EXEUNT OMNES.
It is spring again, and ten years have passed since that sunny
April day when we saw Carl Yorke come home from his travels--ten
years lacking a month, for it is early in March. The afternoon is
as still as any afternoon can be in a city. Not a twig trembles on
the bare trees, not a spray swings on the dry vines that drape all
the balcony railing. The sky is of a uniform gray, and so thick
that it seems to contain a deluge of snow. But the day is not a
gloomy one. The shadow seems protecting and tender, as when the
small birds are covered in the nest beneath the downy breast of the
mother-bird.
Standing on the pavement in front of Mrs. Yorke’s drawing-room
windows, one can catch glimpses of warmer color within, bright
curtains and cushions, and the soft crimson glow that comes from
an open fire.
A tall, broad-shouldered man comes to one of these windows, nearly
filling it, and looks out at the sky. He has a long beard streaked
with gray, and thick black hair streaked with gray is pushed back
from his sober, sunburnt face. While he makes his observations on
the weather, a slight figure of a woman comes to his side, drawing
more closely about her a white Shetland shawl, and giving a dainty
little shiver. She has a delicate face, and the hair that shows
under the black lace scarf she wears is a bright bronze, mingled
with silver.
“Then you do not think we shall have a great storm, Rudolf,” she
says, with another shiver. Mrs. Amy Yorke likes warmth and warm
colors, and only to see such a day chills her.
“No, dear!” (Captain Cary always calls his mother-in-law “dear,”
being forbidden on his peril to call her mother). “This great
parade of getting up a storm seldom amounts to much. When it’s
going to storm, it storms, and doesn’t stop to threaten. We
may have a little flurry, though, but it will be fair weather
to-morrow.”
“I do not care on our account,” Mrs. Yorke says. “We are all very
happy and comfortable, thank God! but I pity the poor.”
They retire, and presently another gentleman approaches the window,
and looks out. At first glance, one might think that Mr. Yorke has
not changed in ten years. The hair is scarcely more gray, the face
scarcely more wrinkled. But the second glance detects a certain
pallor of age, which has displaced the former bilious tint. A young
woman, dressed in gay, outlandish-looking silk, comes to his side.
A profusion of black curls are gathered back from her brunette
face, and fastened with a garnet chain, and a band of large
garnets, _en cabochon_, is clasped round her neck.
“Papa,” she says, “what do you see overhead?”
“Clouds,” replies Mr. Yorke.
She gives his arm a little squeeze. “Oh! but I don’t mean that.”
“What! you are playing Polonius to me?” asks Mr. Yorke. “Well, it
is neither like a camel, nor a weasel, nor a whale; it is a tent.”
“Oh! papa!” cries Clara, “put on your spectacles, your
second-sighted ones. You have no eyes at all. In that sky I see
crops for the fields, billows of grass, heaps of leaves for the
trees, foaming torrents for all the brook-channels, and no end of
violets, dandelions, buttercups, and ‘other articles too numerous
to mention.’”
Both turn their heads, with an affectionate smile, as Mr. Yorke’s
youngest daughter takes his other arm, and leans against his
shoulder.
Hester’s dress is black. Not a tinge of color nor an ornament
breaks the sombre monotony of her costume. But a white _ruche_ at
the throat and wrists shows that her widow’s weeds have been long
worn, and the smile on her lips, though plaintive, is not without a
dawn of returning contentment. It is now three years since Hester
took her children, and came back to live with her father and mother.
Why should we stand on the pavement? Open, sesame! We enter. The
whole family are gathered, and it is a gala-time; for Captain Cary
and his wife have just returned from their last voyage, and are
going to settle down in a home with foundations more stable than
green, wind-rolled waves; and, a greater event still, Carl and his
wife have just arrived from a four-years’ sojourn abroad. The
family are all very proud of Carl--not because he has represented
his country at a foreign court, not even because he has done so
with singular ability, but because he has been so truly just and
honorable as to have offended prejudiced partisans on both sides,
and won the applause of the few who believe that a man need not
blush to be called a traitor to his party, so long as he is true to
God.
“I am glad to see you with the minority, sir,” Mr. Yorke had
said in welcoming him home; “and to see that you can stand there
quietly, as well as firmly. I am tired of splutter.”
“I hope, sir,” Carl replied, smiling, “that you would not object to
my being with the majority, if the majority were right.”
Mr. Yorke shrugged his shoulders, and made one of his favorite
quotations: “_Il y a à parier que toute idée publique, toute
convention reçue, est une sottise, car elle a convenue au plus
grand nombre._”
But, though forced to resign his position, Carl is not without
a vocation. He speaks and writes; and, such is the charm of his
tongue and pen, persons most severely castigated by them listen and
read with a sort of pleasure. If one must be dissected, there is
surely a certain satisfaction in finding the hand skilful and the
scalpel bright.
There is, indeed, danger that Carl might be too sharp, were it not
for his wife. But Edith is his first reader, and often, through her
influence, a sentence is softened, a sarcasm struck out.
“Love is stronger than hate,” she would say. “You have done only
half the good you might do, if, in convincing a man’s reason, you
at the same time inflame his will against you. You may make him
hate a truth of which he was before ignorant.”
This is one of the couples which rests the heart to see in this
world of discordant matches. Every taste and instinct is so in
harmony that all the smaller business of life goes on without that
jar which, in so many lives, makes a wrangle of pettinesses, and
withdraws the attention from all that is noble. And, in higher
characteristics, there is only that difference which enables each
one to correct the mistakes of the other.
Edith Yorke, at thirty-one, has not yet lost, she probably never
will lose, the simple earnestness of her childhood. It is the
same bud blossomed, and so fresh and lovely is she, they call her
the Rose of Yorke. She was much admired abroad. No other lady had
combined so sweet a stateliness, and such wit, with incorruptible
piety.
“I think,” she said, “that the reason why, while I kept my place
in society, I never once yielded to any pernicious dissipation or
extravagance, was because I was constantly afraid that I should.”
The evening shuts in, the curtains are drawn, and the room is in
a glow. The wind has risen suddenly, and the snow is coming down,
beating sharply with its tiny lances on the window-panes. But the
family only feel more keenly the delight of being all together and
at home.
“How cosy it is!” exclaims Clara, with a sigh of immense content,
as she hears the doors and windows rattle. “One feels so
comfortable in-doors when one knows that everybody out-doors is
uncomfortable.”
Mrs. Yorke, seated in her own especial chair, with Captain Cary
beside her, talks over housekeeping affairs with him, commends his
wish to live in the suburbs instead of the city, and does not doubt
that he will find fanning a delightful occupation.
Mrs. Yorke cannot now be made to acknowledge that she ever objected
to the sailor as a son-in-law. “Why, what should we do without
him?” she asks. “We should feel quite lost without this dear
Hercules of ours.”
Somewhat withdrawn, at one side, Carl is talking to Hester about
her boys. He advises her to send them to a private Catholic school,
and she has almost consented. She will ultimately consent. Opposite
them, Edith and Melicent talk together. Doctor Stewart is kept
at home by a rheumatism, which will not allow him to brave March
storms, and no one very much regrets his absence, least of all
the doctor himself. His efforts to prevent the whole family from
toppling over into Catholicism have not been agreeable to them nor
to him, and in their intercourse they feel a constant restraint.
But Melicent is highly pleased by the cordial interest with which
Edith has inquired concerning all her husband’s symptoms, and,
wishing to say something complimentary in return, observes, “I am
charmed with your little girl. She will be a great belle some day.”
“God forbid!” Edith exclaimed involuntarily.
Melicent recollected herself. “Yes, to be sure, it is a position
full of temptations. Still, she cannot help being admired.”
Edith’s face was very serious. “It is my dearest hope that my
Eugénie may be a religious,” she said, with a soft suffusion of her
eyes. “She would be such a lovely offering! Of course, I cannot
tell what the will of God may be; but if it should be this, I shall
be happy.”
“But how would Carl like it?” Melicent asked.
“When I first mentioned it to him, he recoiled,” was the answer.
“But when he thought more of it, he became reconciled, and now
he desires it as much as I do. We both feel that we would like
to present unspotted to God that which is to us most sweet and
precious. It may be the partial fondness of parents for their only
child, but it seems to us that she is too beautiful for anything
else.”
There was a chorus of children’s voices from the next room, where
Betsey Bates and a French _bonne_ were entertaining the little
ones, and presently the door was opened, and a little boy came in,
went to Mrs. Amy Yorke, and leaned on her lap. This child’s face
told at once who he was. Brown, ruddy, black-eyed, with thick black
hair which constantly fell over his forehead, gay and daring was
this four-year-old sailor. He was ocean-born and ocean-bred, he had
played with babes of all nations, chattered childish words in many
a tongue, and was at home everywhere. His mother privately called
him Captain Kidd; and his father had often sung to him the ballad
of that wicked sailor, when they sat on deck as their ship cleaved
the wave, and the fresh breeze sang in the rigging.
But, when night came on, there was one song that the child always
asked for, and his mother always sang before he slept. Many a
distant sea had heard that tender evening hymn to the Virgin, _Ave
Sanctissima_, which the mother sang in a tremulous voice, mindful
of home, and of the many dangers in her path. And, after a while,
it became a tacit understanding, that, when at evening he saw the
boy in his mother’s arms, with his blooming cheek laid close to
hers, and their black locks flowing indistinguishably together,
Captain Cary should come and stand, with bared head, beside the
two, and listen as though to a prayer while the hymn was sung.
Gradually his prejudices had worn away; and when he saw that mother
and son, so dear to him, and so inseparable, he recognized the
sacred and indissoluble union of the Divine Son with his Immaculate
Mother. “Besides,” the sailor reasoned in his own mind, “there must
be something more than commonly good in that religion which claims
such devotion from Dick Rowan and Edith Yorke, and which my Clara
thinks as good as any, and a little better.”
“I am glad that we are going to have a real home for the child, and
make a citizen of him,” his father said, as the boy went slowly
toward the door again. “Clara and I have been a little too easy
with him, I am afraid.”
“It is odd,” Mrs. Yorke remarked, “that of my daughters, Hester,
the softest, should be quite strict with her children, while Clara,
whom I should have thought would need a warning not to be so, is
almost too indulgent.”
“I could have told you that,” Captain Cary answered, glancing
across the room to where his wife talked with her father. “Clara’s
heart melts only too readily, I always knew. I never mistook her
disposition. And, if she is literary, she can darn stockings the
most neatly, and make a room look prettier, and get up the best
little supper of any woman I know.”
Charlie Cary, loitering toward the door, had scarcely reached it,
when it was pushed open, and--was it a human child, or a fairy, who
entered, and flitted across the room into Edith Yorke’s arms? A
little girl of five years, softly white and dainty, golden-haired
and hazel-eyed, and so exquisite in shape that one examined her
with delight. Her motions were full of a captivating grace, her
voice silvery-fine. She was vowed to the Virgin, and wore only
white and blue.
Charlie stopped inside the door to stare at her. He always did
follow her about, and watch her, as though she were some strange,
rare bird. He seldom volunteered to speak to her, and touched her
with timid care, like something he feared to break.
Carl Yorke crossed the room, and leaned on the back of his wife’s
chair. One could not see a more perfect group.
Edith bent over the child, her braids of shadowed gold touching the
pure gold ringlets. “What does mamma’s little girl want?” she asked.
The child, smilingly aware that all eyes were upon her, but too
much accustomed to love to be abashed by their gaze, lisped out
her question: “Isn’t Philip, and Charlie, and all of ’em got
guardian-angels?”
“Yes, my love!” answered Edith.
“There!” cried the child, with a glance of sparkling triumph at
Charlie.
She ran to him, and put her white arms around his neck in a hug of
congratulation, then, as light as air, whisked herself behind him.
“You’s got an angel, and he stands just so, and tells you what to
do,” she said.
She stood on tiptoe, showing a pink and white face beside his, and
two tiny hands on his shoulder. Then, with a bewitching laugh, she
ended her pantomime, and ran back to her mother.
Charlie did not take it well. “I haven’t got any old angel,”
he said doggedly. “My mother tells me where to go, and _Ave
Sanctissima_ takes care of us nights.”
A vivid red shot across Clara’s face as she drew the boy to her.
“It is true, Charlie, and I will tell you all about it soon,” she
said.
Should Edith’s child, should any other mother’s child, go guarded
by angels, and upheld by a religious trust, and her son be like a
heathen? All she had taught him had been such as pleased her fancy
only. _Sanctissima_ had been but a beautiful object to paint and
sing, not a real being to whom honor was due. “I’ll have Father
Rasle baptize this child before he is a week older!” she resolved.
Edith held out her hand to the boy, and looked at him with a
beaming smile. “Come, darling, and tell me about _Sanctissima_,”
she said.
“I’ve no objection,” Captain Cary said later that night, when his
wife asked his permission to have their child baptized by a priest.
“But you needn’t fret, Clara, at the boy’s speaking so. It is more
natural that a little yellow-haired girl should take to religion,
than that a great bouncing boy should.”
Father Rasle, it should be said, was at this time the pastor of a
city church.
This little scene ended, “I am glad to see, Clara,” her father
said, “that in what you write lately, you employ less pure color
for your men and women, and use secondaries and tertiaries more.
There is, of course, a vast difference between the good and bad;
but in this life, whatever they may become in the next, all are
human.”
“And yet,” she replied, “I am sometimes criticised for putting
spots on the sun, and giving an amiable trait to my villain. The
pretext for the criticism is that perfect examples and perfect
warnings are wanted. I think, however, that the spots on the sun
give most offence.
‘And if Jove err, who dare say Jove doth wrong?’”
“Nevertheless, stick to your tertiaries,” Mr. Yorke said, with
a decided nod. “The lump of glass that, seeing a flaw in the
diamond, went and smashed itself all to pieces, would have smashed
itself to pieces if it had not seen the flaw in the diamond. It
merely used that as a pretext for what it was predetermined to do.
It is one thing to admire an ideal character, and another thing
to imitate it; and many a lazy and insincere moralist would be
delighted to have you paint all your good characters so extremely
good that he could at once prove his piety by applauding, and
his modesty by not striving to emulate. There are, of course,
exceptions, dear souls who love to look at unadulterated goodness;
but they are so charitable they will forgive you the spots on the
sun, and so truthful they will not require you to be false in order
to please them. My belief is that those persons do great good whose
occasional missteps excite our courage to imitate the virtues by
which they retrieve themselves. There are other stronger beings,
who are outwardly without a fault; but they are exceptional, about
in the proportion of salt to your porridge. Suppose that I were
advised to go to the top of a high mountain. ‘I cannot go,’ I say.
My mentor points to a man who stands on the summit. ‘Perhaps he was
born there,’ I reply. ‘Not so!’ says mentor. ‘He climbed: see the
steps!’ ‘But,’ I still object, ‘he must be so much stronger than I
am. I should fall before I were half-way up.’ ‘He was as weak as
or weaker than you,’ says my adviser; ‘and he fell after a dozen
steps, and fell again and again; yet, there he is!’ Don’t you see
that if anything would take me up the mountain-top, that would?
No, Clara, I think that, in the long run, it’s best to tell the
truth. There may be ignorant souls who will thrive for a while on
pretence; but let them once find out that you have once pretended,
no matter how good the motive, and, from their very ignorance, they
will never be able to trust you again. If you want to be politic,
honesty is the best policy.”
“If people wouldn’t classify one so!” sighed the young woman
pathetically. “The science and order that are abroad appall me.
You cannot say nor do the smallest thing, but instantly somebody
pounces on you, and pins a label on your back before you can take
breath. One would think that we were dried specimens. Say that
you sometimes fancy your departed friends may hear you speak,
you are without delay set down as a spiritist, a table-tipper, a
planchette-roller, a spirit-seer, and everything that follows; say
that you think Catholics, and even priests, have some little chance
of being saved, presto! you are a Papist, you are a Jesuit, you
are going to poison Protestants, you want the Pope to be president
of the United States, you are going to muzzle the press, shut up
the public schools, destroy the Bible, put an end to free speech,
etc.; send Bridget to get your husband’s slippers, instead of going
after them yourself, and oh! you woman’s-rights woman, you! How you
are going to abuse your husband! How you are going to let him eat
cold dinners, wear ragged stockings, and come to grief generally!
Labelled you must be, if you put your nose above the earth. And
how your dear friends like to pin on the little pieces of paper,
and give you a pat at the same time, so that the pin shall prick!
There’s Miss Minerva, who wants to pick me to pieces, and, at the
same time, keep up a reputation for charity, goes round telling
everybody, and me among them, that I am impressionable, using the
word in a tone that makes it mean unprincipled, of no stability,
frivolous, inconstant; and that, because I have eyes and a heart,
I was delighted to find in a newspaper, not long ago, a little
extract which I am going to send her: ‘A strong mind is more easily
impressed than a weak one; you shall not as easily convince a fool
that you are a philosopher, as a philosopher that you are a fool.’
Papa, I insist on being eclectic!”
“Take breath, my daughter, take breath!” said Mr. Yorke
apprehensively.
Mrs. Clara took breath, and switched the last part of the
conversation off the track. “_A propos_ of colors!” she said.
“You remember I always liked to find out the relations of things,
and had the idea of a trinity in everything, before I heard of
Delsarte. And, by the way, I do not think that the theory is
original with him. It seems to me I have heard it before. You know
how he does; groups everything in threes, the parts of which are
co-existent, co-efficient, and co-necessary, and, as an instance,
gives space, motion, and time, neither of which can be computed
without the aid of the other two. See how I figure my Trinity with
the three colors: the color which signifies the Father is blue,
the contemplative color, the color of infinite space in which the
creation floats, the intellectual color, the color of faith; the
ensign of the Son is red, which is sacrifice and love; yellow is
for the Holy Spirit, and is the illuminating color. It is also
the color chosen by the Pope, who is the human voice of the Holy
Spirit. United, these three form white, which is the seal of the
Trinity. White is rest, peace, and bliss.”
“You are, then, a Catholic!” Mr. Yorke said, looking with keen eyes
into his daughter’s face.
She blushed, and was embarrassed. “Æsthetically, papa!”
He dropped his eyes, and a slight frown settled on his forehead.
“Papa,” she said earnestly, “there is nothing else!”
He smiled, but said nothing.
“Would you be displeased if I should be one in earnest?” she asked.
“I should be glad!” her father replied, and rose abruptly to meet
Melicent, who was going home.
The others withdrew, leaving Mr. and Mrs. Yorke with Edith and
Carl. They gathered closely together before the fire, the parents
sitting between their children, and, with hand clasped in hand,
talked lovingly and seriously far into the night.
When they parted, all had shed tears, but they were not tears of
sorrow.
“Good-night, my dear parents,” Edith said, embracing them. “You
have made me happy for all my life, and yourselves happy for all
eternity. I do not wonder that you find it hard to take such a
step, and renounce before the world the religion which you have
professed all your lives. You are not cowards; you have been
willing to suffer that Catholics might have their rights; but, you
know, ‘obedience is better than sacrifice.’”
“Perhaps it is a whim,” Mrs. Yorke said; “but I would like to be
baptized by that dear young man I used to love so, Mr. Rowan.”
“Young man!” Carl said, smiling. “He and I are about the same age,
and I am forty-three.”
“Forty-three!” echoed his mother in surprise. “And I am over
sixty! Charles, we are entering on our service at the eleventh
hour. We will not wait for Mr. Rowan. Let us not delay beyond
to-morrow.”
“Good-night, children!” said Mr. Yorke. “Yes, Amy.”
The next day was Sunday, and Carl and Edith went to High Mass.
Captain Cary’s “flurry” had passed with the night, and not a cloud
was to be seen. Little heaps and drifts of snow hid under fences
and trees, but the pavement was wind-swept. The sun shone joyously,
and, not far from it, a waning moon dissolved in its light.
There was the dear old church again, and, just going in under the
portal, Mrs. Rowan-Williams. She took holy water, and bowed before
entering her pew. The same hands were on the organ-keys, the same
soprano, bright as a sunbeam, broke through the cloud of bass and
alto, the same slow wreath of white-robed boys curled silently,
like incense, about the sanctuary, there were the same faces at the
altar. It was like coming home again.
But, before the _Veni Creator_, who was this coming from the
sacristy, palm to palm, draped in folds of spotless whiteness, and
showing, even now, through his measured steps, a familiar swing and
freedom? The chestnut hair, cut short, exposed the forehead, the
face was slightly thin, but bright and healthy.
The glance this priest cast over the congregation, as he went
toward the pulpit, was peculiar. It took in the number of his
hearers, but you would say that he saw their souls, not their
bodies. So many waiting souls to whom he was to carry a message.
Self so completely annihilated that even humility was forgotten,
he went on, wrapped in calm obedience, to speak the word that was
given him.
The subject of the sermon was the uses of pain; the argument, that
all real good comes through pain. The speaker’s voice was so clear
and strong that it was heard without effort on his part or the
listener’s, his tone was conversational, and his illustrations came
naturally from his old sea-life.
Real confidence in God can be shown, he said, only when we are
blind, and cannot see how our sufferings are to lead to any good
end. Then trust is possible, is deserving, is saving. Then we learn
quickly the lesson that God would teach us, and take a higher
place. Our Master does not put back any soul. If it remain long in
the region of trouble, it must be through its own stubbornness.
“We all suffer too much, because we afflict ourselves in trying to
escape pain, when we cannot escape it. The chalice of this bitter
sacrament is never empty, and never set aside. Friends and foes
alike give it into our hands, our dearest and kindest press it to
our lips, unaware, or in their own despite; the messenger of God
presents it. It is useless to struggle, for we cannot escape; it is
foolish to struggle; for in the bottom of that cup of bitterness is
a heavenly draught of sweetness.
“Lessons are on every side, the whole creation preaches to us. Even
the building of a ship is like the building of a saint. The pine
and the oak grow in the forest, they grow in rain and sunshine,
they swing their branches in the wind, and rock the birds to rest.
What is their end? To grow, and then to decay, and feed the roots
of succeeding trees with their crumbling remains. They grow only to
decay, and wish no better, and know no better, and, if better come,
it must come from some outside, wiser will.
“When the woodman appears, he is an object of terror, fancy, the
Manichee would tell you. At the blows of the axe, the whole tree
shivers, it trembles in every leaf, it falls with a groan. But its
tortures are not ended. The saw, the plane, the shave, the auger,
the adze, do each their work; and the mourning tree says, ‘I was
made to be tormented. I am covered with ruin, and good shall no
more come to me.’ Ah, then, how happy seem the far-away, peaceful
woods! how dear the little nests that have been clipped off, and
the intertwining branches of neighboring trees!
“But we are not like the tree. We know what hand lays us low, and
clips off the unruly wishes, the foolish, twittering hopes.
“Look at the home of the iron! It lies in darkness and mystery
underground, and hears the small streams trickle down or bubble up.
It knows and wishes no better. The miner comes with his pick, the
dark ore is dazzled with alien sunshine, is tortured by fire. In
its agony it becomes more terrible than fire, and presses and glows
to destroy. It replies with sparks to the blows of the hammer.
“Oh! for the cool dark, the whispering stream, the moveless rock
and earth! Its pain is to no end but that it may suffer, and ruin
has come.
“But we are not like the senseless iron. We know what Divine Miner
digs us out of our abasement, shows us the light of truth, and
moulds us into shape.
“At last the ship is built; its different elements are united into
one harmonious being; and then it fancies that it understands all.
It exults over the dull tree standing with its roots in earth, over
the brutish ore buried in the darkness. It stands in its stocks,
and grows in beauty, looks at the shining river that flows and
sings for ever, and sees the children play, and the days go by.
“But the end is not yet. Some summer morning the workmen come to
strike its props away. The tide comes up, and its song is the song
of the siren; a crowd gathers to mock at its ruin. It was raised,
then, only to be more cruelly cast down. One support after another
is struck away, prop after prop falls. The ship shudders, it has
learnt nothing from its lesson, it moans, it slips slowly, then
rapidly, then it plunges--whither? Into annihilation? No! into its
own proper element at last, into the bosom of the deep. The tides
bear it up, the winds of heaven wing its course; at last it is of
use.
“Take comfort, brethren, in your pain. He who permits it knows
well how hard it is to bear. When you are nailed to your cross,
the glorified flesh of the Man-God remembers its own agony. And,
suffer not only trustingly, and with resignation, but suffer with
courage. If you shrink and cover your eyes, you have hidden a ghost
in your life. When a sorrow comes to you, look it in the face; and,
by-and-by, the mask shall fall off, and you will see the face of an
angel.”
We have given but a sketch. The words are dry, but the sermon was
full of life.
When Carl and his wife walked homeward, Edith did not speak for
a long time. Whenever her husband looked at her, she was gazing
straight forward, and seemed absorbed in thought.
“Well, Edith,” he said at length, “what is it?”
She looked up into his face with those eyes so childlike still.
“I was wondering, Carl,” she said, “how I could ever have presumed
to call him Dick!”
And so we leave our Edith, as we found her, wondering.
FRAGMENTS OF EARLY ENGLISH POEMS ON THE BLESSED VIRGIN.
To Catholics ... it is a joy and a solace to look back into past
centuries, and remember that there were days when our poets drank
of a purer fount than that of Castaly; and made it their pride
to celebrate in their verse, not Dian nor Proserpine, but the
Immaculate Queen of Heaven. Of Chaucer’s devotion to this theme,
I have already spoken, but other poets before his time delighted
in dedicating their verses to her who, as she inspired the most
exquisite designs of the artist’s pencil, has also claimed not the
least beautiful productions of the poet’s pen. Thus, one sings of
her as ‘Dame Lyfe,’ and describes how
“As she came by the bankes, the boughs eche one,
Lowked to the Ladye, and layd forth their branches,
Blossoms and burgens (new shoots) breathed ful swete,
Flowres bloomed in the path where forth she stepped,
And the gras that was dry greened belive.”
Others, according to their quaint fashion, mixed up English and
Latin rhymes in a style which, barbarous as it is, is certainly not
deficient in harmony. One little poem, ascribed to a writer in the
reign of Henry III., commences thus:
“Of all that is so fayr and bright,
Velut maris stella;
Brighter than the day is light,
Parens et puella.
I crie to The, Thou se to me,
Levedy, preye the Sone for me,
Tam pia,
That Ich mote come to The,
Maria.”
--_Christian Schools and Scholars._
THE LEGENDS OF OISIN, BARD OF ERIN.
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
VI.
OISIN’S GOOD CONFESSION.
Not seldom, crossed by bodings sad,
In words though kind yet hard
Spake Patrick to his guest, Oisin;
For Patrick loved the Bard
In whose broad bosom, swathed with beard
Like cliffs with ivy trailed,
A Christian strove with a pagan soul,
And neither quite prevailed.
Silent as shades the shadowing monks
O’er cloistral courts might glide;
But the War-Bard strode through the church itself
Like hunter on mountain-side.
Yea, sometimes, while his beads he told,
Fierce thoughts, a rebel breed,
Burst up from the graves of his warriors dead,
And he stormed at priest and Creed.
His end drew nigh. ’Twas after years
Had proved stern warnings vain,
When dying he lay on his wolf-skin bed,
And murmured a warlike strain.
The Saint drew near: he gazed; then spake,
“A fair child died one day:
Four weeks had passed; yet, changeless still,
Like a child asleep he lay.
“They could not hide him in the ground
Though hand and heart were chill,
For round his lips the smile avouched
The soul was in him still.
“Then lo! a man of God came by
And stood beside the bier,
And spake, ‘A pagan house is this;
And yet a saint lies here!
“‘God shaped this child his praise to sing
To a blind and pagan race;
And till that song is sung, in heaven
He may not see God’s face.’
“Then thrice around that child he moved
With circling censer-cloud,
And touched with censer fire his tongue,
And the dead child sang aloud.
“Oisin! like larks beside thy Lee,
So loud he sang his hymn:
And straight baptized he was, and died;
And, dead, his face grew dim.
“So then, since Christ had caught to heaven
The fair soul washed from sin,
A little grave they dug, and laid
The little saint therein.
“And ever as fell the night, that grave
Shone like the Shepherds’ star,
With happy beam that homeward drew
The wanderer from afar.
“Oisin! thy Land is as that child!
Thou call’st her dead--thy Land;
For cold is Fionn, thy sire; and he,
He was her strong right hand!
“And cold is Oscar now, thy son:
Her mighty heart was he--
Oisin! let dead at last be dead;
Let living, living be!
“Her great old Past is gone at last:
Her heavenlier Future waits,
Yet entrance never can she find
Till Faith unbars the gates.
“Prince of thy country’s songful choir!
Thou wert her golden Tongue!
Sing thou her New Song--‘I believe!’
Give thou to God her Song!
Then suddenly that old man stood,
And made his arms a cross:
Within his heart a light that changed
The earth to dust and dross:
And, pierced by beams from those two hands
Of Jesus crucified,
His Erin of two thousand years
Held forth her hands, and died:
For all her sceptres by a Reed
That hour were overborne;
And all her crowns went down, that hour,
Before the Crown of Thorn.
As shines the sun through snowy haze
Oisin’s white head forth shone:
“In God the Father I believe,”
He sang, “and Mary’s Son:”
And, onward as the swan-chaunt swept
Adown the Creed’s broad flood,
In radiance waxed his face, as though
He saw the face of God.
Then Patrick, with his wondering monks,
Knelt down, and said, “Amen,”
While slowly dropped a sun that ne’er
Saw that white head again.
The rite complete, the old man sank,
And turned him on his side:
Next morning, as the Lauds began,
“My Son,” he said, and died.
A SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR.
PART III.
ON THE BOULEVARDS.
Summer had come, and was nearly gone. Paris was deserted. As autumn
approached, lifting its fiery finger over the city, the _flaneurs_
disappeared. All those who could flee, fled. The faubourg had fled
long ago to its châteaux. The Chaussée d’Antin and the Champs
Elysées were fleeing _aux eaux_ or _aux bains de mer_ and the
boulevards, with their glittering shops and _cafés_ and theatres,
were left to the mercy of the tourist. Perhaps the tourist would
retort that he was left to the mercy of the boulevards. And,
perhaps he would be right. _Chignoned_ sirens, who dwelt in glass
cases surrounded by millions of glass vials ranged in rhythmic
color from the ceiling to the floor, so as to make the sirens
look as much as possible like the centre point of an elaborate
kaleidoscope, smiled through their crystal shell at the reckless
being who stood outside to peep and wonder. The door stood open. He
might not hear the siren’s, “Entrez, monsieur!” but there was no
being deaf to her smile; it drew him irresistibly.
“Would monsieur not like just to ‘gouter’ our last novelty, ‘cerise
à la Victor Noir?’ Would he not very much like to take some little
souvenir home to madame?”
Of course monsieur would. Weak mortal! He unbuttons his coat,
and straightway the bees which had sipped abundantly of native
porte-monnaies the rest of the year, alight on the purse of the
tourist, and suck it, if not dry, as nearly dry as they can.
Busy “dead season,” when stale bonbons and faded finery are brought
out, christened by new names, and sold to the barbarians across the
Channel. Paris does not want any more of it, but Londres, that city
which the English in their ignorance of the French language call
Lon-don--Londres will find it charming!
Gaily, busily the bees were plying their task. The long white lines
of Haussmann barracks glared shadowless in the fierce vertical sun;
gilded railings and balconies flashed in gingerbread magnificence;
the dome of the Invalides rose up against the cloudless blue
and blazed like a burning mount; the red heat poured down from
the zenith on the miles of _asphalte_ that meander through the
city, and pelted it till it softened and gave under your foot
like india-rubber. Even the lordly chestnuts of the Tuileries,
so carefully tended, so abundantly watered, were burnt brown and
red, and were shedding their leaves from exhaustion; not a vestige
of green was anywhere visible. The fountains were playing, but
even they had a tired, worn-out look, and the water seemed to go
on splashing lazily from mere force of habit; the flag was still
floating above the palace, the gray old palace blinking with
its myriad glass eyes in the sultry noon; the broad walks were
deserted, no little feet went pattering on the gravel, no merry
child-laughter rang through the shade to scare the swallows from
their cool siesta; the whole scene, lately so animated and bright,
had a weary, day-after-the-ball look that was premature in the
first days of July.
The bees of the boulevard were buzzing loud, and bestirring
themselves to good purpose. But, hark! What noise is that? Not
the cannon’s opening roar, nor “the car rattling o’er the stony
street,” but a sound that jars upon the lively hum, and makes the
hive suspend labor and hush itself to listen. It comes from the
Corps Législatif, first a faint surging sound, then a clamor as of
the waves rising and lashing themselves up for a tempest. Louder it
grows, and nearer. It crosses the tepid waters of the Seine, lying
low between its banks; it reaches the boulevards. At first the
cries are indistinguishable, a torrent of human voice, rolling and
heaving and rushing like the roar of a cataract, drowning all sense
in its senseless frenzy. On it comes, gathering strength in its
march, waking up the echoes of the _trottoir_, and making the crisp
leaves quiver and drop, and fly along the dusty pavement before the
vociferating multitude like straws before a bellows.
“What is it? Is it a revolution?” cried Berthe, as the horses,
laying back their ears, threatened mischief, and obliged the
footman to get down and hold them.
“I don’t know, madame,” said the man, looking up the Rue de la
Paix at the stream that was pouring along the boulevards, to the
sound of beating drums, and blaring trumpets, and all manner of
Parisian excitableness in the shape of noise. “It’s more likely
_une démonstration patriotique_; the horses don’t seem to like it,
or else we might drive up close and see.”
But Berthe’s curiosity was not proof against a certain mistrust of
the sovereign people. The noise might mean nothing more aggressive
than a _démonstration patriotique_, but in Paris patriotism has
many moods and phases, and innumerable modes of expressing itself,
and its attitudes, if always effective from a dramatic point of
view, are not always agreeable to come close to, and, whatever
the character of this particular one might be, Berthe preferred
admiring it from a respectful distance.
“Turn back, and drive home by the Champs Elysées,” she said.
But the tide had risen too rapidly. The Rue de Rivoli was
flooded. It had caught the delirium of the boulevards, and was
sending back their echoes with frantic exultation. Cabs and
omnibuses were seized with the sudden insanity, private coaches
caught it, foot-passengers, _gamins_, and _bourgeois_, and
_messieurs les voyageurs_ careering on the top of omnibuses, all
_en masse_ caught it, and shouted as one man: “Vive la France!
vive la guerre! A Berlin! à Berlin!” Ladies and gentlemen,
reclining in soft-cushioned carriages, started suddenly into
effervescence, waved hats and handkerchiefs, and cried: “Vive la
guerre! A Berlin!” Horses neighed, and dogs barked, and the very
paving-stones shook to the popular passion. All Paris shouted and
shrieked till the city, like a huge belfry, rang with thundering
salvos: “Vive la guerre! A Berlin! à Berlin!”
Berthe’s horses, scared anew by the uproar that was now close
upon them, played their part in the general row by plunging and
prancing, and eliciting screams of terror from the adjacent women
and children, while the coachman brandished his whip, and the
footman whirled his hat in the air, and shouted with all their
might: “A Berlin! à Berlin!” A troop of _gamins_ laid violent hands
on a Savoyard who was grinding away “Non ti scordar di me,” to
the delight of the _concierge_ in the nearest _porte-cochère_,
and, dragging him to the fore, bade him at once strike up the
_Marseillaise_. Luckily for his limbs, the despotic command was
within the limits of the Savoyard’s instrument. He turned its
handle, and began vigorously grinding out the Republican chant.
Every man, woman, and child within ear-shot took up the chorus,
“Marchons! marchons!” till the palpitating air throbbed and
thrilled with the passionate voices of the multitude.
Berthe was not long proof against the magnetic current that
was whirling round her. First terrified, then bewildered, then
electrified, she caught the intoxication, and yielded to its
impulse: “Vive la France! Vive la guerre!” And the fair hand waved
its snowy little flag from the window as the carriage moved slowly
past the Tuileries gardens.
Emerging into the broad space of the Place de la Concorde, the
horses seemed to breathe more freely, and, quickening their step,
tore at full speed up the Champs Elysées.
“What possessed me to shout and cheer with those madmen?” said
Berthe, soliloquizing aloud, and laughing at the absurdity of her
recent behavior. “I must have gone mad myself for the moment.
Vive la guerre indeed! Heaven help us! We shall hear another cry
by-and-by, when the widows and orphans and sisters of France hear
at what price her new laurels have been bought. Thank God I have no
brothers!”
“Madame la Marquise de Chassedot is waiting, madame,” said
François, as Berthe entered.
“Has she been waiting?”
“A short half-hour, madame.”
“What can she have to say?” thought Berthe.
Madame de Chassedot rose to meet her “with eyes that had wept,” and
extended her hands with an air that asked less for greeting than
for sympathy.
“Vous ange de la peine, madame!” exclaimed Berthe, her ready
kindness going forth at once to the sufferer.
The two ladies were not friends. They had met at Madame de
Beaucœur’s and Madame de Galliac’s; but only once had there been
a personal interchange of visits; Madame de Chassedot had called
on Berthe to thank her for the kindness she had shown to their
young kinswoman, Hélène de Karodel, “whom the family had indeed
of late lost sight of, but with whom they were delighted to renew
cousinship,” the marquise declared effusively, and as a proof
of this she was carrying off Hélène to the country to spend the
vacation with them. Berthe did not inform her that it had taken
all her own influence to induce the high-spirited young lady to
accept the hospitality so tardily offered. She returned Madame de
Chassedot’s visit; the latter soon left for the country, and they
had not met since.
“Oui, j’ai du chagrin,” said the marquise holding Berthe’s hand, as
she sat down beside her.
Berthe’s first thought was of Edgar. But the mother was not in
mourning. Whatever it was, the worst had not yet come.
“Your son is ill?” she said.
Madame de Chassedot shook her head. Then, after a pause, during
which she gave battle to her emotion, she looked at Berthe, and
said:
“He’s going to get married!”
“What! And is not that precisely what you wanted him to do!”
exclaimed Berthe.
“I wanted to make the match myself; but now he goes and does it
instead,” replied the marquise.
“Ah! It is a _mésalliance_, then!”
The fact was startling certainly, but less so than it might have
been, owing to certain rumors that prepared the public to believe
in any extravagance coupled with Edgar de Chassedot’s name.
“_Oh! mon Dieu, non!_ A thousand times no!” cried his mother with
quick resentment. “Edgar _a fait des bêtises_, but he is incapable
of dishonoring himself. Oh, no! The girl is of an excellent family,
she is even our own cousin.”
“It is her principles, then, or her--character that you object to?”
said Berthe with some hesitation.
“O dear! no. She is as pious as a seraph, and brought up like a
lily!” exclaimed the marquise.
“Is she a hunch-back, then, or lame, or blind, or what?”
“She is a beggar! A beggar who has not a sou to buy her own
trousseau. It is a beggar who has stolen the heart of my son!” And
tears of bitter, disappointed motherhood flowed down the cheeks of
the marquise.
“And her name is--?”
“Mademoiselle de Karodel!”
“What! Hélène? Hélène de Karodel, that brave, true, gentle creature
is going to be your son’s wife! And you in tears, and not of joy!
And you call her a beggar! A woman whose love, since your son has
been lucky enough to win it--and Hélène is not a girl to marry him
if he had not--would be a prize for a prince! And you, a Christian
mother, weep over it, and expect to be pitied! Really, madame, if
it were not laughable, it would be deplorable, not on your son’s
account, but on your own!”
Madame de Chassedot was so staggered by this unexpected sortie that
she was actually struck dumb. “Do you know,” she said, after a
pause, looking steadily at Berthe, and bringing out her words with
slow emphasis--“do you know, madame, that my son has four millions
of patrimony, and that he could have married any girl in France?”
“As to his marrying any girl in France, admitting that they were
one and all ready to marry Monsieur de Chassedot, was he ready to
marry them?” demanded Berthe significantly; “and as to his four
millions, they are the very reason why he should marry a girl who
had none. A woman who is as well born as himself, who is, you
admit, pure as a lily, and pious as an angel, and, moreover, quite
graceful and beautiful enough to satisfy your pride and his, and to
make her an ornament as well as a treasure in your son’s house--a
wife who will rescue him from much that I should fancy would have
given you greater cause for tears than his marriage with such a
woman as Hélène de Karodel. Candidly, _chère marquise_, I am so far
from sympathizing with you that, if I had heard this news in any
other way, my first impulse would have been to fly to you with my
congratulations.”
Madame de Chassedot’s tears were flowing still, but perhaps less
bitterly; she was going to speak when a noise of steps in the
ante-chamber made her rise hastily, and look round for a means of
escape.
“Into my bedroom!” said Berthe, pulling aside the _portière_.
The marquise pressed her hand, and disappeared through the cloud
of blue satin just as the drawing-room door opened, and Hélène
de Karodel, holding out her arms with a cry of joy, rushed into
Berthe’s.
It was something of a disappointment to Hélène to find that Berthe
already knew her secret. But there was much left to tell still.
Most of the tale was told with blushes and smiles, and tears
that had no brine in them. Her marriage was to take place in a
fortnight. Edgar, from family reasons, chose to precipitate the
_dénouement_, and his young Bretonne _fiancée_ had come up to town
to make the few bridal preparations that he could not possibly make
for her.
It happened unluckily to be Berthe’s day, so the usual stream of
visitors began soon to pour in, and broke up the _tête-à-tête_ of
the two friends.
The war was the topic of every tongue; but there was no mistaking
for enthusiasm the animation with which it was discussed. Some
indignantly repudiated and denounced the government, and protested
that, so far from being a popular war, it was universally condemned
as senseless, iniquitous, and ill-timed, and that there were not
ten men in France who would cry _Vive la guerre!_ unless they were
paid for it. Others, who had been on the boulevards an hour ago,
thought differently.
“There are madmen to be found in every city who are glad of an
opportunity to bark, and bray, and howl, and demean themselves
after the usual manner of madmen,” said the Austrian _habitué_,
“and Paris can muster as good a roll of lunatics on as short notice
as any city in Europe; but I don’t believe there were ten sane men
on the boulevards this morning who cried _Vive la guerre!_”
“I can assure you,” said Berthe, “I saw hundreds of
_comme-il-faut_-looking men, to all appearance in their right mind,
who were crying it frantically; so much so that I got quite carried
away, and actually shook my handkerchief, and shouted with the rest
of them.”
“Why did you shout, madame?” inquired the Austrian.
“Because, I tell you, I was carried away, I could not help myself.
The excitement was catching.”
“Of course it was. Most fevers are, especially malignant ones;
and if you asked nine-tenths of the crowd _why_ they shouted, the
answer, if they spoke the truth, would be precisely the same;
they could not help themselves, the excitement was catching. If
an arsenal blows up, who is to blame, the powder, the matches, or
yourself who fired the train? You might just as logically blame
the powder for blowing up, as the French people for marching and
bugling and _Vive-la-guerring_ when they hear the sound of the
trumpet.”
“Do you agree with monsieur?” asked Berthe addressing a
quiet-looking military man who had been listening in silence to the
conversation. “Are the people not really glad of the war?”
“It is difficult to say yet,” replied the soldier. “With the
people, all depends on how it turns out; success alone is in the
right.”
“But you do not contemplate such an absurd alternative as the
non-victoriousness of the French arms?”
There was a prompt general protest from the company. The military
man alone stroked his moustache with a meditative air, and was
silent.
“Answer me, I pray you, commandant,” pursued Berthe. “You are not
afraid of our troops being beaten?”
“Our troops are matches, if not masters, of the best troops in
Europe,” replied the commandant proudly.
“And our generals? We have no lack of good ones surely?”
“Not of veterans,” was the evasive rejoinder.
“Oh! the young ones will rise up as soon as they are wanted. We
shall have a new generation of heroes that will eclipse in glory
the _vieux de la Vieille_ themselves. As for you, you will come
back to us a marshal of France,” declared Berthe merrily.
The prophecy elicited gentle cheering and congratulations from
the ladies, while the men approved in their own way, joking the
commandant, and dubbing him _Monsieur le Maréchal_ on the spot.
“If it be not a futile or indiscreet question to put, may I ask
what you are going to war for?” demanded Mr. Clifford, addressing
himself to the company in general.
“For security of the dynasty,” replied a Legitimist.
“For the honor and security of France,” said the commandant.
“Do you separate them, M. le Commandant!” exclaimed the Legitimist
with mock horror. “I arraign you, _de par l’Empereur_, for high
treason against France!”
The circle laughed, and the Commandant, not caring to challenge the
_persifleur_, laughed good-humoredly, too.
“Shall I tell you, monsieur, why we are going to war?” said
the Deputy de la Gauche to Mr. Clifford. “We are going to war
to _désennuyer_ Paris. If Paris goes on much longer _ennuying_
herself as she has done for the last six months, she will make a
revolution!”
“That may be quite true,” returned his colleague of the Droite;
“but the preventive is rather violent; some milder form of
excitement might be invented for the _ennui_ of Paris than that of
taking her to Berlin for a distraction. It is hardly a sufficient
reason for plunging the whole nation into war. No, I prefer to
think we are going to fight for the honor of France, and it may be
for her aggrandizement.”
“Yes,” said Madame de Beaucœur, “M. le Maréchal will win his
_bâton_ by taking the Rhine for us!”
“Bravo,” cried in chorus the Legitimist, the Droite, and the
Gauche. “_Le Rhin! le Rhin! Vive le Rhin!_”
“I will be willing to shake hands with _ce gaillard lâ_, and to cry
_Vive l’Empereur_ myself, if he comes back with the Rhine in his
pocket,” declared the Legitimist with desperate patriotism.
And the sentiment was echoed by every one present. Orleanist,
Bourbonist, Bonapartist, and Republican all united in a common
thirst for the blue waters of the Rhine, and avowed themselves
ready to vote the war, whatever its motive, a wise war and a
righteous, if it gave the Rhine to France. All with one exception:
the old academician shook his head, and muttered some broken
sentences in which the words, _démence_, _fanfaronnade_, _ruine du
commerce_, _feu follet de la gloire_, _décadence des mœurs_, _jour
de rétribution_, etc., were audible through the general hubbub.
“What a people, _mon Dieu_!” murmured the philosopher to himself,
as, descending the softly carpeted stairs, cries of “A Berlin! A
Berlin dans six semaines! Vive le Rhin! Vive la guerre!” followed
him through the open door of Berthe’s apartment; “fitful as the
wind, passing from reason to madness, from heroism to absurdity, as
the weathercock turns with the breeze.” The word that touches our
vanity, touches every chord in our nature, and sets us in a blaze,
just as the spark fires the powder-flask. _Quel peuple? Mon Dieu,
quel peuple!_
REVIEW OF DR. STÖCKL’S PHILOSOPHY.[74]
We have already called attention to the necessity of providing
sound philosophical text-books and manuals in the vernacular
tongues, particularly the English, with which we are specially
concerned. We have also expressed our conviction that the only
philosophy which has any claim or fitness to be adopted in our
places of education is the scholastic philosophy. Those who are
capable of studying this philosophy in the more extensive and
elaborate works of our great Catholic authors, have all they need
for prosecuting their studies to any degree they please. More
elementary treatises and compendiums in the Latin language are
also at hand for those who can make use of them with facility. But
those who cannot do so need to have books in their own language,
and made level to their mental capacity and actual knowledge.
And even those who are able to study in Latin text-books may
derive great assistance from a good manual written in their own
vernacular, for many reasons which are obvious, especially if
they are not perfect in their knowledge of Latin. Besides this,
there are many persons whose education is already completed, who
would derive great pleasure and profit from a book of this kind.
The English and American educated world is so unfamiliar with the
ancient philosophy of the Catholic schools, that there is need
of an interpreter who can make it intelligible, and domesticate
it in our vernacular scientific literature. Numbers of educated
persons, and even clergymen, who are converts and have received a
Protestant collegiate education, or, if old Catholics, have not
been thoroughly taught philosophy according to the scholastic
method, have derived their information on the subject mostly from
the miscellaneous philosophical literature of England and America,
and perhaps, also, of France and Germany. In this miscellaneous
literature there is much that is valuable, and even of great
value, the product of highly gifted and cultivated minds imbued
with sound and elevated principles, containing a vast amount of
truth and conclusive argument. There is wanting, however, the
scientific precision, definiteness and fixedness of terminology,
and completeness, which are found only in the masters and disciples
of the scholastic method. Protestants, and to a great extent
Catholics also, have been at sea in philosophy ever since the
unfortunate epoch of the Lutheran schism. The evil began in that
fresh outbreak of paganism, miscalled _renaissance_; a revolt
against the science and the civilization founded by the Holy See,
the hierarchy, and the monastic orders, the only truly Christian
science and civilization; a retrograde movement of the most fatal
sort under the name of progression. The vain and frivolous scholars
of that period brought St. Thomas and the scholastic theology
and philosophy into contempt among the crowd of their followers.
They affected to be Platonists, because the philosophy of Plato
was at that time something strange and novel, and afforded them
the chance of displaying their knowledge of Greek. The leaders
of the religious revolt of the age of Leo X., at which time the
disorder culminated, pretended to go back to the Hebrew and Greek
Scriptures and the Fathers; where they could evade the contest
with scholastic theology, and make a show of learning and pure
Biblical and patristic doctrine for a considerable time. The
scholastic theology has, however, fully avenged itself. It has
defeated the enemies of the church who have attacked the Catholic
faith from without. Within the church, it has established its
supremacy, and subdued all those who have professed and endeavored
to substitute a new system of theology for the old, while retaining
the dogmas of faith. The pitiable and abortive effort to produce
a new _renaissance_, which occasioned so much both of scandal and
ridicule during the time of the Vatican Council, was marked by a
specially violent assault on St. Thomas and St. Alphonsus, the
two great doctors of the church in dogmatic and moral theology
respectively. The result has been the triumph of both. The Angel
of the Schools has gone up to a pinnacle of honor and glory above
that which he had ever before attained, and it is safe to predict
that his supremacy as the master of sacred science will never more
be seriously questioned. The great champion of the thoroughly
Roman teaching in doctrine, piety and morals, has been crowned
with the doctorate at the petition of a vast body of the men
highest in learning and office in the church. The great theological
controversies are substantially finished and settled, and Catholic
theology is very nearly complete. Philosophy is now the great
field for intellectual activity, and that consolidated union in
philosophical teaching which has been secured in theology is the
end toward which the efforts of all the ardent and loyal lovers of
the divine Truth should be directed.
This end can be secured only by following the same principles and
methods in philosophy which have effected and secured unity and
uniformity in theological doctrine. The scholastic philosophy
must accompany the scholastic theology. This is obvious, without
entering into the intrinsic merits of the question. No other system
has that authority, that general prevalence, that scientific
precision and completeness, that sanction of the rulers of the
church, the great teaching orders, and the body of directors and
professors of seminaries and strictly Catholic colleges, which
are requisite for producing unity and uniformity in instruction.
Those who do not follow the scholastic philosophy are divided into
small parties holding the most opposite opinions and mutually
hostile to each other; and these parties are again subdivided into
smaller sections. The subject matter of this difference is not the
mere corollaries and remote conclusions, or the high speculative
questions of philosophy, not essentially affecting its substance;
as is the case with the differences among strict adherents to
scholastic theology and philosophy; but the very substance, the
first principles, the guiding rules of philosophy itself. What
likelihood is there that any one of these systems will ever conquer
for itself sufficient territory or unite a sufficient number of
suffrages to become the reigning doctrine? The history of the
disputes which have gone on within and without the church during
three centuries, since the decay of the influence of scholastic
philosophy, may answer the question. Either we must give up the
hope of attaining unity, and let philosophy degenerate into a mere
theme of endless discussion among rival parties, like doctrine
among the Protestants, or we must range ourselves under the banner
of the ancient and still numerous and powerful school of the
Angelic Doctor.
The first of these alternatives we must decidedly reprobate, as
contrary to the Catholic sense, and incompatible with the respect
which is due to the judgment and authority of the church. It is
evident that philosophical instruction is regarded in the church
as highly important and necessary, and as an essential part of
Catholic education, more especially for those who are preparing for
the study of theology. The sense of its importance is increasing
instead of diminishing. Everywhere longer time and greater pains
are bestowed upon it, and we have been told that it is the desire
of the Sovereign Pontiff that the theological course should rather
be shortened if necessary, than that philosophy should fail to
receive its adequate proportion of the time allotted to the
curriculum of the ecclesiastical seminary. All this implies that
philosophy, like theology, is a true science, having its certain
principles, methods, and doctrines. And if this is so, we are to
look for it where the queen of sciences, whose herald and prime
minister it is--Catholic theology--announces her magisterial
teaching, and not in any particular school set up by private
authority. In fact, the scholastic philosophy is an intimate and
essential part of scholastic theology, which would be decomposed if
its other elements were separated from this one, and be resolved
into a mere collection of dogmas and doctrines without logical
coherence. We may infer, therefore, from the express sanction which
the church has given to scholastic theology, her approbation of
scholastic philosophy. This tacit and implied approbation is also
manifested in her practical action. The Holy See, the greater
number of bishops, and the body of those ecclesiastics in high
positions of authority who have control over strictly Catholic
colleges, sanction and establish the teaching of scholastic
philosophy, encourage works and authors professing to follow it,
and in many ways repress and discourage whatever is contrary
to it. More than this, the Holy See, during the reigns of our
present Sovereign Pontiff and his illustrious predecessor, Gregory
XVI., has repeatedly intervened by acts of supreme authority,
in which books, authors, systems, and propositions have been
censured and condemned on account of their teaching philosophical
errors contrary to the received doctrine, and either subversive
of or dangerous to the faith. The Fathers of the Council of the
Vatican were occupied during several months with discussions upon
fundamental questions of philosophy, the result of which is visible
in the decrees of the Council. The doctrines which all Catholics
are obliged to hold and teach have thus been to a certain extent
defined and declared, and the limits marked beyond which they are
forbidden to stray. We have occasion, at present, to specify only
two of the erroneous doctrines which have been thus condemned,
viz.: that which is called Traditionalism, and another commonly
known under the name of Ontologism. We notice these, because both
errors arose among sincere Catholics, and were the chief cause of
dissension concerning philosophical doctrines in our own ranks, so
that their condemnation has had a direct effect towards unity in
teaching, especially as most of the principal persons concerned
submitted obediently to the decision of authority. The first of
these errors was an extreme anti-rationalism, tending to subvert
and sweep away all philosophy, and upon this we have no need to
enlarge. The second was of far greater import, as it professed
to be a new and perfect philosophy, and was the most formidable
antagonist which the scholastic philosophy has ever had to
encounter. The question is still a living one, and the discussion
of it is not yet over. Moreover, it relates to the very foundation
of philosophy and theology, and has the most wide-reaching
relations, wherefore we feel it to be necessary to be very careful
and exact in what we say on the subject. That ontologism which
we call an error is a certain ideological doctrine professing
to be a true _scientia entis_, or science of being, and to be,
therefore, the true and only real metaphysic. It has received its
name from this profession of its advocates, and from common usage,
for the want of one more specific and definite. It must not be
supposed, however, that it is called an error on account of its
being ontological, as if there were no true ontology, since this
latter is the most essential part of philosophy itself. Nor is it
correct to say that the doctrine of all those who call themselves
ontologists by way of distinction from those whom they call
psychologists, but whom we prefer to designate rather as Platonists
in distinction from Peripatetics or Aristotelians, is a condemned
error. The condemned error, as we understand it, after carefully
examining and reflecting upon the matter for several years, is
a false and heterodox ontological doctrine, which radically and
principally consists in the affirmation of _a natural power in
the created intellect to know God in himself_, as infinite and
necessary being, or in any other ideal aspect. The essence of the
error consists in that part of the affirmation which is expressed
by the term _in himself_, denoting that the very idea which is the
object of the divine intelligence and is identical with it, and is
really the divine essence itself considered as intelligible, is the
idea of the created, and specifically of the human, intellect. The
falsity of the doctrine consists in this, that it substitutes an
imaginary intuition of God, which has no existence, for the real
intuition of the connatural object of the created intellect; and an
explicit cognition of God explicated from this intuition for that
cognition which human reason is actually capable of attaining, by
discursion from self-evident truths which the developed intellect
possesses as its first principles. It therefore overturns true
philosophy and natural theology, and destroys the very cause which
its advocates are most anxious to promote. It is heterodox, because
its logical consequences annihilate the distinction between the
natural light of reason and the supernatural lights of faith and
glory, and, by ascribing to the natural condition of the creature
that which belongs only to its deific condition, tend to annihilate
the essential difference between the Word of God and the creatures
of God, the Only Begotten Son of God and his adopted sons; thus
introducing pantheism by a covert road, into which Platonists
and mystics have always been in danger of straying unawares. The
authors and advocates of this doctrine have been, at least in many
cases, holy men of orthodox faith, who have strenuously denied
its logical consequences. Wherefore, the condemnation of their
opinions has been made in a very gentle and considerate manner, and
their personal character as Catholics has not been compromised,
unless they have shown a spirit of contumacious resistance to the
authority of the Holy See. They have not fallen into heresy, but
into philosophical error, and that in good faith, and before the
authority of the church had given judgment. Several of the most
distinguished among them have made a formal recantation of their
doctrine, others have done the same tacitly, and we may take it as
a settled fact that the ontologism condemned at Rome is banished
for ever from the Catholic schools.
It is equally certain, however, that there is an ideology,
distinct from that of the Thomist school, and frequently called
ontologism, which is not condemned. Its advocates profess to find
it in St. Augustine. It is probably contained in the doctrine of
St. Bonaventura. It is the doctrine taught in the later and more
mature works of the great and saintly Cardinal Gerdil, who was
in his youth a disciple of Malebranche the author of the theory
of the vision in God. And it is still maintained, under various
forms, by a considerable number of most respectable persons in
the church. Rosmini is well known as the author of a system which
bears an affinity to it, and, in a general sense, it may be said
to include all those Catholic teachers and disciples of philosophy
who are Platonists rather than Aristotelians. It is certain, we
say, that this ideology, distinct alike from that of the Thomists
and the pure ontologists, is not condemned. This is proved by the
answers given to queries on the subject by persons connected with
the Roman congregations, by the fact that the doctrines in question
are openly advocated in lectures and published works under the eye
of the Sovereign Pontiff, and by the express or tacit admission
of the opponents of ontologism. We have been informed also by a
distinguished prelate who was present at the discussions of the
Vatican Council, that such was the general understanding of the
bishops there assembled.
This ideology gives the human intellect an idea created by an
immediate illumination of God, and preceding all apprehension and
perception of particular, finite objects. It may be an idea of
God, of the infinite, of being, of the necessary and universal,
under any aspect, or under many distinct aspects; or it may be an
assemblage of ideas representing both the infinite, and finite
exterior objects. According to St. Bonaventura, it is an idea
representing God; according to Rosmini it is idea of _ens in
genere_. But in whatever way this theory of innate ideas may be
expressed, the intellectual object is always an image, something
created with and in the mind, and even where it represents God,
or the archetypal ideas of God, it is not identified with the
uncreated _ens_ of which it is the created image. The theory is
therefore free from the censures of the church. It is necessary,
however, for those who still adhere to the Platonic ideology to
be very careful and accurate in their expressions, in order to
avoid the likelihood of being understood by their readers to teach
condemned propositions. The looseness of language which is more
or less found in the more ancient authors; in all authors not
familiar with the scholastic method, unless they have a precise
terminology of their own, which is another difficulty in the
way of understanding them; and the abstruseness of the subject
itself, produce a great deal of misunderstanding. There is a great
deal of obscurity in the writings of Plato whenever he speaks of
ideology, and his disciples have inherited the same. It has been
quite possible, therefore, for writers whose doctrine is sound to
use the language and adopt many of the ideas of the celebrated
authors of the ontologistic party, without really apprehending
the nature and bearings of that erroneous doctrine which was at
the bottom of their whole system. These authors have frequently
expressed their ideas under terms and forms of expression borrowed
from St. Augustine, St. Bonaventura, Gerdil, Fénelon, and other
well-known doctors, prelates, and theologians. Very few of them
have elaborated their doctrine with sufficient completeness and
precision to make it easy to be understood. Those who have done so
have been the occasion of its precise formulation and condemnation
in the famous seven propositions. But, now that the supreme
authority in the church has distinctly specified what errors of
ontologism must be rejected as dangerous to faith, it is specially
important that every Catholic writer should be precise, accurate,
and clear in his language, so that he may not be misunderstood
even by the ordinary student or reader of philosophical essays.
The supreme, infallible authority of the Holy See has not, in
condemning certain errors, prescribed or defined what precisely
is the true ideological doctrine. Catholic philosophers must
therefore seek to come to as close an agreement as possible by
the way of reason. In order to do this, it is necessary that the
method and terminology sanctioned by ancient and general usage
should be strictly adhered to, since, otherwise, endless discussion
will be the only result. We think, moreover, as we have already
said, that this agreement can only be effected by means of the
ideology of St. Thomas. The church has not, indeed, formally
approved it, but, in our opinion, she has condemned that which is
its only logical alternative. Therefore, we trust in the power of
reason and logic to bring all master-minds into agreement with
St. Thomas, and in the authority of these teachers and leaders to
secure the adhesion of the great majority, who must ever be their
disciples. It is, we believe, ignorance or misapprehension of the
scholastic philosophy, as taught in the school of St. Thomas,
which has been the occasion of the attempt made by so many highly
gifted and noble-hearted men to fabricate out of Platonism a
better ideology. Disgust at nominalism, sensism, and psychologism,
abhorrence of the scepticism into which Hume and Kant sought to
resolve all knowledge and belief, have driven them to seek for a
self-subsisting, objective foundation of the ideal, separate from
and independent of the sensible. Irresistible logic has impelled
them by degrees toward the ultimatum which the pure ontologists
have reached; and which is simply the affirmation of God existing
in his attribute of absolute being, the infinite, or archetypal
truth, beauty, and goodness, to which Gioberti adds in the creative
act; as the immediate ideal object of the intellect. They have
supposed that this is the only alternative of the opposite extreme,
and have put aside the scholastic ideology as halting between the
two upon untenable ground. The opinion which they have of its
inconsistency and insufficiency is distinctly expressed in the
oft-repeated assertion that it is mere psychologism. This term
properly denotes any system which makes ideas mere subjective modes
of the mind. It is obvious that every species of semi-ontologism,
every theory of innate ideas, every system shaped out of Platonic
elements, which separates ideas from the sensible as the centre
of their concretion and their focus of visibility to the human
intellect, without locating them in God, is psychologism. But it
is not true of the philosophy of Aristotle and St. Thomas, that it
reduces ideas to this condition of subjectivity, no better than
that of the phantoms which arise in the imagination of the sleeper
or the day-dreamer. In this philosophy, the intelligible object
has a reality exterior to the mind, which it directly perceives,
and by which as a medium it attains self-evident and demonstrated
truths, having their foundation in the eternal truth, in the
infinite, in absolute being, in the Word, in God; who is the object
of the mediate intellectual vision of the mind, as the apostle
declares. _Invisibilia ipsius; per ea quæ facta sunt, intellecta,
conspiciuntur._ His invisible perfections are disclosed to our
sight, being perceived by the intellect through those things which
are made. _Videmus nunc per speculum._ We see even now, although
only in a mirror. The scholastic philosophy is not identical with
any merely sensistic, conceptualistic, or empirical system. It
does not reduce ideas to mere abstractions, make philosophy a mere
induction from the results of experience, or the knowledge of God
by reason the sum of an aggregate mass of probabilities. It is
not in any wise a system of subjectivism. On the contrary, it is
objective in the highest sense of the term, and truly ontological,
the real _scientia entis_, and not an imaginary one like that of
the so-called ontologists. If this be so, the whole ground of the
prejudice against the Catholic peripatetic philosophy falls away,
and there is no reason to desert the common teaching of the schools
for any other doctrine, either ancient or modern.
The four great masters in philosophy are Plato, Aristotle, St.
Augustine, and St. Thomas. Plato is rather a teacher of theology
and ethics than of metaphysics. His doctrine concerning God, the
immortality of the soul, and the moral ideal, is in many respects
purer and more sublime than that of his pupil. Yet Aristotle
deserves _par excellence_ the title of the heathen philosopher. The
name of _the dæmon_ given to him by his fellow-pupils on account
of his wonderful intellect well expresses what he really was--the
greatest intellectual prodigy that has appeared in human history,
the real creator of logical and metaphysical science. St. Augustine
followed Plato rather than any other heathen philosopher, and does
not appear to have been acquainted with the works of Aristotle.
Yet his philosophy as a whole was original; it was chiefly his
theology under a rational aspect; it was by no means a complete
and distinct system. St. Thomas, with the Aristotelian system
as a plan and basis, built the vast and sublime structure of a
Catholic philosophy. Although it may be true that he derived his
knowledge of Plato chiefly from Aristotle, and the latter may have
misrepresented his master; yet, through St. Augustine, he obtained
all that was really valuable in Plato purified and improved; and
has thus incorporated into his system everything, whether pagan
or Christian, which tradition had brought down to his time. As
Aristotle is the dæmon, St. Thomas is the angel of philosophy. It
is difficult to compare his natural gifts with those of Aristotle
in such a way as to make a relative estimate of the genius of the
two men. But in actual wisdom, enlightened as he was by revelation
and the Christian luminaries of the ages which preceded him, and
elevated above the natural capacities of man by the gifts of the
Holy Ghost, he is like the bright mid-day sun compared to the pale
orb of night. All other stars in the firmament must be content to
shine as lesser lights, and the brightest among them are only his
planets. Metaphysical genius of the highest order is the rarest of
gifts. Clement of Alexandria thought that the Greek philosophy had
not arisen without a special act of the divine providence which
was preparing the way for Christian theology. When we consider the
wonderful work accomplished by Aristotle, and the manner in which
his philosophy has become blended with the theology of the church,
we cannot fail to recognize the hand of God making use of the
human intellect in its most consummate perfection as the servant
of the Eternal Word in his mission as the teacher of divine truth.
Much more must we recognize the same divine hand in the genius and
work of St. Thomas. God does his work once for all. The apostles
finished their special work, the fathers finished theirs, and we
can have no more apostles or fathers of the church. The doctors
have done their work, and, although they may have left room for
successors, yet this is not in the sense that their work is to be
done over again. We do not believe there can ever arise another
St. Thomas to reconstruct more perfectly the edifice of theology
and philosophy in those parts which he has built, and these are
its essential and principal parts. Of theology we need not speak
particularly. Of philosophy, the principal parts are those which
give a scientific exposition of the rational basis of theology;
that is, which treat scientifically of the objective reality
of the intelligible which the human intellect perceives by its
natural power; of the first principles of reason; of self-evident
and demonstrable truth; of the process by which the mind ascends
from the knowledge of things to the knowledge of their highest
and creative cause, from the creature to the Creator, from the
visible and ideal world to God, from the knowledge of God through
the creation to the knowledge of God through revelation. It is
precisely here, as we have shown, that the dispute lies between
scholastic philosophy and ontologism. And it is precisely what
we claim for scholastic philosophy, that it gives us the true
science of ideology and theodicy, which satisfies reason and
accords with faith, and is really that which is implicitly and
confusedly possessed by the common sense of all men, especially
of all Christians, in proportion to the degree in which reason
is developed and instructed. This has been proved in the most
thorough and ample manner by F. Liberatore in his great work
_Della Conoscenza Intelletuale_, F. Kleutgen in his _Philosophie
der Vorzeit_, and F. Ramière in his _Unité de l’Enseignement
Philosophique_, as well as in other recent works of the same kind.
We will endeavor to give a statement as succinct and clear as
possible of the scholastic theory, in order that its opposition to
every form of sensism, idealism, and ontologism may be apparent.
In thought or cognition, we find by analysis these three, the
subject, the object, and the intellectual light; as in vision we
have the visual faculty, light, and the visible object. The subject
is the human intellect; the primary, immediate object is the
intelligible in the sensible, or the essences of sensible things;
the light is intelligence. It is a primary maxim that nothing
is in the intellect which was not first in the sense. Sensible
experience is therefore the starting point of thought. The thought
itself is the result of an active operation of the intellect upon
a passive impression which it receives from the object. This
active operation produces a similitude of the object (species)
in the mind, by which it becomes cognizant of the object itself
as distinct from and extrinsic to the subject. The intelligible
essence which is in the sensible object is distinguished and made
the object of apprehension by the process of abstraction. In this
intelligible essence, or what is called in common parlance “the
nature of things,” are contained the fundamental notions which are
the first germs of all intellectual processes, the first product
of the act of abstraction which is the beginning of intellectual
activity in the infant. In these notions are given the first
principles, the self-evident principles, the axioms of reason;
and with these reason is able to start the discursive process,
by which it demonstrates conclusions from premises, which in the
last analysis are intellections _a priori_ and self-evident. By
this reasoning process, the existence and attributes of God are
proved from the rational and material universe by the principle
of causality, which is one of the self-evident principles.
Self-consciousness begins as soon as the mind takes note of itself
as acting, and thus the subject becomes objective to itself without
any need of a species or impressed similitude of itself, because
it is itself, and present to itself, and more vividly cognizant of
itself in acting than of anything exterior to itself. The notions
derived from reflection on its own operations are thus added to
those which are derived by abstraction from sensible objects. The
immediate perception terminates only on particular individual
objects, but the notions obtained by abstraction are universal,
whence it is necessary to define in what consists the objective
reality of these universals. The universal is defined by Aristotle
as that which is one, but having aptitude to be contained in many.
That is, it is _genus_, with whatever is included under genus, to
wit, species, differentia, essential and accidental propriety.
For instance, the notion of man is the notion of a nature which
is one, but apt to be contained in an indefinite number of men.
It includes the genus animal, the species rational animal, the
differentia rationality, the essential propriety, or the entire
human constitution, mental and physical, and, in respect to the
varieties of race, the accidental proprieties which distinguish
each one from the others. All particular and individual objects
of cognition can be classed under these five predicaments of the
universal. The universal itself has its formal existence and
reality, as universal, only in the intellect. It is a conception of
the mind, formed by abstraction from the concrete and particular.
It is not, however, a mere abstract conception, but an abstractive
conception. An abstract conception is one in which a quality is
considered as separated by thought from any particular subject in
which it has residence, as goodness or sweetness. An abstractive
conception, as that of the human species, is one formed from
the consideration of men actually existing, in whom the species
is actually individualized. The conception has, therefore, its
foundation in the real object of mental intuition, the individual
man, and in him the whole that is contained in the universal
conception really exists. The conception is universal, because the
intellect perceives the intrinsic possibility of an indefinite
multitude of men in the very essence of man, as made known by
the existence of any one man in particular. This possibility is
something necessarily and eternally true, which is disclosed to
the intellect by means of its outward expression and realization
in the human race. That is to say, it is a thought which has
been expressed and communicated, by an intelligence in which the
possibility eternally and essentially subsists, to the human
intelligence. The foundation of the universal conception is
therefore in God. It is in God as archetype of man, as the reason
of the possibility of man’s nature, and the cause of his existence.
But the idea in God is totally different from the conception in
the mind of man. God understands the possibility of the existence
of man in the vision of his own essence, as imitable in this
particular form, and of his own creative power. But man cannot see
this idea as it is in God; he cannot compare the human type with
its archetype. He can only produce an afterthought of the divine
thought itself, a copy or imitation of the divine idea, which is
wholly inaccessible to his immediate vision, and is only known to
him inasmuch as it is manifested through the created type.
Let us take another example, that of a triangle. The figure
drawn on the blackboard is the sensible object. The conception
of a triangle is the intelligible object formed by abstraction,
and universal. In this conception are contained the general
notions of a point, a line, an angle; and in these notions are
involved several self-evident principles or axioms. From these are
demonstrated the various mathematical propositions of trigonometry.
It is easy to see that, in the intellectual process of the pupil’s
mind, the genesis and development of the act of cognition of
mathematical truth is precisely what has been above described. In
an intelligent and well-developed mind, many of the steps of the
process may be made with such ease and rapidity that they appear
to be instantaneous, and the conceptions gained are so clear and
evident that they appear like innate or intuitive ideas. But they
are not so, and this is made manifest enough in the case of dull or
slow-minded pupils. The conception of the triangle, with all the
mathematical truth which it contains, is necessary, universal, and
eternal. It has, therefore, its foundation in necessary being, or
in the divine intelligence. But it is in God in an eminent mode,
and formally only in the human intellect. Geometrical truth is
founded in the essence of God, who is the archetype of the triangle
and of every other geometrical figure. But that which the triangle
imitates the human intellect cannot see; the divine idea in which
mathematical truth as apprehended by us is eminently contained is
inapprehensible by any created mind; and the procession of the
divine thoughts expressed in quantity and its relations in a manner
intelligible to us, from the divine essence, is as much above our
understanding as the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father
and the Son. It is impossible to think of mathematical conceptions
except as having objective verity, and equally impossible to think
of them as identical with the ideal being of God; they must be,
therefore, as St. Thomas teaches, concrete only in particular
quantities, but in their universality, _conceptus mentis cum
fundamento in re_.
It is the same with the conceptions of time and space. These
conceptions come from the apprehension of things which succeed or
coexist with each other. Real time and space are relations of real
and finite things. Ideal time and space are necessarily conceived
as illimitable. It is equally evident that these conceptions of
illimitable time and space are not purely subjective categories of
the mind, and that they are not, in the formality which they have
in our mind, either eternal realities in themselves or identical
with God. They have a foundation in the divine essence, which we
can demonstrate to be nothing else than the infinite possibility
of being imitated in created existences. But this is a conclusion
of reason, and not an intuition of the divine essence as infinite
archetype. In our minds, the conceptions represent space and time
as boundless extended locality and boundless successive duration,
as Locke and Clarke have so clearly set forth, and as every one
knows by his own reflections. As conceptions of the universal, they
have their existence, therefore, only in the mind, while their
foundation is in reality. They presuppose and demand an eternal
thinker and an eternal thought; we can see immediately neither
the thought nor the thinker as they are in themselves, but we
behold both mediately by the conceptions of the universal and the
necessary; which reflect in our minds the eternal thought of the
eternal thinker, the eternal idea of the eternal God.
In point of fact, ontologists are obliged to admit that the process
of the act of the cognition of the infinite is historically the
same in substance with that which we have just explained. Their
immediate ideal intuition is something involute and out of the
reach of consciousness, until contact with sensible objects,
reflection, experience and instruction bring it into the state of
evolution. On the one hand, this proves that it has no existence,
except in their own imagination. An innate or intuitive idea of
God would make his infinite splendor to shine on the mind with
such incessant and dazzling splendor, that the sunlight would
appear as darkness, and finite things as nonentities, before it.
It would be impossible to doubt or to forget it, if it existed.
On the other hand, this shows that the scholastic theory of the
origin of ideas and knowledge adequately expresses everything
which they can reasonably desire in respect to the relation of the
intellect to the infinite, or real and necessary being, as the
object of cognition. The idea of the infinite and the knowledge of
God are _virtually_ in the intellect, because the light of reason,
a participation of the divine light, gives it the potentiality
which can be reduced to act by union with the intelligible object.
The theory which ascribes to the newly created soul something
besides its rational capacity, which it brings with it as a kind of
form to vivify the sensible object, or keeps as a distinct ideal
object within itself, is wholly unnecessary and superfluous. It
is, moreover, not in accordance with the true doctrine respecting
the human soul as _forma corporis_. It belongs rather to that
imperfect philosophy which ascribes to the soul in this life a
separate and independent subsistence, into which the body does not
enter as an integral part of the personality, but which it merely
serves as a machine. The scholastic doctrine preserves the unity of
the essence and the operation of man, as a rational animal. That
an intellectual operation should begin from our senses, and the
mind commence its existence in its rudimental body as a _tabula
rasa_, is in accordance with our humble position in the natural
order. The capacity for gaining knowledge by the slow process of
experience and discursion is all that we have any right to claim
for ourselves. It is enough for us that we are rational, that “the
light of God’s countenance is signed upon us” by the impress
of an image of his intelligence upon our souls; and that we are
enlightened by “that light which enlighteneth every man coming
into this world” by receiving the power to know God as manifested
in his works. We are certainly a “little lower than the angels,”
who have no natural vision of God in his essence, and how are we
essentially inferior to them, except in the necessity of beginning
the process of intellectual cognition from the apprehension of
sensible objects? It still remains true that God is both the
author and the object of knowledge even in the natural order,
and that we naturally tend to the contemplation of his being and
perfections. But this process carried on for eternity could never
bring us to a point where we could obtain the faintest glimpse of
an intuitive vision of the divine essence. The capacity to attain
to this vision is wholly gratuitous and supernatural, a gift of
grace, an elevation of our nature above itself, and above the
angelic nature to a similitude with the divine nature. The actual
vision is reserved for the state of glory in which the blessed see
God in himself and all things in God. The scholastic philosophy
is therefore in conformity with Catholic theology, and a proper
preparation for studying and understanding this sublime science.
Every other system is either in discord with it, or deficient
in the perfect logical concord which ought to make the inferior
harmonize completely with the superior science.
The revival of scholastic philosophy, and the general consent with
which, in all parts of the world, those who lead in the great
work of Catholic education and instruction are uniting together
in promoting its study and exposition, are a most hopeful sign
for the coming age. It is especially encouraging to witness this
revival in Germany; and to see the powerful and heavily panoplied
champions of orthodox theology and sound philosophy coming forth
from the German schools, to meet and overthrow the boastful giants
of that land of colossal intelligence and learning; who defy the
armies of the living God and aim at an imperial domination over
the world of science, as its statesmen and warriors do over the
political world. They are but giants of condensed cloud, like
the genii of Arabian fable who escaped from the bottles of King
Solomon. The wisdom of Solomon subdued these genii, and it is the
true wisdom, _sapientia_, which must subdue the cloudy giants
of critical, historical, and philosophical sophistry; the Bruno
Bauers, Strausses, Döllingers, Kants, Hegels, and Büchners, who
make war on the old Bible, the old church, the old religion, the
old philosophy, the old God of Germany and Christendom. A nephew
of Hegel and pupil of Feuerbach asked the latter what was to be
done next, since the Kantian philosophy had ended in the complete
dissolution of all science. The reply was, that we must return to
common sense. The pupil followed the advice by returning to the
old God and the old religion. To bring back the next generation to
this old religion, and to educate in it the youth who have received
it by their baptism in the church, is the great task of Catholic
teachers. This can be done only by the aid of the old philosophy.
The attempts made everywhere, but especially in Germany, to do
this by a new philosophy and a new theology are all failures, and
end only in betraying the whole cause of the church to the enemy.
Those Catholic scholars of Germany who are sound and strong alike
in their faith and in their science are beginning to see this, and
are returning to the philosophy of the Angelic Doctor as the only
fit companion to theology, the true wisdom in the rational order.
Those who become the interpreters and teachers of this wisdom to
the young are the most valuable and efficient of all laborers in
the field of divine philosophy. They need to be thoroughly learned
both in theology and philosophy, and at the same time to have a
special gift for teaching and explaining doctrine in a condensed,
lucid, and attractive manner.
In all these respects, Dr. Stöckl is pre-eminent. He has the
vast and solid erudition of the great German scholars. He has,
moreover, an intellect which is remarkable both for strength and
clearness, a masterly reasoning faculty, great talent cultivated
by long experience for instructing young students, and a style
which represents his thoughts with the precision of a photograph.
The German language is, moreover, of such a nature that, while it
reproduces exactly the Latin terminology of scholastic writers, it
brings out the idea in a new and fresh form, in which it becomes
more intelligible to those who belong to the Teutonic race than
it is in the Latin dress. We have never yet met with a manual of
philosophy which seems to us so perfectly satisfactory as the
_Manual_ of Dr. Stöckl; and the speedy call for a second edition
which followed its publication, as well as the praise given to it
by competent authorities, proves that it has met the want which
has been felt in Germany as in Great Britain and America. Besides
the ordinary topics which are treated in our text-books, it
contains also treatises on political and social morals, and has a
companion volume of small size which contains a masterly treatise
on “Æsthetics.” We have noticed it especially for the purpose of
recommending it to the examination of those who are engaged in
promoting the study of the scholastic philosophy, as a suitable
work to be translated into English for the use of students. It is
perhaps too large for a college text-book. It contains about one
thousand pages octavo, and would require two years’ study, with an
ordinary class, to be properly mastered, in connection with the
_Manual of the History of Philosophy_, which is a volume of equal
size. Nevertheless, although a smaller text-book is needed for
the majority of pupils, this one would make an admirable work of
reference for more advanced scholars, and supply the other needs
which we have pointed out in the earlier part of our article as
calling for a book of this kind in the English language. The great
cost of translation and publication, coupled with the risk of a
small sale, makes it somewhat difficult to undertake the task we
have suggested as desirable. It cannot be done, of course, without
the author’s permission, which, we suppose, he will readily grant
to those who can give the proper guarantee for the faithful and
scholarly performance of the work. We intended, when sitting down
to begin this article, to make only a brief introduction of our own
to a translation of the author’s chapter on the “Origin of Ideas,”
as a specimen of the work. But we have not done so, as the reader
knows, and have been unwittingly led on over such a length of space
that we have left no room for any citations from the author, or
minute review of the different parts of his philosophy. We trust
that he will become speedily known to all lovers of the philosophy
of St. Thomas, which he has so ably presented and defended, and
we are sure that he needs only to be known to be most highly
appreciated.
FOOTNOTE:
[74] _Lehrbuch der Philosophie._ Von Dr. Albert Stöckl, ord.
Professor der Philosophie an der Akademie Münster. Mainz: F.
Kirchheim. 1869.
FLEURANGE.
BY MRS. CRAVEN, AUTHOR OF “A SISTER’S STORY.”
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, WITH PERMISSION.
PART SECOND.
THE TRIAL.
XVI.
“The princess begs Mademoiselle Gabrielle to descend.” This message
was brought Fleurange by one of the servants of the princess, whose
attendants were a German valet de chambre, an Italian courier,
and a Russian waiting-maid. The latter, named Varinka, literally
belonged to the princess, being her slave. But Varinka, skilful and
intelligent like all the Russians of her class, kindly treated by
her mistress, to whom she was faithfully attached, and clothed in
her cast-off garments, did not look upon her condition as in the
least humiliating. In French she was called Mademoiselle Barbe,
in Italian the Signora Barbara, and she considered herself, and
indeed was regarded, as one of the most accomplished of servants.
Extremely exacting of all who were beneath her, and inclined
to be jealous of those she considered her equals, she at first
wished to class the princess’ new _demoiselle de compagnie_ among
the latter. But Fleurange, without even observing this, knew how
to take the place that belonged to her, and oblige Mademoiselle
Barbe to maintain a respectful deportment towards her. Barbara was
consequently inclined to dislike her, but, after some attentive
observation, she had sufficient wit to refrain. The fact was,
Fleurange’s activity relieved her from a part of her cares without
increasing them in the least (for the young girl never required
any one’s assistance), and used her influence in a way which every
one else profited by as well as Barbara. When the Princess was
recovering from one of the attacks of physical suffering that
all at once showed how unavailing were the comforts, luxuries,
and attentions that surrounded her, she dwelt constantly on her
illness, its cause, duration, and probable or improbable cure, and
under the influence of this preoccupation she became capricious,
whimsical, and almost impossible to satisfy. No one had ever
succeeded so well as Fleurange. Mademoiselle Barbe could not help
acknowledging, “She really has all the trouble of keeping madame in
a good humor, and we the benefit of it,” and this plain reasoning
made her decide to live at peace with the new-comer, and take
all possible advantage of the accommodating turn she noticed in
Fleurange, who thus unwittingly disarmed her enemy and converted
her into an ally, and almost a friend.
The princess’ message, which put an end to the young girl’s
pleasant dreams, was, it must be acknowledged, merely an invention
of Mademoiselle Barbe’s, who, being told by the courier it was
very delightful on deck, was suddenly seized with the desire of a
walk by moonlight. With this end in view, she sent the courier for
Fleurange. As before stated, she was sure Mademoiselle Gabrielle
would come down immediately without making any objections or asking
any questions, which was one of her meritorious qualities in the
eyes of this sagacious servant. “That young lady does not meddle
with what does not concern her, which, I must acknowledge, is very
agreeable,” she said.
As she had foreseen, Fleurange left her seat in the open air
without any objection, and went down to the ladies’ cabin, of
which the princess had exclusive possession. She found the invalid
asleep, and quietly took a seat beside her without questioning the
exactness of the message she had just received. Throwing off the
cloak she wore, she said: “Here, Barbara, put on this, if you like,
and go up and take the air. It is delightful on deck.”
It was by such pleasing good humor she had unintentionally made a
conquest of one who naturally regarded Fleurange as a rival, and
this, above all the qualities she possessed, was the charm that had
most power over the princess, and changed the sudden infatuation to
which she was liable (like most of the ladies of her country) into
something deeper and more permanent.
The Princess Catherine was lying on a couch, her head propped up
by several cushions, and her feet covered with a cashmere shawl.
In spite of her age and ill health, which had changed the outlines
of her face and form, beauty and grace had not disappeared without
leaving on her person traces much less fleeting than beauty itself.
Fleurange, looking at her face by the light of a lamp suspended
from the ceiling, could not help admiring her noble brow, and the
expressiveness as well as the still remarkable delicacy of her
features. Suddenly, as she thus sat contemplating her with more
attention than ever before, it seemed as if the face before her
awoke some indistinct remembrance--but before she could grasp the
idea that suddenly came into her mind, the princess opened her
eyes. Seeing Fleurange beside her, she smiled, and extended her
beautiful hand.
“You here, Gabrielle?” she said. “So much the better.”
“I was told you wanted me.”
“No; but I am very glad you are here.”
Fleurange bent down, and kissed the hand she held with an impulse
more affectionate than she had ever felt towards her before. The
princess seemed touched, and pressed her hand in return without
speaking. Then she went to sleep again. Fleurange remained with her
eyes fastened on her a long time, then she too lay down on a couch
at the other end of the cabin, to pass away the few hours that yet
remained before their arrival at Leghorn, which would be about
daybreak.
At that time, long before the era of railways, the route from
Leghorn to Florence, a long and dusty one, was not always traversed
in a single day, and our travellers stopped at Pisa for the
night. The princess no longer felt any interest in the places
she had visited so many times. She had only one wish, and that
was--to rest, and, once rested, to resume the journey. But it was
quite otherwise with Fleurange. Pisa was her birthplace. In Pisa
lay buried the mother she never knew. Here her father brought
her during the few happy days they passed together. How many
vicissitudes her young life had passed through since that time! How
many sorrows and joys she had experienced! How many ties she had
formed and broken! And with what interest she already dwelt on the
past at an age when others are only thinking of the future! As soon
as it was light, long before the princess awoke, Fleurange went to
pray beside her mother’s grave. Then she directed her steps towards
the Campo Santo, around which she slowly walked. Of all the places
she visited with her father, this was the one of which she retained
the most vivid recollection. The paintings of the Campo Santo are
like a poem which it is impossible to understand if ignorant of the
language in which it is written. This language she learned from her
father, and had not been allowed to forget it in her uncle’s house.
She remembered that her cousin, without ever having visited this
spot, was as familiar with all the paintings as herself. “How much
poor Clement would enjoy all these beauties of nature and art, and
these scenes of historic interest!” she said to herself. “How much
he would enjoy Italy!”
She might have added that, like many of his countrymen, he already
knew and loved
“The land where the lemon-trees bloom,”
without ever having seen it. Many Germans have loved it with a
profound and material passion, fatal when satisfied by violent
possession, but reciprocated and fruitful when the forced and
hated union was broken and gave place to voluntary and acceptable
alliance.
Leaving the Campo Santo, Fleurange went into the church, the
wonderful Cathedral of Pisa, which cannot be compared to any other;
for, if there are any finer, it is doubted or forgotten as soon
as this is entered. Here Fleurange heard Mass, after which she
remained a long time on her knees, praying, thinking of all those
she loved, and looking around: and all this without losing her
spirit of devotion. This may appear strange to those who wish to
confine the soul’s impulse towards God within narrow and rigid
limits. It is nevertheless certain that, in a simple and upright
heart, a good will, a more ardent love of the eternal goodness, the
resolutions so properly called a firm purpose of amendment, all
these effects of prayer often spring from what does not naturally
seem destined to produce them. In those lands where religion and
the arts go hand in hand, and where the inspiration which guides
the painter and the architect is the same that draws the believer
to the foot of the altar, it often happens that a glance at a
fresco or painting aids the soul more than a sermon in its upward
flight, and in accomplishing the very act for which it is prostrate
before God.
It was thus Fleurange, kneeling on the pavement, holding her
closed book in her hand, meditated, looked around, and prayed.
Among the thoughts floating in her mind, there was one especially
which seemed to harmonize with everything around her: it was the
remembrance of the cloister of Santa Maria, and the friend of her
early childhood, whose features at this moment seemed to beam out
of some of the holy faces on the walls around her. She was once
more beneath the same sky, and sufficiently near to cherish a hope
of seeing her. At this thought her eyes overflowed with tears.
The remembrance of her childhood prevailed over all others, and
rendered her prayer more concentrated and more fervent.
Mild and saintly Madre Maddalena!--perhaps at this same hour you,
too, were praying--praying for the child that was still dear to
you: perhaps, afar off, you echoed her prayer and made it more
efficacious--the oft-recurring prayer now on Fleurange’s lips as
she was about to leave the church: “Our Father, ... lead us not
into temptation, but deliver us from evil!”
XVII.
For the first time since her illness, the princess rose above her
languor, and resumed the faculty of talking of something besides
herself. As they drew near the end of their journey, Fleurange
perceived she knew how to converse, and that the indifference she
sometimes manifested to what seemed most worthy of interest was
not the result of ignorance, but simply a preference for something
else. Like other people, she admired monuments, galleries, splendid
churches, and museums, but she preferred the shops where she could
procure the rarities she had a taste for, and liked to adorn her
house with for the admiration of others. She enjoyed the brilliant
sky of Italy and the comfort of its mild climate, so necessary to
her health; but, if these advantages had not been accompanied by a
sumptuous palace and a large circle of fashionable acquaintances,
she would have regarded her expatriation as an exile, and found
it but slightly mitigated by all the wonders of nature and art by
which she was surrounded.
Their journey at last came to an end. The princess descended from
her carriage at the foot of the magnificent entrance to her palace,
so overjoyed at finding herself once more at home that the last
traces of her recent malady disappeared as if by enchantment.
Numerous servants relieved Fleurange from the care of the light
baggage with which the princess’ carriage was always encumbered,
and she hastily followed her protectress up the broad steps
of white marble that led to the first story. Here a vast hall
ornamented with statues opened into apartments whose splendor
surprised the young girl. She had already visited more than one
palace in Italy with a similar display of grand proportions,
frescoes, ceilings richly painted and gilded, but she had never
seen anything comparable to the luxury of the furniture and the
richness of the long suite of rooms through which they passed. When
the princess came to the last, she stopped. This salon, smaller
than the others, opened, as well as the one next it, upon a large
covered terrace with frescoed arches, which, filled with flowers,
rare plants, and seats of all forms and sizes, resembled a garden
screened from the sun, and formed an appendage to the elegant
apartment they had just entered, which was the princess’ private
sitting-room. A table loaded with fruit-cake and ices stood in
the centre of the room. The princess threw herself on a _chaise
longue_. “We dine late,” said she. “I will take a biscuit and an
ice. Eat something also yourself. But first take off your hat, lay
down your satchel, and rest yourself. It is exceedingly warm.”