had any to fight against, so calmly and sovereignly did virtue
rule over his soul. I believe the love of pleasure never made
him lose a single instant of his life. It even seemed as if he
needed no relaxation to balance the exhaustion of his mind,
and, if he allowed himself any at rare intervals, a little
historical or literary reading, a short conversation with a
friend, or a chat with my mother was enough to strengthen his
mind for more work; but these relaxations were so few and far
between that one would have thought he grudged them to himself.
Ambition never disturbed his heart; for himself, he had never
had any, and in his children’s careers he looked only for
opportunities for them to serve their country and avoid
idleness and luxury, which he considered a perpetual temptation
to evil. How could avarice come near a soul so generous?...
Twenty years’ labor on public works and thirty-one in the
council never suggested to him the idea of asking for
anything.[180] ... He died at the age of eighty-one, never
having received any extraordinary gratuity, pension, or grant.
Even his salary, in spite of his share in the distribution of
the public treasury, was always the last to be paid. Mr.
Desmarets, finance minister, said to me one day as we were
walking in his garden: ‘I must say your father is an
extraordinary man. I found out by chance that his salary has
not been paid for some time, though he needs it. Why did he not
tell me? He sees me every day, and he knows there is no one I
would oblige sooner than him.’ I answered with a laugh that the
salary never would be paid, if he waited for my father to ask
for it, for he well knew that the word _ask_ was the hardest in
the world for my father to utter.... What defects could a man
have who was so insensible to pleasure, ambition, even
legitimate self-interest? Nearly all human weaknesses are the
results of these three passions, ... and Despréaux was only
literally in the right when he said of your grandfather: ‘Such
a man makes humanity despair.’ He did not know justice only
through the discernment of his mind; he felt it as the natural
instinct and impulse of his heart, spite of all prejudices and
predilections. Diffident of his own judgment, he feared the
illusions of a first impulse and the snares of a hasty
conclusion. Wisely lavish of his time in listening to causes
and reading the memoranda of his clients, he was never
contented till he had got to the smallest details of the truth,
for to judge aright was the only anxiety or disturbance of mind
he ever experienced. Mindful only of things in the abstract, he
wholly lost sight of names and persons; and if in the exercise
of his functions he was ever known to give way to emotion, it
was only on behalf of endangered justice, never of individuals
as such. In this there was no obstinacy or arrogance. Zeal for
justice and love of truth would often so move him that he was
unable to contain his thoughts, and would admonish others of
the danger of trusting too much to what is erroneously called
common sense, though it be so rare a gift; of the duty of
learning accurately the principles of justice, and of forming
one’s judgment on the experience of the wisest men.”
His gentleness and patience, his prudence and discretion, were no less
conspicuous; his son says further: “No one knew men better, and no one
spoke less of them.” His gentleness was a companion virtue of his
courage. Apparently timid, he was yet impassible; neither moral nor
physical danger awed him.
“From this mixture of justice, prudence, and bravery resulted a
perfect equipoise as little in danger from variations of temper
as from tempests of passion.... He was always the same, always
himself, always lord of his thoughts and feelings. Hence that
groundwork of moderation that kept him in an atmosphere so
serene that pride never puffed him up, nor weakness degraded
him, nor extreme joy upset him, nor immoderate sorrow depressed
him. Duty, ever present to his mind, kept him within the bounds
of the most solid wisdom, and one might epitomize his character
thus: he was a living reason, quickening a body obedient to its
lessons and early accustomed to bear willingly the yoke of
virtue.”
Of lesser qualities, having these greater ones, he could not be
destitute, and in his daily life, his eating and drinking, his
recreations, his domestic relations, he was equally steady and perfect.
He disliked dinner-parties especially, as involving a loss of time,
though, if obliged to be at them, he never went beyond the frugal
portion equivalent to his home meals; he drank so little wine that it
scarcely colored the water with which he mixed it; and as to display,
he was such an enemy to it that he would use only a pair of horses
where his colleagues and subordinates ostentatiously used two pair. He
was sickly of body, but retained his gentle and equable temperament
throughout his life; his servants found him too easy to serve, so
careless was he of his personal comfort; his friends, few but sincere,
found in him another self, so forgetful was he of his interests in
theirs. In conversation he repressed his natural turn for pleasantry,
because he despised such frivolous talents; but his _esprit_ pierced
his gravity at times, and he was always a hearty laugher. Piety was
inborn in him, and his faith was as childlike as his morals were pure.
Scripture was his favorite reading, the Gospels especially, and his
grave devotion in church was a rebuke to younger and more thoughtless
men. He laid aside a tenth of his income for the use of the poor, whom
he looked upon collectively as an additional child of his own; and a
famine, or local distress of any kind, always found him with a reserve
fund ready to help the needy. On the other hand, he practised the
strictest domestic economy, and on principle shunned all display beyond
what was necessary for simple comfort and the respect due to his
official position. We might go further in this eulogium, but, having
pointed out the steadiness of character which was peculiar to him, we
need not enlarge on qualities which he shared with many weaker but
still well-meaning men. All real saints are first true men; wherever an
element of weakness crosses the life of a servant of God there is a
corresponding flaw in his perfection. The death of Henri d’Aguesseau
was worthy of his life; the consideration for others, the solicitude
for some poor clients whose interests he feared would suffer through
the time lost in formalities after his death, the strong reliance on
God, the frequent repetition of the Psalms, “the possessing his soul in
patience,” which distinguished his dying hours, all pointed to the
“preciousness” which it must have worn in God’s sight.
The Chancellor d’Aguesseau walked in his father’s footsteps. Among his
teachings to his son, who at nineteen was leaving home, he insists
especially on the study of Holy Scripture, supplemented by a practice
of marking and bringing together in writing all such passages as relate
to the duties of a Christian and a public life, to serve as a body of
moral precepts for his own guidance. Others, he says, have commented
upon Scripture in this direction, but he does not advise his son to
follow them in their methods, for “the true usefulness and value of
this sort of work is only for the person himself, who thereby profits
at his leisure, and imbues himself with the truths he gathers.” In his
book, _Reflections on Christ_, he says: “The characteristic of Gospel
doctrine is that it is as sublime, while it is also as simple, as
_one_, as God himself. There is but one thing needful: to serve God, to
imitate him, to be one with him. This truth includes all man’s duties.”
Simplicity and uprightness, singleness of purpose and love of truth,
were for him the practical synonym of religion. His father’s death he
calls “simple and great”; Job’s eulogium he emphatically points out as
having been that of “a man simple and upright, fearing God and
eschewing evil.” Other moralists, public and private, have harped, not
unnecessarily, on the same string. The Provençal poet, Frederick
Mistral, adds another element to the definition of goodness—work.
Brought up on a farm, among all the interests and details of
agriculture and the vintage, in a household whose head was his father
and teacher, and where daily family prayer and reading in common ended
a day of hard work, he was a strong and rustic boy. All old customs
were in vogue: the father solemnly blessed the huge Yule-log at
Christmas, and then told his children of the worthy doings of their
ancestors. He never complained of the weather, rebuking those who did
in these words: “My friends, God above knows what he is about, and also
what is best for us.” His table was open to all comers, and he had a
welcome for all but idlers. He would ask if such and such a one was a
good worker, and, if answered in the affirmative, he would say: “Then
he is an honest man, and I am his friend.” The men and women on the
farm were busy, healthy, strong, and pious. The old man had been a
soldier under Napoleon, and had harbored proscribed and hunted
fugitives in the Reign of Terror. His adventures were a never-ending
source of interest to his family, his hired men, and to strangers. We
are perhaps wrong in saying so, but there is always a tendency, when we
see or hear of such men, to say: “There are none such now.” Certainly
there are fewer, but in every age the same lament has been raised. The
“good old times,” if you pursue them closely, vanish into the age of
fable; yet in hidden corners one may always find some of their
representatives, and goodness, alas! has always been exceptional. M.
Taine, in his _Sources of Contemporary France_, wisely says: “In order
to become practical, to lord it over the soul, to become an
acknowledged mainspring of action, a doctrine must sink into the mind
as an accepted, indisputable thing, a habit, an established
institution, a home tradition, and must filter through reason into the
foundations of the will; then only can it become a social force and
part of a national character.” Unfortunately, it takes centuries, or at
least generations, to produce such results; but the continual and
unchanging teaching of religion, running parallel to, and yet distinct
from, all local changes of circumstance, may often supply much of this
natural tradition. In the sixteenth century Olivier de Serres, in a
manual of agriculture, touches on the duties of a landholder, and the
old principles of the Bible are revived in his archaic French. He bids
masters, “according to their gifts, exhort their servants and laborers
to fly sin and follow virtue.”
“He (the master) shall show them how industry profits every
business, specially farming, by means of which many poor men
have built houses; and, on the other hand, how by neglect many
rich families have been ruined. On this subject he shall quote
the sayings of the wise man, ‘that the hand of the diligent
gathers riches,’ and that the idler who will not work in winter
will beg his bread in summer. Such and like discourses shall be
the ordinary stock of the wise and prudent father of a family
concerning his men, whence also he will learn to be the first
to follow diligence and virtue, and to let no word of
blasphemy, of lasciviousness, of foolishness, or of backbiting
ever pass his lips, in order that he may be a mirror of all
modesty.”
Gerebtzoff’s _History of Ancient Russian Civilization_ gives curious
details of the patriarchal rules of life in that country, the respect
lavished on parents and elders, the early-imbibed love of truth, and
the familiar use of proverbs embodying these doctrines. Why do these
things seem new to us, or at least why is their repetition so
necessary? St. Marc Girardin, lecturing at the Sorbonne thirty years
ago on the fifth chapter of Proverbs, distrusted the effect on his
audience of youths “of the period.” He handled the subject manfully,
but so well that his audience caught his own enthusiasm and rained down
applause on those noble, ancient Hebrew maxims, so dignified in theory,
so beautiful in practice. But if the world would not listen to such
teaching, the same precepts would meet it unawares in the books of
classic writers—in the _Republic_ of Plato, in the speeches of Cicero,
the _Politics_ of Aristotle, in the laws of Solon. The ancients
constantly startle us with their maxims of more than human virtue; much
of their heathen teaching puts to shame the practice of their
pseudo-Christian successors. Those among them who do not uphold piety,
filial respect, obedience, and faith belong to a time when literature
as well as morals was degenerating; but it would have required a
Sardanapalus in literature to teach unblushingly what Rousseau taught
to the most polished society of Europe. All law is contained in the Ten
Commandments, and in China, relates one of the missionaries whose
“letters,” unpretentious as they are, are the greatest help to science,
a committee of learned men, on being ordered to report flaws in
Christian doctrine, said they had considered well, but dared not do it,
for all the essential doctrine was already contained in their own
sacred books, the _King_. Again, Christian practice in old times
revived the precept of Deuteronomy to bear the commandments “on the
wrist, and engrave them on the threshold of the house and the lintel of
the door” (Deut. _vi_. 6–9). In Luneburg, Hanover, a farm-house built
in 1000, and which for six hundred years has been in the family of its
present owner, a small yeoman, Peter Heinrich Rabe, has this text over
the door: “The blessing of God shall be thy wealth, If, mindful of
naught else, thou art Faithful and busy in the state God has given
thee, And seekest to fulfil all thy duties. Amen.” English and Dutch,
German and French, houses have more or less such decorations and
reminders on their walls; churches abounded with them, and men and
women wore illuminated texts as jewels. The immutable law of which
Cicero, in his _Republic_, gives a definition worthy of the Bible, and
to deny which, he says, is to fly from one’s self, deny one’s own
nature, and be therefore most grievously tormented, even if one escapes
human punishment; the law of conscience, of which a Chinese family
register says: “Nothing in the world should turn your heart away from
truth one hair’s breadth,” and “If you set yourself above your
conscience, it will avenge itself by remorse; heaven and earth and all
the spirits will be against you”; the law which Père Gratry resumed in
three passages of Scripture: “Increase and multiply, and possess the
earth,” “Man is put on earth to set order and justice in the world,”
and “Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all things else
shall be added unto you”; the law which Garron de la Bévière, a victim
of the Revolution, though himself a sincere advocate of liberty,
translates thus: “He who knows not how to suffer knows not how to
live”; that law which does not deal only in magnificent generalities,
but carries its dignity into the smallest details of practical life, so
that Père de Ravignan could apply it from the pulpit of Notre Dame to
the sore point of a fashionable audience whom he startled by asking if
they paid their debts—that law was the shield and the groundwork of the
heroic old family life of French provinces. Simple tradesmen and
untaught peasants lived under it as blamelessly as gentlemen and
statesmen, and taught their sons the same traditions, the same honesty,
the same truth, the same deference to their conscience, the same fear
of evil for evil’s sake, and not for the punishments it involves or the
misfortunes it often brings on. The custom of keeping family registers
is a very old one; even before St. Louis’ famous instructions to his
children it was common: Bayard’s mother left him a similar manual, and
people of all conditions made a practice of it. From these documents,
and the sentiments written in them from time to time by fathers for the
guidance of their children, M. de Ribbe has collected many memorials of
domestic life in France—chiefly in remote and happy neighborhoods, but
also in more populous and disturbed ones; and the sameness of the
precepts in all is less strange than the likeness they bear to those of
the Chinese family books, which date back often more than 2,000 years.
He has found in the recently-discovered papyri in Egyptian tombs the
same eternal rules, set forth in language almost equal to the simple
grandeur of the Bible, while the Hindoo hymns and books of morals teach
in many instances the same truths in nearly the same words.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DR. DRAPER AND EVOLUTION.
At a meeting of Unitarian ministers held at Springfield, Massachusetts,
on the 11th of October, 1877, Dr. J. W. Draper delivered a lecture on
“Evolution: its Origin, Progress, and Consequences.” Prof. Youmans
publishes it in the _Popular Science Monthly_, with the remark that
“some passages omitted in the lecture for want of time are here
introduced”; which means, so far as we can understand, that Dr. Draper,
before allowing the publication of his lecture, retouched it, and
introduced into it some items, views, or considerations which the
lecture delivered to the Unitarian meeting did not contain, but which
he considered necessary as giving the last finish to his composition.
It seems, in fact, that the doctor must have felt a little embarrassed
in the performance of the task which he had accepted; for he well knew
that in speaking to a body of sectarian ministers he could not make the
best use of the ordinary resources of free-thought without breaking
through the barriers of conventional propriety; and he himself candidly
informs his hearers that, when he received the request to deliver this
lecture before them, he was at first disposed to excuse himself, giving
the following reason for his hesitation: “Holding religious views which
perhaps in many respects are not in accordance with those that have
recommended themselves to you, I was reluctant to present to your
consideration a topic which, though it is in truth purely scientific,
is yet connected with some of the most important and imposing
theological dogmas.” This was, perhaps, one of the motives (besides the
want of time) why in the delivery of the lecture some passages were
omitted which have subsequently found their way into the pages of the
scientific monthly.
It would be interesting to know what “imposing theological dogmas” Dr.
Draper considered it to be his duty to respect while lecturing before a
Unitarian audience. Unitarians do not generally overload their liberal
minds with dogmas. Their creed is very short. They simply admit, as
even the good Mahometans do, that there is one God. This is all. What
that one God is they are not required to know; their denial of the Holy
Trinity leaves them free to conceive their God as an impersonal being,
a universal soul, or a sum total of the forces of nature. On the other
hand, their denial of ecclesiastical authority and of the inspiration
of the Scriptures leaves them absolutely free to disbelieve every other
dogma and mystery of Christianity. It seems to us, therefore, that Dr.
Draper, who had no need, and certainly no inclination, to descant on
Trinitarian views or to defend the inspiration of the Bible, ought not
to have feared to scandalize the good souls to whom he was requested to
break the bread of modern science. It is clear that only an unequivocal
profession of scientific atheism could have been construed into an
offence; and even this, we fancy, would have been pardoned, for the
sake of science, by the easy and accommodating gentlemen whose
“liberality of sentiment” triumphed at last over Dr. Draper’s
hesitation.
Whether or not the assembled Unitarian ministers were satisfied with
the lecture, and converted to the scientific views maintained by the
lecturer, we do not know; this, however, we do know: that Dr. Draper’s
reasoning and assertions about the origin, progress, and consequences
of evolution, even apart from all consideration of religious dogmas,
are not calculated to command the assent of cultivated intellects.
The lecture begins with the statement that two explanations have been
introduced to account for the origin of the organic beings that
surround us; the one, according to the lecturer, “is conveniently
designated as the hypothesis of creation,” the other as “the hypothesis
of evolution.” This statement, to begin with, is incorrect. It may,
indeed, be very “convenient” for Dr. Draper to speak of creation as a
mere hypothesis; but the device is too transparent. The creation or
original formation of organic beings by God is not a hypothesis, but an
historical fact perfectly established, and even scientifically and
philosophically demonstrated. Evolution, on the contrary, as understood
by the modern school, is only an empty word and a dream, unworthy of
the name of scientific hypothesis, under which sciolists attempt to
conceal its absurdity. In fact, even the little we ourselves have said
on this subject in some of our past numbers would amply suffice to
convince a moderately intelligent man that the theory of evolution has
no real scientific character, is irreconcilable with the conclusions of
natural history, and has no ground to stand upon except the worn-out
fallacies of a perverted logic. To call it “hypothesis” is therefore to
do it an honor which it does not deserve. A pile of rubbish is not a
palace, and a heap of blunders is not a hypothesis.
“Creation,” says Dr. Draper, “reposes on the arbitrary act of God;
evolution on the universal reign of law.” This statement, too, is
entirely groundless. Creation is a _free_ act of God; but a free act
needs not to be _arbitrary_. We usually call that arbitrary which is
done rashly or without reason. But an act which forms part of an
intellectual plan for an appointed end we call an act of wisdom; to
call it “arbitrary” is to falsify its nature. If Dr. Draper admits that
there is a God, he ought to speak of him with greater respect. But,
omitting this, is it true that evolution “reposes on the universal
reign of law”? By no means. We defy Dr. Draper and all the modern
evolutionists to substantiate this bold assertion. Not only is there no
universal law on which the evolution of species can repose, but there
is, on the contrary, a well-known universal law which sets at naught
the speculations and stultifies the pretensions of the Darwinian
school. The law we refer to is the following: In the generation of
organic beings there is no transition from one species to another. This
is the universal law which rules the department of organic life; and it
is almost inconceivable how a man who is not resolved to injure his
scientific reputation could so far forget himself and his science as to
pretend a blissful ignorance of this known truth, in order to propagate
a silly imposture exploded by philosophy and contradicted by the
constant, unequivocal testimony of nature itself.
Had we been present in the Unitarian audience when the doctor uttered
the assertion in question, we doubt if it would have been possible for
us to let him proceed further without interruption; for the
recklessness of his doctrine called for an immediate challenge. When a
man, in laying down the foundations of a theory, takes his stand upon
the most evident false premises, he simply insults his hearers. Why
should an intelligent man accept in silence such a glaring absurdity as
that “evolution reposes on the universal reign of law”? Why should he
not rise and say: “I beg permission, in the name of science, to
contradict the statement just made, and to express my astonishment at
the want of consideration shown to this learned assembly by the
lecturer”? However contrary to the received usages, such an
interruption would have been highly proper and meritorious in the eyes
of a lover of truth. But, unfortunately, the assembled ministers had no
right to remonstrate. They had requested the doctor to lecture, and to
lecture on that very subject; they knew beforehand the doctor’s views
concerning evolution; and they were not ignorant that his manner of
reasoning was likely to exhibit that disregard of truth of which so
many striking instances had been discovered in his history of the
conflict between religion and science. The assembled ministers were
simply anxious to hear a bit of genuine modern thought; hence, whatever
the lecturer might think good to say, they were bound to listen to with
calm resignation, if not with thankful submission.