This remarkable book contains a denunciation, by an angry and an able
man, of some of the most pressing practical evils of the Roman Catholic
system. The celibacy of the priesthood, the mysteries of the
confessional, the usurpations of priestly direction in the economy of
families, in the control of women, and in the education of
children--these are the objects against which the historian of France
now directs the arrows of his indignation, and which he seeks to drive
from among his countrymen by his earnest and energetic attacks. His
hostility has probably been prompted, in part, by the strong feelings of
jealousy at present existing in France between the Universities and the
Church. But his work is not professedly, nor principally, directed to
that subject of controversy. It embraces a larger question, affecting
the various relations of private life, and not confined to one form or
phasis of fanaticism. It deserves the anxious consideration of all who
are interested in the progress of European civilization, and may teach a
valuable lesson to many who may, at first sight, seem to be far removed
from the mischief which it seeks to remedy.
For centuries past, it may be said, that the great disease of France has
been the disorder in its domestic relations. That amidst the general
surrender of its upper classes in former times to levity, "and something
more," there were many exceptions of family happiness and purity, is as
certain as that human nature, in its worst state of depravity, will ever
assert its better tendencies, and give indications of the ethereal
source from which it has sprung. But, that the prevailing tone of those
who ought to have given the tone to others, was long of the most lax or
licentious character, admits of little doubt; nor is it wonderful that
public corruption and anarchy should have followed fast upon the
dissolution of private restraints. The same form of the evil may not now
exist; but the book before us exhibits proofs that there is still a want
of that harmony in conjugal life that is essential as the foundation of
solid virtue and social prosperity. The husband and the wife are still
separated from each other; not, it may be, by a lover, but by a priest.
There is the same want of sympathy as ever, the same mutual alienation
of hearts, the same absence of that kindly agency of mind on mind, which
is needed to strengthen the intellect of the woman and to purify the
spirit of the man. It is this state of things that has roused the
energies of a writer not remarkable for his prejudices against the
Catholic church in her earlier constitution, but who thinks he sees her
now at his own door, undermining household authority, and stealing from
every man the affections of those who are united to him by the tenderest
ties, and whom he cannot cease to love, even when his love has ceased to
be returned.
Michelet's book is divided into three parts. The first treats of
"Direction," or spiritual superintendence in the seventeenth century;
containing a historical view of clerical influence during that period;
and more particularly of the policy and power of the Jesuits. The second
discusses the character of "Direction" in general, and particularly in
the nineteenth century. The third is specially devoted to the subject
"Of the Family," and winds up the work, by showing the operation of the
poison in the most vital part of the frame.
The preface to the first edition contains powerful passages. We extract
some of the best of them from the English translation by Mr Cocks, which
is sufficiently respectable for our present purpose.
"The question is about our family:--that sacred asylum in which we
all desire to seek the repose of the heart, when our endeavours
have proved fruitless, and our illusions are no more. We return
exhausted to the domestic hearth; but do we find there the repose
we sigh for?
"Let us not dissemble, but acknowledge to ourselves how things are:
there is in our family a sad difference of sentiment, and the most
serious of all.
"We may speak to our mothers, wives, and daughters, on any of the
subjects which form the topics of our conversation with indifferent
persons, such as business or the news of the day, but never on
subjects that affect the heart and moral life, such as eternity,
religion, the soul, and God.
"Choose, for instance, the moment when we naturally feel disposed
to meditate with our family in common thought, some quiet evening
at the family-table; venture even there, in your own house, at your
own fireside, to say one word about these things; your mother sadly
shakes her head, your wife contradicts you, your daughter, by her
very silence, shows her disapprobation. They are on one side of the
table, and you on the other--and alone.
"One would think that in the midst of them, and opposite you, was
seated an invisible personage to contradict _whatever you may say_.
"But how can we be astonished at this state of our family? Our
wives and daughters are brought up and governed by _our enemies!_
* * * * *
"_Our enemies_, I repeat it, in a more direct sense, as they are
naturally envious of marriage and family life. This, I know full
well, is rather their misfortune than their fault. An old lifeless
system, of mechanical functions, can want but lifeless partisans.
Nature, however, reclaims her rights: they feel painfully that
family is denied them, and they console themselves _only by
troubling ours_.
* * * * *
"This lifeless spirit, let us call it by its real name, Jesuitism,
formerly neutralized by the different manners of living, of the
orders, corporations, and religious parties, is now the common
spirit which the clergy imbibes through a special education, and
which its chiefs make no difficulty in confessing. A bishop has
said, 'We are Jesuits, all Jesuits;' and nobody has contradicted
him.
"The greater part, however, are less frank: Jesuitism acts
powerfully through the medium of those who are supposed to be
strangers to it; namely, the Sulpicians, who educate the clergy,
the Ignorantins, who instruct the people, and the Lazarists, who
direct six thousand Sisters of Charity, and have in their hands the
hospitals, schools, charity-offices, &c.
"So many establishments, so much money, so many pulpits for
preaching aloud, so many confessionals for whispering, the
education of two hundred thousand boys, and six hundred thousand
girls, the management of several millions of women, form together a
powerful machine. The unity it possesses in our days might, one
would suppose, alarm the state. This is so far from being the case,
that whilst the state prohibits association among the laity, it has
encouraged it among the ecclesiastics. It has allowed them to form
a most dangerous footing among the poorer classes, the union of
workmen, apprentice-houses, association of servants who are
accountable to priests, &c. &c.
"Unity of action, and the monopoly of association, are certainly
two powerful levers.
* * * * *
"That which constitutes the gravity of this age, I may even say its
holiness, is conscientious work, which promotes attentively the
common work of humanity, and facilitates at its own expense the
work of the future. Our forefathers dreamed much, and disputed
much. But we are labourers, and this is the reason why our furrow
has been blessed. The soil which the middle ages left us still
covered with brambles, has produced by our efforts so plentiful a
harvest, that it already envelopes, and will presently hide the old
inanimate post that expected to stop the plough.
"And it is because we are workmen, and return home fatigued every
evening, that we need more than others the repose of the heart. Our
board and fireside must again become our own; we must no longer
find, instead of repose, at home, the old dispute which has been
settled by science and the world; nor hear from our wife or child,
on our pillow, a lesson learnt by heart, and the words of another
man.
"Women follow willingly the strong. How comes it, then, that in
this case they have followed the weak?
"It must be that there is an art which gives strength to the weak.
This dark art, which consists in surprising, fascinating, lulling,
and annihilating the will, has been investigated by me in this
volume. The seventeenth century had the theory of it, and ours
continues the practice."
We shall not follow the writer in his review of Jesuitical influences
in the seventeenth century, though it contains much that might excite
remark and deserve attention. We hasten to the more urgent question--the
state of matters as they exist at the present hour.
The root of the evil, as Michelet thinks, lies in the position of the
priesthood. We are far from adopting all his views, and would decline
any indiscriminate condemnation of a body of men who, under any form of
Christianity, must do good in many quarters, and must contain numerous
examples of faithful and fervent piety. But in so far as the system of
the Romish church is vicious and injurious, it is of vital moment that
we should trace the effect to its cause. Much evil, we think, is
ascribable to the doctrines of that church, and of every other that too
highly exalts the powers and functions of the priest as compared with
the people. But, dismissing these for the present, the peculiar
discipline of the Romish system deserves our immediate consideration;
and here our attention is first attracted by a striking characteristic,
the CELIBACY of the clergy. Let us hear how so important a peculiarity
is thought to operate by this acute observer:--
"We think, without enumerating the too well-known inconveniences of
their present state, that if the priest is to advise the family, it
is good for him to know what a family is; that as a married man (or
a widower, which would be still better,) of a mature age and
experience, one who has loved and suffered, and whom domestic
affections have enlightened upon the mysteries of moral life, which
are not to be learned by guessing, he would possess at the same
time more affection, and more wisdom.
* * * * *
"Why torment a blind man by speaking to him of colours? He answers
vaguely; occasionally he may guess pretty nearly; but how can it be
helped? he cannot see.
"And do not think that the feelings of the heart can be guessed at
more easily. A man without wife or child might study the mysterious
working of a family in books and the world for ten thousand years
without ever knowing one word about them. Look at these men: it is
neither time, opportunity nor facility, that they lack to acquire
knowledge; they pass their lives with women who tell them more than
they tell their husbands; they know, and yet they are ignorant;
they know all a woman's acts and thoughts, but they are ignorant
precisely of what is the best and most intimate part of her
character, and the very essence of her being. They hardly
understand her as a lover, (of God or man,) still less as a wife,
and not at all as a mother. Nothing is more painful than to see
them sitting down awkwardly by the side of a woman to caress her
child; their manner towards it is that of flatterers or
courtiers--anything but that of a father.
"What I pity the most in the man condemned to celibacy, is not only
the privation of the sweetest joys of the heart, but that a
thousand objects of the natural and moral world are, and ever will
be, a dead letter to him. Many have thought, by living apart, to
dedicate their lives to science; but the reverse is the case. In
such a morose and crippled life, science is never fathomed; it may
be varied, and superficially immense; but it escapes--for it will
not reside there. Celibacy gives a restless activity to researches,
intrigues, and business--a sort of huntsman's eagerness--a
sharpness in the subtilties of school-divinity and disputation:
this is at least the effect it had in its prime. If it makes the
senses keen and liable to temptation, certainly it does not soften
the heart. Our terrorists in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
were monks. Monastic prisons were always the most cruel. A life
systematically negative--a life without its functions--developes in
man instincts that are hostile to life; he who suffers is willing
to make others suffer. The harmonious and fertile parts of our
nature, which on the one hand incline to goodness, and on the other
to genius and high invention, can hardly ever withstand this
partial suicide.
* * * * *
"I have never been insensible either to the humiliation of the
church, or to the sufferings of the priest. I have them all
present, both before my imagination and in my heart. I have
followed this unfortunate man in the career of privations, and in
the miserable life into which he is dragged by the hand of a
hypocritical authority. And in his loneliness, on his cold and
melancholy hearth, where he sometimes weeps at night, let him
remember that a man has often wept with him, and that I am that
man."
We partly know the object and origin of the middle age institution of
celibacy among the clergy. It was intended to check the tendency to
secularize benefices. It was adapted to the condition of a church
militant. It might do good, or at least it could do little harm, where
aged and self-mortified men were the occupants of the office. But a
youthful priesthood, established in all the comforts or the luxuries of
a state endowment, moving and officiating in a sphere where leisure and
refinement give an impulse to the heart and fancy, and yet condemned to
a renunciation of all the charities of family union, of all the
affections of a lover, a husband, a father--how unnatural a position is
this, how detrimental to usefulness, how dangerous to virtue! Supposing,
even, that the vow is kept in its spirit, and perhaps its violation is
not the greatest imaginable mischief, what must be the effect of such
solitary seclusion on ordinary minds! What power shall protect the mass
of the profession on an envious sourness of heart at the sight of that
happiness in others, which in a moment, it may be of rashness, they have
relinquished for themselves. "Croire qu'un voeu, quelques prieres, une
robe noire sur le dos, vont vous delivrer de la chair, et vous faire un
pur esprit, n'est-ce pas chose puerile?" We hope and are sure it is not
often so; but can we say that sometimes the dark and deserted spirit of
the priest may not look on the happiness of families with an approach to
the feelings of the Evil One, when gazing at our First Parents in their
state of innocence?--
"Sight hateful! sight tormenting! thus these two
Emparadised in one another's arms--While I--"
But this is not all. Thus doomed to the dreary isolation of a _manque_
and mutilated life, yet, in the midst of his privations, retaining his
natural passions, his longings of the heart and affections, the Romish
priest is employed in no ordinary task of clerical occupation or
superintendence--in preaching merely or in prayer--in the visitation of
the sick and afflicted. The CONFESSIONAL is added to his duties, as if
on purpose to enhance the misery of his condition, and the mischief of
his influence. And with whom is the confessional chiefly conversant? The
male penitent, we presume, is content with a very general acknowledgment
of his errors, and seldom indulges in great outpourings of the spirit,
or would submit to any stretch of authority over his conscience or
conduct. But the softer sex, whose own tenderness of heart, and whose
power over the hearts of others, make all converse with them so potent
for good or for harm--maidens, and wives in the prime of life, and in
the pride of beauty, opening their souls to a confessor, revealing all
their secret emotions, their hopes, their disappointments, their fears,
their failings, submitting to his questions, and hanging upon his words
of acquittal or condemnation; surely this is a subject of contemplation
full of awful interest, and on which it is impossible to be at ease
where the mysterious intercourse is without a witness and without a
check--but the consciences of two frail and fallible human beings. Well
may we say with Michelet, that under such a system the priest ought to
be truly a ~presbyteros~, "a man who has seen, learned, and
suffered much." A young priest as a father-confessor is not merely "a
nonsensical contradiction," but a snare and a source of peril both to
himself and his penitents.
The pomp of Popery gives its clergy sufficient aids to their influence
by other means.
"The priest takes advantage of every thing that is calculated to
make him be considered as a man apart--of his dress, his position,
his mysterious church, that invests the most vulgar with a poetical
gleam.
* * * * *
"What an immense place is this church, and what an immense host
must inhabit this wonderful dwelling! Optical delusion adds still
more to the effect. Every proportion changes. The eye is deceived
and deceives itself, at the same time, with these sublime lights
and deepening shades, all calculated to increase the illusion. The
man whom in the street you judged, by his surly look, to be a
village schoolmaster, is here a prophet. He is transformed by this
majestic framework; his heaviness becomes strength and majesty; his
voice has formidable echoes. Women and children tremble and are
afraid.
* * * * *
"Do you see that solemn figure, adorned with all the gold and
purple of his pontifical dress, ascending, with the thought, the
prayer of a multitude of ten thousand men, the triumphal steps in
the choir of St Denis? Do you see him still, above all that
kneeling mass, hovering as high as the vaulted roofs, his head
reaching the capitals, and lost among the winged heads of the
angels, whence he hurls his thunder? Well, it is the same man, this
terrible archangel himself, who presently descends for her, and
now, mild and gentle, goes yonder into that dark chapel, to listen
to her in the languid hours of the afternoon! Delightful hour of
tumultuous, but tender sensations! (Why does the heart palpitate so
strongly here?) How dark the church becomes! Yet it is not late.
The great rose-window over the portal glitters with the setting
sun. But it is quite another thing in the choir; dark shadows
envelope it, and beyond is obscurity. One thing astounds and almost
frightens us, however far we may be, which is the mysterious old
painted glass, at the farthest end of the church, on which the
design is no longer distinguishable, twinkling in the shade, like
an illegible magic scroll of unknown characters. The chapel is not
less dark on that account; you can no longer discern the ornaments
and delicate moulding entwined in the vaulted roof; the shadow
deepening blends and confounds the outlines. But, as if this chapel
were not dark enough, it contains, in a retired corner, a narrow
recess of dark oak, where that man, all emotion, and that trembling
woman, so close to each other, are whispering together about the
love of God."
The details of a priest's education for the confessional office are
necessarily deplorable. We blame not so much the men as the system. Yet
books, apparently, are continued among the preparations for this duty,
which might well be dispensed with as wholly unsuited to the age. We
believe that Sanchez was a man of holy life, though his purity, after
the analogy of one of Swift's paradoxes, left him a man of impure ideas;
and no one was ever forced by dire necessity to read his book without
disgust and dismay. It may be good for the students of medicine to
penetrate into every form in which bodily disease can show itself; but
the pathology of the mind thus hideously represented is degrading even
to the observer.
"A worthy parish priest has often told me that the sore part of his
profession, that which filled him with despair, and his life with
torment, was the confession.
"The studies with which they prepare for it in the seminaries are
such as entirely ruin the disposition, weaken the body, and
enervate and defile the soul.
"Lay education, without making any pretension to an extraordinary
degree of purity, and though the pupils it forms will, one day,
enjoy public life, takes, however, especial care to keep from the
eyes of youth the glowing descriptions that excite the passions.
"Ecclesiastical education, on the contrary, which pretends to form
men superior to man, pure virgin minds, angels, fixes precisely the
attention of its pupils upon things that are to be for ever
forbidden them, and gives them for subjects of study terrible
temptations, such as would make all the saints run the risk of
damnation. Their printed books have been quoted, but not so their
copy-books, by which they complete the two last years of seminary
education: these copy-books contain things that the most audacious
have never dared to publish.
* * * * *
"This surprising imprudence proceeded originally from the very
scholastic supposition, that the body and soul could be perfectly
well kept apart."
What is the influence by which the power of the confessor is converted
into that of the director? It is done in the usual way--by the continual
repetition of the same process for a length of time. Habit is the
insidious enemy that, ere it seems to assail, has already conquered and
led captive.
"Stand at this window every day, at a certain hour in the
afternoon. You will see a pale man pass down the street, with his
eyes cast on the ground, and always following the same line of
pavement next the houses. Where he set his foot yesterday, there he
does to-day, and there he will to-morrow; he would wear out the
pavement if it was never renewed. And by this same street he goes
to the same house, ascends to the same story, and in the same
cabinet speaks to the same person. He speaks of the same things,
and his manner seems the same. The person who listens to him sees
no difference between yesterday and to-day; gentle uniformity, as
serene as an infant's sleep, whose breathing raises its chest at
equal intervals with the same soft sounds.
"You think that nothing changes in this monotonous equality; that
all these days are the same. You are mistaken; you have _perceived_
nothing, yet every day there is a change, slight, it is true, and
imperceptible, which the person, himself changed by little and
little, does not remark.
"It is like a dream in a bark. What distance have you come whilst
you were dreaming? Who can tell? Thus you go on, without seeming to
move--still, and yet rapidly. Once out of the river, or canal, you
soon find yourself at sea; the uniform immensity in which you now
are, will inform you still less of the distance you go. Time and
place are equally uncertain; no sure point to occupy attention; and
attention itself is gone. The reverie is profound, and becomes more
and more so--an ocean of dreams upon the smooth ocean of waters.
"A pleasant state, in which every thing becomes insensible, even
gentleness itself. Is it death, or is it life? To distinguish, we
require attention, and we should awake from our dream.--No, let it
go on, whatever it may be that carried me along with it, whether it
lead me to life or death.
"Alas! 'tis habit! that gently-sloping, formidable abyss, into
which we slide so easily! we may say every thing that is bad of it,
and also every thing that is good, and it will be always true."
It would be painful and repulsive to follow out the acts which the
acquisition of such spiritual ascendancy may suggest to wicked or even a
weak spirit. The result in general is the complete possession of the
whole mind of the subdued victim, which lives, and moves, and has its
being in the will and wishes of its omnipotent tyrant. This change is of
itself destructive of moral independence; but we must not conceal what
the writer before us represents as an ulterior effect, and which, even
as a possibility, must be contemplated with fear and horror.
"To be able to have all, and then abstain, is a slippery situation!
who will keep his footing on this declivity?
* * * * *
"Are you sure you possess the heart entirely, if you have not the
body? Will not physical possession give up corners of the soul,
which otherwise would remain inaccessible? Is spiritual dominion
complete, if it does not comprehend the other? The great popes seem
to have settled the question; they thought popedom implied empire;
and the pope himself, besides his sway over consciences, was king
in temporal matters.
* * * * *
"Afterwards comes the vile refinement of the Quietists:--'If the
inferior part be without sin, the superior grows proud, and pride
is the greatest sin; consequently the flesh ought to sin, in order
that the soul may remain humble; sin, producing humility, becomes a
ladder to ascend to heaven.'
"Sin!--But is it sin? (depraved devotion finds here the ancient
sophism:) _The holy by its essence_, being holiness itself, _always
sanctifies_. In the spiritual man, every thing is spirit, even what
in another is matter. If, in its superior flight, the holy should
meet with any obstacle that might draw it again towards the earth,
let the inferior part get rid of it; it does a meritorious work,
and is sanctified for it.
"Diabolical subtilty! which few avow clearly, but which many brood
over, and cherish in their most secret thoughts."
We feel assured that, as Michelet himself has said, this last act of the
dreadful drama is but seldom represented. But enough may be done,
without actual or conscious guilt, to pervert the feelings, and, above
all, to destroy the peace and the unity of the family.
"Six hundred and twenty thousand girls are brought up by nuns under
the direction of the priests. These girls will soon be women and
mothers, who, in their turn, will hand over to the priests, as far
as they are able, both their sons and their daughters.
"The mother has already succeeded as far as concerns the daughter;
by her persevering importunity, she has, at length, overcome the
father's repugnance. A man who, every evening, after the troubles
of business, and the warfare of the world, finds strife also at
home, may certainly resist for a time, but he must necessarily give
in at last; or he will be allowed neither truce, cessation, rest,
nor refuge. His own house becomes uninhabitable. His wife, having
nothing to expect at the confessional but harsh treatment as long
as she does not succeed, will wage against him every day and every
hour the war they make against her; a more gentle one, perhaps;
politely bitter, implacable, and obstinate.
"She grumbles at the fireside, is low-spirited at table, and never
opens her mouth either to speak or eat; then, at bed-time, the
inevitable repetition of the lesson she has learned, even on the
pillow. The same sound of the same bell, for ever and ever: who
could withstand it? What is to be done? Give in, or become mad!
* * * * *
"What is very singular, the father, generally, is aware that they
are bringing up his child against him. Man, you surprise me; what
do you expect then? 'Oh! she will forget it; time, marriage, and
the world, will wear away all that'. Yes, for a time, but only to
reappear; at the first disappointment in the world, it will all
return. As soon as she grows somewhat in years, she will return to
the habits of the child; the master she now has will be her master
then, whether for your contradiction, good man, or for the despair
and daily damnation of her father and husband. Then will you taste
the fruit of this education.
"Education! a mere trifle, a weak power, no doubt, which the father
may, without danger, allow his enemies to take possession of!
"To possess the mind, with all the advantage of the first
possessor! To write in this book of blank paper whatever they will!
and to write what will last for ever! And, remember well, it will
be in vain for you to write upon it hereafter; what has once been
indited, cannot be erased. Is the mystery of her young memory to
be as weak in receiving impressions, as it is strong in keeping
them. The early tracing that seemed to be effaced at twenty,
reappears at forty or sixty. It is the last and the clearest,
perhaps, that old age will retain.
* * * * *
"This is true in speaking of the school, but how much more so as
regards the church! especially in the case of the daughter, who is
more docile and timid, and certainly retains more faithfully her
early impressions. What she heard the first time in that grand
church, under those resounding roofs, and the words, pronounced
with a solemn voice by that man in black, which then frightened her
so, being addressed to _herself_;--ah! be not afraid of her ever
forgetting them. But even if she could forget them, she would be
reminded of them every week: woman is all her life at school,
finding in the confessional her school-bench, her schoolmaster, the
only man she fears, and the only one, as we have said, who, in the
present state of our manners, can threaten a woman.
"What an advantage has he in being able to take her quite young, in
the convent where they have placed her, to be the first to take in
hand her young soul, and to be the first to exercise upon her the
earliest severity, and also the earliest indulgence which is so
akin to affectionate tenderness, to be the father and friend of a
child taken so soon from her mother's arms. The confidant of her
first thoughts will long be associated with her private reveries.
He has had an especial and singular privilege which the husband may
envy: what--why, the virginity of the soul, and the first-fruits of
the will.
"This is the man of whom, young bachelors, you must ask the girl in
marriage, before you speak to her parents."
The subject is resumed in his preface to the third edition.
"It had been generally believed that two persons were sufficient
for matrimony: but this is all altered; and we have the new system,
as set forth by themselves, composed of three elements: 1st, _man_,
the strong, the violent; 2dly, _woman_, a being naturally weak;
3dly, _the priest_, born a man, and strong, but who is kind enough
to become weak, and resemble woman; and who, participating thus in
both natures, may interpose between them.
"Interpose! interfere between two persons who were to be henceforth
but one! This changes wonderfully the idea which, from the
beginning of the world, has been entertained of marriage.
"But this is not all; they avow that they do not pretend to make an
impartial interference that might favour each of the parties,
according to reason. No, they address themselves exclusively to the
wife: she it is whom they undertake to protect against her natural
protector. They offer to league with her in order to transform the
husband. If it was once firmly established that marriage, instead
of being unity in two persons, is a league of one of them with a
stranger, it would become exceedingly scarce."
It would be unjust to assume that a book written under the influence of
strong feelings contains an impartial account of actual facts; but even
the rage with which it has been received by the party attacked, is a
proof that it is true to most damaging extent. That its pictures are
exaggerated is more than possible. But it is not possible that it should
be destitute of a broad and deep foundation of melancholy reality.
What now is the remedy which this physician would prescribe for the
disease he has thus exposed? His words on this subject are well
deserving of attention.
"Marriage gives the husband a single and momentary opportunity to
become in reality the master of his wife, to withdraw her from the
influence of another, and make her his own for ever. Does he profit
by it? very rarely. He ought, in the very beginning, when he has
much influence over her, to let her participate in the activity of
his mind, his business, and ideas, initiate her in his projects,
and create an activity in her by means of his own.
"To wish and think as he does, both acting with him and suffering
with him--this is marriage. The worst that may happen is not that
she may suffer, but that she may languish and pine away, living
apart, and like a widow. How can we wonder, then, if her affection
for him be lessened? Ah, if, in the beginning, he made her his own,
by making her share his ambition, troubles, and uneasiness:--if
they had watched whole nights together, and been troubled with the
same thoughts, he would have retained her affections. Attachment
may be strengthened by grief itself; and mutual sufferings may
maintain mutual love.
* * * * *
"Unfortunately, this is not the way of the world. I have sought
every where, but in vain, for this fine exchange of thought, which
alone realizes marriage. They certainly try for a moment, in the
beginning, to communicate together, but they are soon discouraged;
the husband grows dumb, his heart, dried up with the arid influence
of interests and business, can no longer find words. At first she
is astonished and uneasy: she questions him. But questions annoy
him, and she no longer dares to speak to him. Let him be easy; the
time is coming when his wife, sitting thoughtful by the fireside,
absent in her turn, and framing her imaginary plans, will leave him
in quiet possession of his taciturnity.
* * * * *
"Let us not accuse the Jesuits, who carry on their jesuitical
trade, nor the priests, who are dangerous, restless, and violent,
only because they are unhappy.
"No, we ought rather to accuse ourselves.
"If dead men return in broad daylight, if these Gothic phantoms
haunt our streets at noonday, it is because the living have let the
spirit of life grow weak within them. How is it that these men
reappear among us, after having been buried by history with all
funereal rites, and laid by the side of other ancient orders? The
very sight of them is a solemn token, and a serious warning.
* * * * *
"Modern strength appears in the powerful liberty with which you go
on disengaging the reality from the forms, and the spirit on the
dead letter. But why do you not reveal yourself to the companion of
your life, in that which is for you your life itself? She passes
away days and years by your side, without seeing or knowing the
grandeur that is within you. If she saw you walk free, strong, and
prosperous in action and in science, she would not remain chained
down to material idolatry, and bound to the sterile letter; she
would rise to a faith far more free and pure, and you would be as
one in faith. She would preserve for you this common treasure of
religious life, where you might seek for comfort when your mind is
languid; and when your various toils, studies, and business have
weakened the vital unity within you, she would bring back your
thoughts and life to God, the true, the only unity.
"I shall not attempt to crowd a large volume into a small preface.
I shall only add one word, which at once expresses and completes my
thought.
"Man ought to nourish woman. He ought to feed spiritually (and
materially if he can) her who nourishes him with her love, her
milk, and her very life.
"Our adversaries give women bad food; but we give them none at all.
"To the women of the richer class, those who seem to be so gently
protected by their family, those brilliant ones whom people suppose
so happy, to these we give no spiritual food.
"And to the women of the poorer class, solitary, industrious, and
destitute, who try hard to gain their bread, we do not even give
our assistance to help them to find their material food.
"These women, who are or will be mothers, are left by us to fast,
(either in soul or in body,) and we are punished especially by the
generation that issues from them, for our neglecting to give them
the staff of life.
"I like to believe that good-will, generally, is not wanting--only
time and attention. People live in a hurry, and can hardly be said
to live: they follow with a huntsman's eagerness this or that petty
object, and neglect what is important.
"You, man of business or study, who are so energetic and
indefatigable, you have no time, say you, to associate your wife
with your daily progress; you leave her to her _ennui_, idle
conversations, empty sermons, and silly books; so that, falling
below herself, less than woman, even less than a child, she will
have neither moral action, influence, nor maternal authority, over
her own offspring. Well! you will have the time, as old age
advances, to try in vain to do all over again what is not done
twice, to follow in the steps of a son, who, from college to the
schools, and from thence into the world, hardly knows his family;
and who, if he travels a little, and meets you on his return, will
ask you your name. The mother alone could have made you a son; but
to do so you ought to have made her what a woman ought to be,
strengthened her with your sentiments and ideas, and nourished her
with your life."
True, O most subtle and sapient Frenchman, the remedy lies in the
direction you have pointed out; but we have doubts if you have fully
discovered its nature, or are prepared to apply it in its necessary
extent. The husband must make the wife the companion of his heart and
thoughts, of his hopes and exertions. Too long has this sympathy and
confidence been unknown in France, where your women have been but the
toys and playthings of your lighter or looser hours, and where often to
their own husbands they have not even been so much. But, as you partly
see, this is not all that is needed to be corrected. In order to be the
fitting guide and guardian of the mother of his family, the husband must
share in those higher feelings which he seeks to regulate and reclaim.
You do not hope or wish to see your wife and children devoid of
religion. But if you would not surrender them to the guidance of others
in those momentous concerns, you must care for them and conduct their
course yourself, and must learn to travel the road along which they are
to be led. The husband must become himself the priest and the director:
not by inculcating a vague theism or a cold morality, but by
establishing in his household the purity and the practice of a Christian
faith. If the domestic throne is to be upheld on its rightful
foundation, the altar must be reared by its side. The philosopher and
historian must stoop to learn from his own children that simplicity of
which they are such powerful teachers, and which will amply repay him
for all the lessons of a more mature wisdom that his learning and
experience can impart. Openly and earnestly sympathizing with their
devout impressions, he will strengthen and support by his intellectual
energies the soft and more susceptible natures of those placed under his
charge, and will thus shield them from the attempts to mislead and
inflame, to which they must inevitably be exposed if left to find their
only sympathy in extraneous influences. This re-establishment of a
patriarchal piety is one of the great boons which the true spirit of
Protestantism purchased for its followers, and which alone can protect
the weaker members of the household from becoming a prey to priestly
interference and false enthusiasm.
The book contains a touching tribute, such as able men have often paid
to the maternal affection that formed their minds:--
"Whilst writing all this, I have had in my mind a woman, whose
strong and serious mind would not have failed to support me in
these contentions; I lost her thirty years ago, (I was a child
then;) nevertheless, ever living in my memory, she follows me from
age to age.
"She suffered with me in my poverty, and was not allowed to share
in my better fortune. When young, I made her sad, and now I cannot
console her. I know not even where her bones are: I was too poor
then to buy earth to bury her!
"And yet I owe her much. I feel deeply that I am the son of woman.
Every instant, in my ideas and words (not to mention my features
and gestures,) I find again my mother in myself. It is my mother's
blood that gives me the sympathy I feel for bygone ages, and the
tender remembrance of all those who are now no more.
"What return then could I, who am myself advancing towards old age,
make her for the many things I owe her? One, for which she would
have thanked me--this protest in favour of women and mothers; and I
place it at the head of a book believed by some to be a work of
controversy. They are wrong. The longer it lives, if it should
live, the plainer will it be seen, that, in spite of polemical
emotion, it was a work of history, a work of faith, of truth, and
of sincerity;--on what, then, could I have set my heart more?"
In a spirit worthy of these feelings, the author contends strongly for
the benefits of maternal education on the character of sons. We shall
give the passage in the original, as it contains a good deal that is
French, and a great deal that is beautiful:--
"Quand on songe que la vie moyenne est si courte, qu'un si grand
nombre d'hommes meurent tout jeunes, on hesite d'abreger cette
premiere, cette meilleure epoque de la vie, ou l'enfant, libre sous
la mere, vit dans la grace et non dans la loi. Mais s'il est vrai,
comme je pense, que ce temps qu'on croit perdu est justement
l'epoque unique, precieuse, irreparable, ou, parmi les jeux
puerils, le genius sacre essaye son premier essor, la saison ou les
ailes poussent, ou l'aiglon s'essaye a voler ... Ah! de grace, ne
l'abregez pas. Ne chassez pas avant le temps cet homme nouveau du
paradis maternel; encore un jour; demain a la bonne heure, mon
Dieu! il sera bien temps; demain, il se courbera au travail, il
rampera sur son sillon.... Aujourd'hui laissez-le encore, qu'il
prenne largement la force et la vie, qu'il aspire d'un grand
coeur l'air vitale de la liberte.
"Une education trop exigeante, trop zelee, inquiete, est un danger
pour les enfants. On augmente toujours la masse d'etude et de
science, les acquisitions exterieures; l'interieur succombe.
Celui-ci n'est que latin, tel autre n'est que mathematiques. Ou est
l'homme, je vous prie? Et c'etait l'homme justement qu'aimait et
menageait la mere. C'est lui qu'elle respectait dans les ecarts de
l'enfant. Elle semblait retirer son action, sa surveillance meme,
afin qu'il agit, qu'il fut libre et fort. Mais, en meme temps, elle
l'entourait toujours comme d'un invisible embrassement.
"Il y a un peril, je le sais bien, dans cette education de l'amour.
Ce que l'amour veut et desire par-dessus tout, c'est de s'immoler,
de sacrifier tout--interets, convenances, habitudes, la vie, s'il
le faut.
"L'objet de cette immolation peut, dans son egoisme enfantin,
recevoir, comme chose due, tous les sacrifices, se laisser traiter
en idole, inerte, immobile, et devenir d'autant plus incapable
d'action qu'on agira plus pour lui.
"Danger reel, mais balance par l'ambition ardente du coeur
maternel, qui presque toujours place sur l'enfant une esperance
infinie, et brule de la realiser. Toute mere de quelque valeur a
une ferme foi, c'est que son fils doit etre un heros--dans l'action
ou dans la science, il n'importe. Tout ce qui lui a fait defaut
dans sa triste experience de ce monde, il va, lui, ce petite
enfant, le realiser. Les miseres du present sont rachetees d'avance
par ce splendide avenir: tout est miserable aujourd'hui; qu'il
grandisse, et tout sera grand. O poesie! O esperance! ou sont les
limites de la pensee maternelle? Moi, je ne suis qu'une femme; mais
voici un homme. J'ai donne un homme au monde. Une seule chose
l'embarrasse--l'enfant sera-t-il un Bonaparte, un Voltaire, ou un
Newton?
"S'il faut absolument pour cela qu'il la quitte, eh bien! qu'il
aille, qu'il s'eloigne, elle y consent; s'il faut qu'elle s'arrache
le coeur, elle s'arrachera le coeur. L'amour est capable de
tout, et d'immoler l'amour meme. Oui, qu'il parte, qu'il suive sa
grande destinee, qu'il accomplisse le beau reve qu'elle fit quand
elle le portait dans son sein, ou sur ses genoux. Et alors, chose
incroyable, cette femme craintive, qui tout-a-l'heure n'osait le
voir marcher seul sans craindre qu'il ne tombat, elle est devenue
si brave qu'elle l'envoie dans les carrieres; les plus hasardeuses,
sur mer, ou bien encore dans cette rude guerre d'Afrique. Elle
tremble, elle meurt d'inquietude, et pourtant elle persiste. Qui
peut la soutenir?--sa foi. L'enfant ne peut pas perir puis-qu'il
doit etre un heros.
"Il revient. Qu'il est change! Moi! ce fier soldat, c'est mon fils!
Parte enfant, il revient homme. Il a hate de se marier. Voila un
autre sacrifice, et qui n'est pas le moins grand. Il faut qu'il en
aime une autre; il faut que la mere, pour qui il est, et sera
toujours le premier, n'ait en lui desormais que la seconde
place--une place bien petite, helas! aux moments de passion. Alors
elle se cherche et se choisit sa rivale, elle l'aime a cause de
lui, elle la pare, elle se met a la suite, et les conduit a
l'autel, et tout ce qu'elle y demande, c'est de ne pas etre
oubliee."
A word now as to the application to our own case of the leading views
already suggested. It may be thought that the moral they most clearly
inculcate would point to our fellow countrymen in Ireland. But we own we
have a different reading of the lesson, and consider that the peculiar
perils here described must as yet have been scarcely felt among the
priesthood of a peasantry. It is in circles where there is less physical
privation and more sentimental excitement, that the evils of spiritual
fascination and domestic division are likely to arise.
Michelet has shown that "Direction," in its worst forms, did not
terminate with the seventeenth century, but has revived in his own
times. We may be allowed to follow out his opinions, and suggest that
Jesuits and Directors are not confined to the Romish faith. It behoves
even a Protestant people to be on their guard against the recurrence of
Popery and its Practices under a new aspect. The same erroneous position
may be reached from opposite directions. The same constitutional malady
may show itself in different diseases. Caesar was inaccessible to all
flattery, except that which told him he hated flatterers. And many are
most in danger of Popish error when it approaches under an
ultra-Protestant disguise. We are saved, indeed, from the evils of a
celibatary clergy. We are not exposed to that ignorance or that envy of
family life which such a institution involves. But ambition and interest
will supply the place of most other vices; and we shall be wise to watch
whether the same battle is not now being fought among ourselves, and for
the same immediate object--the occupancy of the female heart. The
pictures that have been sometimes drawn of our own doings may have only
a limited resemblance. Methodist preachers, and evangelical vicars, may
be exaggerated delineations or mere individual portraits. But still, is
it not true that the minds of our women, particularly those that are
unmarried or childless, are here, as well as in France, sought to be
engrossed, and alienated from their natural attachments, through
priestly influences and for priestly purposes? Look at any new sect
springing up among us--Look at the last example of the kind, where a
peculiar religious body is forcing or feeling its way towards an
ascendency. Powerful as it seems to be in numbers and in wealth, in what
does its main strength consist? It was frankly avowed by one of its
apostles, that the female mind alone seemed properly fitted to
appreciate its tenets. A strange confession! We doubt if Luther, Calvin,
or Knox, would have boasted of such a fact as characterizing the
religious movements to which they gave an impulse. In the purity of
female feelings we may have a security that any system that recommends
itself to women, must have a fair semblance of goodness as it appears in
their eyes: but it does not follow that their approbation is a test of
its genuine excellence, or of its actual conformity with the type which
it professes to represent. It is no novelty in the history of human
nature, that evil makes its first attempts on the weakness of woman.
Whatever is calculated strongly to excite the affections will gain the
hearts of the more susceptible sex; and, without the aid of stronger
intellects, they will run a risk of following after delusive lights, and
may be found as often to be the votaries of an amiable and attractive
error, as the assertors of a severe and sober truth. We would take leave
to affirm, that a religious creed or constitution among whose supporters
a vast preponderance of females was to be found, stood in a dubious
position, and was open to the suspicion that its principles cannot stand
examination by the standards of reason and argument. Certain it is that
this severance of the sexes by religious distinctions is an unnatural
state of society, and a serious evil. It is accompanied too, and
aggravated, by another source of danger. The system of hanging the faith
and feelings on the lips of a man, as if he were a special messenger
from heaven, is nothing else than Popery, and goes to put a pope in
every pulpit. Incessant sermons, itinerant speeches, public meetings,
devotional assemblies, form a round of excitement of a dangerous and
deceptive kind, and are little else than a species of decent
dissipation. The constant intervention of a favorite or fashionable
minister in all the exercises of religion, identifies too much the
sacred subject itself with the individual who presides over it; while
theatrical exhibitions of extemporaneous oratory and flights of fancy,
make the ordinary ritual of public worship, or the quiet practice of
private devotion, seem tame and trivial. The tendency of the evil is,
that the direct access to a communion with above is barred against the
deluded and dependent devotee, much in the same manner as the votaries
of Romanism are driven for aid to the intermediate intercession of the
Virgin and the Saints. If the devotion of women is to be maintained
mainly by the presence and personal influences of a spiritual guide and
prompter, the selection ought to be made in accordance with other
principles. The substitution of the priest or preacher in the place of
the husband or guardian, presupposes or foreshows a subversion more or
less of the most essential relations of family life. The necessity of
resorting to this means of gaining or maintaining power must degrade the
clergy who depend on it, by tempting them to arts of flattery and
excitement, and by corrupting their style of instruction to suit the
tastes merely of the more sensitive section of our species, at the
sacrifice of that due proportion of more solid and intellectual grounds
of thought and principle, which are needed to influence thoroughly the
understandings of men. The remedy here also is to be found in a similar
course of conduct to what has been formerly suggested. Let the heads of
every house do every thing in their power to call into exercise the good
sense and natural feeling of the females who are dependent upon them, at
the same time that they give its due place to that all-important subject
which is the occasion of the error. By a judicious mixture of sympathy
and sober feeling, they may counteract the extraneous influences that
are now at work, and restore peace to the family, by uniting its members
in the practice of a calm and rational piety, of which, out-of-doors,
the best assistance and safeguard are to be found in the time-tried
doctrines and discipline of our PROTESTANT ESTABLISHMENTS.
REFERENCE: MICHELET, (J.) _Du Pretre, de la Femme, de la Famille._ 1845.
_Priests, Women, and Families._ By J. MICHELET. Translated by G. COCKS.
London: Longmans.