rebellion of the Greeks, the last

scene with Philotas, and others; but the power and intensity deepen at the

close, when death at last creeps into the veins of the conqueror. He has

lost Hephestion earlier in the drama, and this loss rends his heart. There

is much truth in his singular, almost selfish love for his great‐souled

friend, who stood to Alexander as a wife would stand to another man. But

he to whom “his purposes were wife and child” could not lean on a woman.

It must be a man, strong, brave, keen‐eyed as himself, but calmer, larger

hearted, humbler, greater souled. Such was Hephestion, and his strong yet

sweet character is not only admirably drawn, but affords an excellent foil

throughout to the eager, impetuous, fiery nature and fiery words of the

king.

Omens thicken around him, and the end comes at Babylon. The fever that

burns at his heart seizes on his body while sailing on the Lake of

Pallacopas. As the royal barge passes, a strain rises up from the waters:

“We sate beside the Babylonian river:

Within the conqueror’s bound, weeping we sate:

We hung our harps upon the trees that quiver

Above the rushing waters desolate.

“If I forget thee, Salem, in thy sadness,

May this right hand forget the harper’s art!

If I forget thee, Salem, in my gladness,

My tongue dry up and wither, like my heart!”

It is a relic of the Babylonian captivity. The song forces from Alexander

the sad confession, significant to all conquerors:

“The ages pass, like winds;

The old wrong remains, rooted like tombs, and moves not:

All may be done through Time; yet Time does naught.

Let kings look well to that.”

The end is on him. Though “maimed, and tamed, and shamed,” he is resolute

still, but impotent, and the empire lacks completion, he confesses, while

“The years, the months,

The hours, like ravening wolves that hunt a stag,

Come up upon my haunches.”

Fighting time to the last, he succumbs; but he will not even die as other

men. In his half‐delirium he tells Ptolemy:

“I have a secret—one for thee alone:

’Twas not the mists from that morass disastrous

Nor death of him that died, nor adverse gods,

Nor the Fates themselves; ’twas something mightier yet,

And secreter in the great night, that slew me.”

And thus, surrounded by his warriors and his generals, with success within

his grasp, but that grasp nerveless, his last moments troubled with awful

visions and ill dreams, resentful to the last against what slew him, in

doubt and in fear, in youth and glory and empire, in the fatality of

success, staring with strained eyes into the dread void beyond that no ray

of faith illumines, he whose nod was life or death to nations, Alexander,

_the god_, passes away and dies—of a little slow fever that has entered

and claimed for its own the clay of which he was made.

Mr. de Vere has written at once a magnificent poem and a powerful drama.

We have devoted our attention in both instances to the chief characters,

and thus many scenes and personages in _Alexander the Great_ on which in

reading we have dwelt with much pleasure and admiration must pass

unnoticed. The author, if we may say so, has surprised us by the strength

and finish of this work. The action of the piece is rapid; the characters,

small and great, rounded and full; the scenes most varied and dramatically

set. The clew to the play we take to be that old whisper which first

allured our parents from their allegiance, and tempts forever the race of

man: _Ye shall be as gods_. The whisper runs through the piece from the

first line to the last, and lends to it a purpose and a plan of its own.

The dramatist has taken the man who in human history came the nearest to

exemplifying its truth to prove its utter and miserable falsehood, and to

read with a new force the old and eternal command that alone can order the

life of man wisely and well: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and him

only shalt thou serve.”

When he died, Alexander was nearly thirty‐three. With him really, though

remnants lingered after him, his scheme and his empire passed away; and

when to‐day we look for what is left of the world’s conqueror, of

Alexander the god, we must search in musty tomes and grope in desert

sands. Nothing is left of him, save some words and histories; and even

were they lost also, and his very memory blotted out with them, the world

to‐day would in reality be little or none the loser.

Some centuries later there died Another at the age of thirty‐three. He

came into life silently; he went out of life ignominiously. He led no

army; he had no following of any note; he was the son of a carpenter, and

born of a despised race. He was born, he lived, he died, in poverty,

sorrow, and suffering, a social outcast even from his own people. The last

three years of his life he spent in preaching in and about Jerusalem. His

doctrines were strange and startling. They were utterly subversive of all

human glory and greatness. Like Alexander, he proclaimed himself divine,

and claimed to be the Son of God. Like Alexander, he too died, but a death

of ignominy. Before his name had spread far beyond Jerusalem, men rose up,

Jew and Gentile, king and priest, church and state, together hanged him on

a tree, nailed him there, tortured and slew him, and when he was dead

sealed up the tomb in which he was buried. And there, humanly speaking,

was an end to him and his.

To the world what had he left? A memory—nothing more. Men said that he had

wrought wonders, that virtues flowed out of him, that his hands rained

mercies, that the blind saw, the lame walked, the lepers were cleansed,

the very dead rose again. Idle rumors! like that other of his bursting the

tomb and rising again, walking in the flesh and ascending into the heaven

from which he said he had come. And this was “the Expected of the

nations,” “the Prince of Peace,” who was to accomplish what the high‐

priest warned Alexander was not for him, with all his power, to

accomplish—to unite all the nations under one yoke. A likely prospect with

the material he had left!

He left behind him no empire, no record, not a line of writing. He left a

few words, a few maxims, a few rules of life, a few prayers, a few

promises, a few men who timidly believed in him, a few commands. The

world, its belief and non‐belief alike, its customs, maxims, tendencies,

he condemned as wrong. He commanded it to remodel itself according to the

few rules he had left—rules singularly comprehensive, simple, and clear:

to believe in him, to obey him as the son of God and God, to believe and

obey those, and those only, whom he sent forth in his name, armed with the

powers he gave them, fighting with the weapon of the cross. And what is

the result? Who is the conqueror of the world now? Jesus Christ, in whose

name every knee shall bow, or Alexander the Great? Here is a mystery

surely that men should ponder. What shall explain the victory over the

world, over sin, and over death, of Him whom they nailed to the tree

nineteen centuries ago? Nothing but the words of Peter—“Thou art Christ,

the Son of the living God.” Thou art he that was to come, and we look for

no other. “And he was clothed with a garment sprinkled with blood: and his

name is called _The Word of God_. And he hath on his garment and on his

thigh written King of kings and Lord of lords.”

Requies Mea.

Keep me, sweet love! Thy keeping is my rest.

Not safer feels the eaglet from beneath

The wings that roof the inaccessible nest,

Than I when thou art with me, dearest, best,

Whose love my life is, yea, my very breath!

Thy Son to Egypt fled to prove our faith.

Not Herod’s men had snatched him from thy breast,

Or changed his thronèd slumber into death.

How wonderful thy keeping, mighty Queen!

So close, so tender; and as if thine eyes

Had only me to watch, thine arm to screen;

And this inconstant heart were such a prize!

And thou the while, in beatific skies,

Art reigning imperturbably serene!

Ontologism And Psychologism.

Our readers sometimes complain that the philosophical articles of THE

CATHOLIC WORLD are too hard to be understood. Yet some of these very

readers make a great effort to read these articles, and ask questions

about metaphysical subjects—among others, about the very topic of the

present article—showing a great desire to gain some knowledge about them.

We are going to try to make this article intelligible to these readers,

even to those who are yet quite young persons, in whose laudable efforts

to improve their minds and acquire knowledge we are greatly interested.

We shall begin, therefore, by explaining some terms which need to be well

understood before they can be used in a satisfactory manner, and

especially the two which make up the title of this article. Ontology is

the name given to one branch of metaphysics, which is also called general

metaphysics, in distinction from the two other principal branches of that

science—to wit, logic and special metaphysics. It is derived from two

Greek words—that is, the first two syllables from a word which means

being, and the last two from one which means reasoning. It is therefore a

reasoning about being, or the scientific exposition of the object of the

idea of real being, of metaphysical truth, good and evil, beauty,

substance, accident, quantity, causality, the finite and the infinite, the

contingent and the necessary, etc. Psychology is also a Greek derivative

signifying a scientific exposition of the rational soul of man, its powers

and operations, which is a sub‐division of special metaphysics. Therefore

every philosopher must be an ontologist and a psychologist, in the proper

sense of those terms. Yet, there is a difference between ontology and

ontologism, psychology and psychologism. Ontologism and psychologism are

names denoting opposite philosophical systems which diverge in opposite

directions from the scholastic philosophy, or that philosophy commonly

taught in the Catholic schools after the method and principles of the

Angelic Doctor, S. Thomas Aquinas. Of the authority which this philosophy

possesses in the church we cannot now treat at length. We will, however,

cite here the latest utterance of the Sovereign Pontiff which has come to

our knowledge, as a sample of a great number of similar official

expressions of approbation from the Holy See. In a letter to Dr.

Travaligni, founder of the Philosophico‐Medical Society of S. Thomas

Aquinas, dated July 23, 1874, Pius IX. says: “With still greater pleasure

we perceive that, faithful to your purpose, you have determined to admit

only such members to your society as hold and will defend the doctrines

propounded by the sacred councils and this Holy See, and in particular the

principles of the Angelic Doctor concerning the union of the intellective

soul with the human body, and concerning substantial form and primary

matter (_materia prima_).” We shall take for granted at present that in

all its essential parts, as well as in those specified in the above

quotation, the philosophy of S. Thomas has the highest sanction and

authority in the church which any system of philosophy can have, and that

it is the only true and sound philosophy. The system of ontologism differs

from it by proposing a totally different ontology, which is made the basis

of an essentially different philosophy. The advocates of that system call

themselves ontologists, as claiming to be the only philosophers who

understand rightly real being and the relation of intelligence to it as

the object of its intuition and knowledge. They are also called by that

name by their antagonists for the sake of convenience and courtesy, as

those who believe in God, but not in revelation, are called theists,

although neither party has an exclusive right to the appellation given to

it by usage. Psychologism is a system which makes the basis and starting‐

point of philosophy to lie exclusively in the individual soul and its

modifications, like Des Cartes, whose first principle is, “I think,

therefore I am.” The opponents of the scholastic philosophy who pretend to

be ontologists give it the nickname of psychologism, because they either

misunderstand or misinterpret its ontological and psychological doctrine.

The scholastic philosophy is also frequently called Aristotelian, because

S. Thomas derived a great part of his metaphysics from the great

philosopher of Greece; and Peripatetic, which was the name given to the

school of Aristotle, because the teachers and pupils used to walk up and

down during their lectures and discussions. Those who diverge from the

philosophy of S. Thomas in the same direction with the ontologists are

also frequently called Platonists, because they follow, or are supposed to

follow, Plato, in regard to certain opinions differing from those

maintained by Aristotle.

The philosophical disputes which have been lately carried on with so much

vehemence about questions of ontology are by no means of recent origin.

They have been waged both within and without the limits of the Catholic

Church. Des Cartes, the great modern master of psychologism, always

professed to be a loyal son of the church, and had many disciples among

Catholics. Malebranche, the author of modern ontologism, was a devout

priest of the French Oratory; and Cardinal Gerdil, who began as an earnest

advocate of the same doctrine, but gradually approached toward the

scholastic philosophy in his maturer years, was really the second man to

the Pope for a long time in authority and influence, as well as a most

illustrious model of virtue and learning. More recently, the principal

advocates of ontologism have been very devoted Catholics. The Louvain

professors, Hugonin, Branchereau; for anything we know to the contrary,

Fabre, and many others, have been most zealous and devoted Catholics. Only

Gioberti, who was, however, the prince among them all, and one of the most

gifted men of the century, among the well‐known leaders of that school,

was a disloyal Catholic. We have heard on very good authority that

Gioberti continued to receive the sacraments up to the time of his death,

and was buried with Catholic rites. Nevertheless, as a number of priests

were still in the external communion of the church at the time Gioberti

was living in Paris, who were really heretics and have since apostatized,

this fact alone does not count for much as a proof that he died in the

Catholic faith. All his works were long before on the Index; he was at

least suspended, if not _ipso facto_ excommunicated, as a contumacious

rebel against the Pope. Dr. Brownson calls him “that Italian priest of

marvellous genius, and, we were about to write, Satanic power.” And again

he says: “Gioberti died, we believe, excommunicated, and his last book,

published before his death, contains a scurrilous attack on Pius IX., and

bears not a trace of the Catholic believer, far less of the Catholic

priest.”(96) For a long time the Church did not directly interfere with

the philosophical discussions which went on among her children in regard

to ontology. Neither Des Cartes(97) nor Malebranche was condemned, nor

were any specific propositions in the works of Gioberti censured. The Holy

See has never been in the habit of using its supreme magisterial authority

in deciding scientific controversies considered merely as scientific.

Science is left to itself, to make its own way and fight its own battles,

unless the interests of the faith become involved with those of science.

When these interests demand the interference of the supreme authority, it

utters its disciplinary edicts or its doctrinal decisions, as in its

wisdom it deems opportune and necessary. For a considerable period of time

philosophy was left in the enjoyment of the largest liberty, so long as

the doctrines of the church were respected and maintained. But when

professed Catholics, especially in Germany, began to frame systems of

philosophy manifestly dangerous to sound theology and subversive of it,

the Holy See began to exercise a more special vigilance over the teaching

of philosophy in Catholic schools. Gregory XVI. and Pius IX. have

condemned a number of works, of systems, or of distinct propositions in

which philosophical errors were contained, because these were directly or

indirectly subversive of the Catholic faith. Among other errors condemned,

ontologism holds a prominent position. After various means more mild and

indirect of correcting the evils which the teaching of this system

threatened to produce had failed, the Holy See pronounced (Sept. 18, 1861)

its condemnation of seven propositions embracing the fundamental tenets

common to the so‐called ontologists, and some particular tenets advanced

by individual professors or writers of the same school. The professors of

the Catholic University of Louvain were required to make a formal act of

submission to this decision of Rome, which they did in the most exemplary

manner.

The Abbé Hugonin, when nominated to an episcopal see in France, was also

required to make a formal renunciation of ontologism, which he had taught

in his writings, as a condition of receiving the confirmation of the pope,

and complied without hesitation. The Abbé Branchereau, a distinguished

French Sulpitian and professor of philosophy, voluntarily submitted a

statement of the doctrine contained in his _Prelections_ to the

examination and judgment of the Holy See, and, when the judgment

condemning his system was made known to him, promptly submitted and

suppressed his work. In fact, there has been everywhere a most ready and

edifying submission given to the judgment of Rome on a system which was

rapidly spreading and gaining ground, and toward which a great number of

the finest minds among Catholic scholars felt the strongest attraction.

The reason of this may be found in the fact that those who had embraced

this system or were inclined toward it were generally good Catholics,

holding sound theological principles, and imbued with the love of truth

and the love of the church, loyal to conscience, and well grounded in

Christian humility and obedience. Consequently, ontologism, as a system,

prevailing among Catholics and in Catholic schools, is dead, and rapidly

passing into oblivion—a great gain for science, as well as for religion,

since it removes a great obstacle in the way of the revival of the genuine

and sound philosophy which alone contains the real and solid wisdom of the

Grecian sages, the fathers of the church, and the gigantic masters of the

mediæval schools, combined, harmonized, and reduced to method.

It is time now to explain in what the essence of ontologism consists. In

the words of M. Fabre, a professor at the Sorbonne, “Ontologism is a

system in which, after having proved the objective reality of general

ideas, we establish that these ideas are not forms or modifications of our

soul; that they are not anything created; that they are necessary,

unchangeable, eternal, absolute objects; that they are concentrated in the

being to which this name belongs in its simple signification (_l’être

simplement dit_), and that this infinite Being is the first idea

apprehended by our mind, the first intelligible, the light in which we see

all the eternal, universal, and absolute truths. Ontologists say, then,

that these eternal truths cannot have any reality outside of the eternal

essence, whence they conclude that they do not subsist except as united to

the divine substance, and consequently that it can only be in this

substance that we see them.”(98)

We will now give the first two, the fourth, and the fifth of the

propositions condemned at Rome, and which, with the other three, were

taken from the prelections of a professor in a French seminary, never

published, but extensively circulated in lithograph or MSS., and which,

the reader will see, express the identical doctrine summarized so

concisely and ably by M. Fabre:

I. The immediate cognition of God, at least habitual, is essential to the

human intellect, so that without this it cannot know anything, since it is

the intellectual light itself.

II. That being which we intellectively perceive in all things, and without

which we perceive nothing intellectively (_quod in omnibus et sine quo

nihil intelligimus_), is the divine being.

IV. The congenital knowledge of God as simply being (_ens simpliciter_)

involves every other cognition in an eminent manner, so that by it we have

implicit knowledge of every being, under whatever respect it is knowable.

V. All other ideas are only modifications of the idea in which God is

intellectively perceived (_intelligitur_) as simply being (_ens

simpliciter_).

Similar propositions to these are found in the fifteen submitted by M.

Branchereau to the judgment of the Holy See, viz.:

1. In the act of thought two things are to be essentially

distinguished—the subject thinking and the object thought.

2. Again, the object thought is distinguished into two things—that which

is being simply, and that which is being in a certain respect.

3. By that which is being simply we understand real being, concrete and

infinitely perfect; ... in a word, that which is being simply is God.

12. From the first instant of existence the mind enjoys ideal perception,

not indeed reflexively, but directly.

13. Among the intelligible truths, which we apprehend ideally, God

occupies the first place, the intellective perception of whom, although

essentially distinct from the intuition of the beatified, is terminated,

not at a representative image, but at God himself.

The reader will now, we trust, understand without difficulty what is the

fundamental idea of ontologism—namely, that God is the _immediate object_

of the intellect, the ideal object which faces it from its creation, is

present to it as its light and its luminous, intelligible term of vision,

in which all ideal, necessary, self‐evident, eternal ideas, verities,

realities, are concentrated, beheld, made luminous; lighting up all

objects whatsoever which exist and are perceived by sense and intellect,

so that the things that are made are clearly seen by the invisible things

of God, even his eternal power and Godhead; as Malebranche expressed it,

“in Deo,” and Gioberti, “in Deo et per Deum”—in God, and by or through

him, as clouds in a luminiferous ether. For an explanation of the

scholastic doctrine of the origin of universal ideas we refer the reader

to a former article on Dr. Stöckl’s Philosophy. In brief, it is the

reverse of the one just delineated, viz., the universal and transcendental

ideas are derived by abstraction from created things, and the knowledge of

God is obtained by a discursive act of reasoning, by which we ascend from

the knowledge of creatures to the knowledge of the Creator, whose

invisible essence and attributes are understood by the things that are

made. That is, God is known by a mediate and not an immediate

apprehension, resulting in an intellectual judgment that he is. The mind

terminates at a representative and inadequate image of God, and not at God

himself or that which is God, real, concrete, necessary, infinite being,

which is the remote and reflected object of the intellect.

We are now prepared to answer the question, What is the harm and danger of

ontologism on account of which it has been condemned? It has not been

condemned as heretical, for it does not formally, directly, and explicitly

contradict any doctrine of faith. The Holy See has simply decided that it

cannot be safely taught—that is, that it cannot be taught with a safe

conscience, without danger to the faith, and consequently without grievous

sin. It must therefore contain in it an error which cannot be extensively

held and taught in Catholic schools without a serious danger of indirectly

subverting Catholic faith and doctrine, especially in the minds of the

young and inconsiderate. While this danger was only remote or not yet

apparent, the error might be tolerated, and left to be opposed and refuted

by argument. Moreover, it might be held and advocated in good faith and

without sin by intelligent and pious men, who are liable to error when

left to their own reasonings about abstruse matters in theology and

philosophy. But when the danger was apparent and proximate, it was

necessary to appeal to the supreme authority of the Roman Church, that the

whole matter might be thoroughly examined and adjudicated; and, the

judgment being once rendered, the cause is finished for all good

Catholics. Thenceforth all that remains to be done is to study the import

of the decision, and to search into the reasons by which the condemned

errors may be proved false by philosophical and theological arguments, and

the opposite truths brought out into a clearer light for the advancement

of sound and solid science and the protection of the faith.

That part of Catholic doctrine which was endangered and indirectly

subverted by ontologism is the one which relates to the distinction

between nature and grace, the rational knowledge of God attainable by man

in this life, and the immediate intuition of God enjoyed by the blessed in

heaven. Ontologism destroys the real distinction between the natural and

the supernatural orders, between the abstractive vision of God by reason

and faith, and the intuitive vision of God without any medium, and face to

face. It is true that ontologists have never taught that man has, or can

have, a clear vision of the divine essence, like that of the blessed, by

his unaided natural powers. This is a heresy condemned by the General

Council of Vienne. Moreover, it would be too absurd for any sane person to

maintain that such a vision is congenital and possessed by all men from

the first instant of creation. Nor would any one who maintains that the

idea of God is impressed on the soul at its creation be so extravagant as

to assert that the clear and distinct conception of God which can be

obtained by reason and faith is present to the minds of all men from their

birth. Ontologists are careful to state that there is a difference between

the immediate cognition of God in this life and that of the life to come.

And all who maintain any kind of ideal cognition which is congenital or

innate, understand by this something which exists unconsciously in the

soul until its powers are developed. The object is there, facing the

intellect, but the intellect has its eyes closed, and cannot perceive it.

When it perceives it, it is first obscurely, then clearly, then more or

less distinctly. Its congenital cognition is an unconscious, undeveloped

act. But all the principles of conscious, developed cognition are in that

act, and are only evolved by the operation of the senses and the

intellectual faculties. The error condemned is the assertion that this

cognition has God in his intelligibility as real and necessary being as

its _immediate_ object. And though it is not formally a heresy, since it

does not assert that the immediate cognition of God is identical with the

beatific vision, or deny the necessity of the light of glory to make the

soul capable of the beatific vision, it is erroneous, inasmuch as it

removes that which really makes the essential difference of the vision of

the blessed, as distinct from the natural cognition of any created

intelligence. This difference is defined by Benedict XIV., in the Const.

_Benedictus Deus_, to be that the blessed see God “without the mediation

of anything created which presents itself as the object seen”—_nulla

mediante creaturâ in ratione objecti visi se habente_. Every other

cognition of God must therefore have some created object of intellectual

vision as an intermediary between the intellect and God—that is, must be

mediate and not immediate cognition. An immediate cognition, however

obscure and imperfect, must therefore be essentially the same with the

clear, beatific intuition of the essence of God, and capable of being

expanded, extended, developed, increased, made more penetrating or

powerful, without being essentially changed, until it equals or surpasses

the intuition of the highest angel in heaven. The light of faith or the

light of glory can be therefore only aids to the improvement of the human

intellect in its own natural capacity and activity—as if one should see

the stars more plainly by a telescope, and afterwards receive a more

perfect body with a visual organ superior to any telescope that was ever

made.

A more elaborate similitude will make the difference of immediate and

mediate cognition of God more plain. Let us suppose a barbarian lying

asleep on the shore of his lonely island in the Pacific, while a large

ship, the first which has ever approached it, has just come within the

most distant range of vision. There is an object, then on his horizon,

which he has the power to see, but does not perceive until he awakes. He

perceives it at first as a very small and dimly‐seen object—as

_something_, he knows not what. It may be a cloud, a bird, a wave

sparkling in the sun, a canoe. It is a large man‐of‐war which is the real

object perceived, but he does not know that it is a ship, or know its

contents, or even know what a ship is. This is an obscure perception. By‐

and‐by he can see that it is not a cloud, or bird, or canoe, but a large,

moving structure, whose principal parts are visible to him. This is a

clear perception. When it has anchored, he has been taken on board, has

seen its crew and armament, its cabins and hold, and has learned what is

its purpose and the utility of its principal parts, he has a distinct

conception. After he has learned the language of the sailors, and has been

instructed to a greater or less extent, he acquires a more adequate and

perfect knowledge, like that which the sailors themselves possess; he

joins the crew, and becomes an expert seaman, and finds himself to have

become much superior in knowledge and happiness to what he was before the

ship came to his island.

Let us also suppose that a bottle is washed ashore at another island, and

picked up by a native. When he opens it, he finds in it a drawing

representing a large ship, and a paper containing particular information

about the ship and its crew. This bottle had been thrown overboard after

the ship had sprung a leak in mid‐ocean, and was about to founder. After

the bottle has been found by the native, Europeans arrive at the island,

by whom the papers are examined, and their contents explained to the

native, who learns also from the explanation of the drawing to understand

what the ship is, its use, construction, parts, etc. He thus gains

substantially the same knowledge of that ship and its crew with that which

the other native gained about the other ship, though in a different way,

without ever seeing the ship itself, but only an image of it. One has

immediate, the other mediate cognition. One sees the object in itself, the

other sees it in something else. In the first case the native saw

something which was a ship, but while it was distant it was not visible as

a ship, only as an object. Afterwards it was visible in its outward shape

and appearance as a ship, in clear, unmistakable contrast with every

different object, but not distinctly understood or closely inspected, or

made the principal object of the occupation, the attachment, the

enjoyment, of the native—in a word, the home and centre of his chief

earthly good. When he first saw something in the distance, he really saw

the ship, and in that vision was virtually contained all that he

afterwards discovered in respect to it; whereas, the other native never

saw the other ship, and never could see it by means of drawings or verbal

descriptions, although he could learn that it was a ship, and what ship it

was, where it sailed from, who sailed it, and when and where it foundered.

The above comparison is not perfect, since every comparison must limp at

least a little; but we think it is sufficient as an illustration of the

process by which the human intellect attains to the knowledge of God and

the beatific vision of God, according to ontologism as differing from the

doctrine of sound Catholic theology. According to ontologism, God presents

himself to the intellect, when he creates it, as its immediate Object,

objective Idea, or intelligible Term. So soon as it is capable of

apprehending eternal verities, it apprehends that which is God, although

not yet knowing explicitly that what it apprehends is God—that is, the

one, living, most perfect Being who is the creator and sovereign lord of

all things. By another step it acquires a clear conception of God, and

makes the judgment that God is, and that he is eternal, infinite,

omniscient, omnipotent. This judgment is an evolution from that cognition

which existed at the beginning as a habit into an explicit act, as the

explicit act of faith is deduced from the habit of faith given to the

infant by baptism. That God is, is known by what he is—that is, by his

essence, which is seen in the eternal verities or divine ideas as they are

in reality, not distinguishable from the divine substance. Faith gives an

obscure perception of the interior mysteries of the divine substance which

are beyond the ken of the intellect unaided by revelation, or, in other

words, are superintelligible verities; and the light of glory increases

the power of intellectual vision so that it sees clearly and distinctly

the interior essence of God, which completes the beatification of the

soul.

In this place we may cite the third of the seven condemned propositions,

which expresses the afore‐mentioned theory, as taken in connection with

the fifth. This third proposition is: “Universals, objectively considered,

_a parte rei_, are not really distinguishable from God”; and the fifth:

“All other ideas are only modifications of the idea in which God is

intellectively perceived as simply being—_tamquam ens simpliciter

intelligitur_.” Universals are general ideas, each one of which is capable

of being predicated of a multitude of subjects. The logical universals are

five—genus, species, differentia, attribute, accident. The ten categories

of Aristotle include all the supreme genera, though some maintain that a

better division may be made. The transcendental ideas are those which

transcend all generic classification, because they may be predicated of

every genus and all its inferiors. They are the ideas of being, unity, the

good, the true, the beautiful. They belong, therefore, to the universals,

although predicated in analogous and not identical senses of the diverse

genera and their inferior subjects. Take the supreme genus substance, as

an instance, and follow it down to man—substance, corporeal substance,

organized substance, animal, rational animal, _i.e._, man. His proximate

genus is animal, his differentia rationality, which constitute the species

man. The concrete reality of the universals, substance, etc., terminating

in the species which is rational animal is found only in individual men.

The direct universals, genus, species, differentia, exist, _a parte rei_,

in each individual of the human species. Each man is a substance,

corporeal, organized, animal, rational, and these universals can be

predicated of him as their subject. The transcendental predicates, also,

are connected with individual men as their subject. Individual men have

being, unity, verity, goodness, beauty. But these may be predicated in

senses which are only analogous to each other of the composite essence, of

its distinct parts, soul and body, of the attributes or essential

qualities of man, and of the accidents of individual men. For instance,

the human essence is essentially good; the soul and body are good each in

its own order; rationality is good; learning, valor, amiability, moral

virtue, sanctity, are good; but there is analogy only, not identity, in

these various kinds of good. The same is true of being. It is absurd,

therefore, to speak, as Plato does, of a universal good, true, beautiful,

or to speak of any universal idea, such as being, or a modification of

being, as having any objective reality as a universal, except as a concept

of the mind with a foundation in that which is or may be an actually

existing thing. They are metaphysical essences, with their generic,

specific, qualifying, and transcendental predicates. All the categories or

supreme genera together make up what is called the nature of things,

considered metaphysically; considered in their physical being in the sum

of all concrete existences, they make up universal nature. The

metaphysical essences are necessary, immutable, eternal, and potentially

infinite. They are the eternal verities, the necessary truths, which copy

the divine ideas upon nature or the universe, where God has impressed

them, and are abstracted from the works of the Creator by the intellect of

man. They are distinguishable from God, therefore they are not in the

essence of God, or the divine ideas subsisting in the divine substance,

and are not there seen by the intellect. This was long ago proved by

philosophers and theologians. It is now declared by authority that it is

unsafe thus to identify them with God, and thereby make him the immediate

object of the intellect. The reason why it is unsafe is that it destroys

the differentia which makes our rational cognition of God specifically

distinct from the intuitive cognition of the blessed. There are also other

dangers to faith and sound theology involved in the doctrines or

tendencies of ontologism, which we have not space to notice.

Neither the absurdity nor the heterodoxy of ontologism is avoided by the

system of Gioberti. The objection of Giobertians to pure ontologism, that

it furnishes no dialectic principle uniting natural theology with other

branches of special metaphysics and with ontology, is, indeed, well taken.

But this only shows that pure ontologism is absurd and incoherent. It does

not remove the absurdity of that which is common to pure ontologism and

the ontologism of Gioberti. Neither does it remove its heterodoxy. Saying

that we have immediate cognition of something which is not God does not

make it more orthodox to say that we have immediate cognition of God.

Moreover, Gioberti’s doctrine, as taught by himself, and understood by his

European disciples and admirers, as well as by his acutest and most

orthodox opponents, is far more heterodox than that of any other

ontologist who is also a Catholic. Evidence has been furnished which has

never been rebutted that Gioberti was a pantheist even before he published

his _Introduction to Philosophy_. In a letter to Mazzini, written before

that date, but only afterwards published from a motive of pique against

him, he says explicitly that he is a pantheist after the manner of

Giordano Bruno, though a Christian pantheist. What does this mean, unless

it means that he had conceived a plan of combining pantheistic philosophy

with the Catholic dogmas, as a part of his grand scheme of reconciling

paganism with Christianity, and the European revolution with the Papacy?

On this supposition he must either have acted the part of a deliberate

liar and hypocrite—a baseness of which we believe him to have been

incapable—or he must have intended, and in a subtile manner insinuated

pantheism in the guise of his famous ideal formula, _Ens creat

existentias_. In this case whatever may bear a pantheistic interpretation

or seem to point to a pantheistic conclusion must be pantheistically

interpreted, so far as the sense of the author is concerned. It is not

strange, however, that many have understood him in a sense not directly

heretical, or even, perhaps, quite compatible with Catholic faith. For his

works are filled with passages which, taken in a Catholic sense, are gems

of the purest and most precious sort. If the formula _Being creates

existences_ be taken in the orthodox sense, as equivalent to _God creates

the world_, it is obviously a directly contrary proposition to any one

expressing pantheism. To make it bear a pantheistic sense, definitions of

being, create, and existences must be sub‐introduced which vitiate its

orthodox meaning. But, leaving aside this question, we have already proved

that a Catholic must hold that the human intellect cannot have an

immediate cognition of the first extreme of the formula, viz., that real

and necessary Being which is God. Without this he cannot have an immediate

cognition of the creative act, as the act of God, or of created things in

their ideas, considered as the divine ideas themselves in the divine mind,

and really identical with the divine essence. It is certain that the Holy

See did not intend to condemn pantheism in the decree respecting the seven

propositions, for it would never have affixed such a mild censure if it

had so intended. Ontologism, whether couched in Gioberti’s formula or not,

is condemned in that sense which is not pantheistic, and under every

formula which includes an affirmation of the immediate cognition of God by

the human intellect, as defined by M. Fabre in the passage quoted at the

beginning of this article.

Before concluding we are obliged reluctantly to add a few words about a

personal controversy with Dr. Brownson, with whom we always regret to have

a difference respecting any matter which belongs to Catholic doctrine. We

desire to explain, therefore, that we made no statement to the effect that

the ontologism condemned by the Holy See had ever been formally and

explicitly taught in philosophical articles, whether written by himself or

any one else, in this magazine. Moreover, in the passage where his name is

mentioned there is no direct statement that “_his own_ ontologism” falls

under ecclesiastical censure. The utmost implied or asserted is that some

educated men might think that some of his statements are “unsound,”

philosophically or theologically, and demand a certain benignity of

interpretation in order to escape the censure which a professed theologian

would justly incur if he made such statements in a book written for

school‐boys or young pupils. Dr. Brownson’s own defence of his doctrine,

as based on his definition of intuition: “Intuition is the act of the

object, not of the subject,” was cited as the precise distinction between

his own doctrine and the one condemned, upon which the question of the

theological soundness of his peculiar ontologism turns. We called it “a

newly‐invented distinction between ideal intuition and perception or

cognition,” and qualified the definition above quoted as an “assumption,”

which we think is quite correct. It is new in Catholic philosophy, and has

not been proved. We think, therefore, that the phraseology of Dr. Brownson

makes his doctrine liable to an interpretation, even by educated men,

which makes it similar to that of the condemned ontologism. That it is

sound and safe we are not prepared to say. Neither do we say positively

that it is not. If it is, we think Dr. Brownson can place it in a clearer

light than he has yet done, and we shall heartily rejoice to see him

distinctly enunciate and vindicate his fundamental doctrine, whether it

does or does not accord with that which is held by the disciples of S.

Thomas. Of his loyal intention to conform his doctrine to the decisions of

the supreme authority in the church there can be no doubt. That he has so

far succeeded in doing so, at least by an exact and explicit expression of

it, we cannot help doubting. We cannot see that the distinction between

ideal intuition and cognition, so far as we apprehend it, suffices.

We understand him to define ideal intuition as an act of God presenting

himself to the intellect as its object, and to call the act of the

intellect apprehending this ideal object empirical intuition. We

understand him also to identify the immediate object on which the active

intellect exercises its discursive operations with real, necessary

being—_i.e._ God—although it does not make the judgment that eternal

verities are real being, and that real being is God, immediately, but by

means of reflection and reasoning. Now, we cannot see any essential

difference between this doctrine and that of M. Branchereau and other

ontologists. We do not think it possible to escape the ecclesiastical

censure on the doctrine of the immediate cognition of God, unless

something is placed, _ratione objecti visi_, between God and the

intellect, making the cognition mediate. Moreover, we consider that the

term cognition in the Roman decree covers intuition and simple

apprehension, even in their confused state, as well as distinct

conceptions and judgments. Dr. Brownson’s peculiar terminology and

informal method of arguing make it, however, more difficult to understand

his real doctrine and compare it with that of standard authors than if it

were expressed in the usual style and method.

Dr. Brownson has also further charged the author of _Problems of the Age_

with having actually taught in the opening chapters of that essay, as

first published in this magazine, the very ontologism condemned in the

seven propositions. That there are ambiguous expressions and passages

which taken apart from the whole tenor of the argument are liable to such

an interpretation, we do not deny. But in reality, it was the doctrine of

Gerdil which was intended, and expressed with sufficient distinctness for

a careful and critical reader. This doctrine is expressed by the

illustrious cardinal in these words: “God, who contains eminently the

ideas of all things, impresses their intellectual similitudes in us by his

action, which constitute the immediate object of our perceptions.” Upon

which Liberatore remarks: “In these words Gerdil did not modify the

ontologism which he professed in his youth, but retracted it. And indeed,

how can even the shadow of ontologism be said to remain, when the

immediate object of our perceptions is no longer said to be God, or ideas

existing in God, but only their similitudes, which are impressed by the

divine action upon our minds.”(99) A few quotations from the _Problems of

the Age_ will prove the truth of our assertion that it proposed a theory

similar to the theory of Gerdil.