The sun had by this time nearly penetrated through the heavy fog,
which had hung since early dawn like a vail over the valley; and
just as Nellie reached the foot of the path leading straight up
to the castle, it fairly broke through every obstacle, and cast a
gleam of wintry sunshine on her face. That face, once seen, was
not one easily to be forgotten. The features were almost, and yet
not quite, classic in their beauty, gaining in expression what
they lost in regularity; and the frequent mingling, by
intermarriages, of Celtic blood with that of her old Norman race,
had given Nellie that most especial characteristic of Irish
beauty--hair black and glossy as the raven's wing, with eyes blue
as the dark, double violet, and looking even bluer and darker
than they were by nature through the abundance of the long,
silken lashes, the same color as her hair, which fringed them.
She carried her small, beautifully-formed head with the grace and
spirit of a young antelope, and there was something of firmness
even in the elastic lightness of her movements, which gave an
idea of energy and decision not naturally to be looked for in one
so young and girlish, both as to form and feature. Her
tight-fitting robe of dark and strong material, though evidently
merely adopted for the convenience of travelling, rather set off
than detracted from the beauty of her form; and over it hung that
long, loose mantle of blue cloth which seems, time out of mind,
to have been a favorite garment with the Irish. It was fastened
at the throat by a brooch of gold, curious and valuable even then
for its evident antiquity; and with its broad, graceful folds
falling to her feet, and its hood drawn forward over her head,
and throwing her sweet, sad face somewhat into shadow, gave her
at that moment, as the sun shone down upon her, the very look and
expression of a Mater Dolorosa.
Ten minutes' rapid walking up a path, which looked more like an
irregular staircase cut through rock and turf-mould than a way
worn gradually by the pressure of men's feet, brought her to the
platform upon which the castle stood.
Moated and circumvallated toward the south and west, which were
easy of access from the flat lands beyond, Netterville was
comparatively defenceless on the side from whence Nellie now
approached it; its builders and inhabitants having evidently
considered the deep stream and valley which lay beneath as a
sufficient protection against their enemies.
The great gate stood looking eastward, and Nellie could see from
the spot where she halted that all the preparations for her
approaching journey were already almost completed. A couple of
sorry-looking nags, (garrans, the Irish would have called them,)
one with a pillion firmly fixed behind the saddle, were being led
slowly up and down in readiness for their riders.
{89}
Little sorrowful groups of the Irish dependents of the family
stood here and there upon the terraces, waiting (faithful to the
last as they ever were in those days) to give one parting glance
and one sorrowful, long farewell to their deposed chieftain and
his heiress; and a little further off, like hawks hovering around
their prey, might be seen a band of those iron-handed,
iron-hearted men in whose favor the transplantation of the
present owners of the soil had been decreed, and who had been set
there, half to watch and half to enforce departure, should
anything like evasion or resistance be attempted. Something very
like an angry frown clouded Nellie's brow as she caught sight of
these men for whose benefit she was being robbed of her
inheritance; but, unwilling to indulge such evil feelings, she
suffered her gaze to pass quietly beyond them until it rested
once more on the streamlet and valley as they stretched eastward
toward the sea. Just then some one tapped her on the shoulder,
and, turning sharply round, Nellie found herself confronted by a
woman not many years older, probably, than herself, but with a
face upon which, beautiful as it was, the early indulgence of
wild passions had stamped a look of premature decay.
"What would you with me?" said Nellie, surprised at the
familiarity of the salutation, and not in the least recognizing
the person who had been guilty of it. "I know you not. What do
you want with me?"
"Oh! little or nothing," said the other, in a harsh and taunting
voice; "little or nothing, my fair young mistress--heiress, that
has been, of the house of Netterville--only I thought that, may
be, you could say if the old mistress will be after going with
you into exile. _They_ told me she was," she added, with a
gesture toward the soldiers; "and yet, as far as I can see, only
one of the garrans has a pillion to its back. But, may be, she'll
be for going later--"
"I have already said," Nellie coldly answered, for she neither
liked the matter nor the manner of the woman's speech--"I have
already said that I know you not, and, in all likelihood, neither
does my mother. Why, therefore, do you ask the question?"
"Because I _hope_ it!" said the woman, with such a look of
hatred on her face that Nellie involuntarily recoiled a
step--"because I hope it; and then perhaps, when she is houseless
and hungry herself, she will remember that cold December night
when she drove me from her door, to sleep, for all that she
cared, under the shelter of the whin-bushes in the valley."
"If my mother, good and gentle as she is to all, ever acted as
you say she did, undoubtedly she had wise and sufficient reasons
for it," Nellie coldly answered.
"Undoubtedly--good and sufficient reasons had she, and so, for
that matter, had I too, when I put my heavy curse upon her and
all her breed," retorted the girl, with a coarse and taunting
laugh. "And see how it has come to work," she added wildly--"see
how it has come to work! Ay, ay--she'll mind it when it is too
late, I doubt not; and will think twice before she lets loose her
Saxon pride to flout a poor body for only asking a night's
shelter under her roof. Roof! she'll soon have no roof for
herself, I guess; but if ever she has one again, she'll think
better of it, I doubt not."
{90}
"She will think next time just what she thought last time--that,
so long as you lead the life you lead at present, you would not,
though you were a princess, be fitting company for the lowest
scullion in her kitchen."
Thus spoke a grave, sweet voice (not Nellie's) close at the
woman's elbow. She started, as if a wasp had stung her, and
turned toward the speaker.
A tall lady, dressed in widow's weeds, with a pale face and eyes
weary, it almost seemed, with sorrow, had approached quietly from
behind, and overhearing the girl's defiant speech, saved Nellie
the trouble of an answer by that firm yet most womanly response.
Then passing to the front, she put her arm round Nellie's waist,
as if to protect her from the very presence of the other, and
drew her away, saying:
"Come along, my daughter; the morning wears apace, and these long
delays do but embitter partings. Your grandfather is already
waiting. Remember, Nellie," she added in a faltering voice, "that
he, with his seventy years, will be almost as dependent upon your
strength and energy as you can be on his. He is my dead husband's
father, and therefore, after a long and bitter struggle with my
own heart, I have devoted you, my own and only treasure, to be
his best support and help and comfort in the long and
unseasonable journey to which the cruelty of our conquerors has
compelled him. I trust--I trust in God and his sweet Mother that
I shall see no cause later to repent me of this decision!"
Nellie drew a little closer to her mother, and a strange firmness
of expression passed over her young face as she answered quietly:
"My own unselfish mother, doubt not that I will be all--son and
daughter both in one--to him; and fear not, I do beseech you, for
our safety. What though he has seen his seventy winters, and I
but barely seventeen! We are strong and healthy, both of us; and
with clean consciences (which is more than our foes can boast of)
and good wits, I doubt not we shall reach our destination safely.
Destination!" she repeated bitterly--"ay, destination; for home,
in any sense of the word, it never can be to us."
"Say not so, my Nellie--say not so," said her mother gently.
"Home, after all, is only the place where we garner up our
treasures; and, therefore, in the spot where I may rejoin you,
however wild and desolate it otherwise shall be, _my_ heart,
at all events, will acknowledge it has found its home!"
As they thus conferred together, mother and daughter had been
moving slowly toward the castle, in absolute forgetfulness of the
woman who had originally made a third in the group, and who was
still following at a little distance. She stopped, however, on
discovering that they had no intention of making her a sharer in
their conversation, and, gazing after them with a fearful
mingling of hatred and wounded pride on her coarse, handsome
features, exclaimed aloud:
"The second time you have flouted me, good madam! Well, well, the
third is the charm, and then it will be my turn. See if I do not
make you rue it!"
Shaking her fist, as she spoke, savagely in the air, she turned
her back upon Netterville towers, and rushed down a path leading
directly to the river.
As Mrs. Netterville and her daughter approached the castle-gates,
a young man came out to meet them, and, with a look and bearing
half-way between that of an intelligent and trusted servant and a
petted follower, said hurriedly:
{91}
"My lord grows impatient, madam. He says he is ready to depart at
once, and that the sooner it is done the better. And, in troth, I
am much of the same way of thinking my own self," he added, with
that sort of grim severity which some men seem almost naturally
to assume the moment they feel themselves in danger of giving way
to grief, in the womanly fashion of tears.
Hamish was of the same age as Nellie, though he looked and felt
at least eight years older. He was her foster-brother, as we have
already said, and had been her companion in the nursery; but as
war and poverty thinned the ranks of followers attached to the
house of Netterville, he had been gradually advanced from one
post of confidence to another, until, young as he was, he united
the various duties of "bailiff" or "steward," as it would be
called in Ireland--major-domo or butler, valet, and footman, all
in his own proper person.
"True," said Mrs. Netterville, in answer to his
communication--"too true. Every moment that he lingers now will
be but a fresh barbing of the arrow. Come, my Nellie, let us
hasten to your grandfather. Would that I could persuade him to
take Hamish with him instead of Mat, who has little strength and
less wit to help you in such a journey. I should be far more at
ease, both on his account and yours, my daughter."
"Faix, madam, and it was just that same that I was thinking to
myself awhile ago," cried Hamish eagerly. "Sure, who has a better
right to go with Mistress Nellie than her own foster-brother? And
am not I strong enough, and more than willing enough to fight for
her--ay, and to die for her too, if any of them black-browed
hypocrites should dare for to cast their evil eyes upon her or
the old master?"
"Strong enough and brave enough undoubtedly you are," said
Nellie, speaking before her mother could reply, "and true-hearted
more than enough, my dear foster-brother, are you; but, if only
for that very reason, you must stay here to help and comfort my
dear mother. Bethink you, Hamish, hers is, in truth, the hardest
lot of any. We shall have but to endure the weariness of long
travel; she will have to contend with the insolence of men in
high places--yes, and perhaps even to dispute with them, day by
day, and hour by hour, for that which is her rightful due and
ours. This is man's work, not woman's; and a man, moreover,
quick-witted and fearing no one. Will you not be that man,
Hamish, to stand by her against the tyrant and oppressor, and to
act for her whenever and wherever it may be impossible for her to
act for herself?"
Hamish would have answered with a fervor equal to her own, but
Mistress Netterville prevented him by saying, with a mingling of
grief and impatience in her manner:
"It is in vain to talk to you, Nellie! You have all your
grandfather's stiff-necked notions on this subject. Nevertheless
it would have been far more to my real contentment if he and you
had yielded to my wishes, seeing that there is many a one still
left among our dependents to whom, on a pinch, I could entrust
the care both of cattle and of household gear, and but one (and
that is Hamish) to whom willingly I would confide my child."
"Now, may Heaven bless you for that very word, madam," cried
Hamish eagerly and gratefully; and then turning to Nellie, he
went on: "See now, Mistress Nellie, see now, when her ladyship
herself has said it--surely you would never think of going
contrary to her wishes!"
{92}
"Listen to me, Hamish," said Nellie, putting her hand on his
shoulder and standing still, so that her mother unconsciously
moved on without her. "Ever since that weary day when the sheriff
came here to inform us of our fate, I have had a strange,
uncomfortable foreboding that my mother will soon find herself in
even a worse plight than ours. A woman, as she will be, alone and
friendless--foemen all around her--foemen domiciled even in her
household--foemen, the worst and cruelest of any, with prayer on
their lips and hypocrisy in their hearts, and a strong sword at
their hips, ready to smite and slay, as they themselves express
it, all who oppose that wicked lusting for wealth and power which
they so blindly mistake for the promptings of a good spirit! With
us, once we have obtained our certificate from the commissioners
at Loughrea, it will be far otherwise. Each step we take in our
wild journey westward will, if, alas! it leads us further from
our friends, set, likewise, a safer distance between us and our
oppressors. Promise me, therefore, to ask no more to follow us
who go to peace and safety, but to abide quietly here, where
alone a real danger threatens. Promise me even more than this, my
foster-brother--promise to stay with her so long as ever she may
need you; and should aught of evil happen to her, which may God
avert! promise to let me know at once, that I may instantly
return and take a daughter's proper place beside her. Promise me
this, Hamish--nay, said _I promise!_--Hamish, you must
swear it!"
"I swear it! by the Mother of Heaven and her blessed Child, I
swear it!" said Hamish fervently; for he saw at once that there
was much probability in Nellie's view of the subject, though, in
his overweening anxiety for the daughter, he had hitherto
overlooked the chances of danger to the mother. "But, Christ save
us!" he added suddenly, as some wild notes of preparation reached
his experienced ear; "Christ save us, if the old women are not
going to keen for your departure as if it were a burial!"
"Oh! do not let them--do not let them; bid them stop if they
would not break our hearts!" cried Nellie, rushing on to overtake
her mother, while Hamish, in obedience to her wishes, struck
right across the terrace toward a distant group of women, among
whom, judging by their excited looks and gestures, he knew that
he should find the keeners. Long, however, ere he could reach
them, a wild cry of lamentation, taken up and prolonged until
every man, woman, and child within ear-shot had lent their voices
to swell the chorus, made him feel that he was too late; and
turning to ascertain the cause of this sudden outburst, he saw
that Lord Netterville had come forth from the castle, and was
standing at the open gates. A fine, soldierly-looking man he was,
counting over seventy years, yet in appearance not much more than
sixty, and as he stood there, pale and bare-headed, in the
presence of his people, a shout of such mingled love and
sympathy, grief and execration rent the air, that some of the
Cromwellian soldiers made an involuntary step forward, and
handled their muskets in expectation of an attack.
"Tell them to stop!" cried the old man, throwing up his arms like
one who could bear his agony no longer. "For God's sake, tell
them to stop! Let them wait, at least," he added, half bitterly,
half sorrowfully, "until, like the dead, I am out of hearing."
{93}
There was no need for Hamish to become the interpreter of his
wishes. That sudden cry of a man's irrepressible anguish had
reached the hearts of all who heard it, and a silence fell upon
the crowd--a silence more expressive of real sympathy than their
wildest lamentations could have been.
The old lord bowed, and tried to speak his thanks, but the words
died upon his lips, and he turned abruptly to take leave of his
daughter-in-law. She knelt to receive his blessing. He laid his
hand upon her head, and then, making an effort to command his
voice, said tenderly:
"Fare thee well, my best and dearest! It is the way of these
canting times to be for ever quoting Scripture, and for once I
will follow fashion. May Heaven bless and keep thee, daughter;
for a very Ruth hast thou been to me in my old age; yea, and
better than seven sons in this the day of my poverty and sorrow!"
He stooped to kiss her brow and to help her to rise, and as he
did so, he added in a whisper, meant only for the lady's ear:
"Forgive me. Mary, if I once more allude to that subject we have
so much discussed already. Are you still in the mind to send
Nellie with me? Think better of it, I entreat you. The daughter's
place should ever, to my poor thinking, be beside her mother!"
"I _have_ thought," she answered, "and I _have_
decided. If Nellie is my child, she is your grandchild as well;
and the duty which her father is no longer here to tender, it
must be her pride and joy to offer you in his stead. Moreover, my
good lord," she added, in a still lower tone, "the matter hath
another aspect. Nellie will be safer with you! This place and all
it contains is even now at the mercy of a lawless soldiery, and
therefore it is no place for her. Too well I feel that even I,
her mother, am powerless to protect her."
Lord Netterville cast a wistful glance on the fair face of his
young granddaughter, and said reluctantly:
"It may be that you are right, sweet Moll, as you ever are. Come,
then, if so it must be, give us our good-speed, and let us hasten
on our way."
He once more pressed her affectionately in his arms, then walked
straight up to his horse, and leaped almost without assistance to
the saddle. But his face flushed scarlet, and then grew deadly
pale, and as he shook his reins and settled himself in his seat,
it was evident to Hamish, who was holding his stirrup for him,
that he was struggling with all his might and main to bear
himself with a haughty semblance of indifference before the
English soldiery. After he was seated to his satisfaction, he
ventured a half glance around his people, and lifted his beaver
to salute them. But the effort was almost too much; the big tears
gathered in his eyes, and his hand shook so violently that he
could not replace his hat, which, escaping from his feeble grasp,
rolled under his horse's feet. Half a dozen children darted
forward to recover it, but Hamish had already picked it up and
given it to his master, who instantly put it on his head, saying,
in a tone of affected indifference:
"Pest on these trembling fingers which so libel the stout heart
within. This comes of wine and wassail, Hamish. Drink thou water
all thy life, good youth, if thou wouldst match a sturdy heart
with a steady hand, when thy seventy years and odd are on you."
{94}
"Faix, my lord, will I or nill I," said Hamish, trying to fall in
with the old man's humor by speaking lightly; "will I or nill I,
it seems only too likely that water will be the best part of my
wine for some time to come; leastways," he added in a lower
voice, "leastways till your honor comes back to your own again,
and broaches us a good cask of wine to celebrate the day."
"Back again! back again!" repeated Lord Netterville, shaking his
head with a mixture of grief and impatience impossible to
describe. "I tell thee, Hamish, that men never come back again
when they carry seventy years with them to exile. But where is my
granddaughter? Bid her come forth at once, for it's ill lingering
here with this weeping crowd around us, and yonder pestilent
group of fanatics marking out every mother's son among them,
doubtless, for future vengeance."
Mrs. Netterville heard this impatient cry for her only child, and
flung her arms for one last passionate embrace round Nellie's
neck. Then, firm and unfaltering to the end, she led her to
Hamish, who lifted her as reverently as if she had been an
empress (as indeed she was in his thoughts) to the pillion behind
her grandfather.
Lord Netterville barely waited until she was comfortably settled,
ere he stooped to kiss once more his daughter-in-law's uplifted
brow, after which, waving his hands toward the weeping people, he
dug his spurs deep into his horse's sides, and rode swiftly
forward.
Then, as if moved by one common impulse, every man, woman, and
child in presence there, fell down upon their knees, mingling
prayers and blessings, and howls and imprecations, as only an
Irish or an Italian crowd can do; and yet obedient to the last to
the wishes of their departing chief, it was not until he was
well-nigh out of sight that they broke out into that wild,
wailing keen, with which they were known to accompany their loved
ones to the grave. But the wind was less considerate, and as it
unluckily set that way, it bore one or two of the long, sad notes
to him in whose honor they were chanted. As they fell upon the
old exile's ears, the stoical calmness which he had hitherto
maintained forsook him utterly; the reins fell from his hands, he
bowed his head till his white locks mingled with his horse's
mane, and, "lifting up his voice," he wept as sadly and
unrestrainedly as a woman.
To Be Continued.
--------
{95}
The Church Review and Victor Cousin. [Footnote 31]
[Footnote 31: _The American Quarterly Church Review_.
New York: N. S. Richardson. January, 1868. Art. ii., "O. A.
Brownson as a Philosopher. Victor Cousin and his Philosophy.
_Catholic World_."]
The article in the _Church Review_ promises an estimate of
the character of Dr. O. A. Brownson as a philosopher; but what it
says has really no relation to that gentleman, and is simply an
attempt, not very successful, nor very brilliant indeed, to
vindicate M. Cousin's philosophy from the unfavorable judgment we
pronounced on it, in the magazine of last June. Dr. Brownson is
not the editor, nor one of the editors, of _The Catholic
World_; the article in question was signed by no name, was
impersonal, and the _Review_ has no authority for charging
its authorship to any one but ourselves, or for holding any but
ourselves responsible for its merits or demerits. When the name
of a writer is signed to an article, he should be held answerable
for its contents; but when it is not, the magazine in which it
appears is alone responsible. According to this rule, we hold the
_Church Review_ answerable for its "rasping" article against
ours.
The main purpose of the reviewer seems to be to prove that we
wrote in nearly entire ignorance of M. Cousin's philosophy, and
to vindicate it from the very grave charges we urged against it.
As to our ignorance, as well as his knowledge, that must speak
for itself; but we can say sincerely that we should be most happy
to be proved to have been in the wrong, and to see Cousin's
philosophy cleared from the charge of being unscientific,
rationalistic, pantheistic, or repugnant to Christianity and the
church. One great name would be erased from the list of our
adversaries, and their number would be so much lessened. We
should count it a great service to the cause which is so dear to
us, if the _Church Review_ could succeed in proving that the
errors we laid to his charge are founded only in our ignorance or
philosophical ineptness, and that his system is entirely free
from them. But though it talks largely against us, assumes a high
tone, and makes strong assertions and bold denials, we cannot
discover that it has effected anything, except the exhibition of
itself in an unenviable light. It has told us nothing of Cousin
or his philosophy not to be found in our article, and has not in
a single instance convicted us of ignorance, malice,
misstatement, misrepresentation, or even inexactness. This we
shall proceed now to show, briefly as we can, but at greater
length, perhaps, than its crude statements are worth.
The principal charges against us are:
1. We said M. Cousin called his philosophy eclecticism;
2. We wrongly denied scepticism to be a system of philosophy;
3. Showed our ignorance of Cousin's doctrine in saying it
remained in psychology, never attained to the objective, or
rose to ontology;
4. Misstated his doctrine of substance and cause;
5. Falsely denied that he admits a nexus between the creative
substance and the created existence;
6. Falsely asserted that he holds creation
to be necessary;
7. Wrongly and ignorantly accused him of Pantheism;
8. Asserted that he had but little knowledge of Catholic
theology;
9. Accused him of denying the necessity of language to thought.
{96}
In preferring these charges against M. Cousin's philosophy, we
have shown our ignorance of his real doctrine, our contempt for
his express declarations, and our philosophical incapacity, and
the reviewer thinks one may search in vain through any number of
magazine articles of equal length, for one more full of errors
and fallacies than ours. This is bad, and, if true, not at all to
our credit. We shall not say as much of his article, for that
would not be courteous, and instead of saying it, prefer to let
him prove it. We objected that M. Cousin assuming that to the
operation of reason no objective reality is necessary, can never,
on his system, establish such reality; the reviewer, p. 541,
gravely asserts that we ourselves hold, that to the operations of
reason no objective reality is necessary, and can never be
established! This is charming. But are these charges true? We
propose to take them up _seriatim_, and examine the
reviewer's proofs.
1. We said M. Cousin called his philosophical system eclecticism.
To this the reviewer replies:
"'Eclecticism can never be a philosophy;' making, among other
arguments, the pertinent inquiry: 'How, if you know not the
truth in its unity and integrity beforehand, are you, in
studying those several systems, to determine which is the part
of truth and which of error?'
"We beg his pardon, but M. Cousin never called his
philosophical system Eclecticism. In the introduction to the
_Vrai, Beau, et Bien_, he writes:
"'One word as to an opinion too much accredited. Some persons
persist in representing eclecticism as the doctrine to which
they would attach my name. I declare, then, that eclecticism
is, undoubtedly, very dear to me, for it is in my eyes the
light of the history of philosophy; but the fire which supplies
this light is elsewhere. Eclecticism is one of the most
important and useful applications of the philosophy I profess,
but it is not its principle. My true doctrine, my true flag, is
spiritualism; that philosophy, as stable as it is generous,
which began with Socrates and Plato, which the gospel spread
abroad in the world, and which Descartes placed under the
severe forms of modern thought'
"And the principles of this philosophy supply the touchstone
with which to try 'those several systems, and to determine
which is the part of truth and which of error.' Eclecticism, in
Cousin's view of it, as one might have discovered who had
'studied his works with some care,' is something more than a
blind syncretism, destitute of principles, or a fumbling among
conflicting systems to pick out such theories as please us."
If M. Cousin never called his philosophical system eclecticism,
why did he defend it from the objections brought on against it,
that, i. Eclecticism is a syncretism--all systems mingled
together; 2. Eclecticism approves of everything, the true and the
false, the good and the bad; 3. Eclecticism is fatalism; 4.
Eclecticism is the absence of all system? Why did he not say at
once that he did not profess eclecticism, instead of saying and
endeavoring to prove that the eclectic method is at once
philosophical and historical? [Footnote 32]
[Footnote 32: See _Fragments Philosophiques_, t i. pp.
39-42.]
Everybody knows that he professed eclecticism and defended it. As
a method, do you say? Be it so. Does he not maintain, from first
to last, that a philosopher's whole system is in his method? Does
he not say, "Given a philosopher's method, we can foretell his
whole system"? And is not his whole course of the history of
philosophy based on this assumption? We wrote our article for
those who knew Cousin's writings, not for those who knew them
not. There is nothing in the passage quoted from the reviewer,
quoted from Cousin, that contradicts what we said. We did not say
that he always called philosophy eclecticism, or pretend that it
was the principle of his system. We said:
{97}
"There is no doubt that all schools, as all sects, have their
part of truth, as well as their part of error; for the human
mind cannot embrace pure, unmixed error any more than the will
can pure, unmixed evil; but the eclectic method is not the
method of constructing true philosophy any more than it is the
method of constructing true Christian theology. The Catholic
acknowledges willingly the truth which the several sects hold;
but he does not derive it from them, nor arrive at it by
studying their systems. He holds it independently of them; and
having it already in its unity and integrity, he is able, in
studying them, to distinguish what they have that is true from
the errors they mix up with it. It must be the same with the
philosopher. _M. Cousin was not unaware of this, and he
finally asserted eclecticism rather as a method of historical
verification, than as the real and original method of
constructing philosophy_. The name was therefore unhappily
chosen, and is now seldom heard." (_Catholic World_, p.
335.)
Had the reviewer read this passage, he would have seen that we
were aware of the fact that latterly Cousin ceased to profess
eclecticism save as a method of verification; and if he had read
our article through, he would have seen that we were aware that
he held spiritualism to be the principle of his system, and that
we criticised it as such.
2. Cousin counts scepticism as a system of philosophy. We object,
and ask very pertinently, since he holds every system has a
truth, and truth is always something affirmative, positive,
"What, then, is the truth of scepticism, which is a system of
pure negation, and not only affirms nothing, but denies that any
thing can be affirmed?" Will the reviewer answer the question?
The reviewer, of course, finds us in the wrong. Here is his
reply:
"In the history of the progress of the human mind, the phase of
scepticism is not to be overlooked. At different periods it has
occurred, to wield a strong, sometimes a controlling, often a
salutary, influence over the thought of an age. Its work, it is
true, is destructive, and not constructive; but not the less as
a check and restraint upon fanciful speculation, and the
establishment of unsound hypotheses, it has its _raison
d'être_, and contributes, in its way, to the advancement of
truth. Nor can the works of Sextus, Pyrrho, Glanvil, Montaigne,
Gassendi, or Hume be considered less 'systematic' than those of
any dogmatist, merely from their being 'systems of pure
negation.'" (P. 533.)
That it is sometimes reasonable and salutary to doubt, as if the
reviewer should doubt his extraordinary genius as a philosopher,
we readily admit; but what salutary influence has ever been
exerted on science or morals by any so-called system of
scepticism, which denies the possibility of science, and renders
the binding nature of virtue uncertain, we have never yet been
able to ascertain. Moreover, a system of pure negation is simply
no system at all, for it has no principle and affirms nothing. A
sceptical turn of mind is as undesirable as a credulous mind.
That the persons named, of whom only one, Pyrrho, professed
universal scepticism, and perhaps even he carried his scepticism
no farther than to doubt the reality of matter, may have rendered
some service to the cause of truth, as the drunken helotae
promoted temperance among the Spartan youth, is possible; but
they have done it by the truth they asserted, not by the doubt
they disseminated. There is, moreover, a great difference between
doubting, or suspending our judgment where we are ignorant or
where our knowledge is incomplete, and erecting doubt into the
principle of a system which assumes all knowledge to be
impossible, and that certainty is nowhere attained or attainable.
It seems, we confess, a little odd to find a Church Review taking
up the defence of scepticism.
{98}
3. We assert in our article that M. Cousin, though he professes
to come out of the sphere of psychology, and to rise legitimately
to ontology, remains always there; and, in point of fact, the
ontology he asserts is only an abstraction or generalization of
psychological facts. The reviewer is almost shocked at this, and
is "tempted to think that the time" we claim to have spent in
studying the works of Cousin with some care "might have been
better employed in the acquisition of some useful knowledge more
within the reach of our 'understanding.'" It is possible. But
what has he to allege against what we asserted, and think we
proved? Nothing that we can find except that Cousin professes to
attain, and perhaps believes he does attain, to real objective
existence, and, scientifically, to real ontology. But, my good
friend, that is nothing to the purpose. The question is not as to
what Cousin professes to have done, or what he has really
attempted to do, but what he has actually done. When we allege
that the being, the God asserted by Cousin, is, on his system,
his principles, and method, only an abstraction or a
generalization; you do not prove us wrong by reiterating his
assertion that it is real being, that it is the living God, for
it is, though you seem not to be aware of it, that very assertion
that is denied. We readily concede that Cousin does not
_profess_ to rise to ontology by induction from his
psychology, but we maintain that the only ontology he attains to
is simply an induction from his psychology, and therefore is, and
can be, only an abstraction or a generalization. We must here
reproduce a passage from our own article.
"What is certain, and this is all the ontologist need assert,
or, in fact, can assert, is, that ontology is neither an
induction nor a deduction from psychological data. God is not,
and cannot be, the generalization of our own souls. But it does
not follow from this that we do not think that which is God,
and that it is from thought we do and must take it. We take it
from thought and by thinking. What is objected to in the
psychologists is the assumption that thought is a purely
psychological or subjective fact, and that from this
psychological or subjective fact we can, by way of induction,
attain to ontological truth. But as we understand M. Cousin,
and we studied his works with some care thirty or thirty-five
years ago, and had the honor of his private correspondence,
this he never pretends to do. What he claims is, that in the
analysis of consciousness we detect a class of facts or ideas
which are not psychological or subjective, but really
ontological, and do actually carry us out of the region of
psychology into that of ontology. That his account of these
facts or ideas is to be accepted as correct or adequate we do
not pretend, but that he _professes_ to recognize them and
distinguish them from purely psychological facts is undeniable.
"The defect or error of M. Cousin on this point was in failing,
as we have already observed, to identify the absolute or
necessary ideas he detects and asserts with God, the only
_ens necessarium et reale_, and in failing to assert them
in their objectivity to the whole subject, and in presenting
them only as objective to the human personality. He never
succeeded in cutting himself wholly loose from the German
nonsense of a subjective-object or objective-subject, and when
he had clearly proved an idea to be objective to the reflective
reason and the human personality, he did not dare assert it to
be objective in relation to the whole subject. It was
impersonal, but might be in a certain sense subjective, as Kant
maintained with regard to the categories." (_Catholic
World_, PP. 335, 336.)
The reviewer, after snubbing us for our ignorance and ineptness,
which are very great, as we are well aware and humbly confess,
replies to us in this manner:
"And yet nothing in Cousin is clearer or more positive than
that this 'pure and sublime degree of the reason, when will,
reflection, and personality are as yet absent'--this
'intuition and spontaneous revelation, which is the primitive
mode of reason'--is objective to the whole subject in every
_possible_ sense, and is, consequently, conformed to the
objective, and a revelation of it.
"Can the critic have read Cousin's Lectures on Kant, 'thirty or
thirty-five years ago'? If so, we advise him to refresh his
memory by a re-perusal, and perhaps he may withdraw the strange
assertion that Cousin held an 'absolute idea to be impersonal,
but that it might be in a certain sense subjective, _as Kant
maintained with regard to the categories_.' 'The scepticism
of Kant,' says Cousin, [Footnote 33] 'rests on his finding the
laws of the reason to be subjective, personal to man; but here
is a mode of the reason where these same laws are, as it were,
deprived of all subjectivity--where the reason shows itself
almost entirely impersonal.
{99}
"How the critic would wish this impersonal activity to be
objective to the 'whole subject,' and not to the 'personal
only,' as if there was any greater degree of objectivity in one
case than in the other, it is not easy to see. It looks like a
distinction without a difference. The abstract and logical
distinction is apparent, but though distinct, the 'whole
subject,' and the 'human personality,' cannot be separated, so
that what is objective to one, shall not be so to the other
also. The 'whole subject' is, simply, the thinking, feeling,
willing being, which we are, as distinguished from the world
external to us. If an idea, then, is revealed to us by what is
completely foreign to us--if an act of the reason is
spontaneous and unreflective, +hat is, impersonal--what is
there that can be more objective to the subject?
"We have said, that such an act is objective to the subject in
every _possible_ sense. For we are not to forget the
conditions of the case. 'Does one wish,' says Cousin, 'in order
to believe in the objectivity and validity of the reason, that
it should cease to make its appearance in a particular
subject--in man, for instance? But then, if reason is outside
of the subject, that is, of myself, it is nothing to me. For me
to have consciousness of it, it must descend into me, it must
make itself mine, and become in this sense subjective. A reason
which is not mine, which, in itself being entirely universal,
does not incarnate itself in some manner in my consciousness,
is for me as though it did not exist. [Footnote 34]
Consequently, to wish that the reason, in order to be
trustworthy, should cease entirely to be subjective, is to
demand an impossibility.'" (Pp. 534, 535.)
[Footnote 33: Lecture viii.]
[Footnote 34: Lectures on Kant, viii.]
We have introduced this long extract in order to give our readers
a fair specimen of the reviewer's style and capacity as a
reasoner. It will be seen that the reviewer alleges, as proof
against us, what is in question--the very thing that he is to
prove. We have read Cousin's Lectures on Kant, and we know well,
and have never thought of denying, that he criticises Kant
sharply, says many admirable things against him, and professes to
reject his subjectivism; we know, also, that he holds what he
calls the impersonal reason to be objective, operating
independently of us; all this we know and so stated, we thought,
clearly enough, in our article; but we, nevertheless, maintain
that he does not make this impersonal reason really objective,
but simply independent in its operations of our personality. He
holds that reason has two modes of activity--the one personal,
the other impersonal; but he recognizes only a distinction of
modes, sometimes only a difference of degrees, making, as we have
seen, as quoted by the reviewer, the impersonal reason a sublimer
"degree" of reason than the personal. He calls the impersonal
reason the spontaneous reason, sometimes simply spontaneity. All
this is evident enough to any one at all familiar with Cousin's
philosophical writings.
But what is this reason which operates in these two modes,
impersonal and spontaneous in the one, personal and reflective in
the other? As the distinction between the personal and impersonal
is, by Cousin's own avowal, a difference simply of modes or
degrees, there can be no entitative or substantial difference
between them. They are not two different or distinct reasons, but
one and the same reason, operating in two different modes or
degrees. Now, we demand, what is this one substantive reason
operating in these two different degrees or modes? It certainly
is not an abstraction, for abstractions are nullities and cannot
operate or act at all. What, then, is it? Is it God, or is it
man? If you say it is God, then you deny reason to man, make him
a brute, unless you identify man with God.
{100}
If you say it is man, that it is a faculty of the human soul, as
Cousin certainly does say--for he makes it our faculty and only
faculty of intelligence--then you make it subjective, since
nothing is more subjective than one's own faculties. They are the
subject itself. Consequently the impersonal reason belongs as
truly to man, the subject, as the personal reason, and therefore
is not objective, as we said, to the whole subject, but at best
only to the will and the personality--what Cousin calls _le
moi_. The most distinguished of the disciples of Cousin was
Theodore Jouffroy, who, in his confessions, nearly curses Cousin
for having seduced him from his Christian faith, whose loss he so
bitterly regretted on his dying-bed, and who was, in Cousin's
judgment, as expressed in a letter to the writer of this article,
"a true philosopher." This true philosopher and favorite disciple
of Cousin illustrates the difference between the impersonal
reason and the personal by the difference between _seeing_
and _looking_, _hearing_ and _listening_, which
corresponds precisely to the difference noted by Leibnitz between
what he calls simple _perception_ and _apperception_.
In both cases it is the man who sees, hears, or perceives; but in
the latter case, the will intervenes and we not only see, but
look, not only perceive, but apperceive.
Now, it is very clear, such being the case, that Cousin does not
get out of the sphere of the subject any more than does Kant, and
all the arguments he adduces against Kant, apply equally against
himself; for he recognizes no actor in thought, or what he calls
the fact of consciousness, but the subject. The fact which he
alleges, that the impersonal reason necessitates the mind,
irresistibly controls it, is no more than Kant says of his
categories, which he resolutely maintains are forms of the
subject. Hence, as Cousin charges Kant very justly with
subjectivism and scepticism, we are equally justified in
preferring the same charges against himself. This is what we
showed in the article the reviewer is criticising, and to this he
should have replied, but, unhappily, has not. He only quotes
Cousin to the effect that, "to wish the reason, in order to be
trustworthy, should cease entirely to be subjective, is to demand
an impossibility," which only confirms what we have said.
We pursue in our article the argument still further, and add:
"Reduced to its proper character as asserted by M. Cousin,
intuition is empirical, and stands opposed not to reflection,
but to discursion, and is simply the immediate and direct
perception of the object without the intervention of any
process, more or less elaborate, of reasoning. This is, indeed,
not an unusual sense of the word, perhaps its more common
sense, but it is a sense that renders the distinction between
intuition and reflection of no importance to M. Cousin, for it
does not carry him out of the sphere of the subject, or afford
him any basis for his ontological inductions. He has still the
question as to the objectivity and reality of the ideal to
solve, and no recognized means of solving it. His ontological
conclusions, therefore, as a writer in the _Christian
Examiner_ told him as long ago as 1836, rest simply on the
credibility of reason or faith in its trustworthiness, which
can never be established, because it is assumed that, to the
operation of reason, no objective reality is necessary, since
the object, if impersonal, may, for aught that appears, be
included in the subject." (_Catholic World_, p. 338.)
We quote the reply of the reviewer to this at full length, for no
mortal man can abridge or condense it without losing its essence.
{101}
"If a man speaks thus, after a careful study of Cousin, it is
almost useless to argue with him. He either has not understood
the philosopher, or his scepticism is hopelessly obstinate.
Intuition, as asserted by Cousin, is not reduced to its proper
character, but simply misrepresented, when it is called
empirical; for it is the primitive mode of reason, and prior to
all experience. It is a revelation of the objective to the
subject, and to be a revelation must, of course, come into the
consciousness of the subject. Cousin has carefully and
repeatedly established the true character of intuition as a
disclosure to the understanding in the reason, and free from
any touch of subjectivity. _Of course, his ontological
conclusions rest on a belief in the credibility of reason, and,
of course, this credibility can never be established in a
logical way, although, metaphysically, it is abundantly
established_. One may 'assume,' to the end of time, that 'to
the operation of reason no objective reality is necessary,
since the object may, for aught that appears, be included in
the subject,' but the universal and invincible opinion of the
human race has been, and will be, to the contrary of such an
assumption.
"As firmly as Reid and Hamilton have established the doctrine
of sensible perception, and the objective existence of the
material world, has Cousin that of the objective existence of
the absolute, and, on the very same ground, the veracity of
consciousness. And the mass of mankind have lived in happy
ignorance of any necessity for such arguments. When they sowed
and reaped, and bought and sold, they never questioned the real
existence of the objects they dealt with; _nor did they, when
the idea of duty or obligation made itself felt in their souls,
dream that, 'for such an operation of reason, no objective
reality was necessary_.'
"Men have an unquestioning but unconquerable belief, that the
very idea of obligation implies _something outside of
them_, that obliges. Something other than itself it must be,
that commands the soul. Right is a reality, and duty a fact.
The philosophy, that does not come round to an enlightened and
intelligent holding of the unreflecting belief of mankind, but
separates itself from it, is worse than useless. In such wisdom
it is indeed 'folly to be wise.' And this philosophic folly
comes from insisting on a logical demonstration of what is
logically undemonstrable--of what is superior, because anterior
to reasoning. We cannot _prove_ to the understanding
truths which are the very basis and groundwork of that
understanding itself." (Pp. 536, 537.)
This speaks for itself, and concedes, virtually, all we alleged
against Cousin's system; at least it convicts us of no
misapprehension or misrepresentation of that system; and the
reviewer's sneer at our ignorance and incapacity, however much
they may enliven his style and strengthen his argument, do not
seem to have been specially called for. Yet we think both he and
M. Cousin are mistaken when they assume that to demand any other
basis for science than the credibility or faith in the
trustworthiness of reason, is to demand an impossibility, for a
science founded on faith is simply no science at all. There is
science only where the mind grasps, and appropriates, not its own
faculties only, but the object itself. The reason, personal or
impersonal, is the faculty by which we grasp it, or the light by
which we behold it; not the object in which the mental action
terminates, but the medium by which we attain to the object. If
it were otherwise, there might be faith, but not science, and
though reason might search for the object, yet it would always be
pertinent to ask, Who or what vouches for reason? Descartes
answered, The veracity of God, which, in one sense, is true, but
not in the sense alleged; for on the Cartesian theory we might
ask, what vouches for the veracity of God? The only possible
answer would be, it is reason, and we should simply traverse a
circle without making the slightest advance.
The difficulty arises from adopting the psychological method of
philosophizing, or assuming, as Descartes does in his famous
_cogito, ergo sum_, I think, therefore, I exist, that man
can think in and of himself, or without the presence and active
concurrence of that which is not himself, and which we call the
object. Intuition, on Cousin's theory, is the spontaneous
operation of reason as opposed to discursion, which is its reflex
or reflective operation, but supposes that reason suffices for
its own operation.
{102}
In his course of philosophy professed at the Faculty of Letters
in 1818, he says, in the consciousness, that is, in thought,
there are two elements, the subject and object; or, in his
barbarous dialect, _le moi et le non-moi_; but he is careful
to assert the subject as active and the object as passive. Now, a
passive object is as if it were not, and can concur in nothing
with the activity of the subject. Then, as all the activity is on
the side of the subject, the subject must be able to think in and
of itself alone. The fact that I think an existence other than
myself, on this theory, is no proof that there is really any
other existence than myself till my thought is validated, and I
have nothing but thought with which to validate thought.
The _cogito, ergo sum_ is, of course, worthless as an
argument, as has often been shown; but there is in it an
assumption not generally noted; namely, that man suffices for his
own thought, and, therefore, that man is God. God alone suffices,
or can suffice, for his own thought, and needs nothing but
himself for his thought or his science. He knows himself in
himself, and is in himself the infinite Intelligibile, and the
infinite Intelligens. He knows in himself all his works, from
beginning to end, for he has made them, and all events, for he
has decreed them. There is for him no medium of science
distinguishable from himself; for he is, as the theologians say,
the adequate object of his own intelligence. But man being a
creature, and therefore dependent for his existence, his life,
and all his operations, interior and exterior, on the support and
active concurrence of that which is not himself, does not and
cannot suffice for his thought, and he does not and cannot think
in and of himself alone, in any manner, mode, form, or degree, or
without the active presence and concurrence of the object, as
Pierre Leroux has well shown in his otherwise very objectionable
_Réfutation de l'Eclecticisme._ The object being independent
of the subject, and not supplied by the subject, must exist _a
parte rei_, since, if it did not, it could not actually concur
with the subject in the production of thought. There can arise,
therefore, to the true philosopher, no question as to the
credibility or trustworthiness of reason, the validity or
invalidity of thought. The only question for him is, Do we think?
What do we think? He who thinks, knows that he thinks, and what
he thinks, for thought is science, and who knows, knows that he
knows, and what he knows.
The difficulty which Cousin and the reviewer encounter arises
from thus placing the question of method before the question of
principles, as we showed in our former article. No such
difficulty can arise in the path of him who has settled the
question of principles--which are given, not found, or obtained
by the action of the subject without them--and follows the method
they prescribe. The error, we repeat, arises from the
psychological method, which supposes all the activity in thought
is in the subject, and supposes reason to be operative in and of
itself, or without any objective reality, which reality, on
Cousin's system, or by the psychological method, can never be
established.
The reviewer concedes that objective reality cannot be
established _in a logical way_, but maintains that there is
no need of so establishing it; for "men have an unquestioning, an
unconquerable _belief_ that the very idea of obligation
implies something outside of them." Nobody denies the belief, but
its validity is precisely the matter in question.
{103}
How do you prove the validity of the idea of obligation? But the
reviewer forgets that Cousin makes it the precise end of
philosophy to legitimate this belief, and all the universal
beliefs of mankind, and convert them from beliefs into science.
How can philosophy do this, if obliged to support itself on these
very beliefs?
The reviewer follows the last passage with a bit of philosophy of
his own; but, as it has no relevancy to the matter in hand, and
is, withal, a little too transcendental for our taste, he must
excuse us for declining to discuss it. We cannot accept it, for
we cannot accept what we do not understand, and it professes to
be above all understanding. In fact, the reviewer seems to have a
very low opinion of understanding, and no little contempt for
logic. He reminds us of a friend we once had, who said to us, one
day, that if he trusted his understanding and followed his logic
he should go to Rome; but, as neither logic nor understanding is
trustworthy or of any account, he should join the Anglican
Church, which he incontinently did, and since, we doubt not,
found himself at home. Can it be that he is the writer of the
article criticising us?
The reviewer, in favoring us with this bit of philosophy of his
own, tells us, in support of it, that Sir William Hamilton says,
"All thinking is negation." So much the worse, then, for Sir
William Hamilton. All thinking is affirmative, and pure negation
can neither think nor be thought. Every thought is a judgment,
and affirms both the subject thinking and the object thought, and
their relation to each other. This, at least sometimes, is the
doctrine of Cousin, as any one may ascertain by reading his
essays, _Du Fait de Conscience_ and _Du Premier et du
dernier Fait de Conscience_. [Footnote 35] Though even in
these essays the doctrine is mixed up with much that is
objectionable, and which leads one, after all, to doubt if the
philosopher ever clearly perceived the fact, or the bearing of
the fact, he asserted. Cousin often sails along near the coast of
truth, sometimes almost rubs his bark against it, without
perceiving it. But we hasten on.
[Footnote 35: _Fragments Philosophiques_, t. i. pp. 248,
256.]
4. We are accused of misstating Cousin's doctrine of substance
and cause. Here is our statement and the reviewer's charge:
"'M. Cousin,' continues _The Catholic World_, 'professes
to have reduced the categories of Kant and Aristotle to
two--substance and cause; but as he in fact identifies cause
with substance, declaring substance to be substance _only in
so much_ [the italics are ours] as it is cause, and cause to
be cause _only in so much_ as it is substance, he really
reduces them to the single category of substance, which you may
call, indifferently, substance or cause. But, though every
substance is intrinsically and essentially a cause, yet, as it
_may be something more_ than a cause, it is not necessary
to insist on this, and it may be admitted that he recognized
two categories.'
"What is exactly meant by these two contradictory statements it
is not easy to guess; but let Cousin speak for himself:
[Footnote 36]
[Footnote 36: VI. Lecture, Course of 1818, on the Absolute.]
"'Previous to Leibnitz, these two ideas seemed separated in
modern philosophy by an impassable barrier. He, the first to
sound the nature of the idea of substance, brought it back to
the notion of force. This was the foundation of all his
philosophy, and of what afterward became the Monadology. ...
But has Leibnitz, in identifying the notion of substance with
that of cause, presented it with justness? Certainly, substance
is revealed to us by cause; for, suppress all exercise of the
cause and force which is in ourselves, and we do not exist to
ourselves. It is, then, the idea of cause which introduces into
the mind the idea of substance. But is substance nothing more
than cause which manifests it? .... The causative power is the
essential attribute of substance; it is not substance itself.
In a word, it has seemed to us surer to hold to these two
primitive notions; distinct, though inseparably united; one,
which is the sign and manifestation of the other, this, which
is the root and foundation of that.'
{104}
"One would think this sufficiently explicit for all who are not
afflicted with the blindness that will not see." (P. 539.)
We see no self-contradiction in our statement, and no
contradiction of M. Cousin. We maintain that M. Cousin really,
though probably not intentionally or consciously, reduces the
categories of Kant and Aristotle to the single category of
substance, and prove it by the words italicized by the reviewer,
which are our translation of Cousin's own words. Cousin says, in
his own language, in a well-known passage in the first preface of
his _Fragments Philosophiques_, "Le Dieu de la conscience
n'est pas un Dieu abstrait, un roi solitaire, rélegué pardelà la
création sur le trône desert d'une éternité silencieuse, et d'une
existence absolue qui ressemble au néant même de l'existence:
c'est un Dieu à la fois vrai et réel, à la fois substance et
cause, toujours substance et toujours cause, _n'étant substance
qu'en tant que cause, et cause qu'en tant que substance_,
c'est-à-dire, étant cause absolue, un et plusieurs, éternité et
temps, espace et nombre, essence et vie, indivisibilité et
totalité, principe, fin, et milieu, au sommet de l'être et à son
plus humble degré, infini et fini, tout ensemble, triple enfin,
c'est-à-dire, à la fois Dieu, nature, et humanité. En effet,
_si Dieu n'est pas tout il n'est rien._" [Footnote 37] This
passage justifies our first statement, because Cousin calls God
substance, the one, absolute substance, besides which there is no
substance. But as our purpose, at the moment, was not so much to
show that Cousin made substance and cause identical, as it was to
show that he made substance a necessary cause, we allowed, for
reasons which he himself gives in the passage cited by the
reviewer from his course of 1818 on the Absolute, that he might
be said to distinguish them, and to have reduced the categories
to two, instead of one only, as he professes to have done. But
the reviewer hardly needs to be told that, when it is assumed
that substance is cause only on condition of causing, that is,
causing from the necessity of its own being, the effect is not
substantially distinguishable from the substance causing, and is
only a mode or affection of the causative substance itself, or,
at best, a phenomenon.
[Footnote 37: _Fragments Philosophiques_, t. i. p. 76.]
5. Accepting substance and cause as two categories, we contend
that Cousin requires a third; namely, the creative act of the
causative substance, and contingent existences, as asserted in
the ideal formula. _Ens creat existentias_. To this the
reviewer cites, from Cousin, the following passage in reply:
"In the fifth lecture of the course of 1828, M. Cousin says:
"'The two terms of this so comprehensive formula do not
constitute a dualism, in which the first term is on one side
and the second on the other, without any other connection
between them than that of being perceived at the same time by
the intelligence; so far from this, the tie which binds them is
essential. It is a connection of _generation_ which draws
the second from the first, and constantly carries it back to
it, and which, with the two terms, constitutes the _three_
integrant elements of intelligence. ... Withdraw this relation
which binds variety to unity, and you destroy the necessary
bond of the two terms of every proposition. These three terms,
distinct, but inseparable, constitute at once a triplicity and
an indivisible unity. ... Carried into Theodicy, the theory I
have explained to you is nothing less than the very foundation
of Christianity. The Christians' God is at once triple and one,
and the animadversions which rise against the doctrine I teach
ought to ascend to the Christian Trinity.'" (P. 540.)
{105}
We said in our article, "Under the head of substances he (Cousin)
ranges all that is substantial or that pertains to real and
necessary being, and under the head of cause the phenomenal or
the effects of the causative action of substance. He says he
understands, by substance, the universal and absolute substance,
the real and necessary being of the theologians; and by
phenomena, not mere modes or appearances of substance, but finite
and relative substances, and calls them phenomena only in
opposition to the one absolute substance. They are created or
produced by the causative action of substance. [Footnote 38] If
this has any real meaning, he should recognize three categories
as in the ideal formula, _Ens creat existentias_, that is,
Being, existences, or creatures, and the creative act of being,
the real nexus between substance or being and contingent
existences, for it is that which places them and binds them to
the Creator."
[Footnote 38: _Fragments Philosophiques_, t i. pp. xix.
xx.]
The passage cited by the reviewer from Cousin is brought forward,
we suppose, to show that it does recognize this third category;
but if so, what becomes of the formal statement that he has
reduced the categories to _two_, substance and cause, or, as
he sometimes says, substance or being and phenomenon? Besides,
the passage cited does not recognize the third term or category
of the formula. It asserts not the _creative_ act of being
as the _nexus_ between substance and phenomenon, the
infinite and the finite, the absolute and the relative, etc.; but
_generation_, which is a very different thing, for the
generated is consubstantial with the generator.
6. We were arguing against Cousin's doctrine, that God, being
intrinsically active, or, as Aristotle and the schoolmen say,
_actus purissimus_, most pure act, must therefore
necessarily create or produce exteriorly. In prosecuting the
argument, we anticipated an objection which, perhaps, some might
be disposed to bring from Leibnitz's definition of substance, as
a _vis activa_, and endeavored to show that, even accepting
that definition, it would make nothing in favor of the doctrine
we were refuting, and which Cousin undeniably maintains. We say,
"The doctrine that substance is essentially cause, and must, from
intrinsic necessity, cause in the sense of creating, is not
tenable. We are aware that Leibnitz, a great name in philosophy,
defines substance to be an active force, a _vis activa_, but
we do not recollect that he anywhere pretends that its activity
necessarily extends beyond itself. God is _vis activa_, if
you will, in a supereminent degree; he is essentially active, and
would be neither being nor substance if he were not; he is, as
Aristotle and the schoolmen say, most pure act; ... but nothing
in this implies that he must necessarily act _ad extra_, or
create. He acts eternally from the necessity of his own divine
nature, but not necessarily out of the circle of his infinite
being, for he is complete in himself, is in himself the plenitude
of being, and always and everywhere suffices for himself, and
therefore for his own activity. Creation, or the production of
effects exterior to himself, is not necessary to the perfection
of his activity, adds nothing to him, as it can take nothing from
him. Hence, though we cannot conceive of him without conceiving
him as infinitely, eternally, and essentially active, we can
conceive of him as absolute substance or being, without
conceiving him to be necessarily acting or creating _ad
extra_."
{106}
The reviewer says, sneeringly, "This is the most remarkable
passage in this remarkable article." He comments on it in this
manner:
"Thus appearing to accept the now exploded Leibnitzian theory,
which Cousin has combated both in its original form, and as
maintained by De Biran, our critic tries to escape from it by
this subtle distinction between the southern and south-eastern
sides of the hair. He enlarges upon it. God, according to him,
is indeed _vis activa_ in the most eminent degree, but
this does not imply that he must act _ad extra_, or
create. He acts eternally from the necessity of his nature, but
not necessarily out of the circle of his own infinite being.
Hence, though we cannot conceive of him but as infinitely and
essentially active, we can conceive of him as absolute
substance without conceiving him to be necessarily creating, or
acting _ad extra_. M. Cousin, he says, evidently confounds
the interior acts of the divine being with his exterior or
creative acts.
"We have no wish to deny that he does make such a confusion. To
one who holds that 'to the operation of reason no objective
reality is necessary, and that such reality can never be
established,' this kind of subjective activity of the will,
which seems so nearly to resemble passivity--these pure acts,
or volitions, which never pass out of the sphere of the will
into causation--may be satisfactory; but to one who believes
that God is not a scholastic abstraction--to one who worships
the 'living God' of the Scriptures--it will sound like a
pitiful jugglery with words thinly veiling a lamentable
confusion of ideas. God is a person, and he acts as a person.
The divine will is no otherwise conceivable by us than as of
the same nature as man's will; it differs from it only in the
mode of its operation--for with him this is always immediate,
and no deliberation or choice is possible--and it is as absurd
to speak of the activity of his will, the eminently active
force, never extending 'out of the circle of his own infinite
being,' as it would be to call a man eminently an active person
whose activity was all merely purpose or volition, never
passing into the creative act _ad extra_, or out of the
circle of his own finite being.
"If St. Anselm is right, that, to be _in re_ is greater
than to be _in intellectu_, then has the creature man,
according to the critic, a higher faculty than his Creator
_essentially and necessarily_ has. For his will is by
nature causative, creative, productive _ad extra_, and it
is nothing unless its activity be called forth into act
external to his personality, while the pure acts of the divine
will may remain for ever enclosed in the circle of the divine
consciousness without realizing themselves _ad extra_!"
(Pp. 540, 541.)
We do not like to tell a man to his face, especially when he
assumes the lofty airs and makes the large pretensions of our
reviewer, that he does not know what he is talking about, or
understand the ordinary terms and distinctions of the science he
professes to have mastered, for that, in our judgment, would be
uncivil; but what better is to be said of the philosopher who
sees nothing more in the distinction between the divine act _ad
intra_, whence the eternal generation of the Son and the
eternal procession of the Holy Ghost, and the divine act _ad
extra_, whence man and nature, the universe, and all things
visible and invisible, distinguishable from the one necessary,
universal, immutable, and eternal being, than in "the distinction
between the southern and south-eastern sides of the hair"? The
Episcopalian journals were right in calling the _Church
Review's_ criticism on us "racy," "rasping," "scathing;" it is
certainly astounding, such as no mortal man could foresee, or be
prepared to answer to the satisfaction of its author.
In the passage reproduced from ourselves we neither accept nor
reject the definition of substance given by Leibnitz, nor do we
say that Cousin accepts it, although he certainly favors it in
his introduction to the _Posthumous Works of Maine de
Biran_, and adduces the fact of his having adopted it in his
defence against the charge of pantheism, [Footnote 39] but simply
argue that, if any one should adopt it and urge it as an argument
for Cousin, it would be of no avail, because Leibnitz does not
pretend that substance is or must be active outside of itself, or
out of its own interior, that is, must be creative of exterior
effects. This is our argument, and it must go for what it is
worth.
[Footnote 39: _Fragments Philosophiques_, t i. p. xxi.]
{107}
We admit that in some sense God may be a _vis activa_, but
we show almost immediately that it is in the sense that he is
most pure act, that is, in the sense opposed to the _potentia
nuda_ of the schoolmen, and means that God is _in actu_
most perfect being, and that nothing in his being is potential,
in need of being filled up or actualized. When we speak of his
activity, within the circle of his own being, we refer to the
fact that he is living God, therefore, Triune, Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost. As all life is active, not passive, we mean to imply
that his life is in himself, and that he can and does eternally
and necessarily live, and in the very fulness of life in himself;
and therefore nothing is wanting to his infinite and perfect
activity and beatitude in himself, or without anything but
himself. This is so because he is Trinity, three equal persons in
one essence, and therefore he has no need of anything but
himself; nothing in his being or nature necessitates him to act
_ad extra_, that is, create existences distinct from
himself. Does the reviewer understand us now? He is an
Episcopalian, and believes, or professes to believe, in the
Trinity, and, therefore, in the eternal generation of the Son,
and the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost. Do not this
generation and this procession imply action? Action assuredly and
necessarily, and eternal action too, because they are necessary
in the very essence or being of God, and he could not be
otherwise than three persons in one God, if, _per
impossibile_, he would. The unity of essence and trinity of
persons do not depend on the divine will, but on the divine
nature. Well, is this eternal action of generation and procession
_ad intra_, or _ad extra?_ Is the distinction of three
persons a distinction _from_ God, or a distinction _in_
God? Are we here making a distinction as frivolous as that
"between the southern and south-eastern sides of a hair"? Do you
not know the importance of the distinction? Think a moment, my
good friend. If you say the distinction is a distinction
_from_ God, you deny the divine unity--assert three Gods; if
you say it is a distinction in God, you simply assert one God in
three persons, or three persons in one God, or one divine
essence. If you deny both, your God is a dead unity in himself,
not a living God.
The action of God _ad intra_ is necessary, proceeds from the
fulness of the divine nature, and the result is the generation of
the Son and the procession of the Holy Ghost. Now, can you
understand what would be the consequence, if we made the action
of God _ad extra_, or creation, proceed from the necessity
of the divine nature? The first consequence would be that
creation is God, for what proceeds from God by the necessity of
his own nature is God, as the Arian controversy long ago taught
the world. The second consequence would be that God is incomplete
in himself, and has need to operate without, in order to complete
himself, which really denies God, and therefore creation,
everything, which is really the doctrine of Cousin, namely, God
completes himself in his works. Can you understand now, dear
reviewer, why we so strenuously deny that God creates or produces
existences distinguishable from himself, through necessity?
Cousin says that God creates from the intrinsic necessity of his
own nature, that creation is necessary. You say he has retracted
the expression. Be it so.
{108}
But, with all deference, we assert that he has not retracted or
explained away his doctrine, for it runs through his whole
system; and as he nowhere makes the distinction between action
_ad intra_ and action _ad extra_, his very assertion
that God is substance only in that he is cause, and cause only in
that he is substance, implies the doctrine that God, if substance
at all, cannot but create, or manifest himself without, or
develop externally. What say we? Even the reviewer sneers at the
distinction we have made, and at the efforts of theologians to
save the freedom of God in creating. Thus, in the paragraph
immediately succeeding our last extract, he says, "But all this
quibbling comes from an ignorant terror, lest God's free-will
should be attacked." The reviewer, on the page following, admits
all we asserted, and falls himself, blindfold, as it were, into
the very error he contends we falsely charge to the account of
Cousin. "The necessity he (Cousin) speaks of is a metaphysical
necessity, which no more destroys the free-will of God, than the
metaphysical necessity of doing right, that is, obligation,
destroys man's free-will." [Footnote 40] (P. 542.)
[Footnote 40: The reviewer, misled by the evasive answer of
Cousin, supposes the objection urged against his doctrine,
that creation is necessary, is, that it destroys the
free-will of God; but that, though a grave objection, is not
the one we insisted on; the real objection is, that if God is
assumed to create from the necessity of his own nature, he is
assumed not to create at all, for what is called his creation
can be only an evolution or development of himself, and
consequently producing nothing distinguishable in substance
from himself, which is pure pantheism. Of course, all
pantheism implies fatalism, for if we deny free-will in the
cause, we must deny it in the effect; but it is not to escape
fatalism, but pantheism that Cousin's doctrine of necessary
Creation is denied, as we pointed out in our former article.]
_Metaphysical_ necessity, according to the reviewer, p. 537,
means real necessity, since he says, "Metaphysics is the science
of the real," and therefore God is under a real necessity of
creating. Yet it is to misrepresent Cousin to say that, according
to him, creation is necessary! But assume that, by
_metaphysical_, the reviewer means _moral_; then God is
under a moral necessity, that is, morally bound to create, and
consequently would sin if he did not. But we have more yet, in
the same paragraph: "A power essentially creative _cannot but
create._" Agreed. But to assert that God is essentially
creative, is to assert that he is necessary creator, and that
creation is necessary, for God cannot change his essence or belie
it in his act. But this assertion of God as essentially creative,
is precisely what we objected to in Cousin, and therefore, while
asserting that God is infinitely and essentially _active_ in
his own being, we denied that he is essentially _creative_.
He is free in his own nature to create or not, as he pleases. The
reviewer does not seem to make much progress in defending Cousin
against our criticisms.
7. That Cousin was knowingly and intentionally a pantheist, we
have never pretended, but have given it as our belief that he was
not. We do not think that he ever comprehended the essential
principle of pantheism, or foresaw all the logical consequences
of the principles he himself adopted and defended. But his
doctrine, notwithstanding all his protests to the contrary, is
undeniably pantheism, if any doctrine ever deserved to be called
by that name. It is found not here and there in an incidental
phrase, but is integral; enters into the very substance and
marrow of his thought, and pervades all his writings. We felt it
when we attempted to follow him as our master, and had the
greatest difficulty in the world to give him a non-pantheistic
sense, and never succeeded to our own satisfaction in doing it.
{109}
Cousin's pantheism follows necessarily from two doctrines that
he, from first to last, maintains. First, there is only one
substance. Second, Creation is necessary. He says in the
_Avertissement_ to the third edition of his _Philosophical
Fragments_ that he only in rare passages speaks of substance
as one, and one only, and when he does so, he uses the word, not
in its ordinary sense, but in the sense of Plato, of the most
illustrious doctors of the church, and of the Holy Scripture in
that sublime word, I AM that I AM; that is, in the sense of
eternal, necessary, and self-existent Being. But this is not the
case. The passages in which he asserts there is and can be only
one substance, are not rare, but frequent, and to understand it
in any of these passages in any but its ordinary sense, would
make him write nonsense. He repeats a hundred times that there
is, and can be, only one substance, and says, expressly, that
substance is one or there is no substance, and that relative
substances contradict and destroy the very idea of substance. He
is talking, he says in his defence, of absolute substance. Be it
so; interpret him accordingly. "Besides the one only absolute
substance, there is and can be no substance, that is, no other
one only absolute substance." Think you M. Cousin writes in that
fashion? But we fully discussed this matter in our former
article, and as the reviewer discreetly refrains from even
attempting to show that we unjustly accused him of maintaining
that there is and can be but one substance, we need not attempt
any additional proof. The second doctrine, that creation is
necessary, the reviewer concedes and asserts, "In Cousin, as we
have attempted to explain, creation is not only possible, but
NECESSARY," repeating Cousin's own words.
"As to Cousin's pantheism, if any one is disposed to believe
that the systems of Spinoza and of Cousin have anything in
common, we can only recommend to him a diligent study of both
writers, freedom from prejudice, and a distrust of his own
hastily formed opinions. It is too large a question to enter
upon here, but we would like to ask the critic how he
reconciles the two philosophers on the great question he last
considered--the creation. In Spinoza, there is no creation. The
universe is only the various modes and attributes of substance,
subsisting with it from eternity in a necessary relation. In
Cousin, creation, as we have attempted to explain, is 'not only
possible but necessary.' The relation between the universe and
the supreme Substance is not a necessary relation of substance
and attribute, but a contingent relation of cause and effect,
produced by a creative fiat." (P. 545.)
A necessitated creation is no proper creation at all. And Cousin
denies that God does or can create from nothing; says God creates
out of his own fulness, that the stuff of creation is his own
substance, and time and again resolves what he calls creation
into evolution or development, and makes the relation between the
infinite and the finite, as we have seen, not that of
_creation_, but that of _generation_, which is only
development or explication. He also denies that individuals are
substances, and says they have their substance in the one
absolute substance. Let the reviewer read the preface to the
first edition of the _Fragments_, reproduced without change
in subsequent editions, and he will find enough more passages to
the same effect, two at least in which he asserts that finite
substances, not being able to exist in themselves without
something beyond themselves, are very much like phenomena; and
his very pretension is, that he has reduced the categories of
Kant and Aristotle to two, substance or being, and phenomenon.
Now, the essential principle of pantheism is the assertion of one
only substance and the denial of all finite substances.
{110}
It is not necessary, in order to be a pantheist, to maintain that
the apparent universe is an eternal mode or attribute of the one
only substance, as Spinoza does; for pantheism may even assert
the creation of modes and phenomena, which are perishable; its
essence is in the assertion of one only substance, which is the
ground or reality of all things, as Cousin maintains, and in
denying the creation of finite substances, that can act or
operate as second causes. Cousin, in his doctrine, does not
escape pantheism, and we repeat, that he is as decided a
pantheist as was Spinoza, though not precisely of the same
school.
The reviewer says, p. 544, "We proceed to another specimen of the
critic's accuracy; 'M. Cousin says pantheism is the divinization
of nature, taken in its totality as God, But this is sheer
atheism.'" Are we wrong? Here is what Cousin says in his own
language: "Le panthéism est _proprement_ la divinisation du
tout, le grand tout donné comme Dieu, l'universe Dieu de la
plupart de mes adversaires, de Saint-Simon, par example. C'est au
fond un veritable athéisme." [Footnote 41] If he elsewhere gives
a different definition, that is the reviewer's affair, not ours.
We never pretended that Cousin never contradicts himself, or
undertook to reconcile him with himself; but the reviewer should
not be over-hasty in charging inaccuracy, misrepresentation, or
ignorance where none is evident. He may be caught himself. The
reviewer stares at us for saying Cousin's "exposition of the
Alexandrian philosophy is a marvel of misapprehension." Can the
reviewer say it is not? Has he studied that philosophy? We
repeat, it is a marvel of misapprehension, both of Christian
theology and of that philosophy itself. The Neoplatonists were
pantheists and emanationists, and Cousin says the creation they
asserted was a creation proper. Let that suffice to save us from
the scathing lash of the reviewer.
[Footnote 41: _Fragments Philosophiques_, t i. pp. 18,
19.]
8. We said, in our article, "It was a great misfortune for M.
Cousin that what little he knew of Catholic theology, caught up,
apparently, at second hand, served only to mislead him. The great
controversies on Catholic dogmas have enlightened the darkest
passages of psychology and ontology, and placed the Catholic
theologian on a vantage-ground of which they who know it not are
incapable of conceiving. Before him your Descartes, Spinozas,
Kants, Fichtes, Hegels, and Cousins dwindle into pigmies." The
reviewer replies to this:
"This is something new indeed, and we think the great Gallican
churchmen of the seventeenth century, whom Cousin understood so
intimately, and for whom he had so sincere an admiration, would
be the last to claim an exclusive vantage-ground from their
knowledge of the controversies on Catholic dogma. For these
men, alike of the Oratory and of Port Royal, were Cartesians,
and their faith was interwoven with their philosophy; it was
not in opposition to it. And they knew that that philosophy was
based upon a thorough understanding of the great 'controversies
on Catholic dogma,' which had been carried on in the schools by
laymen as well as by ecclesiastics.
"But who is the Romish theologian the critic refers to, and how
is it he makes so little use of his 'vantage-ground'? Since
Descartes brought modern philosophy into being by its final
secularization, we do not recollect any theologian so eminent
that all the great men he has named dwindle into pigmies before
him. Unless, indeed, this should take place from their being so
far out of the worthy man's sight and comprehension, as to be
'dwarfed by the distance,' as Coleridge says." (Pp. 546, 547.)
{111}
We referred to no _Romish_ theologian in particular; but if
the reviewer wants names, we give him the names of St. Augustine,
St. Gregory the Great, St. Anselm, St. Bonaventura, St. Thomas of
Aquino, Fonseca, Suarez, Malebranche, even Cardinal Gerdll, and
Gioberti, the last, in fact, a contemporary of Cousin, whose
_Considerazioni sopra le dottrine del Cousin_ prove his
immense superiority over him, and of the others named with him.
Cousin may have admired the great Gallican churchmen of the
seventeenth century, but intimately understand them as
theologians, he did not, if we may judge from his writings;
moreover, all the great churchmen of that century were not
Frenchmen. As great, if not greater, were found among Italians,
Spaniards, Poles, and Germans, though less known to the
Protestant world. Has the reviewer forgotten, or has he never
known, the great men that in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries flourished in the great religious orders, the
Dominicans, Franciscans, the Augustinians, and especially the
Jesuits--men whose learning, genius, and ability were surpassed
only by their humility and sanctity?
But we spoke not of Cousin's little knowledge of churchmen, but
of his little knowledge of Catholic theology. The reviewer here,
probably, is not a competent judge, not being himself a Catholic
theologian, and being comparatively a stranger to Catholic
theology; but we will accept even his judgment in the case.
Cousin denies that there is anything in his philosophy not in
consonance with Christianity and the church; he denies that his
philosophy impugns the dogma of the Word or the Trinity, and
challenges proof to the contrary. Yet what does the reviewer
think of Cousin's resolution of the Trinity, as cited some pages
back, in his own language, into God, nature, and humanity? He
says God is triple. _"Cest-à-dire, à la fois Dieu, nature, et
humanité."_ Is that in consonance with Catholic theology?
Then, of the Word, after having proved in his way that the ideas
of the true, the beautiful, and the good are necessary and
absolute ideas, and identified them with the impersonal reason,
and the impersonal reason with the Logos, he asks what then? Are
they God? No, gentlemen, they are not God, he answers, but the
Word of God, thus plainly denying the Word of God to be God. Does
that prove he knew intimately Catholic theology? What says the
reviewer of Cousin's doctrine of inspiration and revelation? That
doctrine is, that inspiration and revelation are the spontaneous
operations of the impersonal reason as distinguished from the
reflective operations of the personal reason, which is pure
rationalism. Is that Catholic theology, or does it indicate much
knowledge of Catholic theology, to say it is in consonance with
that theology?
In his criticism on the Alexandrians or Neoplatonists, he blames
them for representing the multiple, the finite, what they call
creation, as a fall, and for not placing them on the same line
with unity, the infinite, or God considered in himself. Is that
in accordance with Catholicity, or is it a proof of his knowledge
of Catholic theology to assert that it is, and to challenge the
world to prove the contrary? But enough. No Catholic theologian,
not dazzled by Cousin's style, or carried away by his glowing
eloquence and brilliant generalizations, can read his
philosophical works without feeling that he was no Christian
believer, and that he neither knew nor respected Catholic faith
or theology. In his own mind he reduced Catholic faith to the
primitive beliefs of the race, inspired by the impersonal reason,
and as he never contradicted these as he understood them, he
persuaded himself that his philosophy did not impugn Christianity
and the church.
{112}
9. The reviewer says:
"One more extract, by way of capping the climax. Seemingly
ignorant of Cousin's criticism upon De Bonald's now exploded
theory of language, and his exposition of De Biran's, the
critic thinks, 'He would have done well to have studied more
carefully the remarkable work of De Bonald; had he done so, he
might have seen that the reflective reason cannot operate
without language.' Has this man not read what Cousin has
written, on the origin, purpose, uses, and effects of language,
that he represents him as believing that the reflective reason
can operate without language, without signs!" (P. 547.)
If M. Cousin maintains that the reflective reason cannot operate
without language, as in some sense he does, it is in a sense
different from that in which we implied he had need to learn that
fact. We were objecting to the spiritualism--we should say
intellectism, or noeticism--which he professed, that it assumed
that we can have pure intellections. Cousin's doctrine is that,
though we apprehend the intelligible only on the occasion of some
sensible affection, yet we do apprehend it without a sensible
medium. This doctrine we denied, and maintained, in opposition,
that, being the union of soul and body, man has, and can have in
this life, no pure intellections, and that we apprehend the
intelligible, as distinguished from the sensible, only through
the medium of the sensible or of a sensible representation, as
taught by Aristotle and St. Thomas. The sensists teach that we
can apprehend only the sensible, and that our science is limited
to our sensations and inductions therefrom; the pure
transcendentalists, or pure spiritualists, assert that we can and
do apprehend immediately the noetic, or, as they say, the
spiritual; the peripatetics hold that we apprehend it, but only
through the medium of sensible representation; Cousin, in his
eclecticism, makes the sensation the occasion of the apprehension
of the intelligible, but not its medium. On his theory the
sensible is no more a medium of noetic apprehension than on that
of the transcendentalists; for the occasion of doing a thing is
very different from the medium of doing it.
Now, language is for us the sign or sensible representation of
the intelligible, and, as every thought includes the apprehension
of the intelligible, therefore to every thought language, of some
sort, is essential. The reviewer stumbles, and supposes that we
are accusing Cousin of being ignorant of what he is not ignorant,
because he supposes that we mean by reflective reason the
discursive as distinguished from the intuitive faculty of the
soul, which, if he had comprehended at all our philosophy, he
would have seen is not the case. Intuition with us is ideal, not
empirical. It is not our act, whether spontaneous or reflective,
but a divine judgment affirmed by the Creator to us, and
constituting us capable of intelligence, of reason, and
reasoning. Reflective reason is our reason, and the reflex of the
divine judgment, or the divine reason, directly and immediately
affirmed to us by the Creator in the very act of creating us. Not
only discursion, then, but what both Cousin and the reviewer call
intuition, or immediate apprehension, is an operation of the
reflective reason. Hence, to the operation of reason in the
simple, direct apprehension of the _intelligible_, as well
as in discursion or reasoning, language of some sort, as a
sensible medium, is necessary and indispensable. When the
reviewer will prove to us that Cousin held, or in any sense
admitted this, he will tell us something of Cousin that we did
not know before, and we will then give him leave to abuse us to
his heart's content.
{113}
But we have already dwelt too long on this attempt at criticism
on us in the _Church Review_--a _Review_ from which,
considering the general character of Episcopalians, we expected,
if not much profound philosophy or any very rigid logic, at least
the courtesy and fairness of the well-bred gentleman, such as we
might expect from a cultivated and polished pagan. We regret to
say that we have been disappointed. It sets out with a promise to
discuss the character of Dr. Brownson as a philosopher, and
confines itself to a criticism on an article in our magazine
without the slightest allusion to a single one of that
gentleman's avowed writings. Even supposing, which the
_Review_ has no authority for supposing, that Dr. Brownson
wrote the article on Cousin, that article was entitled to be
treated gravely and respectfully; for no man in this country can
speak with more authority on Cousin's philosophy, for no one in
this country has had more intimate relations with the author, or
was accounted by him a more trust worthy expositor of his system.
As to the reviewer's own philosophical speculations, which he now
and then obtrudes, we have, for the most part, passed them over
in silence, for they have not seemed to us to have the stuff to
bear refuting. The writer evidently has no occasion to pride
himself on his aptitude for philosophical studies, and is very
far from understanding either the merits or defects of such a man
as Victor Cousin, in every respect so immeasurably above him. We
regret that he should have undertaken the defence of the great
French philosopher, for he had little qualification for the task.
He has provoked us to render more glaring the objectionable
features of Cousin's philosophy than we wished. If he sends us a
rejoinder, we shall be obliged to render them still more glaring,
and to sustain our statements by citation of passages from his
works, book and page marked, so express, so explicit, and so
numerous, as to render it impossible for the most sceptical to
doubt the justice of our criticism.
-----------
The Tears Of Jesus.
"And Martha said: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had
not died. ... Jesus saith to her: Thy brother shall rise again.
... And Mary saith to him: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my
brother had not died. ... And Jesus wept."
DISCIPLE.
"Kind Lord,
Dost Martha's love prefer?
Cheer Mary's heavy heart likewise,
And say to her,
Thy brother once again shall rise.
{114}
"Why fall those voiceless tears
In sad reply
To her, as if thine ears
Heard not her cry?
"What opens sorrow's deep abyss
At Mary's word?
When Martha spoke, no grief like this
Thy spirit stirred."
MASTER.
"My child,
Remember what I said to her--
The elder of the twain,
When she, the busy minister,
Of Mary did complain.
"Know, they who choose the better part
And love but me alone.
Ask only that my loving heart
Shall make their griefs mine own.
"To Martha is the promise given
That Lazarus shall rise from sleep;
But Mary is the bride of heaven--
With her shall not the bridegroom weep?"
DISCIPLE.
"Kind Lord,
When breaks my heart in agony,
Dost ever shed a tear with _me_?"
MASTER.
"My Child,
Wilt all things else for me resign?
Wilt others' love for mine forego
Wilt find thy joy alone in me?
Then will I count thy griefs as mine.
And with thy tears my tears shall flow
In loving sympathy."
---------
{115}
Sister Simplicia.
"What a wet, disagreeable day it is! If papa hadn't bought the
tickets last evening, I don't believe I should have come out
to-day, even for the sake of hearing Ristori in Marie Antoinette.
She can't do better than she does in Mary Stuart, and I already
wish ourselves back in your cosy little library again; besides, I
haven't half finished looking at those curious old illuminated
books of your father's, and, as we go home to-morrow, I fear I
shan't have time, for papa has an invitation for us all this
evening."
So spoke Anita Hartridge as she and Mary Kenton took their places
in the Broadway stage on their way to a matinee at the French
Theatre. Anita's father was a Baltimore merchant. He was often in
the city buying goods, but this was the first time he had brought
his daughter with him. The two girls were warm friends. They had
been educated together, and it was not yet a year since they had
bidden adieu to the convent walls, the one to thread, motherless,
the gay mazes of Baltimore society; the other to come home as a
household angel to the father and mother, who were already
beginning to grow old. It has been a happy week, a week all too
soon coming to an end; and Mary Kenton sits thinking sadly, so
wrapped in her reveries that she does not even raise her eyes
when the stage stops to take in more passengers.
She is thinking of Anita, of her beauty and brilliancy, her
quick, flashing, Southern gayety, and yet deep, true, sympathetic
heart; and she wonders what will become of her friend, with no
mother to restrain her impulsiveness and a father who thinks only
of gratifying her lightest wish. How gladly she would share with
her her own mother's tender care; and if she could but be taken
from this whirl of amusement for a short time; but no; they
return to-morrow. Well, here they are at Union Square, and Anita
is speaking softly.
"Mary, did you ever see so beautiful a face? No, not opposite;
over there in the corner next the door--that younger Sister of
Mercy. She looks like Elizabeth of Hungary. I have been watching
her all this time, and she has never looked up once. She seems
inspired. Do you believe any one _can_ be so happy as she
looks, I mean any one who leads so self-denying a life?"
But there is no time to reply. They leave the omnibus and are
soon entranced under the magic power of the great tragedian.
"I wish I were Ristori," said Anita, as they left the theatre.
"To have her power and to be admired as she is admired; oh! that
were grand. That were a life worth living. What is it to live as
we do--to-day as yesterday, and to-morrow as to-day again--no
grand purpose; and when we die, have the world go on just the
same as before? Such lives are not worth living. I wish I could
be great as Madame de Staël, or beautiful as Madame Recamier."
"'O world! so few the years we live,
Would that the life that thou dost give
Were life indeed!'"
repeated Mary slowly; "and yet, there are other lives that I had
rather take for my model than any of these."
{116}
"Yes, I know, Mary. You would take rather the life of some saint,
St. Elizabeth herself, perhaps; you are always so good and
gentle; and Sister Agnes used to say that she knew you would come
back to her some time as a sister yourself. But I am not at all
so; I love the world, and society, and amusement, and am only
dissatisfied because I am neither so brilliant nor beautiful as I
should like to be. I feel that your ideal is the better one, but
I have not strength of character enough to live anything but a
gay, butterfly life. You know my favorite song is, 'I'd be a
butterfly,' and indeed I do wish for beauty more than anything
else in the world. And yet, after all, that face that I saw under
the plain black bonnet was of a heavenly beauty that I cannot
forget. Page's copy of the _Madonna della Seggiola_ that we
admired so much yesterday is scarcely more beautiful."
"And her life has been as beautiful as her face, they say. But
there is our stage. Let us hurry a little; mother will be waiting
dinner for us already."