“No efforts were wanting on the part of the Jesuit priest. He was with his

prisoner day and night, endeavoring to bring him to a true repentance of

his sin against God and against humanity. And he succeeded. He found the

count from the first overwhelmed with remorse, and his object was to

prevent this remorse degenerating into despair, and thus excluding the

light of faith. Happily, Conte Falcone, grievously as he had offended

against the laws of God, had never given place to rationalistic or

scoffing doubts. It needed but to transform the awful bitterness of human

remorse into the tenderness of perfect contrition; and this great work in

the culprit’s soul was happily accomplished in time to give him courage to

bear the dreadful intelligence that all efforts made at the Court of

Appeal to get the sentence commuted had entirely failed. This was an

unusual and remarkable fact, for capital punishment is very rarely carried

out in Italy; many would tell you not sufficiently for the protection of

society. Probably in this case the judges were urged to unusual severity

by the position of the criminal, lest it should appear that, being a

nobleman, he was less severely dealt with than a common man might have

been. Moreover, it was not forgotten that this was the third time one of

his unfortunate family had taken the life of a relation, and it was

thought necessary an example should be made. The priest accordingly

announced to him that his fate was sealed, and that the next morning he

must proceed on the terrible journey which was to be his last.

“In the kingdom of Naples, as well as in some other parts of Italy, it is

the law that the execution of a criminal should take place on or near the

spot where the deed was done.”

“What a terrible law of retribution!” exclaimed Mary.

“Yes, and one strictly in conformity with many passages of the Holy

Scriptures, and with the Biblical spirit generally.”

“Has it not been supposed, father,” asked Frank, “that possibly after

death the souls in purgatory, as also the lost, suffer for their errors

there where they were guilty of them?”

“It is a common opinion, and it goes far towards explaining the accounts

of strange noises and spectral forms in places where it is known there has

been a murder. The very sound of the fatal blow is repeated through the

hours of the night, as though the disembodied spirit were condemned for

ever to re‐enact the semblance of that crime which has grown into one

idea, one all‐absorbing memory of the past. The soul becomes, as it were,

the personification and essence of its fatal crime.”

“What a fearful verification of the worm that dieth not!” said Mary.

“But surely,” I exclaimed, “we may have softer and happier feelings about

the souls in purgatory?”

“Of course we may,” replied the father, almost smiling at my look of

horror and anxiety. “If they frequent the scenes of their past, it is not

to inspire us with fear; for of that dreadful passion they are now

themselves no longer capable, the blessed security of their future

annihilating all touch of apprehension. If they reappear to the living, it

is either to remedy some evil or to solicit our prayers. I never could

understand the terror people have of what they call ghosts.”

“It would be strange indeed,” said Mary, “not to wish to see again those

we have loved and lost, even their disembodied souls.”

“And yet it is not lawful to desire it with ardor or to entreat for it;

because it is outside the bounds of God’s usual dealings with his

creatures to permit the dead to revisit the living, or rather to reappear

to them; for I believe they revisit us constantly, and probably mostly

dwell amongst us, unseen and, alas! generally forgotten.”

“Oh! no, not forgotten, dear father,” said Mary, the tears filling her

eyes.

“Not forgotten by such as you, _figlia mia_.(150) But we have entered on a

subject which might keep us discussing till midnight. I go back to my poor

penitent.”

“Was he your penitent from the first, father? Were you the director of the

prison?”

“You have robbed me of my disguise, _cara figlia_.(151) I meant to have

told you a story, but not to talk of myself. However, it does not matter,

and I will lay aside all disguise. The journey the unhappy count had to

make to his native place was perhaps the most terrible part of his

punishment. But I had the satisfaction of seeing him receive the

announcement with the greatest resignation, once more offering it as an

atonement for his crime. As he was a man of considerable refinement and

education, his resignation arose from no lack of power to appreciate the

dreadful contrast between his present position on returning to his home

and that which he had once filled. It would be impossible to put into

words what he felt on arriving to meet an ignominious death at the place

where he had been the great man and the most influential person. Early in

the morning of the dreadful day on which we began our long journey he was

led out of the prison, and mounted on an ass—such being the law in that

part of Italy. The slow paces of the beast added considerably to the

torture of the count’s feelings, it being impossible to hasten a progress

every hour of which seemed an age. He had made his general confession to

me before that fatal morning, and constantly on the road he would turn to

me for a word of consolation and encouragement, or to renew his frequent

acts of contrition. I need hardly say I never left his side for a moment.

Poor fellow! what an agony the whole journey was to him, and, from

sympathy, hardly less so to me; for he was bound hand and foot, and the

animal was led by one of the guards, the others following and surrounding

him on horseback. You know enough of us Italians to be aware that,

physically and morally, we are more sensitively constituted than any other

European nation. Our feelings are extraordinarily keen, and our

imaginative powers excessive; and these two qualities combine to give us a

most intense love of life. All the incidents of our journey, which

occupied the entire day, must have been, and indeed I can bear testimony

that they were, the perfection of anguish to the count, such as seldom can

fall to the lot of any man, taking his whole life together. The sun poured

its scorching rays on his uncovered head; he, being bound, could not in

any way help himself; and several times he turned so faint that the guards

had to fetch water to revive him. I obtained permission at last for his

poor head to be covered—all the more so as I apprehended a sun‐stroke. I

held the cup for him to drink from, and sometimes supported him for a few

seconds in my arms to relieve him as well as I could from the restraint of

his painful position. It was nightfall when our awful and melancholy

procession reached the prison of the count’s native town. His own château

was not far distant! I had written to have a chapel prepared in the

prison; and in that chapel, kneeling at the foot of the altar, he whom I

had come to love as the very child of my soul spent the entire night.

Naturally, his first thought on arriving was for his wife and his two

little children. And he entreated to be allowed to see them once more. I

was not then aware of what was the custom on such melancholy occasions,

and I applied for permission to send for the countess and her children.

But I found that they had been removed from their home by the order of the

magistrates, and were already at a considerable distance. This had been

done from motives of humanity, that the poor wife might not be almost

within hearing of the dreadful event which was to take place on the

morrow, or his children grow up with a full knowledge of their father’s

fate. It was almost more than I myself could bear when I had to return to

him in the prison, and tell him of the ill‐success of my request. It was

the last drop of extreme bitterness. It was the vinegar and the gall; the

absolute isolation from all that he had loved, the utter desolation of his

human affections. A spasm of agony passed over his face; but the only

words he spoke were, ‘The will of God be done.’ ”

“In the morning he again made his confession with the ardent contrition

and fervor of a saint. He heard a Mass as preparation for his last

communion. He received the Blessed Sacrament at the second Mass, and

assisted at a third in thanksgiving.

“The dreadful moment was now at hand. The horrid black limbs of the fatal

guillotine stood stark and rigid against the bright morning sky in the

great public square of the town.

“Every church in the place was thronged with worshippers, praying and

offering their communions for the salvation of the poor soul so soon to be

wrenched from sweet life, and sent to its everlasting doom. The public

square was also filled with spectators—a silent, awe‐struck throng, while

occasionally a prayer would seem to quiver on the air from the suppressed

voice of a hundred people.

“At length the count appeared, supported by the guards; for by that time

he was in a very exhausted state. His last act was to press my hand in

silence. It was the signal for me to give him the last absolution. I had

just turned aside, hardly conscious myself from excess of feeling, when

the fatal knife fell. A cry of horror ran through the crowd; and then

immediately they dispersed, many of them repeating aloud the _De

profundis_, as they retired to their homes.

“I always remember poor Falcone in my daily Mass; though I cannot say I

think he is in any further need of prayers, but is, I hope, long since in

a position to benefit me by his.”

“What is your opinion, father,” asked Mary, “of public executions?”

“In the present state of feeling in Italy they are beneficial rather than

otherwise. I attended the execution of two soldiers a few years ago at

Terracina. The whole town was crowding to the church the evening before,

and at an early hour on the day itself, to pray for the poor men. It was

like the general communion at the close of a mission; and those who

actually witnessed the execution seemed to do so with no other object than

to assist the poor criminals by their prayers. Many of the women were on

their knees in the public place. And I do not believe but that such a

fervor of devotion had a beneficial effect upon all. It is, or at least it

was, the same thing in Rome. But where, as in London and Paris, that idea

of intercessory prayer has died out with the faith of which it forms a

part, and the vilest rabble collects from a brutal curiosity to see a man

hung or guillotined, then I am convinced that public executions are

demoralizing, and tend to increase the crimes they are meant to repress.”

“All I know is,” said Frank, suddenly starting up, “if a fellow could only

have the good‐luck to be hung in the presence of a large Italian crowd, I

think he would have a better chance of going straight to heaven than by

any other death. I think I should like to go in for that sort of thing

myself.”

“O Frank! what do you mean?”

“Why, this is what I mean: If you have a long illness, you get weak in

mind and in the power of volition, as well as weak in body. I know, if I

have only a headache, how difficult it is to say my prayers. Fancy, then,

what it must be through a long, painful illness. Whereas, if you are going

to be hung, you have all your faculties about you; you are in no doubt of

when you are going to die; the time is fixed to the minute. You have made

your last confession; and I can imagine being able then to make such an

act of perfect contrition, with all the forces of one’s mind and soul,

that would land one safe past the realms of purgatory. I often feel as if

it would be my only chance, and not a bad one, either.”

Padre Cataldo looked amused. Elizabeth did not appear quite to like it,

and I overheard her say to him: “I think you might manage to end an

honorable life in a more honorable way, and secure heaven all the same.” I

thought I heard something in reply about “with your help and your

example”; but I did not listen, as I wanted to induce Padre Cataldo to

tell us about his wonderful escape during the revolution of 1860. I said

something to him about it; but he turned it off, and Mary whispered to me

that he never liked to talk about it, but that Don Emidio knew all about

it, and we could ask him to tell us the next time we met. Padre Cataldo

now took leave, Frank accompanying him back, and promising to return for

the Vernons later.

As soon as they had left, Ida told us that all their troubles and

anxieties in reference to the Casinelli and the chapel bell had been

renewed. There had been an interregnum of comparative peace, and we had

entertained the hope that all was likely to go on quietly. But it turned

out that one of the sisters some days previously had called on Mrs. Vernon

and her daughters to explain that the bell ringing for Mass was such a

cause of annoyance to the other lodgers that she really must request that

it should be entirely given up. Of course Mrs. Vernon refused. The chapel

had been conceded to them; Mass was said there daily by the express

permission of the cardinal archbishop, and was of the greatest benefit to

the neighborhood; and she and her daughters absolutely declined to

sanction such an insult to religion. Signorina Casinelli proposed that the

bell should be hung somewhere in the garden at a considerable distance.

But this also was refused. It was not rung at an early hour. It was not a

large bell, and it was absurd to have the chapel in one place, and the

chapel bell an eighth of a mile away, to say nothing of the trouble of

sending some one to ring it. Signorina Casinelli left the house in high

dudgeon; and the next day she waylaid Padre Cataldo, as he was returning

through the garden from visiting the sick. She flew into a violent rage

the moment she saw him, and told him that, rather than offend their other

tenants, they would, the house being their property, shut up the chapel

entirely.

Unfortunately, no written agreement respecting the use of the chapel

existed between the Vernons and the Casinelli; and it had never entered

any one’s head that they could be guilty of such a transaction. The threat

was, however, only too well carried out. That same evening the bell was

cut down and carried away. The Vernons learnt from the _vignaiuoli_ in

their neighborhood that the Casinelli had had some difficulty in finding

any workmen who would undertake the job. They had first sent for a mason

in their own employ; but he had absolutely refused to have anything to do

with a work which he considered as sacrilegious; and turning to the

_padrona_, the eldest sister, he exclaimed, “Judas also sold his Master

for money, but I will have nothing to do with conduct which resembles his.

You may manage your own affairs in your own way.”

The following Saturday they completed their evil work by literally doing

as they threatened. A message was sent to the Vernons to warn them that

they had better take out of the chapel anything therein which belonged to

them without loss of time, as that night it was to be locked and the keys

withdrawn.

It was a sad office indeed for the Vernons to have to strip the little

chapel of all its ornaments, the work of their hands and their hearts.

They did it in silence, and in silence they bore the heavy trial; for had

they allowed themselves any expressions which would have served as a cry

for the peasantry around, it would have been difficult to restrain the

grief and indignation of these poor people at finding themselves deprived

of their Mass and of the instructions of a priest whom they all loved as a

father. Ida’s delicate health made it very difficult for her to walk to

any church up the high hill at the foot of which Casinelli is situated.

Padre Cataldo had to go elsewhere to say his Mass, to the great

inconvenience of himself and others. But that was as nothing compared to

the grief of seeing all his little flock dispersed.

Signore Casinelli informed his tenant, in the presence of several persons,

that henceforth he might consider himself master of the situation. And so

he has remained. But the Casinelli have never since been able to command

the slightest respect from the _vignaiuoli_ and peasantry of the

neighborhood. They have lost all prestige. And long before these pages see

the light the Vernons will have left Casinelli to establish themselves in

one of the many villas whose doors were open to them from that moment. All

in the neighborhood wanted to let their apartments to them and Padre

Cataldo; and if anything could console them for all they had had to

sacrifice, it might be the amount of sympathy and respect which met them

on all sides and from all classes; while the incident, far from

diminishing Padre Cataldo’s field of usefulness, seemed to have opened out

fresh spheres for him to work in, and to have extended his influence far

and wide.

The garden in which our villa of R—— R—— stood led by steps and winding

paths to a tiny bay and to a long series of rocks and large natural caves.

There was more than one bath, fed by the fresh sea‐water, in whose limpid

depths we not unfrequently saw brilliant sea‐anemones, and even small fish

which sometimes forced their way through to the openings left in an

artificial dike to supply the bath with water. Here and there a wooden

bridge was thrown over some part where the water broke the communication

from one cave to another. The views from the wide, arched openings of the

caves were very lovely; Naples and the bay on one side, and the flower‐

clad, precipitous rocks of the coast of Posilippo on the other. At night

the fishermen’s boats which had been moored in these caves, and in others

like them, came gliding out with a lighted torch at the prow. And all

through the night many of them might be seen, with the black figures of

two or three fishermen dimly distinguished from time to time; though more

generally all that can be seen is the dark, shadowy form of the boat and

the flaring torch, intended to attract the unwary fish into the net.

I should have liked the caves better had they not been disfigured by the

stuffed, gaunt forms of a hippopotamus and some alligators and similar

monsters, which were placed in all sorts of unexpected places, and seemed

to meet you round the corner with gaping jaws. These caves had formed part

of a public place of resort some years ago, but were now deserted and

forgotten, with all the monsters rapidly falling into dusty decay.

We had been for some time at the villa before my curiosity had ever led me

to explore this strange place. When I did so, it was in company with Don

Emidio. But as I protested that I did not like crocodiles and hippopotami,

he suggested that we should climb the rock outside the cave to the pretty

little pink and green kiosk which crowned it, and which commanded a lovely

view from where it stood embedded in aloes and cacti, opuntias and zoccas,

besides many varieties of climbing plants. Nothing could be prettier than

the winding paths, protected on one side by a rustic fence, while every

cranny in the rock on the other side bore some tuft of blossom or afforded

roothold for the wild tresses of some flowering creeper.

Mary and Frank had remained in the lower garden, while we wandered into

every nook and corner, and finally sat down to rest inside the kiosk,

which, with windows all round, presented to us a wide and lovely scene.

It was here I consented to become Don Emidio’s wife.

That effected, no matter how or in what words—for those things seldom read

wisely—I suggested that we should rejoin Mary and Frank. Don Emidio took

the latter by the arm, and walked with him a little way apart. I remained

silent, sitting at Mary’s feet. When Don Emidio joined us, it was without

Frank. I asked where he was. “Gone down to Casinelli,” was the reply. I

knew why. He was determined to have his fate also decided that same day,

that same hour. I had no doubts for him. I knew that Elizabeth would

consent; and I felt partly glad, and partly saddened at the thought that

our life, hitherto so united and bound up in each other, was about to

divide and separate, each following his or her own destiny, and weaving a

new web of life’s joys and sorrows. Don Emidio left us soon. But long

after, I saw him leaning over the parapet of the road, waiting for Frank

to return from Casinelli, that he might learn whether his wishes also were

to be crowned with success. I could see the meeting from my window, as the

tall figures of the two friends stood dark against the deep blue of an

Italian starlight night. I could have no doubt of the nature of the

intelligence conveyed by Frank to his friend; for, to my horror, Don

Emidio threw his arms around him and kissed him, as Italians do. Poor

Frank! thought I, how will he put up with such an un‐English proceeding?

No doubt it had happened to Frank before; for he did not, so far as I

could judge at that distance, start with astonishment. But it set me

thinking about my future husband’s foreign ways. And the next morning,

when Frank and I had talked over the more serious questions in our

affairs, I found myself drifting into that part of the matter. “I wonder,

Frank, if I shall ever get quite reconciled to his Italian customs, so as

either not to notice, or to prefer them?”

“It is to be hoped so, since he will be your husband. But what do you mean

in particular?”

“Why, you know he will call me Miss Jane; any one else would say Miss

Hamilton.”

“That is an evil which is already at an end. No doubt for the future he

will call you simply Jane, and speak of you a short time hence as la

Contessa Gandolfi.”

“Then I wish he would not embrace you, Frank.” Frank laughed aloud.

“He would be hurt if I repulsed him. They all do it. He will soon see that

in England it is not the custom, and then he will give it up—at least

while there.”

“Another thing is, I do not like his wearing a large ring—though I own it

is a handsome one—on his forefinger. We think that vulgar in England.”

“And it does not happen to be vulgar here; that is all about it, my dear

Jane. I am afraid I cannot help you in that matter. But possibly in time

you will succeed in bringing him round to your views; though I doubt your

ever being able to break him of occasionally transferring that ring from

his finger to his thumb whenever he is particularly anxious to remember

something. When you see his palazzo in Rome, you will find that he

possesses a beautiful portrait, by Vandyke, of an ancestor on his mother’s

side. That very ring is on the forefinger of the portrait. Emidio is the

living image of that picture. And you can hardly blame a man for carrying

out a likeness he has such reason to be proud of.”

“There is one other thing, Frank, which strikes me as odd. If he is

sitting in the arm‐chair when Mary or I come into the room (and you know

we are not rich in arm‐chairs here), he never gives either of us that

chair, but fetches us another, and goes back to the arm‐chair himself.”

“Jane, you are a little fool. Do you not know that in Italy, at least in

the south, it is the height of ill‐breeding to offer any one the chair you

have just occupied yourself? A cool seat is always a desideratum in this

climate, even though it may be a less luxurious one.”

“Shall I ever, do you think, be able to take back to England with me a

husband with such a name as Emidio? What a pity he was not christened

Paul, or Stephen, or even Anthony! But Emidio!” By this time we were both

laughing—Frank at me, I at myself.

“You need never call him Emidio in public. We call him so because, when we

have been travelling about Italy alone together, we found it convenient to

drop his title. But you know he is il Conte Gandolfi. His mother was the

only child of a noble Roman family, and consequently a great heiress. She

married a Neapolitan Conte Gandolfi; and that is how it happens that with

a Neapolitan name his chief residence is in Rome, in the palazzo that

belonged to his mother. His father was not a man of very considerable

fortune, and his only property here is his villa at Capo di Monte, where

he spends the summer. A nobler heart and a finer nature I never saw. There

is the simplicity of a child, the honor of a true‐born gentleman, the

delicacy of a woman, the courage of a hero, and the piety of a saint.”

The tears stood in my eyes; and taking dear Frank’s hand in mine, I said,

“Thank you, dear old fellow, for saying that. And, thank God, you too have

drawn a prize!”

A Discussion With An Infidel.

IV. Immortality Of Matter.

_Reader._ And now, doctor, what other argument do you allege against

creation?

_Büchner._ The immortality of matter, and the immortality of force.

_Reader._ The immortality of matter?

_Büchner._ Yes, sir. “Matter is immortal, indestructible. There is not an

atom in the universe which can be lost. We cannot, even in thought, remove

or add an atom without admitting that the world would thereby be

disturbed, and the laws of gravitation and the equilibrium of matter

interfered with. It is the great merit of modern chemistry to have proved

in the most convincing manner that the uninterrupted changes of matter

which we daily witness, the origin and decay of organic and inorganic

forms and tissues, do not arise, as was hitherto believed, from new

materials, but that this change consists in nothing else but the constant

and continuous metamorphosis of the same elementary principles, the

quantity and quality of which ever are, and ever remain, the same” (p. 9).

“The atoms are in themselves unchangeable and indestructible; to‐day in

this, tomorrow in another form, they present by the variety of their

combinations the innumerable forms in which matter appears to our senses.

The number of atoms in any element remains, on the whole, the same; not a

single particle is formed anew; nor can it, when formed, disappear from

existence” (p. 11).

_Reader._ Do you say in the same breath that no particle of matter can be

formed anew, and that, _when formed_, it cannot disappear? When is it

formed, if it cannot be formed at all?

_Büchner._ The phrase may be incorrect, but the idea is sound, and the

argument conclusive.

_Reader._ Poor doctor! the idea is as inconsistent as the phrase is

incorrect; and the argument is not worthy of the name. Let us admit that

matter, elements, and atoms have been observed to remain always and

everywhere the same. Does it follow that matter, elements, and atoms are

indestructible? By no means; it only follows that, be they destructible or

not, they have not been actually destroyed. You say that by the

destruction or addition of an atom “the world would be disturbed.” Let it

be disturbed; what then?

_Büchner._ Then the laws of gravitation and the equilibrium of matter

would be interfered with; which cannot be admitted. The laws of nature are

unchangeable. What has been constantly true for the past must be true for

ever.

_Reader._ You are utterly mistaken, doctor. The world may be disturbed by

the creation or the annihilation of matter without the laws of nature

being interfered with. I admit that the laws of nature are unchangeable;

they have been true for the past, and they will be true for ever. But what

is the object of these laws? Nothing but the mode of production of the

phenomena of the material world. Hence you have a law of gravitation, a

law of propagation of sound, a law of impact, a law of reflection and of

refraction, and generally laws of motion, but you have no law of

_existence_ and no law of _substance_. Whence it is clear that all your

laws of nature would remain exactly the same whether any new portion of

matter were brought into being or any portion of existing matter

annihilated. Suppose that your own body were annihilated; would any law of

nature be upset? Would the sun cease to illuminate the earth? Would the

earth cease to revolve round its axis or to attract bodies? Would the

ocean cease rolling its waves to the shore? Would fire cease to burn? In

one word, would any law of statics or of dynamics cease to be true?

Nor can you decline this supposition by saying that annihilation itself

would be against the laws of nature. For all your laws of nature, as I

have just remarked, regard the movements, and not the substance, of the

material world. Your laws suppose the existence of matter in the same

manner as civil laws suppose the existence of civil society; and as these

latter are not modified by an increase or a decrease in the number of the

individuals subject to them, so neither would the former be modified by

any increase or decrease in the number of material elements. There would

be, of course, a change in the phenomena themselves, because the execution

of the laws would be carried on suitably to the new condition of the case;

but the laws would remain the same. Consequently any amount of matter

could be annihilated without the least change in the laws of nature. Let

the moon be annihilated; the ebb and flow of the ocean will be altered,

but the laws of motion will remain the same; for the ebbing and flowing of

the waters will still be proportional to the action of the disturbing

causes. Let a stone be annihilated in the act of its falling to the

ground; the law of attraction will remain unaltered, as it will still be

true that every falling body must acquire, under gravitation, a uniformly

increasing velocity. Hence the unchangeableness of natural laws cannot be

alleged as a proof of the indestructibility of matter; and your argument

is worthless. The utmost you can be allowed to assume is that matter,

whether destructible or not, has hitherto continued to exist, and no

particle of it has ever been annihilated.

This last assertion, however, is admitted by natural philosophers, not

because there is any scientific proof of it, but simply because science

has no grounds for denying it. Science has no means of ascertaining, for

instance, whether any remote star has been annihilated, or any new star

created, in the last thousand years; and if the common belief is that no

new matter has been created, and no portion of matter annihilated, we owe

it, not to science, but to the teaching of the Bible, which represents the

work of creation as long ago completed, and the conservation of all

created substances as the effect of design. But you, who laugh at

revelation, and pretend to substantiate all your assertions by facts, have

no right to assume that no matter has ever been annihilated. Hence not

only are you unable to show that matter is indestructible, but you cannot

even maintain that no particle of matter has ever been destroyed.

But I will no longer insist on this point. I admit that no atom of matter

can ever be lost to the world _by natural processes_. My reason is that

the natural actions of bodies, whether physical or chemical, tend merely

to the production, modification, or neutralization of movement, and that

no amount of change in the movement of an atom can cause the atom to

vanish. This is not, however, a discovery of modern chemistry, as you seem

to believe. The scholastic philosophers had not the fortune to know modern

chemistry; yet they never believed that new compounds were made of new

materials, though you recklessly assert that “it was hitherto believed”;

but they always uniformly taught that matter was ingenerable and

incorruptible. There was therefore scarcely any need of modern chemistry

to teach us that no portion of matter can be lost by natural processes.

Yet this is not the real question. What we want to know is whether an

atom, or any number of atoms, has a necessary existence and cannot be

annihilated by God. This is your assumption; and this is what you are

unable to show. Your argument is, in fact, nothing but a vicious circle.

You say: “There is no God; and therefore matter cannot be annihilated”;

and at the same time you say: “Matter cannot be annihilated; and therefore

there is no God.” This is, in reality, the covert drift of your

argumentation, when from the assumed indestructibility of matter you

conclude, first, that matter could not have been created, and, further,

that the existence of a Creator is a gratuitous hypothesis. On the other

hand, you cannot make good your assertion that matter is indestructible

without first denying the existence of a Creator. Such is your nice logic

in what you probably consider to be one of your best arguments.

And let me here make a passing remark on the word “immortality,” which you

have chosen to designate the pretended indestructibility of matter.

Immortality is not simply “existence without end,” but “life without end.”

Hence living beings alone can be immortal. Do you assume, then, that a

grain of dust or an atom of matter is a living being? If you say _yes_,

where are the facts that will lend a support to such an unscientific

doctrine? If you say _no_, then the immortality of your matter is nothing

indeed but a new form of what you would style “philosophical

charlatanism.”

To conclude: the indestructibility of matter is a ridiculous invention of

ignorant empiricists, who know neither what matter is nor what is

philosophical reasoning. They make, indeed, a great deal of noise with

their scientific publications; but their ephemeral celebrity is due to an

organized system of mutual laudation and to Masonic support, as you know.

Let only twenty years pass, and you may be sure that our children will

laugh at your celebrities: and if your _Force and Matter_ is to reach

them, they will laugh at you too. Common sense cannot slumber for ever;

and when it awakes, then will all your infidel scribes be pronounced

designing knaves.

_Büchner._ I thought you would never end, sir; but, long as your answer

has been, it has failed to convince me. The force of my argument lies in

this: that what can have an end must have had a beginning. If, therefore,

matter is not indestructible, it must have had a beginning.

_Reader._ Certainly.

_Büchner._ But a beginning of matter is inconceivable. For how could

matter come into existence?

_Reader._ By creation out of nothing.

_Büchner._ This is what I deny. For out of nothing nothing can arise. This

is an axiom. Hence “never can an atom arise anew or disappear; it can only

change its combinations.... Matter must have existed from eternity, and

must last for ever” (p. 12).

_Reader._ I am not in the least surprised to hear that my long talk did

not convince you. It is always difficult to convince a man against his

will. My object, however, was not to give you a positive demonstration of

the fact of creation, but only to show that the reasons which you were

parading against creation amount to nothing. Of this I hope I have not

failed to convince you. But now you come forward with a new argument,

which indeed is very old, consisting in a pretended axiom, that out of

nothing nothing can arise. Suppose, doctor, that I deny your axiom. How

would you show that I deny a truth?

_Büchner._ “How can any one deny the axiom that out of nothing nothing can

arise?” (p. 12).

_Reader._ You must know, doctor, that what you assume to be an old axiom

is only an old error. In fact, why do you say that out of nothing nothing

can arise? Simply because natural energies can do nothing without pre‐

existing materials. Hence your argument amounts to this. “Natural energies

never make anything out of nothing; therefore out of nothing nothing can

be made.” That this conclusion is a great blunder I need not prove, I

presume, as logic teaches that no conclusion can be more general than its

premises. Where is, then, the ground of your pretended axiom?

Nor can you reply that the natural energies are the only energies known to

us, and that, if these cannot make anything out of nothing, the axiom is

unexceptionably true. This would be to assume what you are bound to prove,

to wit, that there is no power above the natural forces; and to assume

this is what logicians call _Petitio principii_. On the other hand, you

cannot maintain that such natural forces are the only ones we know; for

you cannot limit the range of human knowledge within the narrow sphere of

mere empiricism without denying human reason.

_Büchner._ We have no notion of supersensible forces.

_Reader._ You talk without reflection, doctor. If you have no such a

notion, what is it, then, that compels you to admit any demonstrated

truth? Is it attraction, heat, electricity, or any of your physical or

chemical forces? No; it is the force of demonstration, it is the force of

truth. This is no vain theory; I appeal to your own experience. Your

intellect is obliged to yield to the force of evidence and demonstration

just as inevitably as the pendulum is obliged to yield to the force of

gravitation. And since a real effect requires a real cause, hence whatever

thus really compels your intellect to yield must have a real power, and

that evidently supersensible.

But reverting to your pretended axiom, I have yet to remark that, strictly

speaking, it does not even hold in the case of natural causes; in other

terms, I say that nothing is ever produced by natural causes except out of

nothing. Of course no tailor ever made a coat without cloth, and no

carpenter ever built a ship without pre‐existing materials. This I admit;

but if you closely examine the point, you will see that to make a coat or

a ship is not _to produce_ it, and that the action of the tailor and the

carpenter wholly consists in modifying and arranging the materials so as

to give them a form. It is, therefore, this _form_ alone that is produced.

Now, clearly, this form, before its production, was nothing; for it had no

existence. And therefore the work of the tailor or the carpenter is a

production of something out of nothing.(152) And thus either you must deny

that anything is ever produced, or you must give up your axiom that

nothing can be produced out of nothing.

_Büchner._ I cannot give up my axiom without inconsistency. I will rather

deny that anything is ever really produced. In fact, “Those are children,

or persons with a narrow sphere of vision, says Empedocles, who imagine

that anything arises that has not existed before, or that anything can

entirely die and perish” (p. 15).

_Reader._ These are empty words.

_Büchner._ On the other hand, “the immortality of matter is now a fact

scientifically established, and can no longer be denied” (p. 13).

_Reader._ Indeed?

_Büchner._ Yes; “Its actual proof is given by our scales and retorts” (p.

13).

_Reader._ I thought I had already shown that your scales and retorts are

incapable of giving such a proof.

_Büchner._ “Sebastian Frank, a German who lived in 1528, says: Matter was

in the beginning in God, and is on that account eternal and infinite. The

earth and everything created may pass away, but we cannot say that that

will perish out of which matter is created. The substance remains for

ever” (p. 14).

_Reader._ Do you endorse these words?

_Büchner._ Certainly.

_Reader._ Then you catch yourself in your own trap. For if matter is

created, as your German writer says, surely there is a Creator.

_Büchner._ But if matter was in the beginning in God, and was eternal, it

is plain that matter could not be created.

_Reader._ Perfectly true. And therefore, since matter, according to your

German authority, has been created, surely matter was not in the beginning

in God. But, after all, can you endorse Frank’s words without admitting a

God? And can you admit a God and a Creator while fighting against creation

and the existence of God? Be honest, doctor, and confess that bad indeed

must a cause be which cannot be maintained but by clumsy sophistry and

shameful contradiction.

V. Immortality Of Force.

_Reader._ In your theory, doctor, force is immortal. This I cannot

understand. Would you tell me how you come to such a conclusion?

_Büchner._ “Indestructible, imperishable, and immortal as matter is also

its immanent force. Intimately united to matter, force revolves in the

same never‐ending cycle, and emerges from any form in the same quantity as

it entered. If it be an undoubted fact that matter can neither be produced

nor destroyed, but merely transformed, then it must also be assumed as an

established principle that there is not a single case in which force can

be produced out of, or pass into, nothing; or, in other words, can be born

or annihilated. In all cases where force is manifested it may be reduced

to its sources; that is to say, it can be ascertained from what other

forces a definite amount of force has been obtained, either directly or by

conversion. This convertibility is not arbitrary, but takes place

according to definite equivalents, so that not the smallest quantity of

force can be lost” (p. 16).

_Reader._ How do you account for this theory?

_Büchner._ “Logic and our daily experience teach us that no natural motion

or change, consequently no manifestation of force, can take place without

producing an endless chain of successive motions and changes, as every

effect becomes immediately the cause of succeeding effects. There is no

repose of any kind in nature; its whole existence is a constant cycle, in

which every motion, the consequence of a preceding motion, becomes

immediately the cause of an equivalent succeeding one; so that there is

nowhere a gap, nowhere either loss or gain. No motion in nature proceeds

from or passes into nothing; and as in the material world every individual

form can only realize its existence by drawing its materials from the

immense storehouse of matter, so does every motion originate from the

equally immense storehouse of forces, to which sooner or later the

borrowed quantity of force is again returned. The motion may become

latent—_i.e._, apparently concealed; but nevertheless it is not lost,

having merely been converted into equivalent states, from which it will

escape again in some shape. During this process force has changed its

mode; for force may, though essentially the same, assume in the universe a

variety of modes. The various forms may, as already stated, be converted

into others without loss, so that the sum‐total of existing forces can

neither be increased nor diminished, the forms only changing” (pp. 17,

18).

_Reader._ What do you mean by “forms of forces”?

_Büchner._ Physics, as I stated to you on another occasion, “makes us

acquainted with eight different forces—gravitation, mechanical force,

heat, light, electricity, magnetism, affinity, cohesion, which,

inseparably united to matter, form and give shape to the world. These

forces are, with few exceptions, mutually convertible, so that nothing is

lost in the process of conversion” (p. 18).

_Reader._ “With few exceptions”? I fear that any exception will prove

fatal to your theory. But go on, doctor; I wish to hear more about your

conversion of forces.

_Büchner._ “We may cite a few instances of transformation or

convertibility of forces. Heat and light are produced by combustion. Heat

again is converted into mechanical power in steam, and mechanical force

can again by friction be reconverted into heat, and, as in the electro‐

magnetical machine, into heat, electricity, magnetism, and light. One of

the most frequent conversions of force is that of heat into mechanical

force, and _vice versa_” (pp. 18, 19).

_Reader._ What conclusion do you draw from these and similar facts?

_Büchner._ I draw the conclusion that in speaking of forces “the word

_lost_ is an incorrect expression; for in all these and similar cases

there is not a minim of power lost as regards the universe, but merely as

regards the immediate object. The expended force has in reality only

assumed different forms, the sum‐total of which is equivalent to the

original force. Innumerable examples may be adduced to establish this law,

which is expressed in the axiom that _force can neither be created nor

destroyed_—an axiom from which results the immortality of force, and the

impossibility of its having a beginning or an end. The consequence of this

recently‐discovered natural truth is the same as that deduced from the

immortality of matter, and both form and manifest from eternity the sum of

phenomena which we term _world_. The cycle of matter sides, as a necessary

correlate, with the cycle of force, and teaches that nothing is generated

anew, that nothing disappears, and that the secret of nature lies in an

eternal and immanent cycle, in which cause and effect are connected

without beginning or end. That only can be immortal which has existed from

eternity; and what is immortal cannot have been created” (pp. 21, 22).

_Reader._ I have heard with great attention all you have said, doctor, and

I am sorry to see that you are as wrong as ever. Your argument is

altogether ludicrous.

_Büchner._ It is, however, a mere statement of known facts.

_Reader._ I question this very much. But even if the alleged facts were

unquestionable, and could not receive any other interpretation than that

which you give of them, your conclusion about the “immortality of force”

would still be groundless. In fact, the forces of which you speak are all

material, and have their existence in matter alone. It is therefore vain

and preposterous to argue about the immortality of such forces when you

have already failed to show the immortality of matter itself. You boast

that your argument is a mere statement of facts; and so do all modern

sciolists, more or less awkwardly, when pushed to the wall. But what are

the facts? Is heat a form of force? Is it a form convertible into another

form? I perceive from your style that you never studied this subject; you

only repeat like a parrot what other parrots have learned to say, without

the least notion of the true state of things. Tell me, what is a form of

force? What is force itself?

_Büchner._ It is not my duty to define force. I accept the definition of

the physicists.

_Reader._ This is exactly what I expected to hear. Yet when a man

undertakes to philosophize on anything, he ought to know very distinctly

what that thing is. Do you make any difference between “forces” and

“powers”?

_Büchner._ No, sir, as is evident from my terminology.

_Reader._ Do you discriminate between “force” and “quantity of action”?

_Büchner._ No, sir.

_Reader._ Do you identify “force” with “quantity of movement”?

_Büchner._ Yes, sir.

_Reader._ Then it is evident that you confound force, power, quantity of

action, and quantity of movement.

_Büchner._ All these terms are substantially identical in science.

_Reader._ True, the lowest school of physicists considers them as

substantially identical, and in this manner they succeed in persuading

themselves and many others that the quantity of living force existing in

the world is always invariably the same. But, after all, those physicists

speak very incorrectly, and are not to be followed in their blundering

terminology. A quantity of movement is not an action, but the result of

action; and a quantity of action is not a power, but the exertion of

power. In fact, the same power acts with different intensity in different

conditions; and equal actions produce different movements in bodies

actually subject to different dynamical determinations. Hence it is

impossible to admit that powers, actions, and movements are synonymous.

And now, which of these three notions do you choose to identify with

force? If you say that force is “a quantity of movement,” then it will be

false that no force is ever lost; for any quantity of movement can be lost

_without compensation_. Thus a stone thrown up vertically loses its

quantity of movement without compensation.(153) If you say that force is

“a quantity of action,” it will again be false that no force is ever lost;

for all successive actions successively pass away, and continually change

their direction and their intensity, according as the distances and

positions of the bodies acted on are altered. Lastly, if you say that

force is “power,” then it is false that forces are transformed or

convertible; for the power of each element of matter remains unalterably

the same, as you yourself acknowledge, throughout all the vicissitudes of

time. “A particle of iron,” you say with Dubois‐Reymond, “is and remains

the same, whether it crosses the horizon in the meteoric stone, rushes

along in the wheel of the steam‐engine, or circulates in the blood through

the temples of the poet.”

_Büchner._ Would you, then, repudiate science?

_Reader._ By no means. I love and respect true science. I only repudiate

that false and presumptuous dogmatism which prompts a class of physicists

to draw general conclusions from particular, and often questionable,

premises.

_Büchner._ Do you, then, condemn the method of induction?

_Reader._ Not at all. I condemn the abuse of that method. What right have

modern scientists of extending the principle of the “conservation of

force” beyond the boundaries marked by observation and experiment? All

they have a right to say is that _in the impact of bodies an equal

quantity of movement __ is lost by one body and acquired by another_. This

is the fact. But does it follow that therefore the movement lost by the

one body passes _identically_ into the other? This is what they imagine;

and this is what cannot be proved, because it is absurd. Movement is an

affection of matter, and has no independent existence, as you well know.

It cannot, therefore, pass identically from body to body any more than a

movement of anger can pass identically from man to man. And yet it is on

this absurd notion of _nomadic_ movement that the whole theory of the

conservation of force, as now held by your advanced thinkers, has been

raised. They say: “The quantity of movement which is lost by one of the

bodies, and that which is acquired by the other, are perfectly equal;

therefore a quantity of movement passes identically from one body to

another.” In other terms they say: “There is equality; therefore there is

identity.” Is this legitimate induction? Good logic would lead us to argue

in the following manner: The actions of the two struggling bodies, being

equal and opposite, must produce equal and opposite quantities of

movement; hence the quantity of movement which is _destroyed_ in the

impinging body must equal the quantity of movement _produced_ in the body

impinged upon. Such is the only logical view of the subject; it agrees

both with reason and with fact, and it strikes your theory at the root.

For what is destroyed is no more; and what is produced had no existence

before its production.

We might allow you to talk of the “conservation” and “conversion” of

forces, were you reasonable enough to consider such expressions as mere

conventional technicalities suited to explain the relations of effects to

effects rather than of effects to causes. But you construe the technical

phrases into real and absolute principles, and try to explain causation by

substituting the effect for the cause; which is as ridiculous an abuse of

the word “force” as if a carpenter pretended that his iron square is the

square spoken of in the treatises of geometry. But this is not all. What

right have you to apply such a theory, whether right or wrong, to

gravitation?

_Büchner._ “The pendulum of every clock shows the conversion of

gravitation into motion” (p. 21).

_Reader._ Indeed? What do you mean by gravitation? The attractive power of

the earth, or its action, or the weight of the pendulum? Surely the

attractive power of the earth is not converted into movement; for it

remains in the earth, and it continues its work. Neither is the weight of

the pendulum converted into movement; for the pendulum does not cease,

while moving, to have weight, nor does it weigh more when, at rest; and at

the end of its oscillation is not found to have expended or consumed any

portion of its weight. You are therefore obliged to say that it is the

action of the earth that is converted into movement. But such an

expression can have no meaning; because the action is the production of an

act, and it is the act itself, not its production, that constitutes the

formal principle of the movement. On the other hand, a production which

becomes the thing produced is such an absurdity that not even a lunatic

could dream of it. Thus it is quite evident that in no imaginable sense

can gravitation be considered as _converted_ into movement. It produces

movement, but is not converted into it. You see, doctor, that your so

boasted theory has no foundation either in reason or in fact.

_Büchner._ But we cannot deny that mechanical movement is convertible into

heat, that heat may become light, and that all other such forces can be

transformed.

_Reader._ I repeat, and, on the strength of the reasons which I have

brought forward, I maintain that the term “conversion of forces” may be

admitted as a conventional phrase, but not as exhibiting a philosophical

notion. A real conversion of mechanical movement into heat would require

that a movement of translation should be transformed into a movement of

vibration by being distributed among the molecules of the body which is

heated. This I have already shown to be impossible. Things follow a

different course. When the hammer falls upon the anvil, its action (and

not its movement) shakes the first range of molecules which it encounters.

These molecules are thus constrained to approach the following set of

molecules lying immediately under them, and to trouble their relative

equilibrium. These latter, in their turn, trouble the equilibrium of the

following set, and so on till all the molecules of the anvil partake in

the movement, each molecule undergoing alternate _compression_ and

_dilatation_, the first through the violent action of its neighbors, and

the second by the reaction due to its immanent powers. The consequence of

all this is that a rapid succession of vibratory movements is originated

in each molecule; and thus, as soon as the movement of translation of the

falling hammer is extinguished, the movement of vibration is awakened in

the molecules of both the anvil and the hammer. Now, what is this but a

case of impact? For just as the hammer impinges on the surface of the

anvil does each molecule of the anvil impinge on its neighbor; and

therefore what you call a transformation of mechanical into vibratory

movement is not a real transformation of the one into the other, but the

extinction of the one and the production of the other. Thus heat is

generated by percussion; and in a similar manner it would be generated by

friction and by other mechanical processes. Whenever heat is produced,

molecules are set into vibrations of a certain intensity, and their

relative equilibrium disturbed. Evidently, such a disturbance of the

molecular equilibrium is due to interaction of molecules—that is, to

molecular impact. Now, I have already shown, and you have understood it, I

hope, that, in the case of impact, the movement never passes identically

from this matter to that, but is produced in the one at the same rate as

it is extinguished in the other.

I might say a great deal more on this subject, but here I stop, as I

almost regret having said so much. Your theory of the conservation of

force does not bear out your “immortality of force,” and is so destitute

of proof that it does not deserve the honor of a longer refutation.(154)

VI. Infinity Of Matter.

_Reader._ How do you account, doctor, for your assertion that “matter is

infinite”?

_Büchner._ In a very simple manner: “Whether we investigate the extension

of matter in its magnitude or minuteness, we never come to an end or to an

ultimate form of it. When the invention of the microscope disclosed

unknown worlds, and exhibited to the eye of the investigator the infinite

minuteness of organic elements, the hope was raised that we might discover

the ultimate organic atom, perhaps the mode of its origin. This hope

vanished with the improvement of our instruments. The microscope showed

that in the hundredth part of a drop of water there existed a world of

animalcules, of the most delicate and definite forms, which move and

digest like other animals, and are endowed with organs, the structure of

which we have little conception of” (p. 23). “We term the most minute

particle of matter, which we imagine to be no longer capable of division,

an _atom_, and consider matter to be composed of such atoms, acquiring

from them its qualities, and existing by their reciprocal attraction and

repulsion. But the word _atom_ is merely an expression for a necessary

conception, required for certain purposes. We have no real notion of the

thing we term _atom_; we know nothing of its size, form, composition, etc.

No one has seen it. The speculative philosophers deny its existence, as

they do not admit that a thing can exist which is no longer divisible.

Thus neither observation nor thought leads us, in regard to the minuteness

of matter, to a point where we can stop; nor have we any hope that we

shall ever reach that point” (p. 24, 25).

_Reader._ That point has been reached, doctor. The theory of primitive,

unextended elements is well known and advocated by good scientists and

thoughtful philosophers. But let this pass, as I long for your

demonstration of the infinity of matter.

_Büchner._ “Like the microscope in respect to the minuteness, so does the

telescope conduct us to the universe at large. Astronomers boldly thought

to penetrate into the inmost recesses of the world; but the more their

instruments were improved, the more worlds expanded before their

astonished eyes. The telescope resolved the whitish nebulæ in the sky into

myriads of stars, worlds, solar and planetary systems; and the earth with

its inhabitants, hitherto imagined to be the crown and centre of

existence, was degraded from its imaginary height to be a mere atom moving

in universal space. The distances of the celestial bodies are so immense

that our intellect wonders at the contemplation of them, and becomes

confused. Light, moving with a velocity of millions of miles in a minute,

required no less than two thousand years to reach the earth from the

galaxy! And the large telescope of Lord Rosse has disclosed stars so

distant from us that their light must have travelled thirty millions of

years before it reached the earth. But a simple observation must convince

us that these stars are not at the limit of space. All bodies obey the law

of gravitation, and attract each other. In assuming, now, a limitation,

the attraction must tend towards an imagined centre of gravity, and the

consequence would be the conglomeration of all matter in one celestial

body. However great the distances may be, such an union must happen; but

as it does not happen, although the world exists from eternity, there can

be no attraction towards a common centre. And this gravitation towards a

centre can only be prevented by there being, beyond the bodies visible to

us, others still further which attract from without—and so forth _ad

infinitum_. Every imagined limitation would render the existence of the

world impossible” (pp. 25, 26).

_Reader._ Is this the whole of your argument?

_Büchner._ Yes, sir.

_Reader._ I should like to know how could the large telescope of Lord

Rosse disclose stars so distant from us that their light must have

travelled thirty millions of years before it reached the earth? Do you not

know that in thirty millions of years light travels two million millions

of times over the distance from the earth to the sun? And do you hope the

world will believe that, thanks to Lord Rosse’s telescope, it has been

possible to determine the parallax of a star two million millions of times

more distant from us than we are from the sun? The world indeed is

ignorant and credulous; but when the lie is too impudent, it is apt to cry

you down as a charlatan. You are most imprudent, doctor. You had no need

of Lord Rosse’s telescope for your argumentation; and your mention of the

distant stars disclosed by it was therefore an inexcusable blunder. But

the argument itself has no foundation. You imagine that, if the world were

not infinitely expanded in all directions, all matter, by universal

gravitation, would have conglomerated into one celestial body. But tell

me, Does the moon gravitate towards the earth?

_Büchner._ Of course it does.

_Reader._ How do you account, then, for the fact that the moon has not

fallen, nor is likely to fall, on the earth? Is it because the moon is

attracted by some matter lying outside its orbit?

_Büchner._ It is on account of centrifugal force accompanying its

curvilinear motion.

_Reader._ I am delighted to see that you can explain the fact without

appealing to the infinity of matter. Let us go on. As the moon gravitates

towards the earth, so do all satellites towards their planets, and all

planets towards the sun. And yet none of the satellites have fallen into

their planets, and none of the planets into the sun. Is this owing to the

matter which lies outside of the planetary and solar system? I presume,

doctor, that the enormous distance of fixed stars from us will not

encourage you to believe that their attraction on any planet can cope with

its gravitation towards the sun. On the other hand, this gravitation is

not neutralized by the action of any exterior matter; for all planets

actually obey the solar attraction, as their orbital movement conclusively

shows. This same orbital movement implies also a centrifugal tendency; and

this tendency sufficiently prevents the falling of the planets on the sun.

This is unquestionable doctrine.

_Büchner._ I admit the doctrine.

_Reader._ Accordingly it is evident there is no need of infinite matter to

prevent the celestial bodies from clustering into one central body.

Centrifugal forces, in fact, are sufficient, even by your own admission,

to remove all danger of such a catastrophe; and centrifugal forces are to

be found wherever there is curvilinear movement around a centre of

attraction, that is, throughout all the world, according to astronomical

induction. Consequently your argument in favor of the infinity of matter

is a mere delusion.

_Büchner._ “If we can find no limit to minuteness, and are still less able

to reach it in respect to magnitude, we must declare matter to be infinite

in either direction, and incapable of limitation in time or space. If the

laws of thought demonstrate an infinite divisibility of matter, and if it

be further impossible to imagine a limited space or a nothing, it must be

admitted that there is here a remarkable concordance of logical laws with

the results of our scientific investigations” (p. 27).

_Reader._ Your great scientific investigations give no result that favors

the infinity of matter. This we have just seen. Logical laws give no

better results. It is idle, doctor, to assume that there is any law of

thought which demonstrates the infinite divisibility of matter; and it is

as capricious to assert the impossibility of imagining that the space

occupied by matter is limited. You say that outside that space there would

be nothing, and therefore there would be no space except that occupied by

matter; whence you conclude that space would be limited. Do not fear,

doctor, for the fate of space. Outside the space which is occupied by

matter there is yet infinite space unoccupied by matter. Space is not made

up of matter. Move the matter; you will not move space. Remove all matter;

space will not disappear. Of course you cannot understand this, because

whoever blots God out of the world extinguishes the source of his

intellectual light, and is therefore doomed to grope for ever in the dark.

But we Christian philosophers, who admit a God infinite and immense, have

no great difficulty to understand how there can be space not occupied by

matter. Wherever God is, there is space which can be occupied by matter;

for wherever God is, there he can create any amount of matter; and

wherever matter can be placed, there is space; for space is nothing but

the possibility of locating matter.

It is not my intention to dilate on this topic, nor is it necessary. To

answer your difficulty I need only say that space, though void of matter,

is always full of God’s substance, to whose immensity alone we must

resort, if we desire to account at all for the existence of infinite

space.

VII. Dignity Of Matter.

_Reader._ I scarcely expected, doctor, that you would devote a chapter of

your book to such a trifling and unscientific subject as the dignity of

matter. Is not matter, as such, the lowest of all known substances? What

is the dignity of matter?

_Büchner._ You belong to the old school, sir. I will tell you what is the

modern view of matter: “To despise matter and our own body because it is

material, to consider nature and the world as dust which we must endeavor

to shake off, nay, to torment our own body, can only arise from a

confusion of notions, the result of ignorance and fanaticism” (p. 28).

_Reader._ You begin with a false assumption, doctor. We of the old school

do not despise the body “because it is material.” God created matter; and

whatever proceeds from God is very good. We, however, consider the body as

of a lower nature than our rational soul, and try to put a check to its

unruly appetites—a thing which you, being a physician, will surely approve

and commend as conducive to the preservation of health, not to say of

morality.

_Büchner._ “Matter is not inferior to, but the peer of, spirit; the one

cannot exist without the other; and matter is the vehicle of all mental

power, of all human and earthly greatness” (p. 28).

_Reader._ This is, doctor, the most abject and degrading materialism.

_Büchner._ I am not afraid of this word, sir. “We frequently hear those

persons contemptuously called _materialists_ who do not share the

fashionable contempt for matter, but endeavor to fathom by its means the

powers and laws of existence; who have discerned that spirit could not

have built the world out of itself, and that it is impossible to arrive at

a just conception of the world without an exact knowledge of matter and

its laws. In this sense the name of materialist can nowadays be only a

title of honor. It is to materialists that we owe the conquest over matter

and a knowledge of its laws, so that, almost released from the chains of

gravitation, we fly with the swiftness of the wind across the plain, and

are enabled to communicate, with the celerity of thought, with the most

distant parts of the globe. Malevolence is silenced by such facts; and the

times are past in which a world produced by a deceitful fancy was

considered of more value than the reality” (p. 29).

_Reader._ You commit blunders upon blunders, doctor. We do not call

materialists those who do not share “the fashionable contempt for matter,”

but those who deny the existence of a spiritual soul, or teach that matter

is not inferior to, but the peer of, spirit, and that the one cannot exist

without the other, just as you teach. And therefore your definition of

materialism is your first blunder. Again, contempt for matter is not, and

never has been, “fashionable”; second blunder. That materialists endeavor

“to fathom the powers and laws of existence” is a third blunder; for they

are not even capable of fathoming their own ignorance, as our present

discussion shows very clearly. A further blunder is to speak of “the

powers and laws of existence,” as if there were any law of existence. A

fifth blunder is to give credit to the materialists for having discerned

“that spirit could not have built the world _out of itself_.” This was

discerned long ago by Christian philosophers; whereas your materialists

have even failed to discern that spirit could create the world _out of

nothing_. A sixth blunder is contained in your assertion that “it is to

materialists that we owe the conquest over matter and a knowledge of its

laws.” Indeed, you might as well say that we owe light to darkness, and

wisdom to dolts. Go and study, O great doctor and president of the medical

association of Hessen‐Darmstadt! and then tell us whether Newton, Volta,

Galileo, Galvani, Biot, Ampère, Cuvier, Faraday, Liebig, and scores of

other great scientists were materialists. To such men we owe modern

science; but what does science owe to your materialists? What law did they

discover? What conquests have they achieved? It is absurd for them to

complain of “malevolence” when they are treated with the contempt they

deserve. They are, in fact, mere plunderers and traitors of science.

But I wonder, doctor, whether your love of materialism is much calculated

to show the _dignity_ of matter. You have not adduced as yet any reason

why we should think of matter very highly. You have said, indeed, that

matter is “the peer of spirit”; but this is mere twaddle, as you admit of

no other spirit than what would be a result of material combination. I

want something better—something like a good argument—before I can

appreciate the dignity of matter.

_Büchner._ “Pretended worshippers of God have in the middle ages carried

their contempt for matter so far as to nail their own bodies, the noble

works of nature, to the pillory” (p. 29).

_Reader._ What do you mean?

_Büchner._ “Some have tormented, others crucified themselves ...”

(_ibid._)

_Reader._ Who crucified himself? When? Where? Can any one nail himself to

a cross any more than he can raise himself by his belt?

_Büchner._ “Crowds of flagellants travelled through the country,

exhibiting their lacerated backs. Strength and health were undermined in

the most refined manner, in order to render to the spirit—considered as

independent of the body—its superiority over the sinful flesh” (p. 29).

_Reader._ The flagellants were a set of fanatics; but their excesses do

not prove the dignity of matter. After all, had they been materialists,

they would surely have done something worse than to scourge themselves.

They may have undermined their strength and their health, as you remark;

but how much greater is the number of materialists who shorten their lives

by shameful disorders, since they have lost all hope of a future and

better life? Do you pretend that what is done by your adepts for the sake

of worldly or sensual pleasure cannot be done by Christians for the sake

of eternal salvation? We believe in eternal salvation, and we know what we

believe. Strength and health are goods of a lower order than morality, and

no true man would hesitate to endanger them for a superior good. But on

what authority do you assume that in the middle ages strength and health

were undermined “in the most refined manner”?

_Büchner._ “Feuerbach relates that S. Bernard had, by his exaggerated

asceticism, lost his sense of taste, so that he took grease for butter,

oil for water” (p. 30).

_Reader._ You know that Feuerbach is no authority; and yet I should like

to know, how can a man lose his sense of taste _by asceticism_? Does

asceticism affect the tongue or the palate? S. Bernard lived sixty‐three

years, in spite of continuous intellectual and corporal work, so that you

can scarcely say that his manner of undermining his strength and health

was “most refined.” As to grease and butter, I have the honor to inform

you that S. Bernard seldom tasted either, as they were excluded from the

Cistercian table. What do you say to that?

_Büchner._ “Rostan reports that in many cloisters the superiors were in

the habit of frequently bleeding their monks, in order to repress their

passions” (p. 30).

_Reader._ Bosh.

_Büchner._ “He further states that injured nature avenged itself, and that

rebellion, the use of poison and the dagger against superiors, were by no

means rare in these living tombs” (p. 30).

_Reader._ And you believe such lies? Of course there is no reason why they

should not be circulated among the ignorant and superstitious. They are

fond of believing such things, and they are served according to their

taste. The supply always meets the demand. Oh! how truly right was S. Paul

when he said that _those who turn a deaf ear to truth are doomed to

swallow fables_! Those who do not believe the Catholic Church, the highest

authority on earth, by just judgment stupidly believe the lies of a Rostan

and of a hundred other charlatans of modern times. But let us not forget

the real point at issue. Your object was to show the dignity of matter.

Where are your proofs? Do you think that the dignity of matter can be

established by defamation? Every intelligent reader will infer, on the

contrary, that it is from lack of reasons that you are obliged to disgrace

your work with libel and slander.

_Büchner._ I am not a forger, after all. I have cited my authorities. But

the dignity of matter appears from the fact that it is to matter that we

owe science. “Have those who start from God and not from matter ever given

us any clue as to the quality of matter and its laws, after which they say

the world is governed? Could they tell us whether the sun moves or is at

rest? whether the earth is a globe or a plain? what was God’s design? No!

That would be an impossibility. To start from God in the investigation of

nature is a phrase without meaning. The unfortunate tendency to proceed in

the investigation of nature from theoretical premises, and to construe the

world and natural truths by way of speculation, is long abandoned; and it

is by pursuing an opposite course of scientific investigation that the

great advance of our knowledge of nature in recent times must be ascribed”

(pp. 31, 32).

_Reader._ It is evident that all our knowledge begins in sensible

representations, and therefore depends on matter. But how can you infer

from this the dignity of matter? When you ascend a ladder, the first step

is always the lowest; which shows the contrary of what you wish to prove.

Matter is the lowest of all objects of knowledge, while the highest is

God. From matter we start, and in God we must end. This every one admits;

you, however, assume that some philosophers “start from God, and not from

matter.” Who are they? Are they, forsooth, those who teach that matter has

been created by God? Then you are unjust to them, and falsify the history

of science, by giving us to understand that they could not tell us whether

the sun moves or is at rest, and whether the earth is a globe or a plain.

It was not the atheist or the materialist that taught us astronomy and

geography. The materialist can only tell us, as you do, that “all natural

and mental forces are inherent in matter” (p. 32), which is no science at

all; and that “in matter alone forces can manifest themselves,” or that

“matter is the origin of all that exists” (_ibid._), which is the reverse

of science. _This_ they can prate; but as for the great laws of nature,

they had to learn them from us—I mean from men who did not preach the

dignity of matter with the foolish and ignoble purpose of dethroning God.

You condemn those who “construe the world and natural truths by way of

speculation.” This I have already answered; but I may remind you that by

condemning speculation you condemn yourself. Experimental knowledge is

very good; but it is by speculation alone that our knowledge acquires its

scientific character. Hence your view of science without speculation is as

absurd as your assumption of matter without spirit and without God. This

may suit materialists, for they stop supinely at the lowest step of the

ladder; but intellectual men have a mind to ascend the ladder to the very

top. What is the use of knowing matter, if you know nothing else? Matter

is the alphabet of science; to study matter, and to ignore the methods of

rising from matter to spirit, and from the world to God, is to study the

alphabet alone during all your life, and to die an abecedarian. This is

what you crave; this is what you adorn with the venerable name of science;

whereas we believers not only study the alphabet, but also read the great

book of the universe, and know that the book has an Author, whose thoughts

it reveals. You have vainly labored to establish the dignity of matter.

Had you known how to read the book of nature, you would have discovered

that matter has no natural dignity but that of being the lowest work _of

Him whose works are all perfect_.

To Be Continued.

Who Will Remember?

Like as a pebble on the salt sea‐sands

That some wave washes to an unknown shore,

So shall we quietly be swept away

From out the millions to be seen no more.

Who will remember, who will say “dear friend”?

Who will walk sadly seeking yet a trace

Of well‐known footsteps, of caressing hands,

Of some remembrance of a lost, dead face?

Ask not too much of human hearts that wait;

Fresh buds will blossom for their eyes at last,

And flowers dead, however sweet they were,

Are, like the whole of earth’s dead treasures, past.

Church Music.(155)

I.

From the earliest times music has had a place in the public worship of all

peoples—among the pagans, among the Jews, among Christians. Its use in

this connection has been dictated by God himself in the act of

constituting the human mind; it has, moreover, received his express

sanction, as we learn from the ordinances of the Jewish people. In the new

law it has even been consecrated by his own divine example, since we read

that our Lord and his apostles sang hymns together. His birth was heralded

to the world by the song of his angels, and heaven is represented to the

Christian as a place where we shall sing for ever the praises of God.

Church music, therefore, dates from the origin of Christianity, and has

constituted ever since an integral, though not an essential, part of

public worship among Christians.

The church has her simple offices and her solemn offices, and she has made

the use of music one of the chief marks by which they are distinguished.

Church music grew with the growth of the church. As Christians increased

and prospered, music was more and more cultivated, and was more largely

introduced into their solemn exercises of worship.

The extent to which sacred music was cultivated in the early church cannot

be easily determined; we have no reason to think it was very great.

When Europe emerged from that sad state of confusion which came over it

with the invasion of the northern barbarians, and music was revived as a

science and an art, it was, like the other branches of learning, at first

confined mostly to the clergy, and its productions were for a long time

almost exclusively of a sacred character.

The church being an indestructible institution, her traditions are handed

down by one generation of her children to another. It was thus that in a

dark day of confusion and destruction she preserved for us the treasures

of ancient learning and the arts; and the world to‐day owes to her not

only the modern developments of poetry, painting, sculpture, and

architecture, but also the beautiful and varied combinations of modern

music.

At first, as we have just said, there was no music but that which was

dedicated to holy purposes, except such rude melodies as nature in all

ages teaches the most uncultivated.

The musical drama did not exist; and music does not seem to have made any

essential part of the pageants or spectacles destined for the public

entertainment.

It was from the church that music was introduced into the chamber, the

hall, and the street, and in the beginning secular music imitated and

borrowed the forms of that which was sacred.

The music used in the sacred offices at first and during many centuries

was the plain chant. How much of this chant was taken from pagan or Jewish

sources cannot be determined, for authorities differ widely; but in any

case it was so modified and improved by the fathers of the Eastern Church,

and afterwards in the West by SS. Ambrose and Gregory, when they adapted

it to the purposes of Christian worship, that it is now frequently called

the _ecclesiastical chant_, though it is oftener called _Gregorian_, from

the pope just mentioned.

In the beginning it was what its name indicates—_plain_ and simple. It was

sung in unison, and its melodies did not exceed the compass of the most

ordinary voices.

But unison was found monotonous, as also the uniformity of time or measure

generally observed in plain chant. The first departure from the old and

severe forms was made when, about the middle of the IXth century, they

introduced a sort of rude harmony constructed on the chant.

But this did not satisfy the craving for change, and the love of novelty,

once indulged, led the way to many excesses.

Baini gives us an example of the abuses that then became prevalent. “They

would write, for example, a Mass,” he says, “taking as a subject the

melody of the Gregorian _Ave Maria_. Three parts in the harmony would sing

portions of the _Kyrie_, _Gloria_, and _Credo_ at the same time, while a

fourth would take up at intervals the entire _Ave Maria_.”

Not merely were the sacred words of the composition itself “shaken

together in most admired confusion,” but, as we have just said, the words

of other sacred pieces were foisted among them, so that they no longer

expressed any one idea. Worse far, the gaps were even sometimes filled up

“with snatches of old songs,” the ballads of the day, and those not always

of the most unexceptionable character.

Attempts were also made to vary the stately measure of the chant.

Indeed, all sorts of devices were introduced in the search for novelty,

and so great had become the abuse about the period of the Council of Trent

that a celebrated cardinal declared that some of the church music of his

day was so unfit to be offered to God that nothing but invincible

ignorance could excuse from mortal sin those who offered it.

At this juncture arose the illustrious Palestrina.

Born in an age of the most vitiated taste, and himself not quite exempt

from its unfavorable influences at the opening of his professional career,

his exalted and discriminating genius was guided to disentangle the sweet

spirit of song from the mazes in which it was well‐nigh lost, and to

rescue his art from the merited reproaches which it was receiving on every

side. He was encouraged and assisted in his task by two saints, S. Charles

Borromeo and S. Philip Neri. When his celebrated _Missa Papæ Marcelli_ was

first heard in 1565, it at once banished from the churches all the profane

novelties that had preceded it, and became the model for church

compositions during the next hundred years, when with Carissimi began the

change to what is modern.

When Pius IV., the reigning pontiff, heard it, he declared it satisfied

all the requirements of sacred music; in fact, so charmed was he by its

exquisite strains that he compared it to the melodies that the Apostle S.

John had heard in the heavenly Jerusalem, saying that another John

(Palestrina’s Christian name was John) had given us in the earthly

Jerusalem a foretaste of the music in heaven.

From that day to this the use of Palestrina’s music has been retained in

the Pope’s own choir, to the exclusion of all other except the simple

plain chant, with which it is made to alternate. Even when the Pope

officiates or presides at any celebration outside his own chapel, his

choir accompanies him and sings the same music.

It is this music, _alla Palestrina_, that travellers go to Rome to hear,

especially during Holy Week. One generation has thus followed another to

Rome for three hundred years; and the harmonies of Palestrina, though ever

ancient, are, like the beauty of divine truth, found to be ever new.

Though Palestrina has retained his hold on the Papal choir at Rome, music

far different in character from his has been introduced into the other

choirs, even of Rome.

The perfection of the organ and of other instruments used to accompany the

voices of singers, and the consequent discovery of other and more

scientific complications in the art of harmony, especially since the

introduction of the natural discord, the development of melody, joined

with much greater skill in execution and the incessant thirst for novelty,

have led to the introduction into nearly all the churches of compositions

in which the voices and instruments are heard together in every variety of

combination.

Add to this that about two centuries ago the opera took its rise, and the

dramatic style, followed in it and developed by it, made its influence

felt in the church.

For kings and princes then began the practice of selecting the same

musician to preside over the performances of their theatres and of their

chapels; nay, the whole staff of the theatre was brought into the chapel

on Sundays, as is done to‐day in Dresden. Nothing better and nothing

different was required for the chapel, except the substitution of other

words and a toning down of the measures of the drama, and thus the chapel

became merely a sort of sacred concert‐room.

But the _maîtres de chapelle_ at these courts were the first musicians of

their day, and their success in operatic music, sounded over all Europe,

caused their sacred compositions to be looked on with undiscriminating

favor by the public. And as the weakness of human nature is such that

inferiors naturally imitate their superiors, and sometimes even copy their

faults, it became the fashion to sing in churches the sacred music used in

court‐chapels, especially as this was more easily obtained, being printed

at the expense of the courts.

Besides this, the modern composers of opera seem to have the ambition of

composing also for the church. But they generally forget how very

different the church and the theatre are, and they seldom care to follow a

different method in the church from that which gains them applause in the

theatre; and the public are frequently as forgetful in this matter as the

composers.

It must be added that the directors of choirs seem to have a fatal habit

of following, even in church, if they are allowed, the _prevailing __

style_ set by the latest and most popular writers for the stage.

When the model so successfully set by Palestrina was first departed from,

and instrumental music used in conjunction with vocal, there may have been

a certain gain, as the chant became more melodious and less monotonous

without losing its depth and solemnity. Gradually, however, the grave

style of the older musicians disappeared, and the music of the church has

become, at least in some places, almost as light and as airy as that of

the theatre.

This music sometimes seems written in derision or contempt of the sacred

words; as, 1, when a prayer of supplication, such as the _Kyrie eleison_

and _Dona nobis pacem_, is set to numbers as lively as those of a jig

(frequently the case with Haydn). 2. When the words are omitted, even

though they be of importance; as the words of the Creed, _qui ex Patre

Filioque procedit_ (nearly always omitted, even in the longest Masses of

Haydn). 3. When they are interminably repeated or senselessly inverted. In

Mozart’s Twelfth Mass we have: _Crucifixus, et homo factus est_.

What shall we say of the operatic solos, duos, trios, etc., instrumental

interludes, sincopations, etc., which, to any one who reflects, are in

direct contradiction to all our notions of what is reverent and

appropriate to the church?

II.

From what has been said in the preceding pages, there are three general

forms of church music: the plain chant, the music termed _alla

Palestrina_, and modern figured music.

(a.) Plain chant is the old and original song of the church, of which the

forms, like those of a dead language, are fixed and immutable. Long, long

ago the secret of plain chant _composition_ was lost, and it is probable

that we have lost in great measure also the secret of its proper

_execution_.

“The leading idea which is represented by plain chant,” says Canon

Oakeley,(156) “and in no degree by any other style of music, except that

which consists in bare recitative, is that in certain cases music best

discharges her office by retreating, as it were, in despair before certain

divine words, and contenting herself with merely providing a vehicle for

their utterance, so simple as not by any studied beauty of its own to

detract from their intrinsic majesty and power. This, I think, will be

admitted to be the leading idea of plain chant, though I am far from

denying that accidentally this idea produces some of the most attractive

charms of the divine art in its results.... In many of these accidental

instances plain chant not only excels other music, but absolutely sets it

at defiance in its own particular line.” Hence a celebrated musician is

reported to have said that he preferred the plain chant of the Preface and

the _Pater Noster_ to all he himself had ever written.

In the beginning this chant was not even harmonized. It was plain and

unadorned, as its name implies—_cantus planus_.

(b.) The music of Palestrina is the last and triumphant result of the

efforts that were made in his time and before it to vary, to modify, and

to adorn the plain chant, which all had found too simple and too

monotonous.

Pope John XXII., elected in 1316, complains of the novelties introduced

into the execution of plain chant in his day. These innovations he

condemns as unbecoming and undevotional, especially the attempts to vary

the measure; but he immediately adds: “We do not intend by this to

prohibit that occasionally, especially on festival days, either at the

solemn Masses or the other divine offices, some harmonious combinations

(_consonantiæ quæ melodiam sapiunt_), viz., harmonies of the octave, the

fifth, the fourth, and such like, on the simple ecclesiastical chant, be

sung; in such manner, however, that the integrity of the chant remain

untouched, and nothing of this grave and stately music (_musica bene

morata_) be changed, especially since _these harmonies delight the ear,

excite devotion, and prevent the spirit of those who sing to God from

drooping_” (_torpere non sinunt_). (Extr. Comm., lib. iii., cap. 1, _Docta

Sanctorum_.) This Constitution is the earliest utterance of the popes

concerning church music—at least since innovations were attempted—that we

possess. The abuses of which Pope John XXII. complained continued to

exist, and even to increase, till the time of the Council of Trent, when

Palestrina produced that style of music which is known by his name, and

which, though built upon the plain chant, is as unlike it as Grecian is

unlike Italian architecture. It is equally unlike modern music. It differs

from plain chant, being an unbroken series of artistically‐constructed

harmonies, in which unison is unknown. It differs from modern music by the

absolute disuse of instruments of any kind (even the organ), by the

exclusion of all passages for _soli_, and by being written in plain chant

tonality. “With the grave Gregorian melody, learnedly elaborated in

rigorous counterpoint, and reduced to greater clearness and elegance

without any instrumental aid,” says Picchianti, “Palestrina knew how to

awaken among his hearers mysterious, grand, deep, vague sensations that

seemed caused by the objects of an unknown world, or by superior powers in

the human imagination.”(157)

(c.) Modern music differs essentially from all that went before it, and

this difference is attributable to two principal causes: 1. The

improvement in the manufacture and the use of instruments, and their

introduction into the church; and, 2, The influence of theatrical music on

that of the church, before alluded to. Modern music could not be in

ancient times, for the want of modern instruments. As the perfection of

the art of vaulting gave us that advance on the simple lines and heavy

masses of Grecian architecture which we have in Gothic and Italian

architecture, so the modern developments in orchestration have changed the

whole character of music in the church and out of it.

The influence of operatic music on that of the church is seen in the

attempt of modern composers of church music to make it dramatic. Church

music, as Palestrina and the other great masters of the old Roman school

had conceived it, had been treated as an emanation of pure sentiment,

stripped of all human passion—as something ideal. The modern composers, on

the contrary, pretend by their music to express dramatically the sense of

the text. They say that, to be dramatic, it is not necessary to be

theatrical, and they point to certain compositions of Cherubini,

Beethoven, Hummel, and even Haydn, in which they say the contrary is

practically demonstrated.(158)

It must, however, be confessed that modern composers, by trying to be

dramatic, have more frequently fallen into the great fault of being

theatrical than they have avoided it.

The use of instrumentation and of dramatic expression has given them

immense scope, but their success bears no proportion to their talents,

their opportunities, their numbers, and the immense quantity of their

compositions.

Like the Athenians of old (Acts xvii.) spoken of by S. Paul, they

incessantly crave something new, and, in their search for novelty, more

often give us what is novel and strange than what is beautiful and

appropriate, so that their compositions hardly ever continue to be used

for a long time; they are soon thrown aside and forgotten; and, indeed, we

think it no exaggeration to say that, if all their compositions, except a

very few, were burned, or should otherwise perish, the church would suffer

no loss.

In consequence of the failure of modern composers to meet the requirements

of Catholic devotion, though their music has been introduced into our

churches and given every chance of trial, complaints against it are heard

on every side. We grumble about it in our conversations; we write against

its excesses in the public journals; bishops complain of it in pastoral

letters; provincial councils are forced to issue decrees about it; the

Sovereign Pontiffs themselves not unfrequently raise their voices,

sometimes in warning, sometimes in threats—in a word, the evil seems to

have attracted general attention, as a similar evil did in the time of

John XXII. and at the period of the Council of Trent, and a remedy is

called for.

I. On account of the unsatisfactory character of most modern compositions,

some have proposed that we should go back plainly and simply to the

original or plain song. This was proposed in two able articles in THE

CATHOLIC WORLD, Dec., 1869, and Feb., 1870, and the Paulists of New York

have actually made the experiment.

The reasons in favor of the resumption of plain chant and the exclusion of

all other music may be stated thus:

1. It is the original song of the church; it is of venerable antiquity; it

was originated under ecclesiastical influences, and has been sanctified by

having been always associated with what is best and holiest in the history

of the church.

2. It is so dissimilar from the music of the world that it is recognized

at once and by everybody as ecclesiastical, and can never be confounded

with secular music.

3. It possesses, when well sung, an air of stateliness and solemnity which

is never reached by all the refinements and artifices of modern music. If

it is less dramatic than figured music, it is also more expressive,

because in it the words of the ritual speak for themselves naturally and

without affectation, and therefore most eloquently; whereas in figured

music the words are made so subservient to the musical numbers, are so

senselessly repeated and so jumbled together, that their meaning is

disguised rather than conveyed, and they cannot speak intelligibly to the

mind, especially of the uneducated. Now, S. Paul says that psalmody should

speak to the understanding; and Benedict XIV., speaking of S. Augustine,

who used to be moved to tears by the Ambrosian chants he heard at Milan,

says: “The music moved him indeed, but still more so the words he heard.

But he would weep now also for grief; for although he heard the singing,

he could not distinguish the words.”

No one will dare to say that to the ninety‐nine one‐hundredths of every

congregation the Requiem of Mozart, with all its beauty of melody and its

wealth of harmony, would be as expressive and as provocative of the

feelings proper to the funeral service as the old and ever‐charming plain

chant Requiem.

4. Plain chant is the best safeguard against vainglorious display and its

host of attendant evils, because it allows no scope for personal

exhibition, and does not give undue prominence to individuals.

5. It is the only chant used in many places, and is found sufficient for

the purposes of worship.

6. It alone has had the express authorization of the church.

This is a fair exposition of the arguments in favor of plain chant.

We admit the full force of the arguments derived from the venerable

antiquity of plain chant, its Christian origin, its long and exclusive

connection with the rites of religion, its dissimilarity with the music of

the world, its simplicity, its impressiveness, and its incompatibility

with individual display; but it must be remembered against it that it

requires for its execution, especially here, where the knowledge of it and

the taste for it are to be acquired, conditions not easily fulfilled; that

its range is very limited; and that, however grand the impression it

sometimes creates, its resources are soon exhausted; whence to those who

for a long time hear it and nothing else it becomes extremely monotonous,

and burdens the ear with a dull weight of sound not always tolerable. This

will be admitted by all who in seminaries and monasteries have been most

accustomed to hear it.

In those countries where plain chant is exclusively used every sort of

device is resorted to on festival days to escape its monotony, _e.g._, by

harmonies on the chant which are out of all keeping with it, as also by

interludes on the _grand orgue_, by which one‐half of the words of the

text are absolutely omitted, and the recollections of the world are

frequently as vividly brought to mind as by any modern vocal compositions.

No one will deny the appropriateness and impressiveness of plain chant on

certain solemn occasions, especially those of sorrow, but it is

confessedly unequal to the task of evoking and expressing the feelings of

Christian joy and triumph. If the plain chant Requiem is superior to

Mozart’s, the Masses of Haydn are far more suitable to the joys of Easter‐

day than anything we can find in plain chant.

The writer in THE CATHOLIC WORLD before alluded to tells us that plain

chant prays. Give me, he says, the chant that prays. But prayer is

fourfold, like the Sacrifice of the Mass; viz., it is latreutic—that is,

the homage of adoration; it is propitiatory, inasmuch as it tries to

appease God’s anger; it is impetratory—that is, it asks and supplicates

for what we need; but it is also eucharistic—that is, it gives God praise

and thanksgiving. Now, if plain chant expresses better our feelings of

adoration and supplication, it certainly must borrow from figured music

the triumphant strains of praise and thanksgiving.

However, if the argument from authority for plain chant held good,

notwithstanding all we have said, we should instantly waive further

discussion. But the force of this argument we absolutely deny.

Dr. Burney has created the impression that the Council of Trent was at one

time on the point of banishing figured music from the church. This was not

the case. Benedict XIV. (l. xi., c. 7, _De Syn. Diœc._), following

Cardinal Pallavicini, the historian of the council, says: “It was proposed

by some bishops, zealous for ecclesiastical discipline, that musical chant

should altogether be banished from the churches, and the plain chant alone

retained; [but] as others observed that this novelty [_sic_] would give

rise to innumerable complaints and immense trouble, it was finally

resolved, not that musical chants should be prohibited, but that they

should be reformed, according to certain rules, to the requirements of

piety and gravity.” And, in fact, the Council of Trent merely decreed that

Ordinaries should banish from their churches that music in which, either

by the organ or by the chant, “anything lascivious or impure is

introduced, in order that the house of God may seem to be and may be a

house of prayer” (Sess. xxii., _Decr. de obs. et ev. in cel. Missæ._) The

other decree (Sess. xxiv., cap. 12, _De Ref._) adds nothing to this.

The teaching of the theologians is much more lenient than that of many of

our modern dogmatists.

The great theologian, Suarez (_De Orat. Voc._, lib. iii., c. 8), arguing

against Navarre, a rigorist of his day, says: “It is a sufficient argument

that this use (of organic or figured music) is retained throughout the

church, and that in the very church of Rome itself, and in the chapel of

the Sovereign Pontiff, the divine offices are sung after this manner.” He

then proceeds to comment as strongly as any one on the danger of excesses

and abuses; only he does not seem to feel, either with the objectors of

his day or with some writers of the present time, that figured music is

intrinsically mischievous, any more than that it is ecclesiastically

irregular.

A later and better authority, Benedict XIV., speaking as a theologian in

his work _De Synodo Diœc._, loco cit., and as Pope, in his Constitution

_Annuus_; 19th Feb., 1749, addressed to the bishops of the Pontifical

States, says that it would be an extreme measure to banish figured music

from the church, and that he considers it sufficient to banish such music

as is theatrical (_modi theatrales_).

Much has been made of the plea that plain chant is the only chant that has

ever been expressly authorized.

Now, it must be remembered, 1, that when plain chant originated, music was

not used outside of the church, and that in the dark ages churchmen were

the only ones who knew music, and that the church was necessarily its

guardian; and, 2, that for three hundred years the church has treated her

_authorized_ version with strange _incuria_; for of this chant there is

now no version _commanded_ (though the differences of versions are very

remarkable indeed), and till within a year or two there was no version to

which any special _authorization_ or even _recommendation_ was given by

the popes. Even the version now being prepared under the supervision of

the Roman Congregation of Rites is merely recommended.

We must be excused for this long argument about plain chant, but we have

been forced into it by the exaggerations of the advocates of this chant,

who are, like some of the advocates of Gothic architecture, extremists,

and in their zeal fear not to censure the whole church, and even the Pope

himself.

They indeed censure the church; for the use of figured music has

penetrated everywhere with episcopal sanction and Papal toleration, and,

say what we may, it must be admitted that all the theories advanced for

the exclusive use of plain chant have invariably fallen to the ground

under the hand of practice.

We deny, then, the obligation of confining ourselves to plain chant, if we

except that which is in the _Missal_ and the _Pontifical_, and which

contains what is sung by the priest or bishop at the altar.

But while we deny the obligation of using the plain chant exclusively, we

would retain a large portion of it, 1, because there are parts of it so

appropriate to special services that we can invent nothing better; such as

the Requiem, the Lamentations, the _Veni Creator_, and many hymns, and the

incomparable psalm tones, as charming to‐day as when heard by S.

Augustine, who says of them: “As the voices flowed into my ears, truth was

instilled into my heart, and the affections of piety overflowed in tears

of joy.” 2. Because, like our vestments and other appendages of our

ceremonial, it carries us back to the never‐to‐be‐forgotten past. 3.

Because by being used alternately (as in the Papal choir) with music of a

different and more modern character, it contributes most powerfully, by

the effect of contrast, to the dignity and grandeur of church

celebrations.

To Be Concluded Next Month.

Comparison Of Waves With Flowers.

Certainly, no more am I gladdened by the emulous reflections which the

earth and sea, with dark shades and distant projections, form; when alike

in charms and powers the sparkling foam competes with snow‐white flowers,

for the garden, envious of the curling waves of ocean, loves to imitate

their motion, and the amorous zephyr gives back the perfumes which it

drinks in by blowing over the shining waters, and makes the waving leaves

an ocean of bright flowers; when the sea, sad to view the natural beauties

of the garden, while it tries to adorn its own realm, destroys its

majestic mien, and, subject to second laws, blends with sweet effect

fields of blue with waves of green; colored now like heaven’s blue dome,

now plumed with various hues, the garden seems a sea of flowers, and the

sea a garden of bright foam.—_Calderon._

A Glimpse of the Green Isle. III—Concluded.

I return to some incidents in our journey to and arrival at Dublin.

Goold’s Cross is the nearest station to the Rock of Cashel, from which it

is distant about five miles. We alight here. We go to visit one who is kin

and more than kind. His lares are enshrined at Mora House. An Irish

conveyance, called a covered car, takes us thither pretty comfortably.

There are three kinds of cars for the transportation of travellers in

Ireland, not including the “low‐backed car” which is, or was, designed for

the movement of farm produce, and, according to Sam Lover, of rustics on

ante‐nuptial expeditions intent. Apropos, I did not see a specimen of the

“low‐backed car” from Queenstown to Kingstown. That time‐honored and

poetical vehicle seems to have given place to a modern box‐cart, in the

East and South at least. The three varieties of car above mentioned belong

to the genus known as jaunting‐cars. First, there is the “outside car,” on

which the passengers are seated facing outward and back to back. The space

between the backs of the sitters is railed off into a place for

baggage—or, _Anglicé_, luggage—called the “well.” It is one of the wells

in which truth is not always to be found. At the front end of “the well”

is a raised seat for the driver. The “outside car” furnishes seats for

from two to three persons on each side. When the seats are not full, the

driver usually sits on a side “to balance the cyar.” The “inside car” is

the converse of the “outside.” In the former the sitters face each other;

their legs are in a space between the wheels, instead of outside them, as

on the latter. It is entered by a small door at the back. The driver

occupies a raised seat in front. The “covered car” is an “inside” with a

high, square covering of black oil‐cloth. It is used in rainy weather. It

has some disadvantages. You can see only through the curtain at the back.

There are no openings at the sides, and the small glazed apertures in

front are placed too high to admit even of an occasional glimpse of the

face of Nature. You can only see the dame from behind. Both the “inside”

and the “covered car” have a tendency to tilt backwards. You are eternally

slipping down the seat toward the door. A sudden start may drop you out

like a too well‐warmed plate from the hand of a greedy guest. I came near

dropping out once or twice in a ride of a few miles. In one of these

conveyances it is wise to take a double hitch around infant America.

A hearty welcome meets us at Mora House. It is situated in the heart of a

most lovely country. The house is embowered in trees and shrubbery. The

walls, offices, and outhouses are covered with ivy. Along the front of the

house is a conservatory. Around it are parterres with evergreens and early

flowers, and borders of dark‐green box. Broad pastures, spreading their

green slopes into the distance, are relieved here and there by clumps of

tall oaks. Cattle and sheep dot the landscape, giving it life without

taking from its beautiful repose. In the background the Rock of Cashel,

with its ruins and lofty round tower, rears its grim silhouette against

the evening sky. The frame of the picture is completed by the mountains of

misty blue in the far distance. Among them towers the peak from which,

according to tradition, his sable majesty—in a very hungry moment

doubtless—is said to have taken a “Devil’s Bit.” Over all this is spread a

sky half blue, half cloud, with the softest of clare‐obscures. What a

feeling of peace steals over my soul as I look upon this sweet landscape!

What a lovely spot for that retirement, “friend to life’s decline,”

“To husband out life’s taper at the close,

And keep the lamp from wasting by repose”!

Alas! there is no such gentle decline for us, poor nomads of the New

World! We must work with tongue, or pen, or sword, or pencil by the

failing light of the lamp until the last of its flickering rays dies into

darkness for ever.

After luncheon our gentle cousin takes us to look at his horses and his

dogs. One is a Mount St. Bernard, a colossal brute and a prime favorite.

Then we visit his kitchen garden, and his cows, and his bee‐hives, and, in

short, everything that is his. Next we examine the paintings and the

photographs; among the former a life‐size oil‐painting, by O’Keefe, of an

uncle, a university man, a brilliant scholar, who sat in more than one

professor’s chair.

Thus we occupied the time until dinner was announced. Then we sat down to

one of those long‐drawn‐out, old‐fashioned dinners which commence at six

in the evening and end any time before midnight. Gentle cousin, having

heard the Lady from Idaho express a desire to see an Irish turf‐fire, had

one made in the dining‐room; and a bright, pleasant, cheerful, cleanly

fire it is. We persuaded the ladies to honor in the breach, for this once,

the absurd British custom of withdrawing from the table after the dessert.

What a pleasant evening we spent!

Next morning we found rain still falling. It softened the atmosphere

without obscuring it. The Rock of Cashel loomed up grimly but distinctly

in the distance.

There is now little that is regal about “Cashel of the Kings.” It has its

ruins, but nothing else. The approaches to the ruins show more of poverty

and discomfort than I remember to have seen in any other town in Ireland.

There is a majesty about the ruins. The rock on which they stand is about

three hundred feet high. There is a lofty round tower in a good state of

preservation. The frescos in one of the halls, said to have been the

council‐chamber, are in a state of wonderful freshness. The floors of some

of the apartments in the second story seem as perfect as ever they could

have been. The carved stone‐work over the porch of one of the entrances—to

Cormac’s Chapel, I think—is the admiration of connoisseurs. Every foot of

this ground awakens a historical remembrance. I see the rude rulers of

ancient Ireland assembled in their regal state. The second Henry and

Edward Bruce pass before my mind’s eye. I see that fierce and unscrupulous

nobleman, the eighth of the Geraldine earls of Kildare, and think of his

astonishing ideas of right and wrong. When Mormon Harry took him to task

for burning the Cathedral of Cashel, he pleaded as his excuse that when he

fired the church he thought the bishop was in it! What a pleasant neighbor

Lord Gerald must have been!

We have a delightful drive to the little old town of Thurles. The green of

the fields and the hedges is enhanced by the contrast of thousands of

soft, yellow primroses. How purely fresh those primroses look! Here

bunches of violets peer forth bashfully, their modest little faces freshly

washed by the gently‐dropping rain!

Thurles is a station on the Great Southern and Western Railway. There we

take rail for Dublin. It is an old town with a quaint old ivy‐mantled

tower which dates from the XIIIth century. The tower stands by a bridge,

and watches over an infant stream that becomes a broad river before it

reaches the sea. It is a relic of the time when Thurles was a walled town.

Thurles is the seat of the Catholic Archbishop of Cashel. There are two

convents, the Presentation and the Ursuline. The Sisters of the former

institution devote themselves to the education of the poor. The Ursuline

Sisters have an academy for young ladies of the wealthier and more

aristocratic classes. The Presentation school gets a share of the

Government educational fund, and is subject to the supervision of the

Government inspectors. The mode of teaching in the Presentation school is

very similar to that of the public schools in New York. The children sang

in chorus remarkably well. There is also a collegiate institution for the

education of candidates for the priesthood. We visited both convents, and

were kindly and hospitably received.