with fatigue, exhausted from hunger, and totally unprepared for this
attack, remained, as it were, paralyzed. To me this first moment was
terrible; and those who boast of never having been afraid the first
time they take part in a battle either deceive themselves or they lie.
It took me a few minutes to master my emotion; but Kirdjcali too made a
diversion by furious bounds and neighing, which proved that for him
also this was the first baptism of fire.
Seeing the demoralization of his soldiers, the brave general made a
desperate charge in the very midst of the enemy’s ranks, followed by a
handful of dragoons under the orders of Count K——. I followed his
movements with my eye in a mechanical sort of way, when all of a sudden
I saw the unhappy general staggering rather than falling from his
horse, while an infernal hurrah of triumph burst from the Russians.
Then all my fears vanished. I thought of my father, and all that was
French in my blood was roused. I seized a sword that lay close by, and
turning towards the troops, who were still hesitating and wavering, I
cried out: “Cowards, if you have allowed your chief to be murdered, at
least do not let his dead body bear witness of your shame by leaving it
in the hands of your enemies. Come on and rescue it, and wash out in
your blood the stain you have set on Polish honor!”
Saying those words, and recommending my soul to God in one fervent
aspiration, I threw myself impetuously into the strife, followed by all
the soldiers, whom my words had roused from their stupor. The whistling
of balls, the smell of powder, the cries of the dying and the dead, and
more than all the savage howlings of the Russians, threw me into a sort
of mad rage and furious excitement which made me insensible to anything
but a longing for vengeance. Every time I rose in my stirrups to wield
my sword a man bit the dust. I felt a sort of superhuman strength at
that moment, and never ceased to strike till I saw the Poles driving
the defeated Russians completely out of the camp, from whence they fled
in the utmost disorder. I woke then as from a horrible nightmare, and
felt an inexpressible disgust and horror at the sight of the dead and
dying bodies of horses and men all round me weltering in their blood.
At that moment an orderly officer galloped up to me.
“Sir,” he exclaimed, “the general desires you to come to him
immediately.”
“Your general!” I exclaimed joyfully. “Why, I saw him fall with my own
eyes. He is not dead, then?”
“Not yet; but his wounds are mortal, and I fear there is no hope of
saving him.”
I followed the officer hastily to a tent where the poor general was
lying on a camp-bed. His face was literally hacked with sabrecuts; one
ball had gone through his chest, and the surgeon, who was bending over
him, was trying in vain to stanch the blood which was escaping in a
black stream from this gaping wound. I took off my cap and bowed low
before the dying hero.
“Sir,” he said in so weak a voice that I had to bend down my ear close
to him to be able to hear, “I do not know you, and I do not remember
ever to have seen you before; but whoever you may be, may God bless you
for what you have done this day! You have saved my troops from
dishonor, and me from having my last moments embittered by the cruelest
sorrow I could ever have experienced.”
At this moment a rush of blood from his mouth threatened to stifle the
dying man. When he had a little recovered he spoke again:
“Whence do you come, and what is your name?”
“I am French, and my name is Michael,” I replied, blushing deeply. Here
the general drew off a ring from his finger. It was a signet-ring used
throughout the war as a password of command.
“Take this,” he said, “and swear to me not to leave my troops till the
Central Committee have sent another officer to take my place. This is
the last request of a dying man, and I feel sure that you will not
refuse it to me.”
I hesitated an instant. How reveal my secret and explain my anomalous
position at such a moment? The general, striving to raise his voice,
reiterated his dying entreaty:
“Swear not to leave them!”
I felt I could not resist any longer.
“I swear it, general, but on one condition: that your soldiers consent
to serve as escort to Countess L—— from her château to the frontier, as
she wishes to escape with her children and rejoin her husband, who is
in exile.”
“What! Countess L——, Arthur’s wife?”
“The same, general,” I replied; “and it was to implore your protection
for her in her hour of need, as well as to convey to you the
information she had received of the Russian ambuscade, that determined
me to accept this dangerous mission.”
“Thanks, my child—thanks for her and thanks for me. Gentlemen,” he
added, turning to his officers, who, silent and sad, were standing at
the other end of the tent, “you will obey this young officer until my
successor be appointed from headquarters. This is my last order, my
last prayer. And as long as he, though a stranger, fights at the head
of your column, you will not again forget, I hope, that the cause for
which you are fighting is a sacred one, the most holy of all causes,
for it is the cause of God and your country.”
The officers hung their heads at this tacit reproach—the only one
addressed to them by the hero whom they had allowed to be slain in so
cowardly a manner. After another fainting fit the general made me a
sign to draw close to him. I knelt down by his side. “If death spares
you,” he said, “go and tell my poor mother how I died. Console her, and
try and replace me to her; for I am the only thing she has left in the
world.”
Here tears filled his eyes, which he turned away to hide his emotion
from his officers. The surgeon had just finished dressing his wounds,
but he shook his head sadly as he rose. The general perceived the
movement and said:
“My poor friend! you have given yourself a great deal of trouble, and
all for nothing; but I am just as grateful to you.”
The surgeon wrung his hand, too much moved to speak. Then I took
courage and said:
“General, when the doctor of the body can do no more, and science is
exhausted, a Christian has recourse to another Physician.”
“You are quite right, my child,” replied the good general gravely; “and
I have no time to lose, for I feel my life is ebbing away every
moment.”
He made a sign to one of his aides-de-camp, and whispered his
instructions to him, which the latter hastened to obey. He returned in
a few minutes with a young Capuchin, who was the chaplain of the corps.
The officers left the tent, and I was about to do the same when a
sudden thought struck me.
“One word more, general. I want three days to make my arrangements and
get my kit ready.”
“Take them, my son; but do not be away longer, for when you return I
shall be no more here.”
“Not here, perhaps, but in a better world,” I exclaimed. “God bless
you, general! I cannot replace you, but I may perhaps be able to show
your troops how those should fight and die who have had General B—— for
their leader!”
“Thanks, my child, and may God bless you! Adieu!”
I pressed the hand which the dying man held out to me with respectful
tenderness; and then, hurrying from the tent to hide my emotion, I
obtained a “safe-conduct” passport, and, remounting my horse, stopped
at the best inn I could find in the next village, and wrote a few lines
to Countess L——, not to tell her of the extraordinary position in which
I had been placed or the fearful events of the past night, but to
reassure her, and bid her to hold herself in readiness for a speedy
departure, as an escort had been promised for her. Thence I rode as
fast as I could to the convent of the Bernardines at Kielce, and asked
to see Father Benvenuto immediately—that eloquent preacher and holy
confessor who had lingered for twenty years in a Siberian dungeon. He
was my confessor, and at this moment of all others in my life I needed
his advice and guidance. Fortunately for me, he was at home, and I
instantly told him all that had happened, and of the almost compulsory
promise which had been extorted from me by the brave and dying general.
The good old father listened in silence, and then said:
“My child, what you have done is heroic and great; but if you were to
return to the camp, and had to bear alone this terrible secret, it
would crush you with its weight.”
“But, good God! what can I do?” I exclaimed. “Must I give it up and
forfeit my word?”
“No; because God, in permitting these extraordinary events, had
evidently his divine purpose for you. You must return and fulfil your
vow, but you must not go alone. More than a month ago I asked
permission of my superiors to be allowed to carry the consolations of
religion to our brave troops in the field. This permission I received
yesterday; and so I can at once precede you to the camp, and when you
arrive will be your safeguard and protector.”
An enormous weight was taken off my mind by this proposal. I thanked
him with my whole heart, and he then insisted on my going to sleep for
some hours; for all that I had gone through had nearly exhausted my
strength. After a good night’s rest I woke, refreshed in body and
relieved in mind, to ride to Breslau, where I completed my military
equipment and then returned to the camp.
[TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A FINAL PHILOSOPHY.[162]
The war waged by modern thought against supernatural revelation in the
name of the so-called “advanced” science is looked upon in a different
light by Catholic and by Protestant thinkers. Catholic philosophers and
divines look upon it as a noisy but futile effort of modern
anti-Christianism to shake and overthrow the mighty rock on which the
incarnate God has been pleased to build his indefectible church. They
know, of course, that they must be ready to fight, for the church to
which they belong is still militant; but, far from apprehending a
coming defeat, they feel certain of the victory. God is with them, and,
on God’s infallible promise, the church whose cause they serve is sure
of her final triumph. Protestant divines, on the contrary, hold no
tokens of future victories, and look upon infidel science not as an
enemy whom they have to fight, but as an old acquaintance, and a rather
capricious one, whom they must try to keep within bounds of decency,
and from whom they may borrow occasionally a few newly-forged weapons
against the Catholic Church. Some sincere Protestants, considering the
tendency of scientific thought to destroy all supernatural faith, saw,
indeed, the necessity of resisting its baneful incursions; but their
resistance did not, and could not, prove successful. Protestantism is
the notorious offspring of rebellion; it is not built on the rock; it
has no claims to special divine assistance; it cannot reckon but on
human weakness for its support; it is supremely inconsistent; in short,
it is no proof against the anti-Christian spirit of the age, and, what
is still more discouraging, it is fully conscious of its progressive
dissolution.
These considerations and others of a like nature kept continually
coming to our mind as we were perusing the pages of the singular work
whose title stands at the head of this article. The great object of Dr.
Shields is to reconcile religion with science by means of what he calls
_final philosophy_.
In the introduction to the work the author points out the limits and
the topics of Christian science; the logical, historical, and practical
relations of science and religion; the possibility of their
reconciliation, and the importance of their harmony to science, to
religion, to philosophy. The work is divided into two parts. The first
part is a review of the conduct of philosophical parties as to the
relations between science and religion; whilst the second part
propounds and explains the philosophical theory of the harmony of
science and religion, as conceived by the author. The first part opens
with a chapter on the early _conflicts_ and _alliances_ between science
and religion, where the author investigates the causes of the present
disturbed relations between religion and science, and traces them from
the dawn of the Greek philosophy to the Protestant Reformation;
describes the conflicts of philosophy and mythology in the
pre-Christian age; the wars of pagan philosophy against Christianity in
the first centuries of the present era; the alliance of theology with
philosophy in the patristic age; the predominance of theology and the
subjugation of philosophy in the scholastic age; and, lastly, the
revolt of philosophy against theology in the age of the Reformation.
In a second chapter he describes the _modern antagonism_ between
science and religion, the conflict in astronomy, in geology, in
anthropology, in psychology, in sociology, in theology, in philosophy,
and in civilization.
The third chapter, which fills more than two hundred pages, describes
the _modern indifferentism_ between science and religion, under the
name of “schism” or “rupture” in all the branches of science already
enumerated—viz., the schism in astronomy, in geology, in anthropology,
etc., to which is added the schism in metaphysics.
In the fourth chapter the author examines the _modern eclecticism_
between science and religion: eclecticism in astronomy, eclecticism in
geology, and so on through the other branches of knowledge already
mentioned.
The fifth and last chapter describes the _modern scepticism_ between
science and religion: scepticism in astronomy, in geology, in
anthropology, and in all the aforesaid branches of human knowledge,
with a conclusion about “effete religious culture.”
The second part of the work, though much shorter than the first, is
divided also into five chapters, of which the first aims to show that
philosophy is the natural _umpire_ between religion and science,
wherever they are in conflict; the second expounds and refutes the
_positive_ philosophy; the third examines and criticises the _absolute_
philosophy; the fourth states that _final philosophy_, or _a theory of
perfectible science_, may bring about the conciliation of positivism
and absolutism; and the last offers a sketch of the _ultimate
philosophy_, the science of sciences, derived scientifically from their
own historical and logical development, and whose characteristic
features the author thus glowingly describes in the closing sentence of
his work:
“The summary want of the age is that last philosophy into which
shall have been sifted all other philosophy, which shall be at
once catholic and eclectic, which shall be the joint growth and
fruit of reason and faith, and which shall shed forth, through
every walk of research, the blended light of discovery and
revelation; a philosophy which shall be no crude aggregate of
decaying systems and doctrines, but their distilled issue and
living effect, and which shall not have sprung full-born from
any one mind or people, but mature as the common work and
reward of all; a philosophy which, proceeding upon the unity of
truth, shall establish the harmony of knowledge through the
intelligent concurrence of the human with the divine intellect,
and the rational subjection of the finite to the Infinite
reason; a philosophy, too, which shall be as beneficent as it
is sacred, which in the act of healing the schisms of truth
shall also heal the sects of the school, of the church, and of
the state, and, while regenerating human art, both material and
moral, shall at length regenerate human society; a philosophy,
in a word, which shall be the means of subjecting the earth to
man and man to God, by grouping the sciences, with their fruits
and trophies, at the feet of Omniscience, and there converging
and displaying all laws and causes in God, the cause of causes
and of laws, of whom are all things and in whom all things
consist; to whom alone be glory” (pp. 587, 588).
These are noble words. It is certain that our age is in great need of a
philosophy at once catholic and eclectic, as the author very wisely
remarks. But it is our firm conviction that if Dr. Shields had studied
our great Catholic authors, he would know that there is a philosophy
and a theology which does already all that he wishes to do by his
projected final philosophy, and much better too. We praise his
excellent intention; but we do not think that his project has any
chance of being carried out in a proper manner. We even doubt if a
_new_ system of philosophy can be found so comprehensive, coherent,
impartial, and perfect in all its parts as to justify the high
expectation entertained by the author.
This new system of philosophy cannot be the product of infidel thought,
as is evident. Hence none of the advocates of advanced science can have
a part in the projected work, except as opponents whom philosophy shall
have to refute, or as claimants upon whose rights philosophy has to
pronounce its judicial sentence.
Nor will the new system be the product of Catholic thought; for we
Catholics are under the impression that the world has no need of _new_
philosophical systems. As for us, we have a philosophy of admirable
depth, great soundness, and incomparable precision, which has ever
successfully refuted heresy, silenced infidelity, and harmonized the
teachings of revelation and science to our full satisfaction. This
philosophy can, indeed, be improved in some particulars, and we
continually strive to improve it: but we are determined not to change
its principles, which we know to be true, and not to depart from its
method, which has no rival in the whole world of speculative science.
Who, then, would frame and develop the new and “final” philosophy?
Free-thinkers? Freemasons? Free-religionists? These sectaries would
doubtless be glad to dress philosophy in a white apron, with the square
in one hand and the triangle in the other; for, if the thing were
feasible, they would acquire at once that philosophical importance
which they have not, and which they have always been anxious to secure,
but in vain, by their united efforts. But then we are sure that they
would only develop some humanitarian theory calculated to flatter the
sceptical spirit of the age, and to merge all creeds in naturalism and
free-religion; and this, of course, would not do, for the “final
philosophy” should, according to Dr. Shields’ view, maintain the rights
of supernatural revelation no less than of natural reason.
Should, then, the great work be abandoned to the hands, industry, and
discernment of the Protestant sects? Men of talent and men of learning
are to be found everywhere; but as to philosophers, we doubt whether
any can be found among Protestants who will be honest enough to draw
the legitimate consequences of their principles, when those
consequences would imply a condemnation of their religious system. In
other terms, if the work were to be entrusted to Protestant thinkers,
one might, without need of preternatural illumination, boldly predict
that the whole affair must end in nothing but failure. What can be
expected of a Protestant thinker, or of any number of Protestant
thinkers, whether divines or philosophers, but an inconsistent and
preposterous tampering with truth? Protestantism lacks, and ever will
lack, a uniform body of doctrines, whether philosophical or
theological; it has no head, no centre, no positive principle, no
recognized living authority, no bond of union; it has only a mutilated
Bible which it discredits with contradictory interpretations; it is
neither a church nor a school, but a Babel confusion of uncertain and
discordant views; and it has no better foundation than the shifting
sand of private judgment. On what ground, then, can a Protestant
apologist force upon modern thought those shreds of revealed truth
which he claims to hold on no better authority than his own fallible
and changeable reason? And what else can he oppose to the invading
spirit of unbelief? Alas! Protestantism is nothing but a house divided
within itself, a ship where all hands are captains with no crew at
their orders, an army whose generals have no authority to command and
whose soldiers have no duty to obey. Such a House cannot but crumble
into dust; such a ship must founder; and such an army cannot dream of
Christian victories, as it is doomed to waste its strength in perpetual
riots, unless it succeeds in putting an end to its intestine troubles
by self-destruction. It is evident, then, that “final philosophy”
cannot be the product of Protestant thought.
Dr. Shields seems to have seen these difficulties; for he holds that
such a philosophy must not spring full-born from any one mind or
people, but mature “as the common work and reward of all.” Here,
however, the question arises whether this mode of working is calculated
to give satisfactory results. When a number of persons contribute to
the execution of a great work, it must be taken for granted that, if
their effort has to prove a success, they must work on the same plan
and tend in the same direction, so that the action of the one may not
interfere with the action of the other. If all men were animated by an
intense love of truth, and of nothing but truth, if they all could
agree to start from the same principles, if they were all modest in
their inferences, if they were so humble as to recognize their error
when pointed out to them, and if some other similar dispositions were
known to exist in all or in most students of science and philosophy,
Dr. Shields’ plan might indeed be carried out with universal
satisfaction. But men, unfortunately, love other things besides truth
and more than truth: they love themselves, their own ideas, and their
own prejudices; they ignore or pervert principles; they defend their
blunders, and even embellish them for the sake of notoriety, and they
are obstinate in their errors. On the other hand, we see that an
ignorant public is always ready to applaud any philosophic monstrosity
which wears a fashionable dress; and this is one of the greatest
obstacles to the triumph of truth, as error grows powerful wherever it
is encouraged by popular credulity. Thus error and truth will continue
to fight in the future as they did in the past. The history of
philosophy is a history of endless discords. The wildest conceptions
have ever found supporters, and charlatanism has ever been applauded.
The only epoch in which error had lost its hold of philosophy, and was
compelled to retire almost entirely from the field of speculation, was
when theology and philosophy, bound together in a defensive and
offensive alliance under the leadership of the great Thomas Aquinas, so
overpowered the Moorish philosophers and confounded their rationalistic
followers that it was no longer possible for error to wear a mask. Then
it was that the principles of a truly “final” philosophy were laid
down, faith and reason reconciled, and false theories discredited. And
it is for this reason that the disciples of error, who after the time
of the Lutheran revolt have never ceased to attack some religious
truth, style that scholastic epoch a _dark age_. Dark, indeed, for
error, which had lost much power of mischief, but bright for
philosophy, which had triumphed, and glorious for Christianity, which
reigned supreme. If any age must be called _dark_, it is the one we
live in, owing to the numbers of ignorant scribblers, unprincipled men
in responsible positions, and illogical scientists who disgrace it.
This state of things is the product of free thought, which has
disturbed and nearly destroyed the harmony of all the sciences, and all
but extinguished the light of philosophical principles. The idea of
employing free thought as an auxiliary for the defence of philosophy is
so preposterous on its very face that none but a sectary or a sceptic
could have entertained it. It must be pretty evident to all that such a
course is like introducing the enemy into the fortress. Introduce
Draper and Büchner, Tyndall and Moleschott, Haeckel and Darwin, Huxley
and Clifford into the parlor of philosophy, and you will see at once
how utterly mistaken is Mr. Shields if he reckons on them for his great
work; you will see with what self-reliance, arrogance, and intolerance
they condemn everything contrary to their favorite views. Tell them
that they must help you to make a “final philosophy” which shall
reconcile Scripture and science, Christianity and human reason. What
would they think of such a proposal? Would they condescend to answer
otherwise than by a sneer? But let us admit that they will favor you
with an honest answer. What will they say?