Ireland. Next day a truce was agreed on and preliminaries of peace
commenced. With the "Conditions of Limerick," a dismal household word with
the peasantry of Ireland from that hour to the present, we shall not
meddle. They do not come within our scope, which merely embraces the
stirring events of the three years' campaign, our design being to present
these in a picturesque and interesting light, and in a spirit of genuine
impartiality. This being our design, we have seized on everything that
could reflect honor or credit on the chiefs of both parties, or the conduct
of the common soldiers. We have found much more rancor and want of humanity
distinguishing both parties, the military chiefs excepted, then we could
wish. These we have softened as much as truth would permit. No one reading
our sketches but will, as we hope, think better of the party whose
principles he repudiates, than he did before the perusal.
------
{134}
Original
Asperges Me.
by Richard Storrs Willis.
I
Prostrate at thy altar kneeling,
Not a thought or fault concealing,
Hear me cry with inmost feeling,
_Domine, asperges me!_
Ah! What sins I come confessing,
Since I last received thy blessing!
Yet with all this guilt oppressing,
Still I pled _asperges me!_
II
Sins of thought, of word, of action,
Many a righteous law's infraction,
Many an hour of wild distraction--
_Domine, asperges me!_
Oft I think can Christ forgive me--
With such guilt can he receive me?
What if my fond heart deceive me--
_Dare_ I plead _asperges me!_
III
Come I must, for thou dost bid me!
Ne'er for coming hast thou chid me!
From my guilt, ah! quickly rid me--
_Domine, asperges me!_
That my heavy heart grow lighter.
That my love for thee burn brighter,
That my soul than snow grow whiter,
_Domine, asperges me!_
------
{135}
From The Month.
Ancor-Viat--A New Giant City.
If any would-be discoverer of ancient monuments is envious of the laurels
of Mr. Layard and other celebrities of the same class, let him at once set
out by the overland route, and make his way as fast as he can to
Ancor-Viat. Few people have yet heard of it, but if what is said of it be
true, it must be simply the most stupendous collection of magnificent
monuments in the world. If the traveller in Central America, who, like Mr.
Stephens, quits the beaten tracks and plunges into the depths of vast
forests, is amazed at the ruins of Copan, Palenque, Uxmal, and Chichen,
with their huge truncated pyramids, palaces, corridors, and sculptured
bas-reliefs, he would, it seems, be still more surprised if he extended his
researches to the Empire of Annam, and, advancing toward the utmost
boundary of Cambodia, where it skirts Thibet, he came, mounted on an
elephant, to the gigantic temples and forests of marble pillars which mark
the site of which we speak. It was thus that a French officer in the
service of the King of Siam recently visited the spot; and the account he
has given of it may be found in the Revue de l'Architecture, and is in
great part reproduced in the Revue Contemporaine of December, 1866. No
European writer before him has ever mentioned it, and in reading his
letters we must make allowances for possible exaggeration. He is a mandarin
of the third class, and has obtained the rank of general in command of the
Siamese army. M. Perrin (for such is his name) proposes revisiting
Ancor-Viat with a complete photographic apparatus; and when he has done
this, and had given us the pleasure of examining his photographs, we shall
be better able to judge of his veracity. Meanwhile the editor of the Revue
Contemporaine is of opinion that the clearness and simplicity of his
account leaves little room for doubting its truth.
When M. Perrin first visited Ancor-Viat, he saw nothing of its ancient
splendor; for in "Indian China," as in Central America, monuments of large
dimensions and great beauty are often unknown to the people who dwell
within a few hundred yards of them. The concourse of intelligent and
wealthy travellers alone teaches ignorant natives the value of their own
surroundings. On his second journey M. Perrin's attention was directed to
the ruins by a curious circumstance. The King of Kokien pays a yearly
tribute to the King of Siam in kind, and among the articles saltpetre
figures largely. In the whole of India beyond the Ganges--in the Birman
Empire, Siam, Malacca, and Annam--the people, children-like, have a
passion for fireworks, and consequently consume a large quantity of
saltpetre. Now the excrement of bats and night-birds that haunt in great
abundance the cities of the dead furnishes, it seems, a copious supply of
this substance, and is, in fact, as fruitful in the production of squibs
and rockets as guano--the dung of Peruvian sea-birds--is in the cultivation
of corn and rye. It is collected by malefactors who work in chains, and is
dissolved in water mixed with ashes. After some days the water and ashes,
with the macerated dung strongly impregnated with ammonia, is passed
through tight sieves, and exposed in big caldrons to the action of huge
fires.
{136}
The entire substance then evaporates leaving behind it crystals of
saltpetre. The East was famous of old for the manufacture of nitre; and we
have all have noticed how it forms spontaneously on the walls of stables,
slaughter-houses, cellars, and the like, from the decomposition of animal
matter, and even from the breath and sweat of beasts.
No wonder M. Perrin was struck as a foreigner by the strange spectacle of
convicts collecting bird-dung. The birds of night have a strong affinity
for ruins, and crumbling towers and terraces are--to use an expression of
Virgil's--
"Dirarum nidis domus opportuna volucrum."
It was along the northern part of the great city of Ancor-Viat that M.
Perrin halted frequently to watch the culprits of Cambodia plying their
foul task. During six days of elephant march he travelled on without coming
to the end of the city. Here and there be penetrated into the ruins where
explorers had opened a passage. No one, he says, would believe him if he
told all be saw. The monuments, the palaces, the temples, the pillars,
stairs, and blocks of marble pass description. The circle of the ruins was
computed by the people of the country at ten or twelve leagues in diameter.
Now considering that London, with its three millions of inhabitants,
measures about eleven miles from east to west, and that Ancor-Viat by this
calculation covered about three times as much ground, there must have been
a pretty large concourse of human beings under the shadow of its colossal
halls. It may have been the capital of an empire; it may have been an
empire in itself. There, doubtless, as in the ancient cities of Mexico, the
rich and the great dwelt in spacious edifices, with gardens and groves
enclosed, while the poorer sort herded together in huts like those of the
rudest tribes of Indians. There were no parliaments and philanthropic
societies then to look after the dwellings of the poor; as space was no
object in those days, they made up for straitened accommodation at home by
plenty of spare room for building within the walls. Subaltern officers in
the British army in Ceylon, who have surveyed that island of late years,
report cities of enormous size, and covered in with jungle, as inviting
excavation. Anarajaphpoorra, they tell us, must have been larger than
London, and Polonarooa (be indulgent to the spelling, ye students of
Cingalee!) contains statues of Anak height. The recumbent Buddha in the
last of these two cities is 24 feet in length, and the Buddhist temples,
built of a kind of granite, are huge in proportion. What bullock-power and
elephant-power it must have required to move blocks of stone so unwieldy in
an age when machinery and engineering were unknown! What thews must these
Titans have had, before the time of eastern effeminacy, to build their
towers of uncemented ashlars piled up like "Pelion upon Ossa"! M. Perrin
assures us that he saw in Ancor-Viat temples in a good state of
preservation, but overrun with weeds and shrubs, which measured a league in
circuit. Pillars rose around him on every side, tall as cedars, and all in
marble. The stairs, though partly buried under the soil, still mounted much
higher than the noble flights one sees at Versailles or on the Piazza di
Spagna at Rome. The buildings in some places were as solid as if they had
been raised yesterday. According to local tradition, they are four or five
thousand years old; and yet, but for lightning and the overgrowth of
luxuriant vegetation, they would even at this day be perfect and intact.
"Oh! that I had brought a photographic apparatus with me!" exclaims this
traveller. "I assure you, whether you believe it or no, that the most
famous monuments ancient or modern which we can boast of are mere sheds
compared with what I have seen: our palaces, our basilicas, the Vatican,
Colosseum, and the like, are just dog-kennels to it, and nothing more!"
{137}
If we had never heard of the Indian cities of Central America which the
tribes are supposed to have deserted six or seven hundred years ago, when
warned by their priests of the coming of the Spaniards, we might feel
disposed to reject M. Perrin's account as no less fabulous than the travels
of Baron Munchausen. But when we follow the steps of Captain Del Rio and
Captain Du Paix, and still more those of Mr. Stephens in Chiapas and
Yucatan; when we see them working their way through dense forests in
Honduras with fire and axe, and arriving at a wall six hundred feet long
and from sixty to ninety in height, forming one side of an oblong enclosure
called the Temple, while the other three sides are formed by a succession
of pyramids and terraced walls that measure from thirty to a hundred and
forty feet in height, we are not easily repelled by any report of ancient
cities merely because the measurements in it run very high. There was a
phase in the history of civilization when half barbarous races who knew not
the use of iron, delighted in constructing lasting monuments, and made up
for beauty of detail by huge proportions, and for writing and hieroglyphics
by picture-painting. M. Perrin may be guilty of great exaggeration, but we
ought not to charge him with it too hastily. Modern research has more than
verified all that the Spaniards vaguely reported of the cities of the West,
where immense artificial mounds are crowned with stately palaces, and the
dauntless industry of former races is proved by the provision they made for
water supply in a dry and thirsty land--by the vast reservoirs for water
which have been excavated, and are found to be paved and lined with
stone--by the pits around the ponds intended to furnish supplies or water
when the upper basin was empty in the height of summer--by the wells hidden
deep in the rock, and reached by the patient water-carriers by pathways cut
in the mountain to a depth or 450 feet, and conducting them to that depth
by windings 1400 feet in length--by the long ladders, made of rough rounds
of wood and bound together with osiers, up which the Indians carried, and
still carry, on their backs from these deep sources the water requisite for
the consumption of 7,000 persons or more, according to the size of the
villages, during four months of the year--and by the subterranean chambers,
which the Indians of old probably used as granaries for maize, and which
were made, like the ingenious cisterns just spoken of, by slaves obedient
to more intelligent masters. These and similar discoveries in America add a
color of probability to the description M. Perrin has given of Ancor-Viat
in Asia. At the same time we would rather he had not forgotten his
photographic machine.
"I was anxious," he says, "to ascend to a temple that seemed tolerably
perfect. There were eleven staircases, of I know not how many stairs each,
to reach the first five only of peristyles! I began climbing at half-past
six in the morning, and at half-past seven I had barely been able to
examine two or three of the lower apartments. I was obliged to shorten my
stay, fearing that I should have to descend the stairs while the sun was
hot. All the walls are sculptured and ornamented. The first effect the
ruins produced on me was that of stupefaction. Yet I am not a man to cry
out with astonishment at trifles. The following day I went up by a winding
staircase to the top of an immense tower situated on a height, from whence
I enjoyed a good view of the surrounding remains. In hollows and parts
where one cannot penetrate there are palaces of colossal height and
grandeur. I had an excellent opera-glass, and could observe the details. An
untold store of architectural treasures was before me, stretching as far as
the frontier of Cambodia, which is ten or twelve leagues off! Just think
what Paris would be in ruins. Heaps of stones and ashlars scattered over a
surface no more than two or three leagues in diameter. Here there is on the
ground, and under the ground, marble, already hewn, enough to build after
the fashion of giants all the cities in the universe!"
{138}
This is indeed a climax; and one needs to pause and take breath before
following M. Perrin any further up his winding stairs. Can we attach any
credit to one who is so lavish in the use of words and figures? He has
evidently a supreme disregard for nice distinctions, and ordinary measures
of time and place. Marble enough in Ancor-Viat to build all the cities in
the world? _C'est un peu fort, M. Perrin._ But let us hear him to the
end. We can believe a good deal about cities excavated or still
underground, for we have seen several such with our own eyes; but credulity
itself has its limits. "I saw," M. Perrin continues, "the leg of a statue
the great toe of which measured eleven times my fowling-piece in the
length. It is in marble, like the rest of the figure; there is no other
stones here used for building, except colored stones, which are employed as
borders or for the eyes of statues. There are pedestals with flights of
steps, of which the crowning images have disappeared, as high and as large
as St. Germain l'Auxerrois. Fancy octagonal pyramids cut short at half
their proper height--all in marble, recollect. Who the devil raised all
this? If it was some famous dynasty, it cannot be very well satisfied with
the oblivion into which it has fallen, in spite of its sumptuous monuments.
What are the ruins of Palenque, or even Thebes with its hundred gates, or
of Babylon, compared with this unknown city without history and without
name?"
Now, setting aside Thebes and Babylon, it may be well to compare what we
really know of Palenque with the general's singular account of Ancor-Viat.
It is more than a hundred years since the Spaniards first heard of it from
the Indians, and the reports of its extent differ as widely now as they did
then. The natives say the ruins cover an area of sixty miles; Du Paix and
Del Rio seven leagues; and Waldeck about three miles. But though travellers
are not agreed as to their extent, they are quite unanimous as to the
remains themselves. All admit that they are "unique, extraordinary, and
mournfully beautiful." The largest building is on a mound forty feet high,
raised by the hands of man, originally faced with stones, and measuring 310
feet by 260 at the base. It is richly adorned with paintings in the style
proper to the ancient cities of Mexico; the corridors are sumptuous, the
flights of steps broad, and the figures of giant proportions, uncouth and
expressive of suffering. The tallest statue, however, that has been
discovered is only ten feet six inches high, by which it appears that the
stone figures of Mexican Indians were dwarfish compared with the huge
heroes and idols of the East. M. Perrin had been questioned about the
existence of religious monuments in the eastern Peninsula of India, and the
answers which he returned are as follows: "Sacred stones are found here.
Some of them are simply rocks which at some period or other were
sufficiently soft to receive very clearly the impressions of the feet of
men and animals. Of this sort the one most highly venerated is that of the
Buddhist monastery at Phrabat. An immense number of pilgrims visit it
annually. Others are enormous monoliths raised on socles roughly quarried.
If there ever were any inscriptions, they have been effaced. I have also
seen here gateways or arches of triumph built of huge stones laid one upon
another. What giants or what machines moved these immense blocks? They
stand alone. Not a vestige of any building is near them. Sometimes there
are not even any quarries to be found within a great distance. I saw two
such monuments as those I now speak of among the Stiengs, when I conducted
a military expedition against them. They stood in the midst of marshy and
almost impassable forests, and had certainly never before been seen by any
European.
{139}
Some of the people of Laos had spoken to me of these remains, but I very
nearly missed seeing them. The difficulties in the way of getting to them
were so great that at first I did not think they would be worth the
trouble. But they amply repaid me. I examined them most carefully with a
powerful glass. They did not appear to bear any inscriptions. Even the
luxuriant vegetation of the tropics had been unable to disjoint them. What
roots could rend asunder these stones laid one upon the other without
cement, and raise so heavy a weight? The side-supports were, I believe, as
high as the top-stone laid across was long. The soil is evidently raised by
the vigorous growth that marks the vegetation of these forests. These
remains must rest on monolith socles or on the rock, or on gigantic
foundations; for the ground on the surface is so soft and wet that you may
easily thrust a cane into it up to the handle."
When M. Perrin inquired of the natives who reared these monuments, they
replied the Gai; and by the Gai they meant some barbarous white men, who
came from the land of perpetual snow, who were as tall as three Siamese,
and whose fingers and toes, though articulated, were not separate from one
another. They rode on horses double the size of those now seen, but bones
of which are often found in the earth. Impious men were these Gai; they
hunted elephants, and feasted on their flesh; they offered sacrifices of
blood to their gods. Chinese merchants informed the general that monuments
of the same huge description are to be found in the north and west of
China, and that the people there call them "giants' stones." The traveller
in Central America is, we know, sometimes amazed to find monstrous blocks
evidently hewn by the hands of men, yet hundreds of leagues distant from
any calcareous strata. Men in the neighborhood who are learned in other
matters are quite at fault when their opinion respecting them is asked.
Some will tell you that the nature of the soil is changed from what it was
before the conquest, and others that the Incas had means of transport
unknown to us. Probably there are quarries of granite under the surface of
the savannas; but how the Indians could extract the stone without gunpowder
or machinery is a problem we are unable to solve.
Important discoveries are not always due to scientific and discerning men.
The earliest accounts of anything new and surprising are likely to be
overdrawn; but they are not the less valuable from this circumstance. Their
very exaggeration may stimulate inquiry, and thus be an advantage rather
than otherwise in the outset. It was a poor Tungusian fisherman who
discovered the most perfect specimen of the mammoth near the mouth of the
river Lena, nearly seventy years ago, and his sale of the creature's tusks
for fifty rubles led to an accurate knowledge of the monster's structure
and habits, as well as to a great extension of the trade in ivory derived
from mammoths' tusks. General Perrin's testimony appears to us well worthy
of attention, in spite of its being highly colored here and there. It may,
on the whole, fall far short of the reality, and may lead to the solution
of questions of importance in oriental history.
--------
Original
On the Planting of the Cross.
Dig deep: the tree will surely grow,
And spread its branches far and wide;
No tree had e'er such fruit to show,
Nor with its shade so much to hide.
--------
{140}
Miscellany.
_The Cathedral Library at Cologne._--In the year 1794, when the French
Revolutionary army advanced to the Rhine, the valuable library attached to
the Cologne Cathedral was conveyed for safety to Darmstadt. Among its
treasures are one hundred and ninety volumes, chiefly in manuscript. A
careful catalogue of them was made so far back as 1752, by Harzheim, a
learned Jesuit, under the title of "An Historical and Critical Catalogue of
the Manuscripts of the Library of the Metropolitan Church of Cologne." This
valuable collection dates as far back as Charlemagne. It was commenced by
Hildebold, Archbishop of Cologne, and archchancellor of that monarch, in
the year 783. It was considerably increased by gifts from Pope Leo the
Third to the Emperor Charles in 804. The Archbishops Heribertus, Evergerus,
Hanno, and their successors, continued the collection by the purchase of
rare manuscripts and copies of ancient parchments. In the year 1568,
Hiltorp, in the preface of his work "On Divine Offices," dedicated to
Archbishop Salentin, alludes more than once to this rare collection. We
might quote many other authorities to authenticate the manuscripts. Jacob
Pamelius, in a work published at Cologne in 1577, entitled "The Liturgy of
the Latin Church" (who is quoted by Harzheim in his book "The old Codexes
of Cologne"), distinctly gives their date and origin. The collection
consists of eight parts, namely: 1. Bibles; 2. The Fathers; 3.
Ecclesiastical Law; 4. Writers on Sacrifices, Sacraments, Offices of the
Church, and Liturgies; 5. Histories; 6. Ascetics; 7. Scholastics; 8.
Philosophical, Rhetorical, and Grammatical writers. Some of these
manuscripts are richly illuminated, and some set with precious stones. The
first codex dates from the ninth century, if not earlier, which is
indicated by the capital letters, which are in gold. The seventh codex
contains the Gallic, Roman, Hebrew, and Greek Psalmody, as edited by St.
Jerome--"a most rare and valuable codex." The twelfth codex, in elegant
folio, adorned with many illuminations and annotations of the eighth
century, comprises the four Gospels. Codex one hundred and forty-three
deserves particular mention. As frontispiece, there is a portrait of
Archbishop Evergerus in his episcopal robes. It is richly illuminated and
set with jewels. The above quotations, which we have translated from the
Latin, in which language the catalogue is written, will suffice to give
such of our readers as are bibliophiles some idea of a treasures which will
shortly be restored to the shelves of the library attached to the Cologne
Cathedral. We may mention another restoration which is on the eve of
accomplishment. The celebrated collection of pictures, known as the
Dusseldorf collection, will shortly be returned to Prussia, negotiations
having already commenced for that purpose. The collection, which comprises
some of the finest specimens of the German and Dutch schools, is at present
at Munich.--_All the Year Round_.
_On the Movements of the Heart_.--In a recent memoir Dr. Sibson
describes his experiments on the movements of the heart, which were made on
the ass under the influence of wourali, and on dogs subjected to
chloroform. He found that the contraction of the ventricles takes please in
every direction toward a region of rest, which in the right ventricle
corresponds with the anterior papillary muscle in the left ventricle, with
a situation about midway between apex and base. Simultaneously with the
universal contraction of the ventricles there is universal distention of
both auricles, the pulmonary artery, and the aortae. The total amount of
blood contained in the heart and great vessels is the same during both
systole and diastole. During the ventricular contraction, however, the
distribution of the blood, lessened toward the region of the apex, balances
itself by being increased in that of the base, since the auricles and great
vessels are enlarged, not only toward the ventricles, but also outward and
upward. During ventricular dilatation the reverse takes place.
{141}
_The Physics of a Meteorite_.-In a recent note in the proceedings of
the Royal Society, the Rev. Samuel Haughton, of Trinity College, Dublin,
gives a very graphic account of the fall of an aërolite. The fire-ball was
seen by two peasants, who have given the following written statement of
their observations; and since the facts described by these ignorant men
correspond exactly with the facts theoretically believed to present
themselves, we think the description of the highest interest. It is headed,
The Statement of Eye-witnesses, and runs as follows: "I, John Johnson, of
the parish of Clonoulty, near Cashel, Tipperary, was walking across my
potato-garden at the back of my house, in company with Michael Falvy and
William Furlong, on August 12, 1865, at 7 P.M., when I heard a clap, like
the shot out of a cannon, very quick and not like thunder; this was
followed by a buzzing noise, which continued for about a quarter of an
hour, when it came over our heads, and, looking up, we saw an object
falling down in a slanting direction; we were frightened at the speed,
which was so great that we could scarcely notice it; but after it fell we
proceeded to look for it, and found it at a distance of forty yards, half
buried in the ground, where it had struck the top of a potato-drill. We
were some time looking for it (a longer time than that during which we
heard the noise). On taking up the stone we found it warm (milk warm), but
not enough to be inconvenient. The next day it was given up to Lord
Hawarden."--_Popular Science Review_.
_The Earth and Moon in Collision_.--Mr. James Croll, who some time
since asserted that, owing to peculiar solar and lunar action, the above
extraordinary condition will eventually take place, has just published a
paper reasserting the truth of his proposition. The theory was opposed by
the astronomer royal and Professor William Thomson, who showed that, owing
to the position of the tidal wave, the moon is drawn not exactly in the
direction of the earth's centre of gravity, but a little to the east of
that centre, and that in consequence of this she is made to recede from the
earth. Her orbit is enlarged and her angular motion diminished. This
argument does not, in Mr. Croll's opinion, affect his view. The conditions
described by Professor Thomson and the astronomer royal do not in the least
degree prevent the consumption of the _vis viva_ of the earth's motion
round the common centre of gravity, although to a certain extent, at least,
it must prevent this consumption from diminishing the moon's distance, and
increasing her angular motion. But as this consumption of _vis viva_
will go on through indefinite ages, if the present order of things remains
unchanged, the earth and the moon must therefore ultimately come
together.--_Ibid_.
[Transcribers note: The moon is _receding_ from the earth at about 4
cm. per year, based on _lunar laser ranging_ (2015).]
_Sanskrit Library_.--Prof. Goldstücker lately communicated to a
scientific meeting at London the intelligence he had received from Lahore
of the existence in that city of a most extensive Sanskrit Library in the
possession of Pandit Radha Kishen. From an examination of the catalogue
that had been sent to him, he was able to state that that library contained
a great many rare and valuable works, some of which had hitherto been
supposed to be lost. He had also been promised catalogues of similar
collections of Sanskrit MS. in other parts or India, of the contents of
which he would keep the Society informed as they came to hand. The paper
read was by Prof. Max Müller, "On the Hymns of the Gaupàyanas, and the
Legend of King Asamâti." After some remarks on the proper use to be made of
Sanskrit MSS., in general, and on the principles of criticism by which the
writer was guided in his edition of Sàyana's Commentary on the Rig-veda, he
proceeded to show by an example the characters of the three classes of MSS.
he had made use of, and the manner in which the growth of legends was
favored by the traditional interpretation of the Vedic Hymns. He had
selected for this purpose the four hymns of the Gaupâyanas (Mandala x.,
57-60), and the Legend of King Asamâti quoted by Sàyana in explanation of
them; and then related the latter, according to the various forms in which
it has been handed down to us, from the simple account given in the Tàndya
Brahmana and Katyàyana's Sarvânukrama, to the more expanded one in the
Satyâyanaka Brahmana, the Brehaddevatà and the Nitiananjarî. He then gives
a double translation of the hymns in question--one in strict conformity to
Sàyana's interpretation, and another in accordance with his own principles
of translation--the latter as a specimen of what he intends to give in his
forthcoming translation of the whole of the Rig-veda.
{142}
The writer concluded with a _resumé_ of the different points of
interest which these hymns, though by no means fair specimens of the best
religious poetry of the Brahmans, present; the healing powers of the hands,
the constant dwelling on divinities which govern the life of man, and the
clear conception of a soul as separate from the body--of a soul after death
going to Yama Vanasvata, the ruler of the departed, or hovering about
heaven or earth ready to be called back to a new life.--_Ibid_
--------
Original
New Publications.
A Conversation on Union Among Christians;
The Gospels Door of Mercy;
What Shall I do to Become a Christian?
The Church and Children;
A Voice In The Night, Or Lessons of the Sick Room;
The Gospel Church;
Who is Jesus Christ?
Tracts Nos. 13-19;
Catholic Publication Society,
145 Nassau St., New-York
The number of Tracts issued and distributed by the Catholic Publication
Society through direct sales and the aid of auxiliary societies is so great
that its noble and zealous project must, by this time, have become a
subject of interest to every Catholic in the country. It is hardly one year
since the first steps were taken to establish it, and already over _half
a million_ Tracts have been distributed through the length and breadth
of the land. This distribution goes on increasing; that made in the month
of February alone amounted to _seventy-five thousand_. Large orders
are constantly coming in for the books and tracts issued by the Society
from the Rt. Rev. Bishops, the Rev. Clergy, and zealous laymen of every
condition of life.
Encouraged by these marks of universal approbation, and accredited with the
high sanction of our late Plenary Council, the Society will enter upon its
work this spring, upon a scale commensurate with the increasing demands
made upon it for its publications and the magnitude of its enterprise. A
Publication House will be obtained, supplied with its own types and presses
and bindery, which will enable it to conduct its operations with greater
rapidity, and furnish its publications at the lowest possible cost. Not a
few have expressed themselves surprised at its present unparalleled
success, and are anxious to know by what means so much has been
accomplished in so short a time.
For the information of the readers of the CATHOLIC WORLD, who, we are sure,
are all deeply interested in the work, it may be stated that a good fund
was contributed by a number of wealthy gentlemen, principally in New York,
that enabled it to begin its work, and which has been increased by the
proceeds of lectures delivered in the diocese of Boston, Albany, and
New-York, the aid of auxiliary societies, and the sales of tracts and
books.
It cannot be denied that within even the last five years, our holy religion
has made great advances in the spiritual care of its own children, in the
multiplication of churches, the foundation of seminaries for the
priesthood, the greater interest shown in the working of Sunday schools and
religious associations of both sexes, as well as in the numerous
conversions that have been made from the different denominations of
Protestants, and in the earnest consideration of the claims of the Catholic
Church manifested by the people of our country, of whom so many have
hitherto been either indifferent to, or ignorant of it.
The Catholic Publication Society being by its very character a ready arm
for the diffusion of Catholic truth, must therefore commend itself to the
warmest sympathies and generous co-operation of every Catholic who rejoices
to see his holy faith spreading abroad and winning a multitude of souls to
a knowledge of Christian truth and the practice of Christian virtues. In
fact, the Society owes its existence to the ardently cherished wish of a
large class for such an organization, which found an almost simultaneous
expression.
{143}
Letters of encouragement and inquiry are being constantly received from the
venerable bishops and clergy, heads of literary and benevolent
associations, superintendents of Sunday-schools, and from different
individuals in the humblest walks of life. The news of the enterprise has
even penetrated to some of the most distant parts of the world; as is shown
by a letter of sympathy containing an offer of inter-communion sent to the
Society by a zealous priest in Bombay, India, who had started a Publication
Society in that far-off city.
It may not be judged out of place to repeat here the article of the
constitution referring to the conditions of membership. It will show any of
our readers who desire to become copartners in this great work, and thereby
secure for themselves the blessing of having aided in the "instruction of
many unto salvation," how they may practically bring that aid to bear upon
the realization of their pious desires.
"Any person paying, at one time, one hundred dollars into the treasury of
the Society, may by request, become a 'Patron,' and shall be entitled to
receive three dollars' worth of the Society's publications annually.
"Any person paying fifty dollars at one time may become a Life Member,
and shall be entitled to receive two dollars' worth of the Society's
publications annually.
"Any person paying thirty dollars may become a member for five years, and
shall be entitled to receive one dollar's worth of the Society's
publications for five years.
"Persons paying five dollars at one time shall be members for one year,
and be entitled to receive of the Society's publications to the value of
half a dollar."
It is plain, however, that while many will be found to associate themselves
as members of the General Society, in order to carry on the work in other
places, auxiliary societies should be formed which receive all the
publications at cost price. It is to the rapid formation of these auxiliary
associations that those many zealous friends of the work should turn their
attention. The same object will also be gained by making it one of the
labors of Societies of St. Vincent de Paul, guilds, confraternities,
sodalities, and the like.
We have seen many communications in which inquiries have been made in
reference to the publication of illustrated tracts and Sunday-school books,
and the establishment of a cheap and attractive Sunday-school paper. The
Society has all these objects in contemplation, and will proceed to their
execution as soon as the Publication House is in operation.
We would suggest, therefore, that each and every one who has this matter at
heart, will make personal efforts to aid the Society in the establishment
of the Publication House, by sending at once their own names as members
with as many more as they can procure, and take measures to found at least
one auxiliary society for home distribution in the community where they
reside.
Our people have shown the greatest interest in the diffusion of Catholic
literature, and are ever ready to make heroic sacrifices, if necessary, for
any work of charity; and in the present aspect of affairs it must be
evident that one of the most urgent calls upon our Christian zeal and love
is that of bringing instruction home to the thousands who need it, and who,
experience has proved, receive it gladly. One little thought we cannot
refrain from expressing, suggested by a remark made in our hearing, that it
will be for us and our children, when time shall show us and them the happy
fruits of this truly Apostolic work, a most consoling reflection that we
were among those who first encouraged and aided it, and bade it "God speed"
as it started upon its high and glorious mission.
L'echo De La France.
Revue étrangère de Science et de Littérature.
Montreal: Louis Ricard, Directeur.
By the Canadian public and the French-speaking portion of our population of
the States, this well-edited eclectic has, we are glad to know, received a
hearty welcome and a liberal support. It purposes to afford its readers a
choice selection of articles culled from the best European magazines and
reviews, chiefly those of France, and it certainly has accomplished its
task hitherto with much ability. It is not to everyone we would care to
confide the duty of choosing our literary repast from the current
literature of the day; and, to anyone at all acquainted with the French
periodicals, it must be evident that it would require a caterer, who is
himself possessed of high intellectual culture, to make from their pages a
judicious and worthy selection of articles suited to the varied tastes of
the American literary public.
{144}
The "Echo de la Franco" is happily conducted by a gentleman upon whose
judgment and taste in this matter we can confidently rely, if we may judge
from the numbers already issued.
We have only to add that it has our best wishes, and we recommend it
especially to the notice of the readers of the CATHOLIC WORLD who are
acquainted with the French language.
Practical Hints On The Art Of Illumination.
By Alice Donlevy.
New-York: A. D. F. Randolph. 1867.
Together with this useful and elegant publication we have received a set of
plates, designed by the same author, to illustrate the poem of Miss
Rossetti, called "Consider."
The work is intended, as we are told in its preface, to instruct those who
wish to study illumination; to assist those who, having commenced, find
many stumbling-blocks in the way, and require aid in the minutiae of the
art; to furnish those who can paint, yet are unable to design with
outlines, to illuminate, etc. This beautiful art is fast becoming with our
young people a favorite recreation, and, with not a few, a remunerative
study. To such as desire to engage in its pursuit, whether for pleasure or
profit, we heartily recommend this volume as one calculated to give them
much desirable information on the subject.
Three Phases of Christian Love,
By Lady Herbert. L. Kehoe. 1867.
We have received advanced sheets of this volume, which is to be presented
to the public in a few days. It is not our purpose to speak of it at length
in this place, but reserve it for a more extended and appreciative review
which we hope to give of it in the future pages of the CATHOLIC WORLD.
It is a remarkable book; the purity and beauty of its style fitly according
with the saintly biographies which the distinguished authoress has so
happily chosen to illustrate the three phases of a Christian woman's life
and love. We have given as the life of St. Monica as the mother; of
Victorine de Galard Terraube, a young French lady of rank, as the maiden;
and of the Venerable Mère Devos, superior of the Sisters of Charity, as the
religious. It is a book we would wish to see placed in the hands of every
woman in our country; for, whatever be her position in society, or
whichsoever state of life she may have chosen, she will find in it an
example of high Christian and womanly perfection, the view of which must
claim her homage, and in turn exalt and refine her own character.
Mr. Kehoe, in republishing Bentley's superb English edition, offers us a
volume of equal beauty and finish. As a publication it must claim the
attention of every connoisseur and lover of first-class books.
Lauretta and the Fables,
Compiled by the author of Philip Hartley, etc.
Alice; or, The Rose of the Black Forest.
By the author of Grace Morton, etc.
Three Petitions. A tale of Poland and
Trevor Hall. A Christmas story.
Conrad and Gertrude: the Little Wanderers.
Peter F. Cunningham, Catholic Bookseller, Philadelphia.
These four 16mo volumes form a very acceptable addition to our list of
Catholic tales for children. Their appearance is creditable to the
publisher. We hope those who have ability and leisure will furnish a larger
number of such stories for Sunday-school libraries.
Books Received.
From Leypoldt & Holt. New-York.
The Journal of Maurice de Guérin,
with an essay by Matthew Arnold,
and a memoir by Sainte-Beuve. Edited by
G. S. Trebutien. Translated by Edward Thornton
Fisher. 1 vol. 12mo., pp. 153. Price $1.25.
Easy German Reading after a New System, by George Storme.
Revised by Edward A. Open. 1 vol. l2mo, pp.206. Price $1.
From P. F. Cunningham. Philadelphia.
Conrad and Gertrude;
The Three Petitions, a Tale of Poland;
Alice, or the Rose of the Black Forest;
Lauretta and the Fables.
4 vols. of the Young Catholics Library,
pp. 143, 141, 124, 126
Price 50 cents each.
From D. Appleton, New-York.
The Merchant of Berlin;
an Historical Novel L. Mühlbach.
Translated from the German by Amory Coflin, M.D.
pp. 394. Price $2.
Berlin and San Souci; or, Frederick the Great
and Friends. An Historical
Romance. By L. Mühlbach. Translated from
the German by Mrs. Chapman and her daughters.
pp. 391. Price $2.
From J. J. O'Connor & Co., Newark.
The exclusion of Protestant Worship from the City of Rome.
By the Rev. George H, Doane, pastor of St. Patrick's
Cathedral, Newark, N.J. Pamphlets. Price 20 cents.
--------
{145}
The Catholic World.
Vol. V., No. 26.--May, 1867.
Original.
An Old Quarrel.
Those of our readers who have studied with the care their importance
demands the papers on the "Problems of the Age" which have appeared in this
magazine, can not have failed to perceive that the great questions now in
discussion between Catholics and non-Catholics lie, for the most part, in
the field of philosophy, and require for their solution a broader and
profounder philosophy than any which obtains general currency outside of
the church. We think, also, that no one can read and understand them
without finding the elements or fundamental principles of a really Catholic
philosophy, which, while it rests on scientific truth for its basis,
enables us to see the innate correspondence or harmony of reason and faith,
science and revelation, and nature and grace--the principles of a
philosophy, too, that is no modern invention or new-fangled theory which is
brought forward to meet a present emergency, but in substance the very
philosophy that has always been held by the great fathers and doctors of
the church, and professed in Catholic schools and seminaries.
Yet there is one point which the writer necessarily touches upon and
demonstrates as far as necessary to his purpose, which was theological
rather than purely philosophical, that, without interfering in the least
with his argument, already complete, may admit of a more special treatment
and further development. We refer to the objectivity and reality of ideas.
The reader acquainted with the history of philosophy in the middle ages
will perceive at once that the question of the reality of ideas asserted by
the writer takes up the subject-matter of the old quarrel of the
nominalists, conceptualists, and realists, provoked by the Proslogium of
St. Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, in the eleventh century, really one
of the profoundest thinkers, greatest theologians, and ingenious
philosophers of any age.
St. Anselm wished to render an account to himself of his faith, and to know
and understand the reasons for believing in God. He did not doubt the
existence of God; he indeed held that God cannot be thought not to be; he
did not seek to know the arguments which prove that God is, that he might
believe, but that he might the better know and understand what he already
believed.
{146}
Thus he says: "Necque enim quero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut
intelligam. Nam et hoc credo quia nisi credidero, non intelligam." We
believe that we may understand, and we cannot understand unless we
believe--a great truth which modern speculators do not recognize. They
reverse the process, and seek to know that they may believe, and hold that
the first step to knowledge is to doubt or to deny.
In his Monologium, St. Anselm had proved that God is, and determined his
attributes by way of induction from the ideas in the human mind, but it
would seem not wholly to his satisfaction, or, at least, that in writing
that work he discovered, or thought he discovered, a briefer and more
conclusive, method of demonstrating that God is. He had already proved by
psychological analysis, in the way Cousin and others have since done, that
the human mind thinks most perfect being, a greater than which cannot be
thought. This he had done in his Monologium. In his Proslogium he starts
with this idea, that of _ens perfectissimum_, which is, in fact, the
idea of God. "The fool says in his heart there is no God;" not because he
has no idea of God, not because he does not think most perfect being, a
greater than which cannot be thought, but because he does not understand
that, if he thinks it, such being really is. It is greater and more perfect
to be _in re_ than it is to be only _in intellectu_, and
therefore the most perfect being existing only in the mind is not a greater
than which cannot be thought, for I can think most perfect existing _in
re_. Moreover, if most perfect being does not exist _in re_, my
thought is greater and more perfect than reality, and consequently I can
rise above God, and judge him, _quod valde est absurdum_.
Leibnitz somewhere remarks that this argument is conclusive, if we first
prove that most perfect being is possible; but Leibnitz should have
remembered that the argument _ab esse ad posse_ is always valid, and
that God is both his own possibility and reality. Cousin accepts the
argument, and says St. Anselm robbed Descartes of the glory of having
produced it. But it is evident to every philosophical student that the
validity of the argument, if valid it is, depends on the fact that ideas
are objective and real, that is, depends on the identity of the ideal and
the real.
Roscelinus, or Rosceline, did not concede this, and pronounced the argument
of St. Anselm worthless. Confounding, it would seem, ideas with universals,
he denied their reality, and maintained that they are mere words without
anything either in the mind or out of it to respond to them, and thus
founded Nominalism, substantially what is now called materialism. He
rejects the universals and the categories of the peripatetics, and
recognizes only individual existences and words, which words, when not the
names of individual things, are void of meaning. Hence he denied the whole
ideal or intelligible world, and admitted only sensibles. Hobbes and Locke
were nominalists, and so is the author of Mill's Logic. Mr. Herbert Spencer
is a nominalist, but is better described as an atomist of the school of
Leucippus and Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius. We know very little of
Rosceline, except that he lived in the eleventh century, was born in
Brittany, the native land of Abelard and Descartes, and incurred, for some
of his speculations concerning the Trinity, the censures of the church.
None of his writings have come down to us, and we know his doctrine only
from the representations of others.
Guillaume de Champeaux, in the following century, who professed philosophy
for a time at St. Victor, and was subsequently Archbishop of Paris, is the
founder, in the middle ages, of what is called Realism, and which counts
among its disciples Duns Scotus and William of Occam.
{147}
He is said to have maintained the exact opposite of Rosceline's doctrine,
and to have held that ideas, or universals, as they then said, are not
empty words, but entities, existing _a parte rei_. He held, if we may
believe Abelard, that not only genera and species, but such abstractions as
whiteness, soundness, squareness, etc., are real entities. But from a
passage cited from his writings by Abelard, from which Abelard infers he
had changed his doctrine, Cousin, in his Philosophie Scholastique, argues
that this must have been an exaggeration and that Guillaume only held that
such so-called universals as are really genera and species have an
entitative existence. This is most probably the fact; and instead, then, of
being driven to change his doctrine from what it was at first, as Abelard
boasts, it is most likely that he never held any other doctrine. However
this may be, his doctrine, as represented by Abelard, is that which the old
realists are generally supposed to have maintained.
Abelard follows Guillaume de Champeaux, with whom he was for the earlier
part of his career a contemporary. Confounding, as it would seem, ideas
with universals, and universals with abstractions, he denied alike
Rosceline's doctrine that they are mere words, and Guillaume de Champeaux's
doctrine that they are entities or existences _a parte rei_, and
maintained that they are conceptions, really existing _in mente_, but
not _in re_. Hence his philosophy is called Conceptualism. He would
seem to have held that universals are formed by the mind operating on the
concrete objects presented by experience, not, as since maintained by Kant,
that they are necessary forms of the understanding. Thus, _humanitas_,
humanity, is formed by the mind from the concrete man, or _homo_.
There is no humanity _in re_; there are only individual men. In the
word humanity the mind expresses the qualities which it observes to be
common to all men, without paying attention to any particular man. The idea
humanity, then, is simply the abstraction or generalization of these
qualities. Abelard, it would appear from this, makes what we call the race
a property or quality of individuals, which, of course, excludes the idea
of generation. There is, as far as we can see, no essential difference
between the conceptualism of Abelard and the nominalism of Rosceline; for,
by denying the existence _in re_ of genera and species, and making
them only conceptions, it recognizes as really existing only individuals or
particulars.
St. Thomas Aquinas, than whom no higher authority in philosophy can be
named, and from whose conclusions few who understand them will be disposed
to dissent, differs from each of these schools, and maintains that
universals are conceptions existing _in mente cum fundamento in re_,
or conceptions with a basis in reality, which is true of all abstractions;
for the mind can form no conceptions except from objects presented by
experience. I could form no conception of whiteness if I had no experience
of white things, or of roundness if I had seen nothing round. I imagine a
golden mountain, but only on condition that gold and mountain are to me
objects of experience. This is certain, and accords with the peripatetic
maxim, _Nihil est in intellectu, quod prius non fuerit in sensu_,
which Leibnitz would amend by adding, _nisi ipse intellectus_, an
amendment which, perhaps, contains in germ the whole Kantian philosophy.
But St. Thomas, as we shall see further on, does not confound ideal with
universals, nor does he hold genera and species to be simply the
abstraction or generalization of the qualities of individuals or
particulars. Genera and species are real, or there could be no generation.
But the genus or species does not exist apart from its individualization,
or as a separate entity. There are no individuals without the race, and no
race without individuals. Thus the whole race was individualized in Adam,
so that in his sin all men sinned.
{148}
But as genera and species, the only real universals, do not exist apart
from their particulars, and are distinctly possessed or apprehended only as
disengaged from their particulars, which is done only by a mental
operation, St. Thomas might say they exist _in mente cum fundamento in
re_, without asserting them to be real only as properties or qualities
of particulars.
Plato is commonly held to be the father of the ideal philosophy or ideal
realism. We know very little of the philosophy that prevailed before him,
and cannot say how much of the Platonic philosophy is original with him, or
how much of it he took from his predecessors, but he is its originator as
far as our knowledge extends. It is from him that we have the word
_idea_, and his whole philosophy is said to be in his doctrine of
ideas; but what his doctrine of ideas really was is a question. He seems
when treating the question, What is it necessary to know in order to have
real science? to understand by idea _causa essentialis_, or the thing
itself, or what in anything is real, stable, and permanent, in distinction
from the sensible, the phenomenal, the variable, and the transitory. The
real existence of things is their ideas, and ideas are in the Logos or
divine mind. These ideas God impresses on an eternally existing matter, as
the seal upon wax, and so impressed they constitute particulars. Aristotle
accuses Plato of placing the ideas _extra Deum_, and making them
objects of the divine contemplation, but the accusation is not easily
sustained; and we think all that Plato does is to represent the ideas as
_extra Deum_ only as the idea or design of a picture or a temple in
the mind of the artist is distinguishable from the artist himself. But in
God all ideas must be eternal, and therefore really his essence, as is
maintained by St. Thomas. If this is really Plato's doctrine, it is dualism
inasmuch as it asserts the eternity of matter, and pantheism inasmuch as
the ideas, the reality of things, are identical with the divine mind, and
therefore with God himself. On this doctrine, what is that soul the
immortality of which Plato so strenuously maintains? Is it the divine idea,
or the copy of the idea on matter?
When treating the question, How we know? Plato seems to understand by ideas
not the ideas in the divine mind, but their copies impressed on matter, as
the seal on wax. According to him, all knowing is by similitude, and as the
idea leaves its exact image or form on matter, so by studying that image or
copy we arrive at an exact knowledge of the idea or archetype in the divine
mind. This is plain enough; but who are _we_ who study and know? Are
we the archetypal idea, or are we its image or copy impressed on matter?
Here is the difficulty we find in understanding Plato's doctrine of ideas.
According to him all reality is in the idea, and what is not idea is
phenomenal, unsubstantial, variable, and evanescent. The impress or copy on
matter is not the idea itself, and is no more the thing itself than the
reflection I see in a mirror is myself. Plato speaks of the soul as
imprisoned in matter, and ascribes all evil to the intractableness of
matter. Hence he originates or justifies that false asceticism which treats
matter as impure or unclean, and makes the proper discipline of the soul
consist in despising and maltreating the body, and in seeking deliverance
from it, as if our bodies were not destined to rise again, and, reunited to
the soul, to live forever. The real source of Manichaeism is in the
Platonic philosophy. We confess that we are not able to make out from Plato
a complete, coherent, and self-consistent doctrine of ideas. St. Thomas
corrects Plato, and makes ideas the archetypes, exemplars, or models in the
divine mind, and identical with the essence of God, after which God creates
or may create existences. He holds the idea, as idea, to be _causa
exemplaris_, not _causa essentialis_, and thus escapes both
pantheism and dualism, and all tendency to either.
{149}
Aristotle, a much more systematic genius, and, in my judgment, a much
profounder philosopher than Plato, rejects Plato's doctrine of ideas, and
substitutes for them substantial forms, which in his philosophy mean real
existences distinct from God; and which are not merely phenomenal, like
Plato's copies on wax. True, he, as Plato, recognizes an eternal matter,
and makes all existences consist of matter and form. But the matter is
purely passive; and, as nothing, according to his philosophy, exists, save
in so far as active, it is really nothing, exists only _in potentia ad
formam_, and can only mean the ability of God to place existences after
the models eternal in his own mind. His philosophy is, at any rate, more
easily reconciled with Christian theology than is Plato's.
Yet Aristotle and the schoolmen after him adopt Plato's doctrine that we
know by similitude, or by ideas in the sense of images, or representations,
interposed between the mind and the object, or thing existing _a parte
rei_. They suppose these images, or intelligible species, form a sort of
intermediary world, called the _mundus logicus_, distinguished from
the _mundus physicus_, or real world, which they are not, but which
they image or represent to the understanding. Hence the categories or
praedicaments are neither forms of the subject nor forms of the object, but
the forms or laws of logic or this intermediary world. Hence has arisen the
question whether our knowledge has any objective validity, that is, whether
there is any objective reality that responds to the idea. Perhaps it is in
this doctrine, misunderstood, that we are to seek the origin of scepticism,
which always originates in the speculations of philosophers, never in the
plain sense of the people, who never want, when they know, any proof that
they know.
This Platonic and peripatetic doctrine, that ideas are not the reality,
but, as Locke says, that "with which the understanding is immediately
conversant," has been vigorously assailed by the Scottish school, which
denies intermediary ideas, and maintains that we perceive directly and
immediately things themselves. Still the old doctrine obtains to a very
considerable extent, and respectable schools teach that ideas, if not
precisely images, are nevertheless representative, and that the idea is the
first object of mental apprehension. Balmes never treats ideas as the
object existing _in re_, but as its representation to the mind. Hence
the importance attached to the question of certainty, or the objective
validity of our knowledge, around which Balmes says turn all the questions
of philosophy; that is, the great labor of philosophers is to prove that in
knowing we know something, or that to know is to know. This is really the
_pons asinorum_ of modern philosophy as it was of ancient philosophy:
How know I that knowing is knowing, or that in knowing I know? The question
as asked is unanswerable and absurd, for I have only to know with which to
prove that I know, and he who knows knows that he knows. I know that I know
says no more than I know.
The quarrel has arisen from confounding ideas, universals, genera and
species, and abstractions or generalizations, and treating them all as if
pertaining to the same category. These three things are different, and
cannot be scientifically treated as if they were the same; yet nominalists,
realists, and conceptualists recognize no differences among them, nor do
the Platonists. These hold all the essential qualities, properties, or
attributes of things to be ideas, objective and real. Hippias visits
Athens, and proposes during his stay in the city to give the eager
Athenians a discourse, or, as they say nowadays, a lecture, on beautiful
things. Socrates is delighted to hear it, and assures Hippias that he will
be one of his audience; but as he is slow of understanding, and has a
friend who will be sure to question him very closely, he begs Hippias to
answer beforehand a few of the questions this friend is certain to ask.
Hippias consents.
{150}
You propose to discourse on beautiful things, but tell me, if you please,
what are beautiful things? Hippias mentions several things, and finally
answers, a handsome girl. But that is not what my friend wants to know.
Tell me, by what are beautiful things beautiful? Hippias does not quite
understand. Socrates explains. All just things, are they not just by
participation of justice? Agreed. And all wise things by participation of
wisdom? It cannot be denied. And all beautiful things by participation of
beauty? So it seems. Now tell me, dear Hippias, what is beauty, that which
is so not by participation but in itself, and by participation of which all
beautiful things are beautiful? Hippias, of course, is puzzled, and neither
he nor Socrates answers the question.
But we get here a clue to Plato's doctrine, the doctrine of the methexis,
to use his own term. He would seem to teach that whatever particular thing
exists, it does so by the methexis, or participation of the idea. The idea
is that which makes the thing what it is, _causa essentialis_. Thus, a
man is man by participation of the man-idea, or the ideal man, humanity; a
horse is a horse by participation of the horse-idea, or ideal horse; a cow
is a cow by participation of the cow-idea, ideal cow, or _bovisty_;
and so of a sheep, a weazel, an eagle, a heron, a robin, a swallow, a wren,
an oak, a pine, a juniper. To know any particular thing is to know its idea
or ideal, and to know its idea or ideal is to have true science, for it is
science of that in the thing which is real, stable, invariable, and
permanent. This doctrine is very true when by ideas we understand genera
and species, but not, as we have already seen, and as both Rosceline and
Abelard prove, when we take as ideas the abstract qualities of things. Man
is man by participation of humanity; but is a thing white by participation
of whiteness, round by participation of roundness, hard by participation of
hardness, beautiful by participation of beauty, or just by participation of
justice, wise by participation of wisdom? What is whiteness, roundness,
hardness, beauty, justice, or wisdom in the abstract, or abstracted from
their respective concretes? Mere conceptions, as said Abelard, or, rather,
empty words, as said Rosceline. When Plato calls these ideas, and calls
them real, he confounds ideas with genera and species, and asserts what is
manifestly untenable.
Genera and species are not abstractions; they are real, though subsisting
never apart from individuals. Their reality is evinced by the process
called generation, by which every kind generates its like. The race
continues itself, and does not die with the individual. Men die, humanity
survives. It is all very well to say with Plato individuals are mimetic,
and exist as individuals by participation of the idea, if we assume ideas
are genera and species, and created after the models or archetypes in the
divine mind; but it will not do to say so when we identify ideas with the
divine mind, that is, with God himself: We then make genera and species
ideas in God, and since ideas in God are God, we identify them with the
divine essence--a doctrine which the Holy See has recently condemned, and
which would deny all reality distinguishable from God, and make all
existences merely phenomenal, and reduce all the categories, as Cousin
does, to being and phenomenon, which is pure pantheism. The _ideae
exemplares_, or archetypes of genera and species, after which God
creates them, are in the divine mind, but the genera and species, the real
universals, are creatures, and as much so as individuals or particulars
themselves. They are creatures by the direct creation of God, without the
intervention of the plastic soul asserted by Plato, accepted by Cudworth,
and, in his posthumous essay on the Methexis and Mimesis, even by Gioberti.
{151}
God creates all living creatures in genera and species, as the Scripture
plainly hints when it says: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the
green herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after
its _kind_, which may have seed in itself upon the earth." Not only in
the vegetable but also in the animal world, each living creature brings
forth its kind--a fact without which generation would be unintelligible,
and which our scientific men who dream of the formation of species by
natural selection, and are laboring hard to prove that man has been
developed from the tadpole or monkey, would do well to remember.
Genera and species are real, and so far, if we call them ideas, ideas or
universals are real, as Plato and the old realists asserted. But when we
understand by ideas or universals the simple abstractions or
generalizations of the essential qualities or attributes of things, as
whiteness, redness, roundness, hardness, beauty, justice, goodness, they
are real only in their concretes or subject. Objects may be really white,
red, hard, heavy; things may be really beautiful; actions may be really
just, wise, and good; but what we call beauty, justice, wisdom, goodness,
can exist only as attributes or qualities of being, and are real only in
their concretes. They can be reflected by creatures, but have no reality as
abstractions. Abstractions, as St. Thomas says, have a foundation in
reality, because they are formed by the mind by way of abstraction from
objects presented by experience, and experience can present only that which
is real; but as abstractions they are nullities, as Rosceline rightly held.
It is necessary, then, to distinguish between genera and species and
abstractions, and it would save much confusion to drop the name of ideas as
applied to them, and even as applied to the intermediary world supposed to
be inserted between the object and subject, as that world is commonly
represented. This intermediary world, we think, has been successfully
assailed by the Scottish school as ordinarily understood; but we do not
think that the scholastics meant by it what is commonly supposed. These
intermediary ideas, or intelligible species, seem to me in St. Thomas to
perform in intellectual apprehension the office performed by light in
external vision, and to be very defensible. They are not the understanding
itself, but they are, if we may be allowed the expression, the light of the
understanding. St. Thomas holds that we know by similitude. But God, he
says, is the similitude of all things, _Deus est similitudo omnium
rerum_. Now say, with him and all great theologians, that God, who is
light itself, is the light of the understanding, the light of reason, the
true light that lighteth every man coming into this world, and the whole
difficulty is solved, and the scholastics and the philosophy so long taught
in our Catholic schools and seminaries are freed at once from the censures
so freely bestowed on them by the Scottish school and others. We suspect
that we shall find seldom any reason to dissent from the scholastic
philosophy as represented by St. Thomas, when once we really understand it,
and adjust it to our own habits of thought and expression.
Supposing this interpretation to be admissible, the Scottish school, after
all, must modify its doctrine that we know things directly and immediately;
for as in external things light is necessary as the medium of vision, why
should not an intelligible light be necessary as the medium of the
intellectual apprehension of intelligibles? Now, as this light has in it
the similitude of the things apprehensible by it, and is for that same
reason light to our understanding, it may, as Plato held, very properly be
expressed by the word _idea_, which means likeness, image, or
representation. The error of Plato would not then be in holding that we
know only _per ideam_ or _per similitudinem_, but in confounding
creator and creature, and recognizing nothing except the idea either to
know or to be known. On this interpretation, the light may be identical
with the object, or it may not be. Being is its own light, and is
intelligible _per se_; objects distinguishable from being are not, and
are intelligible only in the light of being, or a light distinguishable
from themselves.
{152}
As being in its full sense is God, we may say with Malebranche that we see
all things in God, but must add, _and by the light of God_, or _in
Deo et per Deum_.
Assuming ideas as the light by which we see to be the real doctrine of the
scholastics, we can readily understand the relation of ideas to the
peripatetic categories or praedicaments, or forms under which all objects
are and must be apprehended, and thus connect the old quarrel of the
philosophers with their present quarrel. The categories, according to the
Platonists, are ideas; according to the peripatetics, they are the forms of
the _mundus logicus_, which, as we have seen, they distinguish from
the _mundus physicus_. The Scottish school having demolished this
_mundus logicus_, by exploding the doctrine of intermediary ideas
which compose it, if we take that world as formal, and fail to identify it
with the divine light, the question comes up, Are the categories or
self-evident truths which precede all experience, and without which no fact
of experience is possible, really objective, or only subjective? The
question is, if we duly consider it, Is the light by which we see or know
on the side of the subject or on that of the object? Or, in other words,
are things intelligible because we know them, or do we know them because
they are intelligible? Thus stated, the question seems to be no question at
all; but it is made a very serious question, and on the answer to it
depends the validity or invalidity of St. Anselm's argument.
We have already expressed the opinion that the scholastics as represented
by St. Thomas really mean by their phantasms and intelligible species, or
intermediary ideas by which we attain to the knowledge of sensibles and
intelligibles, simply the mediating light furnished by God himself, who is
himself light and the Father of lights. In this case the light is
objective, and by illumining the object renders it intelligible, and at the
same time the subject intelligent. But Reid, who denied intermediary ideas,
seemed to suppose that the light emanates from the subject, and that it is
our powers that render the object intelligible. Hence he calls the
categories first principles of science, constituent principles of belief,
or common sense, and sometimes constituent principles of human nature. He
seems to have supposed that all the light and activity is on the side of
the subject, forgetting that the light shineth in darkness, and the
darkness comprehendeth it not, or that the light shines, and the darkness
does not compress it, or hinder it from shining, without our perceiving it
or the objects it illumines.
Kant, a German, but, on one side, of Scottish descent, adopts the
principles of Reid, but sets them forth with greater precision and more
scientific depth. Denying with Reid the mediating ideas, he makes the
categories, which, according to Aristotle, are forms of the _mundus
logicus_, or intermediary world, forms of the subject or the subjective
laws of thought. He does not say with Rosceline that they are mere words,
with Abelard that they are mere conceptions, nor with St. Thomas that they
are, taken as universals, conceptions, _cum fundamento in re_, but
forms of the reason, understanding, and sensibility, without any objective
validity. They are not derivable from experience, because without them no
experience is possible. Without what he calls synthetic judgments _à
priori_, such as, Every phenomenon that begins to exist must have a
cause, which includes the judgment of cause, of universal cause, and of
necessary cause, we can form no synthetic judgment _à posteriori_.
Hence he concludes that the categories, what some philosophers call first
principles, necessary truths, necessary ideas, without which we do not and
cannot think, are inherent forms of the subject, and are constitutive of
reason and understanding. He thus placed the intelligibleness of things in
the elemental constitution of the subject, whence it follows that the
subject may be its own object, or think without thinking anything distinct
from himself.
{153}
We think God, man, and nature, not because they are, and think them as we
do not because they are really such as we think them, but because such is
our mental constitution, and we are compelled by it to think them as we do.
This the reader must see is hardly disguised scepticism, and Kant never
pretended to the contrary. The only escape from scepticism, he himself
contends, is to fall back from the pure or speculative reason on the
practical reason, or the moral necessities of our nature, and yield to the
moral imperative, which commands us to believe in God, nature, and duty.
Kant has been followed by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, who differ more or
less from one another, but all follow the fundamental principle he
asserted, and end in the doctrine of absolute identity of subject and
object. "_Cogito, ergo sum_," said Descartes: "I think, therefore I
am." "To think," used to say our old friend Bronson Alcott, "is to
_thing_; to thing is to give or produce reality. My thought is
creative: I think, therefore I am; I think God, therefore he is; nature,
and therefore nature exists. I by thinking make them, that is, _thing_
them, render them real." No bad statement, as far as it goes, of the
development Kant's doctrine received from his disciple Fichte. The only
defect is that his later disciples, instead of making thought creative,
have made it identical with the object. St. Anselm says: "I think most
perfect being, therefore most perfect being is;" and so does Descartes,
only Descartes substitutes God for most perfect being; but St. Anselm never
said it in the sense that most perfect being is because I by my thought
make it. Only a modern transcendentalist gone to seed could say that. The
trouble with this whole scheme is that it puts me in the place of God, and
makes me myself God, which I am quite sure I am not. It would be much more
philosophical to say: I exist, therefore I think; I think being because it
is, not that it is because I think it. Things do not exist because I think
them, but I think them because they exist; they are not intelligible
because I think them, but I think them because they are intelligible. Yet
the germ of our friend Alcott's philosophy was in Kant's doctrine, which
places the _forma_ of the thought in the subject instead of the
object.
Whether the categories, as given by Aristotle, are inexact, as Kant
alleges, or whether, as given by Kant himself, they are reducible in number
to two, as M. Cousin pretends, or to one, as Rosmini maintains, enters not
into the present enquiry, which relates not to their number, but their
objective reality. Kant in regard to philosophy has done simply what Reid
did, only he has done it better or more scientifically. He has fully
demonstrated that in every fact of experience there enters a non-empirical
element, and, if he holds with Leibnitz that that element is the human
understanding itself, he has still demonstrated that it is not an
abstraction or generalization of the concrete qualities of the objects
presented by experience.
Take the ideas or categories of the necessary, the perfect, the universal,
the infinite, the perfect, the immutable, the eternal. These ideas, it is
willingly conceded, never exist in the human mind, or are never thought,
without their opposites, the contingent, the finite, the imperfect, the
particular, the variable, the temporal; but they do not, even in our
thought, depend on them, and are not derived or derivable from them by
abstraction or generalization. Take the synthetic judgment instanced by
Kant, Everything that begins to exist must have a cause. The idea of cause
itself, Hume has shown, is not derivable from any fact of experience, and
Reid and Kant say the same. The notion we have of power which founds the
relation of cause and effect, or that what we call the cause actually
produces or places the effect, these philosophers tell us, is not an object
of experience, and is not obtainable from any empirical facts.
{154}
Experience gives only the relation of what we call cause and effect in
time, that is, the relation of antecedence and consequence. Main de Biran
and Victor Cousin, it is true, deny this, and maintain that the idea of
cause is derived from the acts of our own will, which we are conscious of
in ourselves, and which not merely precede their effects, but actually
produce them. I will to raise my arm, and even if my arm be paralytic or
held down by a [force] stronger than I, so that I cannot raise it, I still
by willing produce an effect, the volition to raise it, which is none the
less real because, owing to external circumstances not under my control, it
does not pass beyond my own interior.
But even granting this, how from this particular act of causation conclude
universal cause, or even from universal cause necessary cause? I by willing
produce the volition to raise my arm, therefore everything that begins to
exist must have a cause. The argument from the particular to the universal,
_non volet_, say the logicians, and still less the argument from the
contingent to the necessary.
Take the idea of the perfect. That we have the idea or category in the mind
is indisputable, and it evidently is not derivable by abstraction or
generalization from the facts of experience. We have experience only of
imperfect things, and no generalizing of imperfection can give perfection.
Indeed, without the category of the perfect, the imperfect cannot even be
thought. We think a thing imperfect, that is, judge it to be imperfect--and
every thought is a judgment, and contains an affirmation--because it falls
short of the ideal standard with which the mind compares it. The universal
is not derivable from the particular, for the particular is not conceivable
without the universal. We may say the same of the immutable, the eternal,
the infinite, the one, or unity.
By abstraction or generalization we simply consider in the concrete a
particular property, quality, or attribute by itself, and take it _in
universo_, without regard to anything else in the concrete thing. It
must then be a real property, quality, or attribute of the concrete thing,
or the abstraction will have no foundation in reality. But the universal is
no property, quality, or attribute of particulars, the immutable of
mutables, the eternal of things temporary, the necessary of contingents,
the infinite of finites, or unity of multiples, otherwise particulars would
be universals, mutables immutables, temporals eternals, contingents
necessary, finites infinite, and multiples one--a manifest contradiction in
terms. The generalization or abstraction of particulars is particularity,
of mutables is mutability, of temporals temporality, of contingents
contingency, of finites finiteness, of multiples plurality or multiplicity.
The overlooking of this obvious fact, and regarding the universal,
immutable, eternal, etc., as abstractions or generalizations of
particulars, mutables, temporals, and so on, has given birth to the
pantheistic philosophy, than which nothing can be more sophistical.
The ideas or categories of the universal, the immutable, and the eternal,
the necessary, the infinite, the one or unity, are so far from being
abstractions from particular concretes that in point of fact we cannot even
think things as particular, changeable, temporal, contingent, finite, or
multiple without them. Hence, they are called necessary ideas, because
without them no synthetic judgment _à posteriori_ or fact of
experience is possible. They are not abstractions formed by the human mind
by contemplating concrete things, because the human mind cannot operate or
even exist without them, and without them human intelligence, even if
supposable, could not differ from the intelligence of the brute, which,
though many eminent men in modern science are endeavoring to prove it,
cannot be accepted, because in proving we should disprove it.
{155}
The question now for philosophy to answer, as we have already intimated,
is, Are these ideas or categories, which precede and enter into every fact
of experience, forms of the subject or human understanding, as Kant
alleges, or are they objective and real, and, though necessary to the
existence and operation of the human mind, are yet really distinct from it,
and independent of it, as much so as if no human mind had been created?
This is the problem.
St. Thomas evidently holds them to be objective, for he holds them to be
necessary and self-evident principles, principles _per se nota_, as
may be seen in his answer to the question, _Utrum Deum esse sit per se
notum?_ and we need strong reasons to induce us to dissent from any
philosophical conclusion of the angelic doctor. Moreover, Kant by no means
proves his own conclusion, that they are forms of the subject. All he
proves is that there is and can be no fact of human knowledge without them,
which may be true without their being subjective. He proves, if you will,
that they are constituent principles of the human understanding, in the
sense that the human understanding cannot exist and operate without their
initiative and concurrence; but this no more proves that they are forms of
the subject than the fact that the creature can neither exist nor act
without the creative and concurrent act of the creator proves that the
creator is an inherent law or form of the creature. To our mind, Kant
confirms a conclusion contrary to his own. His masterly _Kritik der
reinen Vernunft_ establishes simply this fact, that man's own subjective
reason alone does not suffice for science, and that man, in science as in
existence, is dependent on that which is not himself; or, in a word, that
man depends on the intelligibleness of the object, or that which renders it
intelligible, to be himself intelligent, or knowing. Man is, no doubt,
created with the power or faculty of intelligence, but that power or
faculty is not the power or faculty to know without an intelligible object,
or to know what is not knowable independently of it. Hence, from Kant's
facts, we conclude that the ideas or categories, without which no object is
intelligible and no fact of intelligence possible, are not subjective, but
objective, real, and independent of the subject.
The matter is simple enough if we look at it freed from the obscurity with
which philosophers have surrounded it. Thought is a complex fact, the joint
product of subject and object. God is his own object, because he is self
existent and self-sufficing: is in himself, as say the theologians,
_actus purissimus_, most pure act, which permits us up to a certain
point to understand the eternal generation of the Son and the procession of
the Holy Ghost. God, being self-existent and self-sufficing, needs and can
receive nothing from without his own most perfect being. But man is a
dependent being, a creature, and does not and cannot suffice in himself for
either his own existence or his own intelligence. He cannot think by
himself alone or without the concurrence of the object, which is not
himself. If the concurrence of the object be essential to the production of
my thought, then that concurrence must be active, for a passive concurrence
is the same as no concurrence at all. Then the object must be active,
therefore real, for what is not real cannot act or be active. Then the
object in my thought is not and cannot be myself, but stands over against
me. Now, I know that I think these ideas, and that they are the object in
my thought without which I cannot think at all. Therefore, they are
objective and real, and neither myself nor my creations, as are
abstractions.
This conclusion is questioned only by those persons who have not duly
considered the fact that there can be no thought without both subject and
object, and that man can never be his own object. To assume that he can
act, think, or know with himself alone, without the concurrence of that
which is not himself and is independent of him, is to deny his dependence
and to assume him to be God--a conclusion which some think follows from the
famous "_Cogito, ergo sum_" of Descartes, and which is accepted and
defended by the whole German pantheistic school of the present day.
{156}
Indeed, as atheism was in the last century, so pantheism is in the present
century the real enemy philosophy has to combat. In concluding the reality
of the object from the fact that I think it, I am far from pretending that
thought cannot err; but the error is not in regard to what I really think,
but in regard to that which I do not think, but infer from my thought. I
think only what is intelligible, and what is intelligible is real, and
therefore true, for falsehood, being unreal, is unintelligible, and
therefore cannot be thought. But in converting my thought into a
proposition, I may include in the proposition not only what I thought, but
what I did not think. Hence the part of error, which is always the part not
of knowledge, but of ignorance. It is so we understand St. Augustine and
St. Thomas.[Footnote 37]
[Footnote 37: Vide St. Augustine, in lib lxxxiii. Qq., quaest. xxii.,
and St. Thomas, Summa p.1 quaest. xvii, a. 3 ln. c. The words of St.
Augustine are, "Omnis qui fallitur, id quo fallitur, non intelligit."
Hence the Intellect is always true.]
These considerations authorize, or we are much mistaken, the conclusion
that the ideas or categories, which the schoolmen hold to be forms of the
intermediary or logical world, and Kant to be forms of the subject, are
objective and real, and either the intelligible object itself or the
objective light by which it is rendered intelligible or knowable. Plato,
Aristotle, and the scholastics, if we have not misapprehended them, regard
them, in explaining the fact of knowledge, rather as the light which
illumines the object than the object itself. Yet, when the object is
intelligible in itself, or by its own light, St. Thomas clearly identifies
it with the object, and distinguishes it from the object only when the
object is not intelligible _per se_. Thus, he maintains with St.
Augustine that God knows things _per ideam_; but to the objection that
God knows them by his essence, he answers that God in his own essence is
the similitude, that is, the idea, of all things: _Unde idea in Deo nihil
est aliud quam essentia Dei_. Therefore, idea in God is nothing else
than the essence of God. [Footnote 38]
[Footnote 38: Summa, p.1, quaest, xv. a. 1 ad 3. The question is _de
Ideis_, and we think the reader, by consulting what St. Thomas says
in the body of the first article, will agree that, though we have used
a different phraseology, we have simply given his sense.]
The doctrine of St. Thomas is that all knowledge is by ideas, in the sense
of image, likeness, or similitude. In God the idea, image, likeness, or
similitude, the _species_, is not distinguishable from the divine
essence, for he is in his essence _similitudo omnium rerum_. Now,
though we are created after the _idea exemplaris_, or model eternal in
his essence, and therefore in our degree copy or imitate him, we have not
in us the types or models of all things, are not in ourselves _similitudo
omnium rerum_, and therefore are not intelligent in ourselves alone. The
ideas by which things are intelligible and we intelligent must be distinct
from us, and exist independent of us. As no creature any more than we has
in itself the likeness of all things, or is in itself its own _idea
exemplaris_, no creature can be in itself alone intelligible. Hence what
the schoolmen call idea or intelligible species must be equally distinct
from and independent of the object when the object is _aliquid
creatum_, or creature. Hence, while both the created subject and the
created object depend on the idea, the one to be intelligible, the other to
be intelligent, the idea, intelligible species, the light--as we prefer to
say--is independent of them both. The idea _in re_ is not something
intermediary between subject and object, as is sometimes supposed, but the
light that intervenes between them, as the necessary condition of knowledge
in creatures. This seems to us to be the real doctrine of the scholastics,
as represented by St. Thomas, and is, in our judgment, indisputable.
{157}
We call the idea, regarded as intervening in the fact of knowledge, the
light, and thus avoid the question whether all knowledge is by similitude
or not. It may be that the idea is light because it contains the image or
likeness of the object, but that seems to us a question more curious than
practically important. We cannot see that the explication of the mystery of
knowing is carried any further by calling the idea image or similitude than
by simply calling it the intelligible light. The Platonists and
peripatetics seem to us to come no nearer the secret of knowledge by so
calling it than do our philosophers to the secret of external vision, when
they tell us that we do not see the visible object itself, but its image
painted by the external light on the retina of the eye. How do I see the
image or picture, and connect it with the external object? When I have
called the object or the idea light, I seem to myself to have said all that
can be said on the point, and to retain substantially the scholastic
doctrine of ideas, or intelligible species, which asserts, I add, by the
way, what is perhaps very true, but which after all brings us no nearer to
the secret of knowledge, or the explanation of how in the last analysis we
do or can know at all.
How we do or can know seems to us an inexplicable mystery, as is our
existence itself. That we do know is certain. Every man knows, and in
knowing knows that be knows; but how he knows no man knows. To deny is as
much an act of reason as is to affirm, and no one can deny without knowing
that he denies. Men may doubt many things, but universal doubt is a simple
impossibility, for whoever doubts knows that be doubts, and never doubts
that he doubts or that doubt is doubting. In all things and in all science
we arrive at last, if we think long and deep enough, at a mystery which it
is in no human power to deny or to explain, and which is explicable only in
God by his divine science. Hence it is that philosophy never fully suffices
for itself, and always needs to be supplemented by revelation, as nature to
attain its end must not only be redeemed from the fall, but supplemented by
grace. Man never suffices for himself, since his very being is not in
himself; and how, then, shall philosophy, which is his creation, suffice
for itself? Let philosophy go as far as it can, but let the philosopher
never for a moment imagine that human reason will ever be able to explain
itself. The secret as of all things is in God and with him. Would man be
God, the creature the Creator?
If we have seized the sense of the scholastic philosophy as represented by
St. Thomas, and are right in understanding by the intelligible species of
the schoolmen the light by which the object is intelligible, therefore the
object itself when the object is intelligible _per se_, and the
intelligible light when it is not, the ideal is objective and real, and
both the old quarrel and the new are voided. Abstractions are null; genera
and species are real, but creatures; ideas, as the intelligible light by
which we know, are not forms of the subject, but objective and real, and in
fact the light of the divine being, which, intelligible by itself, is the
intelligibility of all created existences. St. Anselm's argument is, then,
rigidly sound and conclusive: I think most perfect being _in re_; and
therefore such being is, or I could not think it, since what is not cannot
be thought. If the most perfect being, a greater than which and the
contrary of which cannot be thought, be only in my thought, then I am
myself greater than the most perfect being, and my thought becomes the
criterion of perfection, and I am greater than God, and can judge him.
This follows from the fact that the ideal is real. The ideas of the
universal, the infinite, the perfect, the necessary, the immutable, the
eternal cannot be either the intelligible object or the intelligible light,
unless they are being. As abstractions, or as abstracted from being, they
are simple nullities.
{158}
To think them is to think real, universal, infinite, perfect, necessary,
immutable, and eternal being, the _ens perfectissimum_ of St. Anselm,
the _ens necessarium et reale_ of the theologians, a greater than
which or the contrary of which cannot be thought. That this _ens_,
intuitively affirmed to every intellect, is God, is amply shown in the
papers on "The Problems of the Age," and also that _ens_ or being
creates existences, and hence there is no occasion for us to show it over
again.
But it will not do to say, as many do, that we have intuition of God. The
idea is intuitive; and we know by intuition that which is God, and that he
is would be indemonstrable if we did not; but we do not know by intuition
that what is affirmed or presented in intuition is God. When Descartes
says, "I think God, therefore God is," he misapprehends St. Anselm, and
assumes what is not tenable. St. Anselm does not say he thinks God, and
therefore God is; he says, "I think most perfect being, a greater than
which cannot be thought," and therefore most perfect being is. The
intuition is not God, but most perfect being. So the ideal formula, _ens
creat existentias_ so ably defended in the papers on "The Problems of
the Age," would be indefensible, if _Deus _were substituted for
_ens_, and it read, God creates existences. That is true, and
_ens_, no doubt, is _Deus_; but we know not that by intuition,
and it would be wrong to understand St. Augustine, who seems to teach that
we know that God is by intuition, in any other sense than that we have
intuition of that which can be demonstrated to be God. We know by intuition
that which is God, but not that it is God.
St. Thomas seems to us to set this matter right in his answer to the
question, _Utrum Deum esse sit per notum?_--He holds that _ens_
is _per se notum_, or self-evident, and that first principles in
knowing, as well as in being, evidence themselves, but denies that _Deum
esse sit per se notum_, because the meaning of the word _Deus_ or
God is not self-evident and known by all. His own words are: "_Dico ergo
haec propositio, DEUS EST, quantum in se est, per se nota est, quia
praedicatum est idem cum subjecto Deus enim est suum esse, ut infra
patebit. Sed qua nos non scimus de Deo QUID EST, non est per se nota est,
sed indiget demonstrari._" [Footnote 39]
[Footnote 39: Summa, pars. 1, quaest. 1 a. ln c.]
St. Thomas adds, indeed, "Sed indiget demonstrari, per ea quae sunt magis
nota quoad nos, et minus secundam naturam, scilicet per effectus;" but this
is easily explained. The saint argues that it is not self-evident that God
is, because it is not self-evident what he is; for, according to the
scholastic philosophy, to be able to affirm that a thing is, it is
necessary to know its quidity [Footnote 40], since without knowing what the
thing is we cannot know that it is. What God is can be demonstrated only by
his works, and that it can be so demonstrated St. Paul assures us, Rom.
1:20: "Invisibilia ipsius, a creatura mundi, per ea quae facta sunt,
intellecta, conspiciuntur: sempiterna quoqne virtus et divinitas;" or as we
venture to English it: "The invisible things of God, even his eternal power
and divinity, are clearly seen from the foundation of the world, being
understood (or known) by the things that are made." St. Paul appeals to the
things that are made not to prove that God is, but to show what he is, or
rather, if we may so express ourself, to prove that he is God, and leaves
us, as does St. Thomas, to prove, with St. Augustine, St. Anselm, Fénelon,
and others, that he is, by the argument derived from intuitive ideas, or
first principles, commonly called the _argumentum a priori_, though
that, strictly speaking, it is not, for there is nothing more ultimate or
universal in science than is God himself, or, rather, that which is God.
[Transcribers footnote 40: quidity--Real nature of a thing; the
essence.]
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The ideal formula is true, for it is contained in the first verse of
Genesis, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth," and in the first
article of the creed, "I believe in one God, maker of heaven and earth, and
all things visible and invisible;" and what it formulates is, as we have
shown, and as is shown more at length in "The Problems of the Age,"
intuitive, and the human mind could not exists and operate if it were not
so; but the formula itself, or, rather, the formulation as an intellectual
judgment, is not so. The judgment was beyond the reach of all Gentile
philosophy, which nowhere asserts or recognizes the fact of creation; it is
beyond the reach of the mass even of the Christian people, who hold that
God creates the world as an article of faith rather than as a scientific
truth; it is denied by nearly all the systems of philosophy constructed by
non-Catholics even in our own day, and it may well be doubted if science,
unaided by revelation, could ever have attained to it.
This relieves the formula of the principal objections urged against it. The
ideas formulated are the first principles in science with which all
philosophy must commence, but the formulation, instead of being at the
beginning, does not always appear even at its conclusion. The explanations
we have offered show that there is no discrepancy between its assertion and
the philosophy of St. Thomas. Indeed, the formula in substance is the
common doctrine of all great Catholic theologians in all ages of the
church, and may be seen to be so if we will only take the pains to
understand them and ourselves. The objection, that the doctrine that we
have intuition of most perfect being assumes that we have the intuitive
vision of God even in this life, cannot stand, because that vision is
vision of God as he is in himself, and this asserts only intuition of him
as idea, which we even know not by intuition is God. The result of our
discussion is to show that the sounder and better philosophy of our day is
in reality nothing but the philosophy of St. Anselm and St. Thomas, and
which in substance has been always, and still is, taught with more or less
clearness and depth in all our Catholic schools.
------
Original
The Hidden Crucifixion.
"And they crucified him there."
Say not 'twas on dread Calvary's mountain top,
And in the broad and glaring light
Of noonday sun;
With hooting rabble crowded 'round
To show
The Holy One despite.
No, no! But in this guilty breast, alone--
God of my love, how could I dare!--
The deed was done.
Ye angels, look upon this heart;
Ye know
I crucified him there!
------
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Impressions Of Spain.
By Lady Herbert.
St. Sebastian and Burgos.
What is it that we seek for, we Englishmen and Englishwomen, who year by
year, about the month of November, are seen crowding the Folkestone and
Dover steamboats, with that unmistakable "going abroad" look of
travelling--bags and wide-awakes and bundles of wraps and alpaca gowns? I
think it may be comprised in one word--_sunshine_. This dear old land
of ours, with all its luxuries and all its comforts and all its
associations of home and people, still lacks one thing--and that is
climate. For climate means health to one half of us; and health means power
of enjoyment; for, without it, the most perfect of homes (and nowhere is
that word understood so well as in England) is spoiled and saddened. So, in
pursuit of this great boon, a widow lady and her children, with a doctor
and two other friends, started off in the winter of 186-, in spite of
ominous warnings of revolutions, and grim stories of brigands, for that
comparatively unvisited country called Spain. As far as St. Sebastian the
journey was absolutely without interest or adventure of any kind. The
express train dashed them past houses and villages, and picturesque old
towns with fine church towers, from Paris to Bordeaux, and from Bordeaux to
Bayonne, and so on past the awful frontier, the scene of so many
passages-at-arms between officials and ladies' maids, till they found
themselves crossing the picturesque bridge which leads to the little town
of St. Sebastian, with its beach of fine sand, washed by the long billowy
waves of the Atlantic on the one hand, and its riant, well-cultivated
little Basque farms on the other. As to the town itself, time and the
prefect may eventually make it a second Biarritz, as in every direction
lodging-houses are springing up, till it will become what one of Dickens's
heroes would call "the most sea-bathingest place" that ever was! But at
present it is a mass of rough stone and lime and scaffolding; and the one
straight street leading from the hotel to the church of St. Maria, with the
castle above, are almost all that remains of the old town which stood so
many sieges, and was looked upon as the key of Northern Spain. The hotel
appeared but tolerably comfortable to our travellers, fresh from the
luxuries of Paris. When they returned, four or five months later, they
thought it a perfect paradise of comfort and cleanliness. After wandering
through the narrow streets, and walking into one or two uninteresting
churches, it was resolved to climb up to the citadel which commands the
town, and to which the ascent is by the fair zigzag road, like that which
leads to Dover Castle. A small garrison remains in the keep, which is also
a military prison. The officers receiving our party very courteously,
inviting them to walk on the battlements, and climb up to the flag-staff,
and offering them the use of their large telescope for the view, which is
certainly magnificent, especially toward the sea. There is a tiny chapel in
the fortress, in which the Blessed Sacrament is reserved. It was pleasant
to see the sentinel presenting arms to it each time his round brought him
past the ever open door. On the hill side, a few monumental slabs, let in
here and there into the rock, and one or two square tombs, mark the graves
of the Englishmen killed during the siege, and also in the Don Carlos
revolution.
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Of the siege itself, and of the historical interest attached to St.
Sebastian, we will say nothing: are they not written in the book of the
chronicles of Napier and Napoleon?
The following morning, after a fine and crowded service at the church of
St. Maria, where they first saw the beautiful Spanish custom of the women
being all veiled, and in black, two of the party started at seven in the
morning, in a light carriage, for Loyola. The road throughout is beautiful,
reminding one of the Tyrol, with picturesque villages, old Roman bridges,
quaint manor-houses, with coats of arms emblazoned over their porticoes;
rapid, clear trout-streams and fine glimpses of snowy mountains on the
left, and of the bright blue sea on the right. The flowers, too, were
lovely. There was a dwarf blue bugloss of an intensity of color which is
only equalled by the large forget-me-not on the mountainsides of Lebanon.
The peasants are all small proprietors. They were cultivating their fields
in the most primitive way, father, mother, and children working the ground
with a two-pronged fork, called by them a "laya;" but the result was
certainly satisfactory. They speak a language as utterly hopeless for a
foreigner to understand as Welsh or Gaelic. The saying among the
Andalusians is that the devil, who is no fool, spent seven years in Bilboa
studying the Basque dialect, and learned three words only; and of their
pronunciation they add that the Basque write "Solomon," and pronounce it
"Nebuchadnezzar!" Be this as it may, they are a contented, happy,
prosperous, sober race, rarely leaving their own country, to which they are
passionately attached, and deserving, by their independence and
self-reliance, their name of "Bayascogara"--"Somos bastantes."
Passing through the baths Certosa, the mineral springs of which are much
frequented by the Spaniards in summer, our travellers came, after a four
hours' drive, to Azpeitia, a walled town, with a fine church containing the
"pila," or font, in which St. Ignatius was baptized. Here the good-natured
curé, Padre G--, met them, and insisted on escorting them to the great
college of Loyola, which is about a mile from the town. It has a fine
Italian façade, and is built in a fertile valley round the house of St.
Ignatius, the college for missionary priests being on one side, and a
florid, domed, circular marble church on the other. The whole is thoroughly
Roman in its aspect, but not so beautiful as the Gothic buildings of the
south. They first went into the church, which is very rich in jaspers,
marbles, and mosaics, the marbles being brought from the neighboring
mountains. The cloisters at the back are still unfurnished; but the
entrance to the monastery is of fine and good proportions, and the
corridors and staircase are very handsome. Between the church and the
convent is a kind of covered cloister, leading to the "Santuario," the
actual house in which the saint was born and lived. The outside is in
raised brickwork, of curious old geometrical patterns; and across the door
is the identical wooden bar which in old times served as protection to the
château. Entering the low door, you see on your right a staircase; and on
your left a long low room on the ground floor, in which is a picture of the
Blessed Virgin. Here the saint was born: his mother, having a particular
devotion to the Virgin, insisted on being brought down here to be confined.
Going up the stairs, to a kind of corridor used as a confessional, you come
first to the chapel of St. Francis Borgia, where he said his first mass.
Next to it is one dedicated to Marianne di Jesu, the "Lily of Quito," with
a beautiful picture of the South American saint over the high altar. To the
left, again, is another chapel, and here St. François Xavier, the Apostle
of the Indies, said his mass before starting on his glorious evangelical
mission.
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Ascending a few steps higher, their guide led them into a long low room,
richly decorated and gilt, and full of pictures of the different events of
the life of the saint. A gilt screen divided the ante-chapel from the
altar, raised on the very spot where he lay so long with his wounded leg,
and where he was inspired by the Blessed Virgin to renounce the world, and
devote himself, body and soul, to the work of God. There is a
representation of him in white marble under the altar as he lay; and
opposite, a portrait, in his soldier's dress, said to be taken from life,
and another of him afterward, when he had become a priest. It is a
beautiful face, with strong purpose and high resolve in every line of the
features.
In the sacristy is the "baldachino," or tester of his bed, in red silk. It
was in this room that he first fell sick and took to reading the Lives of
the Saints to amuse himself, there being no other book within reach. Such
are the "common ways," which we blindly call "accidents," in which God
leads those whom he chooses, like Saul, for his special service. The
convent contains thirty fathers and twenty-five lay brothers. There are
about 120 students, a fine library, refectory, etc. They have a large
day-school of poor children, whom they instruct in Basque and Spanish; and
distribute daily a certain number of dinners, soup, and bread, to the sick
poor of the neighboring villages, about twenty of whom were waiting at the
buttery door for their daily supply.
The English strangers, taking leave of the kind and courteous fathers, had
luncheon at a little "posada" close by, where the hostess insisted on their
drinking some of the cider of the country, which the doctor, himself a
Devonshire man, was obliged to confess excelled that of his own country.
The good curé entertained them meanwhile with stories of his people, who
appear to be very like the Highlanders, both in their merits and their
faults. Some of their customs seemed to be derived from pagan times, such
as that of offering bread and wine on the tombs of those they love on the
anniversary of their death; a custom in vogue in the early days of
Christianity, and mentioned by St. Augustine in his Confessions as being
first put a stop to by St. Ambrose, at Milan, on account of the abuses
which had crept into the practice. The drive back was, if possible, even
more beautiful than that of the morning, and they reached St. Sebastian at
eight o'clock, delighted with their expedition.
The next day they started for Burgos, by rail, only stopping for a few
minutes on their way to the station to see the "Albergo dei Poveri," a
hospital and home for incurables, nursed by the Spanish sisters of charity.
They are affiliated to the sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, and follow their
rule, but do not wear the "white cornette" of the French sisters.
The railroad in this part of Spain has been carried through most
magnificent scenery, which appeared to our travellers like a mixture of
Poussin and Salvator Rosa. Fine purple mountains, still sprinkled with
snow, with rugged and jagged peaks standing out against the clear blue sky,
and with waterfalls and beautiful streams rushing down their sides; an
underwood of chestnut and beach trees; deep valleys, with little brown
villages and bright white convents perched on rising knolls, and
picturesque bridges spanning the little streams as they dashed through the
gorges; and then long tracks of bright rose-colored heather, out of which
rose big boulder-stones or the wayside cross; the whole forming, as it
were, a succession of beautiful pictures such as would delight the heart of
a painter, both as to composition and coloring. No one can say much for the
pace at which the Spanish railways travel; yet are they all too quick in
scenery such as this, when one longs to stop and sketch
at every turn.
{163}
Suddenly, however, the train came to a stand-still: an enormous fragment of
rock had fallen across the line in the night, burying a luggage-train, but
fortunately without injury to its drivers; and our party had no alternative
but to get out, with their manifold bags and packages, and walk across the
_débris_ to another train, which, fortunately, was waiting for them on
the opposite side of the chasm. A little experience of Spanish travelling
taught them to expect such incidents half a dozen times in the course of
the day's journey; but at first it seemed startling and strange. They
reached Burgos at six, and found themselves in a small but very decent
"fonda," where the daughter of the landlord spoke a little French, to their
great relief. They had had visions of Italian serving nearly as well as
Spanish for making themselves understood by the people; but this idea was
rudely dispelled the very first day of their arrival in Spain. Great as the
similarity may be in reading, the accent of the Spaniard makes him utterly
incomprehensible to the bewildered Italian scholar; and the very likeness
of some words increases the difficulty when he finds that, according to the
pronunciation, a totally different meaning is attached to them. For
instance, one of the English ladies, thinking to please the mistress of the
house, made a little speech to her about the beauty and cleanliness of her
kitchen, using the right word (_cocina_), but pronouncing it with the
Italian accent. She saw directly she had committed a blunder, though
Spanish civility suppressed the laugh at her expense. She found afterward
that the word she had used, with the "ci" _soft_, meant a female pig.
And this was only a specimen of mistakes hourly committed by all who
adventured themselves in this unknown tongue.
A letter of introduction procured for our travellers an instant admission
to the cardinal archbishop, who received them most kindly, and volunteered
to be their escort over the cathedral. He had been educated at Ushaw, and
spoke English fluently and well. He had a very pretty little chapel in his
palace, with a picture in it of Sta. Maria della Pace at Rome, from whence
he derives his cardinal's title.