Holy Week In Jerusalem.
The sacred offices of the Catholic Church, wherever celebrated, are admirably calculated to increase devotion, and render intelligible the different events of the ecclesiastical year. In every land the ceremonies of the great week which ends the season of Lent have deep interest to all the faithful, since they portray the chief events of redemption. These annual commemorations of the passion of Christ have, however, an added solemnity and power in the two great cities of religion, Rome and Jerusalem. In the first, the vicar of our Lord takes part in the holy rites; and, in the second, the whole service is more impressive than elsewhere; for the great events here occurred, and the remembrance of them is made, year by year, in closest proximity to the spot where they took place. It is hazarding little to say, that nowhere on earth does the office for holy week have the deep solemnity which marks it in Jerusalem, for the reason just given. While the rubrics of the Missal and Breviary are followed with great exactness, several things peculiar to the place have an interest which may render a description of them worthy of attention.
On the morning of Palm Sunday, 1866, the writer of this sketch went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to be present at the benediction of the palms by his excellency the Patriarch of Jerusalem. The palms, noble branches, seven feet in length, fresh and green, are brought every year from Gaza, a little city about eighteen miles distant. Tied in bundles of suitable size, they were placed within the most holy sepulchre, the patriarch being outside the sacred place until the time for sprinkling them with holy water and incensing, when he entered for that purpose. The benediction completed, the distribution of the palms took place, and the long procession began. Chanting the antiphons, the clergy and laity went twice around the sepulchre, and once around the stone of unction, and then passed into the Latin chapel.
The solemn Mass, to be celebrated by the patriarch, was to begin immediately. The holy sepulchre, being about six feet square, is, of course, much too small for that purpose, and therefore a temporary altar of large size was promptly set up in front of the sacred tomb. While the attendants were preparing and decorating this, in compliance with an intimation given early in the morning, I went into the most holy sepulchre, and offered the Divine Sacrifice—it being the third time I had been privileged to say Mass in that holiest of places. To me it is one of the most memorable things in life, that this happiness should, at such a time, have been mine—that a simple priest could say Mass in "the new tomb of Joseph, which he had hewn out of the rock," while the patriarch was officiating outside the sacred place.
On Wednesday, the office of Tenebrae was said in the church. The patriarch was present and a large number of priests, friars, seminarians, and choir-boys, and many of the laity. The service was very solemn, and the music good. The priests were seated in front of the holy sepulchre, and the triangular candlestick was placed at the right hand of the door leading to the tomb. The chanting of the Lamentations was most impressive; and when the words, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum!" were uttered, it seemed that this plaintive entreaty even now could be addressed with fitness to the city that once was full of people, but is solitary, and made tributary to her enemies. There was a wild pathos and deep earnestness in the chant when the summons to turn to the Lord God was made, as if the singer knew that to-day there is need for the city to listen and obey. Jerusalem is in the power of the followers of the false prophet of Mecca; schismatic Christians outnumber the Catholics; the Jews know not the Lord their God; and the ways of Sion mourn. Would that the expostulation could be heard by all, that they might be perfectly united as a company of brethren, having the same faith and the same worship!
In the afternoon, the column of the flagellation of Christ was exposed for an hour, or two, by removing the iron grating from the front of it. As is well known, a portion of the column is in Rome, in the church of Saint Praxede. The fragment here is only about one foot high, and of the same diameter. It is kept in the Latin chapel, in a recess over an altar named after it, and cannot be seen during the year, as there is little light in the chapel, and that comes through a window high above and nearly over the altar. A popular devotion is to pray in front of the column, and then touch it with a rod, about twenty inches long, having a brass ferule or cap on the end; this ferule is kissed on the place which had touched the stone. It being impossible to reach the pillar by the hand through the grating, this method has been contrived to satisfy the devotion of those who are anxious to salute with reverence all the objects and places connected with the passion of our Lord. On Thursday, at five o'clock, we went down to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as the office was to begin early. We waited nearly an hour, in a dismal morning, until it pleased the Turkish door-keeper to come and unlock the portals. While standing here, among other subjects for consideration, was the evident fact that Christians desiring to celebrate the divine office, in the holiest week of the year, and in the most sacred place on earth, were compelled to delay the fulfilment of their wishes until permission had been given by a Mohammedan. When we were admitted, the services were long, occupying five and a half hours. The holy oils were consecrated. At the end a procession was formed, and the blessed sacrament was carried twice around the sepulchre, and once around the stone of unction, and then was placed in a repository which stood in the tomb where our Lord had lain centuries ago.
At one o'clock, the Mandatum, or ceremony of washing the feet of the pilgrims, was performed by his excellency the patriarch in front of the most holy sepulchre. He gave to each of the pilgrims a wooden cross, about seven inches long, roughly made, and having spaces under bits of pearl for relics from the stations of the Via Dolorosa. Of the many objects of interest brought home from the Holy Land, there is scarcely any one valued more than this, because of the time, place, and occasion when it was received.
The office of the Tenebrae began at three o'clock, as on the day before. Nothing can surpass in solemnity and deep impressiveness the chantings of the Lamentations in this place. The profound desolation of the soul of the prophet as he uttered the sad words is fully expressed and realized; and the remembrance of the calamities which have so frequently befallen Jerusalem, and even now are her portion, gives bitterness to the insulting demand, "Is this the city of perfect beauty, the joy of all the earth?"
On Good Friday the patriarch officiated again in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The passion was sung on Calvary by three chanters, one reciting the narrative by Saint John, another the words of our Lord, while the third sung the remainder. The voice of the priest who chanted the words of Jesus was gentle and sad, and so like what we may imagine to have been that of our Lord, as to become painful and oppressive. When the ejaculation, consummatum est, had been made, the first chanter went to the place where the cross had been set up on which Jesus died, and kneeling there, in a low voice uttered the words, et inclinato capite, tradidit spiritum.
The prayers were chanted in front of the altar of the crucifixion, which belongs to the Catholics, and is at the place properly called of the crucifixion, as being that where our Lord was nailed to the cross; it is to the right, and about twelve feet from the spot where the cross was set up. The unveiling of the cross, at the chant, "Ecce lignum crucis," was done here also; and, when the crucifix was laid on the pavement in front of the altar, it covered the stone which marks the locality where our Lord was fastened to the tree. The veneration of the cross at such a time and place was deeply impressive. After the patriarch, the priests, monks, and laity, having put off their shoes, came in their order, and kissed the feet of the image of the Redeemer.
Wishing to spend as much of Good Friday on Calvary as was possible, I returned to the church in the afternoon, and sat for a long time on the floor, leaning against the large square pillar, within ten feet of the spot where the great oblation was made. While there, I meditated and prayed as well as was possible under the circumstances. For many years the Catholics have had exclusive possession of the church during the last three days of holy week; and accordingly, when the faithful had been admitted, the doors were locked, and the sacred offices performed in peace, free from the annoyance of the crowd which generally fills the edifice. Today, however, on returning, I found the doors open, and every one allowed free access. Many who were not Catholics were now present, and among them were five or six English travellers who were out sight-seeing. Accompanied by their dragoman or interpreter, they came on Calvary, and looked around with idle curiosity. One of them, had he been alone, would probably have knelt down and prayed; but, being with his friends, he only bent one knee, and bowed his head a moment at the place where the cross had been set up. The others of the party, evidently, did not believe this to be the spot of the crucifixion. They were more attracted by the gold, silver, and diamonds on the image of the Blessed Virgin, on the little altar of the Dolors, than by anything else, and for some time admired the brilliancy of these as a candle was held near, and talked of them as the most interesting objects. One glance at the place where the Lord died was enough for them; and when they went away, it was a relief to find the chapel again occupied by those who came to worship. People who have no faith should not visit the Holy Land. If they do, they derive little benefit themselves, and give great disedification to Christians of every name.
It was now toward the close of the day. Some persons, chiefly Greeks, were praying on Calvary, when a Turkish officer came up, and made signs for them to depart. Unwilling to do so, they remained for some time, when he summoned several soldiers who, with muskets, came up to enforce obedience to his commands. They walked slowly around the chapel, close to the wall; and then the people, seeing that they must go, quietly arose and descended. I have little doubt that the church was cleared in order to prepare for the solemn procession in the evening. Although the soldiers behaved with as much decorum as possible, it was a sad sight for Christians to find themselves driven from Calvary on Good Friday by Turks, and it was the bitterest thing experienced in Jerusalem.
There is always a company of soldiers on duty when any service of unusual interest takes place in the church. They are there by request of the French Consul, who is the representative of the European protector of the Holy Land, and are designed to preserve order and add to the display. Although the church covers a large area of ground, there are no spaces of great extent; and thus the presence of men to keep order is necessary. It is recorded with pleasure that, during a residence of two months in the holy city, I saw no act of incivility, nor even a rude look, on the part of the soldiers. The Greeks and Armenians, not to be excelled by Catholics, ask for the soldiers on occasion of their solemnities; and thus, the court of the church, and the edifice itself, are not unfrequently occupied by the military.
In the evening, the patriarch and clergy, with a crowd of laity, assemble in the church for the great procession which is made but on this day. The sacred building was filled to its utmost capacity; but, owing to the perfect arrangements made, the long service was gone through without the least irregularity or embarrassment. There were seven sermons on the passion, in as many different languages, by priests from the nations whose vernacular they spoke. The office began in the Latin chapel, and the first sermon, delivered with much fervor and pathos, was in Italian. When this had been concluded, the procession was formed. As it moved from one station to the next, verses of the Miserere were sung. One of the Franciscan brothers, carrying a large crucifix, led the procession, an acolyte being on either side of him. At the place of the division of the garments of Christ, the sermon was in Greek—at that of the mocking, in another Eastern language. When we had climbed the stairs of Calvary, and were at the place of crucifixion, the cross was laid on the ground, while the sermon in German was preached. Then the crucifix was taken from this place, where our Lord was once nailed to the wood, and carried to that where Christ died. The sermon at this place was in French, and was preached by the leader of the French caravan of pilgrims, a venerable ecclesiastic. When the discourse was finished, several priests came to take the body down from the cross. The crown of thorns was first removed, very slowly, and with great reverence. The nails were then tenderly drawn from the hands; and, as each was removed, the arm of the figure, having joints at the shoulders, was brought down to the side of the body. The feet were, in like manner, disengaged from the nail; a sheet passed under the arms, and the body lowered to the altar, and laid on fine linen. Holding the corners of this cloth, four priests slowly carried the figure down the stairs to the stone of unction, where the patriarch strewed myrrh over it, and sprinkled rose-water. The sermon was now preached in Arabic by the Franciscan curate of the Church of the Nativity, at Bethlehem, and was delivered in a most energetic manner. Of the seven sermons preached, it was probably the one understood by the largest number of those present. Finally, the body was carried to the most holy sepulchre, and laid in the same place where once reposed the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world. Here the sermon was in Spanish, in compliment to that nation of Catholic renown; and, when it had been finished, the procession went to the Latin chapel, whence it had started, and the service of the day was over.
It will be readily understood that the ceremony of taking down from the cross, and carrying the image of our Lord to the tomb, was intended to be a representation of the manner in which the deposition took place on the day of the earth's redemption. It was a most powerful sermon, reaching the heart through the sight. By it we were carried back eighteen hundred years. Standing on Calvary, we were looking on him whose arms were stretched out on the cross, as if, in his infinite love, he would embrace all mankind. We saw him dying that we might live, and dead that we might be ransomed from the grave. No word was spoken, as good Father Jucundino came with pincers to remove the crown of thorns, which he did in such a devout manner, as to make us feel that we were witnessing the great transaction itself. The power and impressiveness of the whole ceremony were such as to render the bystanders awestruck and faint. A scene like this it is impossible to forget, and neither pencil nor words could produce a similar result.
On Holy Saturday I prayed a long time in the sepulchre, where our Lord had lain, as on this day. To be on Calvary on Good Friday, and in the Tomb on Easter eve, had been the desire of my heart. With the realization of such a wish, any one should be content; for he has a privilege granted to but few whose homes are distant from the Holy Land. In the afternoon, the daily procession was made with solemnity, the patriarch and many priests and laymen being present. The pilgrims from Europe were also in the train.
Easter-day was the last of my sojourn in the holy city. Many priests wished to say Mass in the holy sepulchre, some of whom had not yet had that privilege. I said Mass on Calvary, for the last time, that day. During the day the shrines were visited, and the tomb was now indeed the place of the resurrection. "Surrexit, non est hic." Yes! the grave is empty, and death hath no more power over him who was once here but is risen and gone. We see the place where the Lord lay. His day of victory has come, and the triumph over death and hell is complete. The tears of the Christian are dried, and the joy of the Paschal time begins.
Nellie Netterville;
Or, One Of The Transplanted.
Chapter I.
The stream which divides the county of Dublin from that of Meath runs part of its course through a pretty, rock-strewn, furze-blossoming valley, crowned at its western end by the ruins of a castle, which, in the days of Cromwell, belonged to one of the great families of the Pale—the English-Irish, as they were usually called, in order to distinguish them from the Celtic race, in whose land they had cast their fortunes.
A narrow, winding path leads from the castle to the stream below, and down this there came, one cold January morning, in the year of the great Irish "transplantation," a young girl, wrapt in a hooded mantle of dark cloth, which, strong as it was, seemed barely sufficient to defend her from the heavy night fogs still rolling through the valley, hanging rock and bush and castle-turret in a fantastic drapery of clouds, and then falling back upon the earth in a mist as persistent, and quite as drenching, as an actual down-pour of rain could possibly have proved. Following the course of the zigzag stream, as, half-hidden in furze and bramble, it made its way eastward to the sea, a short ten minutes' walk brought her to a low hut, (it could hardly be called a house,) built against a jutting rock, which formed, in all probability, the back wall of the tenement. Here she paused, and after tapping lightly on the door, as a signal to its inmates, she turned, and throwing back the hood which had hitherto concealed her features, gazed sadly up and down the valley. In spite of the fog-mists and the cold, the spot was indeed lovely enough in itself to deserve an admiring glance, even from one already familiar with its beauty; but in those dark eyes, heavy, as it seemed, with unshed tears, there was far less of admiration than of the longing, wistful gaze of one who felt she was looking her last upon a scene she loved, and was trying, therefore, to imprint upon her memory even the minutest of its features. For a moment she suffered her eyes to wander thus, from the clear, bright stream flowing rapidly at her feet to the double line of fantastic, irregularly cut rocks which, crowned with patches of gorse and fern, shut out the valley from the world beyond as completely as if it had been meant to form a separate, kingdom in itself; and then at last, slowly, and as if by a strong and painful effort of the will, she glanced toward the spot where the castle stood, with its tall, square towers cut in sharp and strong relief against the gloomy background of the sky. A "firm and fearless-looking keep" it was, as the habitation of one who, come of an invading race, had to hold his own against all in-comers, had need to be; but while it rose boldly from a shoulder of out-jutting rock, like the guardian fortress of the glen, the little village which lay nestled at its foot, the mill which turned merrily to the music of its bright stream, the smooth terraces and dark woods immediately around it, the rich grazing lands, with their herds of cattle, which stretched far away as the eye could reach beyond, all seemed to indicate that its owner had been so long settled on the spot as to have learned at last to look upon it rather as his rightful inheritance than as a gift of conquest. Castled keep and merry mill, trees and cattle and cultivated fields, the girl seemed to take all in, in that long, mournful gaze which she cast upon them; but the thoughts and regrets which they forced upon her, growing in bitterness as she dwelt upon them, became at last too strong for calm endurance, and throwing herself down upon her knees upon the cold, damp earth, she covered her face with both her hands, and burst into a passionate fit of weeping. Her sobs must have roused up the inmates of the hut; for almost immediately afterward the door was cautiously unclosed, and an ancient dame, with a large colored handkerchief covering her gray hairs, and tied under her chin, even as her descendants wear it to this hour, peeped out, with an evident resolve to see as much and be as little seen as possible in return, by the person who had, at that undue hour, disturbed her quiet slumbers. The moment, however, she discovered who it was that was weeping there, all thoughts of selfish fear seemed to vanish from her mind, and with a wild cry, in which love and grief and sympathy were mingled, as only an Irish cry can mix them, she flung her strong, bony arms around the girl, and exclaimed in Irish, a language with which—we may as well, once for all remark—the proud lords of the Pale were quite conversant, using it not only as a medium of communication with their Irish dependents, but by preference to English, in their familiar intercourse with each other. For this reason, while we endeavor to give the old lady's conversation verbatim, as far as idiom and ideas are concerned, we have ventured to omit all the mispronunciations and bad grammarisms which, whether on the stage or in a novel, are rightly or wrongly considered to be the one thing needed toward the true delineation of the Irish character, whatever the rank or education of the individual thus put on the scene may happen to be.
"O my darling, my darling!" cried the old woman, almost lifting the girl by main force from the ground; "my heart's blood, a-cushla machree! what are you doing down there upon the damp grass, (sure it will be the death of you, it will,) with the morning fog wrapping round you like a curtain? Is there anything wrong up there at the castle? or what is it all, at all, that brings you down here before the sun has had time to say 'Good-morrow' to the tree-tops?"
"O Grannie, Grannie!" sobbed the girl, "have you not heard? do you not know already? It was to say good-by—I could not go without it. Grannie! I never shall see you again—perhaps never."
Pity, and love, and sympathy, all beaming a moment before upon the face of the old hag, changed as instantaneously as if by magic, into an expression of wild hatred, worthy the features of a conquered savage.
"It is true, then!" she cried; "it is true what I heard last night! what I heard—but wouldn't believe, Miss Nellie—if you were not here to the fore to say it to me yourself! It is true that they are for robbing the old master of his own; and that them murdering Cromwellians—my black curse on every mother's son of them—"
But before she could bring her denunciation to its due conclusion, the girl had put her hand across her mouth, and, with terror written on every feature of her face, exclaimed:
"Hush, Grannie, hush? For Christ and his sweet Mother's sake, keep quiet! Remember such words have cost many an honest man his life ere now, and God alone can tell who may or may not be within hearing at this moment."
She caught the old woman by the arm as she spoke, dragging rather than leading her into the interior of the cottage. Once there, however, and with the door carefully closed behind her, she made no scruple of yielding to the anguish which old Grannie's lamentations had rather sharpened than allayed, and sitting down upon a low settle, suffered her tears to flow in silence. Grannie squatted herself down on the ground at her feet, and swaying her body backward and forward after the fashion of her people, broke out once more into vociferous lamentations over the fallen fortunes of her darling.
"Ochone! ochone! that the young May morning of my darling's life (which ought to be as bright as God's dear skies above us) should be clouded over this way like a black November's! Woe is me! woe is me! that I should have lived to see the day when the old stock is to be rooted out as if it was a worthless weed for the sake of a set of beggarly rapscallions, who have only come to Ireland, may be, because their own land (my heavy curse on it, for the heavy hand it has ever and always laid on us!) wasn't big enough to hold their wickedness."
It was in perfect unconsciousness and good faith that old Grannie thus spoke of Nellie and her family as of the old stock of the country—a favorite expression to this day among people of her class in Ireland.
The English descendants of Ireland's first invaders had, in fact, as years rolled by, and even while proudly asserting their own claims as Englishmen, so thoroughly identified themselves both by intermarriages and the adoption of language, dress, and manners with the Celtic natives of the soil that the latter, ever ready, too ready for their own interest perhaps, to be won by kindness, had ended by transferring to them the clannish feeling once given to their own rulers, and fought in the days we speak of under the standard of a De Burgh or a Fitzgerald as heartily and bitterly against Cromwell's soldiers as if an O'Neil or a MacMurrough had led them to the combat. To Nellie Netterville, therefore, the sympathy and indignation of old Grannie seemed quite as much a matter of course as if the blue blood coursing through her veins had been derived from a Celtic chieftain instead of from an old Norman baron of the days of King Henry. Nellie was, moreover, connected with the old woman by a tie which in those days was as strong, and even stronger, than that of race; for the English of the Pale had adopted in its most comprehensive sense the Irish system of fosterage, and Grannie having acted as foster-mother to Nellie's father, was, to all intents and purposes, as devoted to the person of his daughter as if she had been in very deed a grandchild of her own.
But natural as such sympathy might have seemed, and soothing as no doubt it was to her wounded feelings, it was yet clothed in such dangerous language that it had an effect upon Nellie the very opposite of that which, under any other circumstances, it might have been expected to produce. It recalled her to the necessity of self-possession, and conscious that she must command her own feelings if she hoped to control those of her warm-hearted dependent, she deliberately wiped the tears from her eyes, and rose from the settle on which she had flung herself only a few minutes before, in an uncontrolled agony of grief. When she felt that she had thoroughly mastered her own emotion, she drew old Grannie toward her, made her sit down on the stool she herself had just vacated, and kneeling down beside her, said in a tone of command which contrasted, oddly yet prettily enough, with the child-like attitude assumed for the purpose of giving it:
"You must not say such things. Grannie. I forbid it! Now and for ever I forbid it! You must not say such things. They can neither help us nor save us sorrow, and they might cost your life, old woman, if any evil-designing person heard them."
"My life! my life!" cried old Grannie passionately. "And tell me, acushla, what is the value of my life to me, if all that made it pleasant to my heart is to be taken from me? Haven't I seen your father, whom I nursed at this breast until (God pardon me!) I loved him as well or better than them that were sent to me for my own portion? haven't I seen him brought back here for a bloody burial in the very flower of his days? and didn't I lead the keening over him at the self-same moment that I knew my own poor boy was laying stiff and stark on the battle-field, where he had fallen (as well became him) in the defence of his own master? And now you come and tell me that you—you who are all that is left me in the wide world; you who have been the very pulse of my heart ever since you were in the cradle—that you and the old lord are to be driven out of your own kingdom, and sent, God only knows where, into banishment—(him an old man of seventy, and you a slip of a girl that was only yesterday, so to speak, in your nurse's arms)—and you would have me keep quiet, would you? You'd have me belie the thought of my heart with a smiling face? and all for the sake of a little longer life, forsooth! Troth, a-lannah, I have had a good taste of that same life already, and it's not so sweet I found it, that I would go as far as the river to fetch another sup of it. Not so sweet—not so sweet," moaned the old woman, rocking herself backward and forward in time to the inflection of her voice, "not so sweet for the lone widow woman, with barely a roof above her head, and not a chick or child (when you are out of it) for comfort or for coaxing!"
Grannie had poured forth this harangue with all the eloquent volubility of her Irish heart and tongue, and though Nellie had made more than one effort for the purpose, she had hitherto found it quite impossible to check her. Want of breath, however, silenced her at last, and then her foster-child took advantage of the lull in the storm to say:
"Dear old Grannie, do not talk so sadly. I will love and think of you every day, even in that far-off west to which we are exiled. And I forgot to say, moreover, that my dear mother is to remain here for some months longer, and will be ready (as she ever is) to give help and comfort to all that need it, and to you, of course, dear Grannie, more than to all the rest—you whom she looks, upon almost as the mother of her dead husband."
"Ready to give help? Ay, that in troth she is," quoth Grannie, "God bless her for a sweet and gentle soul, that never did aught but what was good and kind to any one ever since she came among us, and that will be eighteen years come Christmas twelvemonth. Ochone! but them were merry times, a-lannah! long before you were born or thought of. God pity you that you have burst into blossom in such weary days as these are!"
"Merry times? I suppose they were," said Nellie good-naturedly, trying to lead poor Grannie's thoughts back to the good old times when she was young and happy. "Tell me about it now, dear Grannie, (my mother's coming home, I mean,) that I may amuse myself by thinking it all over again, when I am far away in the lone west, and no good old Grannie to go and have a gossip with when I am tired of my own company."
"Why, you see, Miss Nellie, and you mustn't be offended if I say it," said Grannie, eagerly seizing on this new turn given to her ideas; "we weren't too well pleased at first to hear that the young master was to be wedded in foreign parts, and some of us were even bold enough to ask if there weren't girls fair enough, ay, and good enough too, for that matter, for him in Ireland, that he must needs bring a Saxon to reign over us! However, when the old lord up yonder at the castle, came down and told us how she had sent him word, that for all she had the misfortune to be English born, she meant, once she was married in Ireland, to be more Irish than the Irish themselves, then, I promise you, every vein in our hearts warmed toward her; and on the day of her coming home, there wasn't, if you'll believe me, a man, woman, or child, within ten miles of Netterville, who didn't go out to meet her, until, what with the shouting and the hustling, she began to think, (the creature,) as she has often told me since, that it was going to massacre her, may be, that we were; for sure, until the day she first saw the young master, it was nothing but tales upon tales she had heard of how the wild Irish were worse than the savages themselves, and how murder and robbery were as common and as little thought of with us as daisies in the springtime. Any way, if she thought that for a moment, she didn't think it long; for when she faced round upon us at the castle-gates, standing between her husband and her father-in-law, (the old lord himself,) we gave her a cheer that might have been heard from this to Tredagh, if the wind had set that way; and though she didn't then understand the 'Cead-mille-failthe to your ladyship!' that we were shouting in our Irish, she was cute enough, at all events, to guess by our eyes and faces what our tongues were saying. And that wasn't all," continued Grannie, growing more and more garrulous as she warmed to her theme; "that wasn't all neither; for when the people were so tired they could shout no more, and quiet was restored, she whispered something to the young master; and what do you think he did, my dear, but led her right down to the place where me and my son (his own foster-brother, that's gone, God rest him!) were standing in the crowd, and she put out her pretty white hand and said, (it was the first and last time that ever I liked the sound of the English,) 'It is you, then, that was my husband's foster-mother, isn't it?' And says I, in her own tongue, for I had picked up English enough at the castle for that, 'Please your ladyship, I am, and this is the boy,' says I, pulling my own boy forward—for he was shy like, and had stepped a little backward when she came near—'this is the boy that slept with Master Gerald' (that was the master, you know, honey) 'on my breast.'"
"'Well, then,' said she, giving one hand to me and the other to my boy, 'remember it is with my foster-brother I mean to lead out the dancing to-night;' and troth, my pet, she was as good as her word, and not a soul would she dance with, for all the fine lords and gentlemen who had come to the wedding, until she had footed it for a good half-hour at least with my Andie, Ah! them were times indeed, my jewel," the old crone querulously wound up her chronicle by saying. "And to think that I should have lived to see the day when the young master's father and the master's child are to be hunted out of their own by a Cromwellian upstart with his 'buddagh Sassenachs,' (Saxon clowns,) like so many bloodhounds at his heels, to ride over us roughshod."
So far the young girl had "seriously inclined her ear" to listen, partly to soothe old Grannie's grief by suffering it to flow over, and partly, perhaps, because her own mind, exhausted by present sufferings, found some unconscious relief in letting itself be carried back to those bright days when the sun of worldly prosperity still lighted up her home. The instant, however, that the old woman began, with all the ferocity of a half-tamed nature, to pour out denunciations on the foes who had wrought her ruin, she checked the dangerous indulgence of her feelings by saying:
"Hush, dear Grannie, and listen to me. My mother is to stay here until May, (so much grace they have seen fit to do us,) in order that she may collect our stock and gather such of our people together as may choose to follow us into exile."
"Then, may be, she'll take me," cried old Grannie suddenly, her withered face lightening up into an expression of hope and joy that was touching to behold. "May be she'll take me, a-lannah!"
Nellie Netterville eyed Grannie wistfully. Nothing, in fact, would she have better liked than to have taken that old relic of happier days with her to her exile; but old, decrepid, bowed down by grief as well as years, as Grannie was, it would have been folly, even more than cruelty, to have suffered her to offer herself for Connaught transplantation. It would have been, however, but a thankless office to have explained this in as many words; so Nellie only said: "When the time comes, dear old woman, when the time comes, it will be soon enough to talk about it then—that is to say, if you are still able and willing for the venture."
"Willing enough at all events, God knows," said Grannie earnestly. "But why not go at once with you, my darling? The mistress is the mistress surely; but blood is thicker than water, and aren't you the child of the man that I suckled on this bosom? Why not go at once with you?"
"I think it is too late in the year for you—too cold—too wretched; and besides, we are only to take one servant with us, and of course it must be a man," said Nellie, not even feeling a temptation to smile at the blind zeal which prompted Grannie to offer herself, with her sixty years and her rheumatic limbs, to the unprofitable post of bower-maiden in the wilderness. "It would not do to alter our arrangements now," she continued gently; "but when spring comes, we will see what can be done; and in the mean time, you must go as often as you can to the castle, to cheer my dear mother with a little chat. Promise me that you will, dear Grannie, for she will be sad enough and lonely enough, I promise you, this poor mother, and nothing will help her so much in her desolation as to talk with you of those dear absent ones, who well she knows are almost as precious to you as they can be to herself. And now I must begone—I must indeed! I could not go in peace without seeing you once more, and so I stole out while all the rest of the world were sleeping; but now the sun is high in the heavens, and they will be looking for me at the castle. Good-by, dear Grannie, good-by!"
Sobbing as if her heart would break, Nellie flung her arms round the old woman's neck; but Grannie, with a wild cry of mingled grief and love, slipt through her embraces and flung herself at her feet. Nellie raised her gently, placed her once more upon the settle, and not daring to trust herself to another word, walked straight out of the cottage, and closed the door behind her.
Chapter II.
The sun had by this time nearly penetrated through the heavy fog, which had hung since early dawn like a vail over the valley; and just as Nellie reached the foot of the path leading straight up to the castle, it fairly broke through every obstacle, and cast a gleam of wintry sunshine on her face. That face, once seen, was not one easily to be forgotten. The features were almost, and yet not quite, classic in their beauty, gaining in expression what they lost in regularity; and the frequent mingling, by intermarriages, of Celtic blood with that of her old Norman race, had given Nellie that most especial characteristic of Irish beauty—hair black and glossy as the raven's wing, with eyes blue as the dark, double violet, and looking even bluer and darker than they were by nature through the abundance of the long, silken lashes, the same color as her hair, which fringed them. She carried her small, beautifully-formed head with the grace and spirit of a young antelope, and there was something of firmness even in the elastic lightness of her movements, which gave an idea of energy and decision not naturally to be looked for in one so young and girlish, both as to form and feature. Her tight-fitting robe of dark and strong material, though evidently merely adopted for the convenience of travelling, rather set off than detracted from the beauty of her form; and over it hung that long, loose mantle of blue cloth which seems, time out of mind, to have been a favorite garment with the Irish. It was fastened at the throat by a brooch of gold, curious and valuable even then for its evident antiquity; and with its broad, graceful folds falling to her feet, and its hood drawn forward over her head, and throwing her sweet, sad face somewhat into shadow, gave her at that moment, as the sun shone down upon her, the very look and expression of a Mater Dolorosa.
Ten minutes' rapid walking up a path, which looked more like an irregular staircase cut through rock and turf-mould than a way worn gradually by the pressure of men's feet, brought her to the platform upon which the castle stood.
Moated and circumvallated toward the south and west, which were easy of access from the flat lands beyond, Netterville was comparatively defenceless on the side from whence Nellie now approached it; its builders and inhabitants having evidently considered the deep stream and valley which lay beneath as a sufficient protection against their enemies.
The great gate stood looking eastward, and Nellie could see from the spot where she halted that all the preparations for her approaching journey were already almost completed. A couple of sorry-looking nags, (garrans, the Irish would have called them,) one with a pillion firmly fixed behind the saddle, were being led slowly up and down in readiness for their riders. Little sorrowful groups of the Irish dependents of the family stood here and there upon the terraces, waiting (faithful to the last as they ever were in those days) to give one parting glance and one sorrowful, long farewell to their deposed chieftain and his heiress; and a little further off, like hawks hovering around their prey, might be seen a band of those iron-handed, iron-hearted men in whose favor the transplantation of the present owners of the soil had been decreed, and who had been set there, half to watch and half to enforce departure, should anything like evasion or resistance be attempted. Something very like an angry frown clouded Nellie's brow as she caught sight of these men for whose benefit she was being robbed of her inheritance; but, unwilling to indulge such evil feelings, she suffered her gaze to pass quietly beyond them until it rested once more on the streamlet and valley as they stretched eastward toward the sea. Just then some one tapped her on the shoulder, and, turning sharply round, Nellie found herself confronted by a woman not many years older, probably, than herself, but with a face upon which, beautiful as it was, the early indulgence of wild passions had stamped a look of premature decay.
"What would you with me?" said Nellie, surprised at the familiarity of the salutation, and not in the least recognizing the person who had been guilty of it. "I know you not. What do you want with me?"
"Oh! little or nothing," said the other, in a harsh and taunting voice; "little or nothing, my fair young mistress—heiress, that has been, of the house of Netterville—only I thought that, may be, you could say if the old mistress will be after going with you into exile. They told me she was," she added, with a gesture toward the soldiers; "and yet, as far as I can see, only one of the garrans has a pillion to its back. But, may be, she'll be for going later—"
"I have already said," Nellie coldly answered, for she neither liked the matter nor the manner of the woman's speech—"I have already said that I know you not, and, in all likelihood, neither does my mother. Why, therefore, do you ask the question?"
"Because I hope it!" said the woman, with such a look of hatred on her face that Nellie involuntarily recoiled a step—"because I hope it; and then perhaps, when she is houseless and hungry herself, she will remember that cold December night when she drove me from her door, to sleep, for all that she cared, under the shelter of the whin-bushes in the valley."
"If my mother, good and gentle as she is to all, ever acted as you say she did, undoubtedly she had wise and sufficient reasons for it," Nellie coldly answered.
"Undoubtedly—good and sufficient reasons had she, and so, for that matter, had I too, when I put my heavy curse upon her and all her breed," retorted the girl, with a coarse and taunting laugh. "And see how it has come to work," she added wildly—"see how it has come to work! Ay, ay—she'll mind it when it is too late, I doubt not; and will think twice before she lets loose her Saxon pride to flout a poor body for only asking a night's shelter under her roof. Roof! she'll soon have no roof for herself, I guess; but if ever she has one again, she'll think better of it, I doubt not."
"She will think next time just what she thought last time—that, so long as you lead the life you lead at present, you would not, though you were a princess, be fitting company for the lowest scullion in her kitchen."
Thus spoke a grave, sweet voice (not Nellie's) close at the woman's elbow. She started, as if a wasp had stung her, and turned toward the speaker.
A tall lady, dressed in widow's weeds, with a pale face and eyes weary, it almost seemed, with sorrow, had approached quietly from behind, and overhearing the girl's defiant speech, saved Nellie the trouble of an answer by that firm yet most womanly response. Then passing to the front, she put her arm round Nellie's waist, as if to protect her from the very presence of the other, and drew her away, saying:
"Come along, my daughter; the morning wears apace, and these long delays do but embitter partings. Your grandfather is already waiting. Remember, Nellie," she added in a faltering voice, "that he, with his seventy years, will be almost as dependent upon your strength and energy as you can be on his. He is my dead husband's father, and therefore, after a long and bitter struggle with my own heart, I have devoted you, my own and only treasure, to be his best support and help and comfort in the long and unseasonable journey to which the cruelty of our conquerors has compelled him. I trust—I trust in God and his sweet Mother that I shall see no cause later to repent me of this decision!"
Nellie drew a little closer to her mother, and a strange firmness of expression passed over her young face as she answered quietly:
"My own unselfish mother, doubt not that I will be all—son and daughter both in one—to him; and fear not, I do beseech you, for our safety. What though he has seen his seventy winters, and I but barely seventeen! We are strong and healthy, both of us; and with clean consciences (which is more than our foes can boast of) and good wits, I doubt not we shall reach our destination safely. Destination!" she repeated bitterly—"ay, destination; for home, in any sense of the word, it never can be to us."
"Say not so, my Nellie—say not so," said her mother gently. "Home, after all, is only the place where we garner up our treasures; and, therefore, in the spot where I may rejoin you, however wild and desolate it otherwise shall be, my heart, at all events, will acknowledge it has found its home!"
As they thus conferred together, mother and daughter had been moving slowly toward the castle, in absolute forgetfulness of the woman who had originally made a third in the group, and who was still following at a little distance. She stopped, however, on discovering that they had no intention of making her a sharer in their conversation, and, gazing after them with a fearful mingling of hatred and wounded pride on her coarse, handsome features, exclaimed aloud:
"The second time you have flouted me, good madam! Well, well, the third is the charm, and then it will be my turn. See if I do not make you rue it!"
Shaking her fist, as she spoke, savagely in the air, she turned her back upon Netterville towers, and rushed down a path leading directly to the river.
As Mrs. Netterville and her daughter approached the castle-gates, a young man came out to meet them, and, with a look and bearing half-way between that of an intelligent and trusted servant and a petted follower, said hurriedly:
"My lord grows impatient, madam. He says he is ready to depart at once, and that the sooner it is done the better. And, in troth, I am much of the same way of thinking my own self," he added, with that sort of grim severity which some men seem almost naturally to assume the moment they feel themselves in danger of giving way to grief, in the womanly fashion of tears.
Hamish was of the same age as Nellie, though he looked and felt at least eight years older. He was her foster-brother, as we have already said, and had been her companion in the nursery; but as war and poverty thinned the ranks of followers attached to the house of Netterville, he had been gradually advanced from one post of confidence to another, until, young as he was, he united the various duties of "bailiff" or "steward," as it would be called in Ireland—major-domo or butler, valet, and footman, all in his own proper person.
"True," said Mrs. Netterville, in answer to his communication—"too true. Every moment that he lingers now will be but a fresh barbing of the arrow. Come, my Nellie, let us hasten to your grandfather. Would that I could persuade him to take Hamish with him instead of Mat, who has little strength and less wit to help you in such a journey. I should be far more at ease, both on his account and yours, my daughter."
"Faix, madam, and it was just that same that I was thinking to myself awhile ago," cried Hamish eagerly. "Sure, who has a better right to go with Mistress Nellie than her own foster-brother? And am not I strong enough, and more than willing enough to fight for her—ay, and to die for her too, if any of them black-browed hypocrites should dare for to cast their evil eyes upon her or the old master?"
"Strong enough and brave enough undoubtedly you are," said Nellie, speaking before her mother could reply, "and true-hearted more than enough, my dear foster-brother, are you; but, if only for that very reason, you must stay here to help and comfort my dear mother. Bethink you, Hamish, hers is, in truth, the hardest lot of any. We shall have but to endure the weariness of long travel; she will have to contend with the insolence of men in high places—yes, and perhaps even to dispute with them, day by day, and hour by hour, for that which is her rightful due and ours. This is man's work, not woman's; and a man, moreover, quick-witted and fearing no one. Will you not be that man, Hamish, to stand by her against the tyrant and oppressor, and to act for her whenever and wherever it may be impossible for her to act for herself?"
Hamish would have answered with a fervor equal to her own, but Mistress Netterville prevented him by saying, with a mingling of grief and impatience in her manner:
"It is in vain to talk to you, Nellie! You have all your grandfather's stiff-necked notions on this subject. Nevertheless it would have been far more to my real contentment if he and you had yielded to my wishes, seeing that there is many a one still left among our dependents to whom, on a pinch, I could entrust the care both of cattle and of household gear, and but one (and that is Hamish) to whom willingly I would confide my child."
"Now, may Heaven bless you for that very word, madam," cried Hamish eagerly and gratefully; and then turning to Nellie, he went on: "See now, Mistress Nellie, see now, when her ladyship herself has said it—surely you would never think of going contrary to her wishes!"
"Listen to me, Hamish," said Nellie, putting her hand on his shoulder and standing still, so that her mother unconsciously moved on without her. "Ever since that weary day when the sheriff came here to inform us of our fate, I have had a strange, uncomfortable foreboding that my mother will soon find herself in even a worse plight than ours. A woman, as she will be, alone and friendless—foemen all around her—foemen domiciled even in her household—foemen, the worst and cruelest of any, with prayer on their lips and hypocrisy in their hearts, and a strong sword at their hips, ready to smite and slay, as they themselves express it, all who oppose that wicked lusting for wealth and power which they so blindly mistake for the promptings of a good spirit! With us, once we have obtained our certificate from the commissioners at Loughrea, it will be far otherwise. Each step we take in our wild journey westward will, if, alas! it leads us further from our friends, set, likewise, a safer distance between us and our oppressors. Promise me, therefore, to ask no more to follow us who go to peace and safety, but to abide quietly here, where alone a real danger threatens. Promise me even more than this, my foster-brother—promise to stay with her so long as ever she may need you; and should aught of evil happen to her, which may God avert! promise to let me know at once, that I may instantly return and take a daughter's proper place beside her. Promise me this, Hamish—nay, said I promise!—Hamish, you must swear it!"
"I swear it! by the Mother of Heaven and her blessed Child, I swear it!" said Hamish fervently; for he saw at once that there was much probability in Nellie's view of the subject, though, in his overweening anxiety for the daughter, he had hitherto overlooked the chances of danger to the mother. "But, Christ save us!" he added suddenly, as some wild notes of preparation reached his experienced ear; "Christ save us, if the old women are not going to keen for your departure as if it were a burial!"
"Oh! do not let them—do not let them; bid them stop if they would not break our hearts!" cried Nellie, rushing on to overtake her mother, while Hamish, in obedience to her wishes, struck right across the terrace toward a distant group of women, among whom, judging by their excited looks and gestures, he knew that he should find the keeners. Long, however, ere he could reach them, a wild cry of lamentation, taken up and prolonged until every man, woman, and child within ear-shot had lent their voices to swell the chorus, made him feel that he was too late; and turning to ascertain the cause of this sudden outburst, he saw that Lord Netterville had come forth from the castle, and was standing at the open gates. A fine, soldierly-looking man he was, counting over seventy years, yet in appearance not much more than sixty, and as he stood there, pale and bare-headed, in the presence of his people, a shout of such mingled love and sympathy, grief and execration rent the air, that some of the Cromwellian soldiers made an involuntary step forward, and handled their muskets in expectation of an attack.
"Tell them to stop!" cried the old man, throwing up his arms like one who could bear his agony no longer. "For God's sake, tell them to stop! Let them wait, at least," he added, half bitterly, half sorrowfully, "until, like the dead, I am out of hearing."
There was no need for Hamish to become the interpreter of his wishes. That sudden cry of a man's irrepressible anguish had reached the hearts of all who heard it, and a silence fell upon the crowd—a silence more expressive of real sympathy than their wildest lamentations could have been.
The old lord bowed, and tried to speak his thanks, but the words died upon his lips, and he turned abruptly to take leave of his daughter-in-law. She knelt to receive his blessing. He laid his hand upon her head, and then, making an effort to command his voice, said tenderly:
"Fare thee well, my best and dearest! It is the way of these canting times to be for ever quoting Scripture, and for once I will follow fashion. May Heaven bless and keep thee, daughter; for a very Ruth hast thou been to me in my old age; yea, and better than seven sons in this the day of my poverty and sorrow!"
He stooped to kiss her brow and to help her to rise, and as he did so, he added in a whisper, meant only for the lady's ear:
"Forgive me. Mary, if I once more allude to that subject we have so much discussed already. Are you still in the mind to send Nellie with me? Think better of it, I entreat you. The daughter's place should ever, to my poor thinking, be beside her mother!"
"I have thought," she answered, "and I have decided. If Nellie is my child, she is your grandchild as well; and the duty which her father is no longer here to tender, it must be her pride and joy to offer you in his stead. Moreover, my good lord," she added, in a still lower tone, "the matter hath another aspect. Nellie will be safer with you! This place and all it contains is even now at the mercy of a lawless soldiery, and therefore it is no place for her. Too well I feel that even I, her mother, am powerless to protect her."
Lord Netterville cast a wistful glance on the fair face of his young granddaughter, and said reluctantly:
"It may be that you are right, sweet Moll, as you ever are. Come, then, if so it must be, give us our good-speed, and let us hasten on our way."
He once more pressed her affectionately in his arms, then walked straight up to his horse, and leaped almost without assistance to the saddle. But his face flushed scarlet, and then grew deadly pale, and as he shook his reins and settled himself in his seat, it was evident to Hamish, who was holding his stirrup for him, that he was struggling with all his might and main to bear himself with a haughty semblance of indifference before the English soldiery. After he was seated to his satisfaction, he ventured a half glance around his people, and lifted his beaver to salute them. But the effort was almost too much; the big tears gathered in his eyes, and his hand shook so violently that he could not replace his hat, which, escaping from his feeble grasp, rolled under his horse's feet. Half a dozen children darted forward to recover it, but Hamish had already picked it up and given it to his master, who instantly put it on his head, saying, in a tone of affected indifference:
"Pest on these trembling fingers which so libel the stout heart within. This comes of wine and wassail, Hamish. Drink thou water all thy life, good youth, if thou wouldst match a sturdy heart with a steady hand, when thy seventy years and odd are on you."
"Faix, my lord, will I or nill I," said Hamish, trying to fall in with the old man's humor by speaking lightly; "will I or nill I, it seems only too likely that water will be the best part of my wine for some time to come; leastways," he added in a lower voice, "leastways till your honor comes back to your own again, and broaches us a good cask of wine to celebrate the day."
"Back again! back again!" repeated Lord Netterville, shaking his head with a mixture of grief and impatience impossible to describe. "I tell thee, Hamish, that men never come back again when they carry seventy years with them to exile. But where is my granddaughter? Bid her come forth at once, for it's ill lingering here with this weeping crowd around us, and yonder pestilent group of fanatics marking out every mother's son among them, doubtless, for future vengeance."
Mrs. Netterville heard this impatient cry for her only child, and flung her arms for one last passionate embrace round Nellie's neck. Then, firm and unfaltering to the end, she led her to Hamish, who lifted her as reverently as if she had been an empress (as indeed she was in his thoughts) to the pillion behind her grandfather.
Lord Netterville barely waited until she was comfortably settled, ere he stooped to kiss once more his daughter-in-law's uplifted brow, after which, waving his hands toward the weeping people, he dug his spurs deep into his horse's sides, and rode swiftly forward.
Then, as if moved by one common impulse, every man, woman, and child in presence there, fell down upon their knees, mingling prayers and blessings, and howls and imprecations, as only an Irish or an Italian crowd can do; and yet obedient to the last to the wishes of their departing chief, it was not until he was well-nigh out of sight that they broke out into that wild, wailing keen, with which they were known to accompany their loved ones to the grave. But the wind was less considerate, and as it unluckily set that way, it bore one or two of the long, sad notes to him in whose honor they were chanted. As they fell upon the old exile's ears, the stoical calmness which he had hitherto maintained forsook him utterly; the reins fell from his hands, he bowed his head till his white locks mingled with his horse's mane, and, "lifting up his voice," he wept as sadly and unrestrainedly as a woman.
To Be Continued.
The Church Review and Victor Cousin.
[Footnote 31]
[Footnote 31: The American Quarterly Church Review. New York: N. S. Richardson. January, 1868. Art. ii., "O. A. Brownson as a Philosopher. Victor Cousin and his Philosophy. Catholic World.">[
The article in the Church Review promises an estimate of the character of Dr. O. A. Brownson as a philosopher; but what it says has really no relation to that gentleman, and is simply an attempt, not very successful, nor very brilliant indeed, to vindicate M. Cousin's philosophy from the unfavorable judgment we pronounced on it, in the magazine of last June. Dr. Brownson is not the editor, nor one of the editors, of The Catholic World; the article in question was signed by no name, was impersonal, and the Review has no authority for charging its authorship to any one but ourselves, or for holding any but ourselves responsible for its merits or demerits. When the name of a writer is signed to an article, he should be held answerable for its contents; but when it is not, the magazine in which it appears is alone responsible. According to this rule, we hold the Church Review answerable for its "rasping" article against ours.
The main purpose of the reviewer seems to be to prove that we wrote in nearly entire ignorance of M. Cousin's philosophy, and to vindicate it from the very grave charges we urged against it. As to our ignorance, as well as his knowledge, that must speak for itself; but we can say sincerely that we should be most happy to be proved to have been in the wrong, and to see Cousin's philosophy cleared from the charge of being unscientific, rationalistic, pantheistic, or repugnant to Christianity and the church. One great name would be erased from the list of our adversaries, and their number would be so much lessened. We should count it a great service to the cause which is so dear to us, if the Church Review could succeed in proving that the errors we laid to his charge are founded only in our ignorance or philosophical ineptness, and that his system is entirely free from them. But though it talks largely against us, assumes a high tone, and makes strong assertions and bold denials, we cannot discover that it has effected anything, except the exhibition of itself in an unenviable light. It has told us nothing of Cousin or his philosophy not to be found in our article, and has not in a single instance convicted us of ignorance, malice, misstatement, misrepresentation, or even inexactness. This we shall proceed now to show, briefly as we can, but at greater length, perhaps, than its crude statements are worth.
The principal charges against us are:
1. We said M. Cousin called his philosophy eclecticism;
2. We wrongly denied scepticism to be a system of philosophy;
3. Showed our ignorance of Cousin's doctrine in saying it remained in psychology, never attained to the objective, or rose to ontology;
4. Misstated his doctrine of substance and cause;
5. Falsely denied that he admits a nexus between the creative substance and the created existence;
6. Falsely asserted that he holds creation to be necessary;
7. Wrongly and ignorantly accused him of Pantheism;
8. Asserted that he had but little knowledge of Catholic theology;
9. Accused him of denying the necessity of language to thought.
In preferring these charges against M. Cousin's philosophy, we have shown our ignorance of his real doctrine, our contempt for his express declarations, and our philosophical incapacity, and the reviewer thinks one may search in vain through any number of magazine articles of equal length, for one more full of errors and fallacies than ours. This is bad, and, if true, not at all to our credit. We shall not say as much of his article, for that would not be courteous, and instead of saying it, prefer to let him prove it. We objected that M. Cousin assuming that to the operation of reason no objective reality is necessary, can never, on his system, establish such reality; the reviewer, p. 541, gravely asserts that we ourselves hold, that to the operations of reason no objective reality is necessary, and can never be established! This is charming. But are these charges true? We propose to take them up seriatim, and examine the reviewer's proofs.
1. We said M. Cousin called his philosophical system eclecticism. To this the reviewer replies:
"'Eclecticism can never be a philosophy;' making, among other arguments, the pertinent inquiry: 'How, if you know not the truth in its unity and integrity beforehand, are you, in studying those several systems, to determine which is the part of truth and which of error?'
"We beg his pardon, but M. Cousin never called his philosophical system Eclecticism. In the introduction to the Vrai, Beau, et Bien, he writes:
"'One word as to an opinion too much accredited. Some persons persist in representing eclecticism as the doctrine to which they would attach my name. I declare, then, that eclecticism is, undoubtedly, very dear to me, for it is in my eyes the light of the history of philosophy; but the fire which supplies this light is elsewhere. Eclecticism is one of the most important and useful applications of the philosophy I profess, but it is not its principle. My true doctrine, my true flag, is spiritualism; that philosophy, as stable as it is generous, which began with Socrates and Plato, which the gospel spread abroad in the world, and which Descartes placed under the severe forms of modern thought'
"And the principles of this philosophy supply the touchstone with which to try 'those several systems, and to determine which is the part of truth and which of error.' Eclecticism, in Cousin's view of it, as one might have discovered who had 'studied his works with some care,' is something more than a blind syncretism, destitute of principles, or a fumbling among conflicting systems to pick out such theories as please us."
If M. Cousin never called his philosophical system eclecticism, why did he defend it from the objections brought on against it, that, i. Eclecticism is a syncretism—all systems mingled together; 2. Eclecticism approves of everything, the true and the false, the good and the bad; 3. Eclecticism is fatalism; 4. Eclecticism is the absence of all system? Why did he not say at once that he did not profess eclecticism, instead of saying and endeavoring to prove that the eclectic method is at once philosophical and historical? [Footnote 32]
[Footnote 32: See Fragments Philosophiques, t i. pp. 39-42.]
Everybody knows that he professed eclecticism and defended it. As a method, do you say? Be it so. Does he not maintain, from first to last, that a philosopher's whole system is in his method? Does he not say, "Given a philosopher's method, we can foretell his whole system"? And is not his whole course of the history of philosophy based on this assumption? We wrote our article for those who knew Cousin's writings, not for those who knew them not. There is nothing in the passage quoted from the reviewer, quoted from Cousin, that contradicts what we said. We did not say that he always called philosophy eclecticism, or pretend that it was the principle of his system. We said:
"There is no doubt that all schools, as all sects, have their part of truth, as well as their part of error; for the human mind cannot embrace pure, unmixed error any more than the will can pure, unmixed evil; but the eclectic method is not the method of constructing true philosophy any more than it is the method of constructing true Christian theology. The Catholic acknowledges willingly the truth which the several sects hold; but he does not derive it from them, nor arrive at it by studying their systems. He holds it independently of them; and having it already in its unity and integrity, he is able, in studying them, to distinguish what they have that is true from the errors they mix up with it. It must be the same with the philosopher. M. Cousin was not unaware of this, and he finally asserted eclecticism rather as a method of historical verification, than as the real and original method of constructing philosophy. The name was therefore unhappily chosen, and is now seldom heard." (Catholic World, p. 335.)
Had the reviewer read this passage, he would have seen that we were aware of the fact that latterly Cousin ceased to profess eclecticism save as a method of verification; and if he had read our article through, he would have seen that we were aware that he held spiritualism to be the principle of his system, and that we criticised it as such.
2. Cousin counts scepticism as a system of philosophy. We object, and ask very pertinently, since he holds every system has a truth, and truth is always something affirmative, positive, "What, then, is the truth of scepticism, which is a system of pure negation, and not only affirms nothing, but denies that any thing can be affirmed?" Will the reviewer answer the question?
The reviewer, of course, finds us in the wrong. Here is his reply:
"In the history of the progress of the human mind, the phase of scepticism is not to be overlooked. At different periods it has occurred, to wield a strong, sometimes a controlling, often a salutary, influence over the thought of an age. Its work, it is true, is destructive, and not constructive; but not the less as a check and restraint upon fanciful speculation, and the establishment of unsound hypotheses, it has its raison d'être, and contributes, in its way, to the advancement of truth. Nor can the works of Sextus, Pyrrho, Glanvil, Montaigne, Gassendi, or Hume be considered less 'systematic' than those of any dogmatist, merely from their being 'systems of pure negation.'" (P. 533.)
That it is sometimes reasonable and salutary to doubt, as if the reviewer should doubt his extraordinary genius as a philosopher, we readily admit; but what salutary influence has ever been exerted on science or morals by any so-called system of scepticism, which denies the possibility of science, and renders the binding nature of virtue uncertain, we have never yet been able to ascertain. Moreover, a system of pure negation is simply no system at all, for it has no principle and affirms nothing. A sceptical turn of mind is as undesirable as a credulous mind. That the persons named, of whom only one, Pyrrho, professed universal scepticism, and perhaps even he carried his scepticism no farther than to doubt the reality of matter, may have rendered some service to the cause of truth, as the drunken helotae promoted temperance among the Spartan youth, is possible; but they have done it by the truth they asserted, not by the doubt they disseminated. There is, moreover, a great difference between doubting, or suspending our judgment where we are ignorant or where our knowledge is incomplete, and erecting doubt into the principle of a system which assumes all knowledge to be impossible, and that certainty is nowhere attained or attainable. It seems, we confess, a little odd to find a Church Review taking up the defence of scepticism.
3. We assert in our article that M. Cousin, though he professes to come out of the sphere of psychology, and to rise legitimately to ontology, remains always there; and, in point of fact, the ontology he asserts is only an abstraction or generalization of psychological facts. The reviewer is almost shocked at this, and is "tempted to think that the time" we claim to have spent in studying the works of Cousin with some care "might have been better employed in the acquisition of some useful knowledge more within the reach of our 'understanding.'" It is possible. But what has he to allege against what we asserted, and think we proved? Nothing that we can find except that Cousin professes to attain, and perhaps believes he does attain, to real objective existence, and, scientifically, to real ontology. But, my good friend, that is nothing to the purpose. The question is not as to what Cousin professes to have done, or what he has really attempted to do, but what he has actually done. When we allege that the being, the God asserted by Cousin, is, on his system, his principles, and method, only an abstraction or a generalization; you do not prove us wrong by reiterating his assertion that it is real being, that it is the living God, for it is, though you seem not to be aware of it, that very assertion that is denied. We readily concede that Cousin does not profess to rise to ontology by induction from his psychology, but we maintain that the only ontology he attains to is simply an induction from his psychology, and therefore is, and can be, only an abstraction or a generalization. We must here reproduce a passage from our own article.
"What is certain, and this is all the ontologist need assert, or, in fact, can assert, is, that ontology is neither an induction nor a deduction from psychological data. God is not, and cannot be, the generalization of our own souls. But it does not follow from this that we do not think that which is God, and that it is from thought we do and must take it. We take it from thought and by thinking. What is objected to in the psychologists is the assumption that thought is a purely psychological or subjective fact, and that from this psychological or subjective fact we can, by way of induction, attain to ontological truth. But as we understand M. Cousin, and we studied his works with some care thirty or thirty-five years ago, and had the honor of his private correspondence, this he never pretends to do. What he claims is, that in the analysis of consciousness we detect a class of facts or ideas which are not psychological or subjective, but really ontological, and do actually carry us out of the region of psychology into that of ontology. That his account of these facts or ideas is to be accepted as correct or adequate we do not pretend, but that he professes to recognize them and distinguish them from purely psychological facts is undeniable.
"The defect or error of M. Cousin on this point was in failing, as we have already observed, to identify the absolute or necessary ideas he detects and asserts with God, the only ens necessarium et reale, and in failing to assert them in their objectivity to the whole subject, and in presenting them only as objective to the human personality. He never succeeded in cutting himself wholly loose from the German nonsense of a subjective-object or objective-subject, and when he had clearly proved an idea to be objective to the reflective reason and the human personality, he did not dare assert it to be objective in relation to the whole subject. It was impersonal, but might be in a certain sense subjective, as Kant maintained with regard to the categories." (Catholic World, PP. 335, 336.)
The reviewer, after snubbing us for our ignorance and ineptness, which are very great, as we are well aware and humbly confess, replies to us in this manner:
"And yet nothing in Cousin is clearer or more positive than that this 'pure and sublime degree of the reason, when will, reflection, and personality are as yet absent'—this 'intuition and spontaneous revelation, which is the primitive mode of reason'—is objective to the whole subject in every possible sense, and is, consequently, conformed to the objective, and a revelation of it.
"Can the critic have read Cousin's Lectures on Kant, 'thirty or thirty-five years ago'? If so, we advise him to refresh his memory by a re-perusal, and perhaps he may withdraw the strange assertion that Cousin held an 'absolute idea to be impersonal, but that it might be in a certain sense subjective, as Kant maintained with regard to the categories.' 'The scepticism of Kant,' says Cousin, [Footnote 33] 'rests on his finding the laws of the reason to be subjective, personal to man; but here is a mode of the reason where these same laws are, as it were, deprived of all subjectivity—where the reason shows itself almost entirely impersonal.
"How the critic would wish this impersonal activity to be objective to the 'whole subject,' and not to the 'personal only,' as if there was any greater degree of objectivity in one case than in the other, it is not easy to see. It looks like a distinction without a difference. The abstract and logical distinction is apparent, but though distinct, the 'whole subject,' and the 'human personality,' cannot be separated, so that what is objective to one, shall not be so to the other also. The 'whole subject' is, simply, the thinking, feeling, willing being, which we are, as distinguished from the world external to us. If an idea, then, is revealed to us by what is completely foreign to us—if an act of the reason is spontaneous and unreflective, +hat is, impersonal—what is there that can be more objective to the subject?
"We have said, that such an act is objective to the subject in every possible sense. For we are not to forget the conditions of the case. 'Does one wish,' says Cousin, 'in order to believe in the objectivity and validity of the reason, that it should cease to make its appearance in a particular subject—in man, for instance? But then, if reason is outside of the subject, that is, of myself, it is nothing to me. For me to have consciousness of it, it must descend into me, it must make itself mine, and become in this sense subjective. A reason which is not mine, which, in itself being entirely universal, does not incarnate itself in some manner in my consciousness, is for me as though it did not exist. [Footnote 34] Consequently, to wish that the reason, in order to be trustworthy, should cease entirely to be subjective, is to demand an impossibility.'" (Pp. 534, 535.)
[Footnote 33: Lecture viii.]
[Footnote 34: Lectures on Kant, viii.]
We have introduced this long extract in order to give our readers a fair specimen of the reviewer's style and capacity as a reasoner. It will be seen that the reviewer alleges, as proof against us, what is in question—the very thing that he is to prove. We have read Cousin's Lectures on Kant, and we know well, and have never thought of denying, that he criticises Kant sharply, says many admirable things against him, and professes to reject his subjectivism; we know, also, that he holds what he calls the impersonal reason to be objective, operating independently of us; all this we know and so stated, we thought, clearly enough, in our article; but we, nevertheless, maintain that he does not make this impersonal reason really objective, but simply independent in its operations of our personality. He holds that reason has two modes of activity—the one personal, the other impersonal; but he recognizes only a distinction of modes, sometimes only a difference of degrees, making, as we have seen, as quoted by the reviewer, the impersonal reason a sublimer "degree" of reason than the personal. He calls the impersonal reason the spontaneous reason, sometimes simply spontaneity. All this is evident enough to any one at all familiar with Cousin's philosophical writings.
But what is this reason which operates in these two modes, impersonal and spontaneous in the one, personal and reflective in the other? As the distinction between the personal and impersonal is, by Cousin's own avowal, a difference simply of modes or degrees, there can be no entitative or substantial difference between them. They are not two different or distinct reasons, but one and the same reason, operating in two different modes or degrees. Now, we demand, what is this one substantive reason operating in these two different degrees or modes? It certainly is not an abstraction, for abstractions are nullities and cannot operate or act at all. What, then, is it? Is it God, or is it man? If you say it is God, then you deny reason to man, make him a brute, unless you identify man with God. If you say it is man, that it is a faculty of the human soul, as Cousin certainly does say—for he makes it our faculty and only faculty of intelligence—then you make it subjective, since nothing is more subjective than one's own faculties. They are the subject itself. Consequently the impersonal reason belongs as truly to man, the subject, as the personal reason, and therefore is not objective, as we said, to the whole subject, but at best only to the will and the personality—what Cousin calls le moi. The most distinguished of the disciples of Cousin was Theodore Jouffroy, who, in his confessions, nearly curses Cousin for having seduced him from his Christian faith, whose loss he so bitterly regretted on his dying-bed, and who was, in Cousin's judgment, as expressed in a letter to the writer of this article, "a true philosopher." This true philosopher and favorite disciple of Cousin illustrates the difference between the impersonal reason and the personal by the difference between seeing and looking, hearing and listening, which corresponds precisely to the difference noted by Leibnitz between what he calls simple perception and apperception. In both cases it is the man who sees, hears, or perceives; but in the latter case, the will intervenes and we not only see, but look, not only perceive, but apperceive.
Now, it is very clear, such being the case, that Cousin does not get out of the sphere of the subject any more than does Kant, and all the arguments he adduces against Kant, apply equally against himself; for he recognizes no actor in thought, or what he calls the fact of consciousness, but the subject. The fact which he alleges, that the impersonal reason necessitates the mind, irresistibly controls it, is no more than Kant says of his categories, which he resolutely maintains are forms of the subject. Hence, as Cousin charges Kant very justly with subjectivism and scepticism, we are equally justified in preferring the same charges against himself. This is what we showed in the article the reviewer is criticising, and to this he should have replied, but, unhappily, has not. He only quotes Cousin to the effect that, "to wish the reason, in order to be trustworthy, should cease entirely to be subjective, is to demand an impossibility," which only confirms what we have said.
We pursue in our article the argument still further, and add:
"Reduced to its proper character as asserted by M. Cousin, intuition is empirical, and stands opposed not to reflection, but to discursion, and is simply the immediate and direct perception of the object without the intervention of any process, more or less elaborate, of reasoning. This is, indeed, not an unusual sense of the word, perhaps its more common sense, but it is a sense that renders the distinction between intuition and reflection of no importance to M. Cousin, for it does not carry him out of the sphere of the subject, or afford him any basis for his ontological inductions. He has still the question as to the objectivity and reality of the ideal to solve, and no recognized means of solving it. His ontological conclusions, therefore, as a writer in the Christian Examiner told him as long ago as 1836, rest simply on the credibility of reason or faith in its trustworthiness, which can never be established, because it is assumed that, to the operation of reason, no objective reality is necessary, since the object, if impersonal, may, for aught that appears, be included in the subject." (Catholic World, p. 338.)
We quote the reply of the reviewer to this at full length, for no mortal man can abridge or condense it without losing its essence.
"If a man speaks thus, after a careful study of Cousin, it is almost useless to argue with him. He either has not understood the philosopher, or his scepticism is hopelessly obstinate. Intuition, as asserted by Cousin, is not reduced to its proper character, but simply misrepresented, when it is called empirical; for it is the primitive mode of reason, and prior to all experience. It is a revelation of the objective to the subject, and to be a revelation must, of course, come into the consciousness of the subject. Cousin has carefully and repeatedly established the true character of intuition as a disclosure to the understanding in the reason, and free from any touch of subjectivity. Of course, his ontological conclusions rest on a belief in the credibility of reason, and, of course, this credibility can never be established in a logical way, although, metaphysically, it is abundantly established. One may 'assume,' to the end of time, that 'to the operation of reason no objective reality is necessary, since the object may, for aught that appears, be included in the subject,' but the universal and invincible opinion of the human race has been, and will be, to the contrary of such an assumption.
"As firmly as Reid and Hamilton have established the doctrine of sensible perception, and the objective existence of the material world, has Cousin that of the objective existence of the absolute, and, on the very same ground, the veracity of consciousness. And the mass of mankind have lived in happy ignorance of any necessity for such arguments. When they sowed and reaped, and bought and sold, they never questioned the real existence of the objects they dealt with; nor did they, when the idea of duty or obligation made itself felt in their souls, dream that, 'for such an operation of reason, no objective reality was necessary.'
"Men have an unquestioning but unconquerable belief, that the very idea of obligation implies something outside of them, that obliges. Something other than itself it must be, that commands the soul. Right is a reality, and duty a fact. The philosophy, that does not come round to an enlightened and intelligent holding of the unreflecting belief of mankind, but separates itself from it, is worse than useless. In such wisdom it is indeed 'folly to be wise.' And this philosophic folly comes from insisting on a logical demonstration of what is logically undemonstrable—of what is superior, because anterior to reasoning. We cannot prove to the understanding truths which are the very basis and groundwork of that understanding itself." (Pp. 536, 537.)
This speaks for itself, and concedes, virtually, all we alleged against Cousin's system; at least it convicts us of no misapprehension or misrepresentation of that system; and the reviewer's sneer at our ignorance and incapacity, however much they may enliven his style and strengthen his argument, do not seem to have been specially called for. Yet we think both he and M. Cousin are mistaken when they assume that to demand any other basis for science than the credibility or faith in the trustworthiness of reason, is to demand an impossibility, for a science founded on faith is simply no science at all. There is science only where the mind grasps, and appropriates, not its own faculties only, but the object itself. The reason, personal or impersonal, is the faculty by which we grasp it, or the light by which we behold it; not the object in which the mental action terminates, but the medium by which we attain to the object. If it were otherwise, there might be faith, but not science, and though reason might search for the object, yet it would always be pertinent to ask, Who or what vouches for reason? Descartes answered, The veracity of God, which, in one sense, is true, but not in the sense alleged; for on the Cartesian theory we might ask, what vouches for the veracity of God? The only possible answer would be, it is reason, and we should simply traverse a circle without making the slightest advance.
The difficulty arises from adopting the psychological method of philosophizing, or assuming, as Descartes does in his famous cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore, I exist, that man can think in and of himself, or without the presence and active concurrence of that which is not himself, and which we call the object. Intuition, on Cousin's theory, is the spontaneous operation of reason as opposed to discursion, which is its reflex or reflective operation, but supposes that reason suffices for its own operation. In his course of philosophy professed at the Faculty of Letters in 1818, he says, in the consciousness, that is, in thought, there are two elements, the subject and object; or, in his barbarous dialect, le moi et le non-moi; but he is careful to assert the subject as active and the object as passive. Now, a passive object is as if it were not, and can concur in nothing with the activity of the subject. Then, as all the activity is on the side of the subject, the subject must be able to think in and of itself alone. The fact that I think an existence other than myself, on this theory, is no proof that there is really any other existence than myself till my thought is validated, and I have nothing but thought with which to validate thought.
The cogito, ergo sum is, of course, worthless as an argument, as has often been shown; but there is in it an assumption not generally noted; namely, that man suffices for his own thought, and, therefore, that man is God. God alone suffices, or can suffice, for his own thought, and needs nothing but himself for his thought or his science. He knows himself in himself, and is in himself the infinite Intelligibile, and the infinite Intelligens. He knows in himself all his works, from beginning to end, for he has made them, and all events, for he has decreed them. There is for him no medium of science distinguishable from himself; for he is, as the theologians say, the adequate object of his own intelligence. But man being a creature, and therefore dependent for his existence, his life, and all his operations, interior and exterior, on the support and active concurrence of that which is not himself, does not and cannot suffice for his thought, and he does not and cannot think in and of himself alone, in any manner, mode, form, or degree, or without the active presence and concurrence of the object, as Pierre Leroux has well shown in his otherwise very objectionable Réfutation de l'Eclecticisme. The object being independent of the subject, and not supplied by the subject, must exist a parte rei, since, if it did not, it could not actually concur with the subject in the production of thought. There can arise, therefore, to the true philosopher, no question as to the credibility or trustworthiness of reason, the validity or invalidity of thought. The only question for him is, Do we think? What do we think? He who thinks, knows that he thinks, and what he thinks, for thought is science, and who knows, knows that he knows, and what he knows.
The difficulty which Cousin and the reviewer encounter arises from thus placing the question of method before the question of principles, as we showed in our former article. No such difficulty can arise in the path of him who has settled the question of principles—which are given, not found, or obtained by the action of the subject without them—and follows the method they prescribe. The error, we repeat, arises from the psychological method, which supposes all the activity in thought is in the subject, and supposes reason to be operative in and of itself, or without any objective reality, which reality, on Cousin's system, or by the psychological method, can never be established.
The reviewer concedes that objective reality cannot be established in a logical way, but maintains that there is no need of so establishing it; for "men have an unquestioning, an unconquerable belief that the very idea of obligation implies something outside of them." Nobody denies the belief, but its validity is precisely the matter in question. How do you prove the validity of the idea of obligation? But the reviewer forgets that Cousin makes it the precise end of philosophy to legitimate this belief, and all the universal beliefs of mankind, and convert them from beliefs into science. How can philosophy do this, if obliged to support itself on these very beliefs?
The reviewer follows the last passage with a bit of philosophy of his own; but, as it has no relevancy to the matter in hand, and is, withal, a little too transcendental for our taste, he must excuse us for declining to discuss it. We cannot accept it, for we cannot accept what we do not understand, and it professes to be above all understanding. In fact, the reviewer seems to have a very low opinion of understanding, and no little contempt for logic. He reminds us of a friend we once had, who said to us, one day, that if he trusted his understanding and followed his logic he should go to Rome; but, as neither logic nor understanding is trustworthy or of any account, he should join the Anglican Church, which he incontinently did, and since, we doubt not, found himself at home. Can it be that he is the writer of the article criticising us?
The reviewer, in favoring us with this bit of philosophy of his own, tells us, in support of it, that Sir William Hamilton says, "All thinking is negation." So much the worse, then, for Sir William Hamilton. All thinking is affirmative, and pure negation can neither think nor be thought. Every thought is a judgment, and affirms both the subject thinking and the object thought, and their relation to each other. This, at least sometimes, is the doctrine of Cousin, as any one may ascertain by reading his essays, Du Fait de Conscience and Du Premier et du dernier Fait de Conscience. [Footnote 35] Though even in these essays the doctrine is mixed up with much that is objectionable, and which leads one, after all, to doubt if the philosopher ever clearly perceived the fact, or the bearing of the fact, he asserted. Cousin often sails along near the coast of truth, sometimes almost rubs his bark against it, without perceiving it. But we hasten on.
[Footnote 35: Fragments Philosophiques, t. i. pp. 248, 256.]
4. We are accused of misstating Cousin's doctrine of substance and cause. Here is our statement and the reviewer's charge:
"'M. Cousin,' continues The Catholic World, 'professes to have reduced the categories of Kant and Aristotle to two—substance and cause; but as he in fact identifies cause with substance, declaring substance to be substance only in so much [the italics are ours] as it is cause, and cause to be cause only in so much as it is substance, he really reduces them to the single category of substance, which you may call, indifferently, substance or cause. But, though every substance is intrinsically and essentially a cause, yet, as it may be something more than a cause, it is not necessary to insist on this, and it may be admitted that he recognized two categories.'
"What is exactly meant by these two contradictory statements it is not easy to guess; but let Cousin speak for himself: [Footnote 36]
[Footnote 36: VI. Lecture, Course of 1818, on the Absolute.]
"'Previous to Leibnitz, these two ideas seemed separated in modern philosophy by an impassable barrier. He, the first to sound the nature of the idea of substance, brought it back to the notion of force. This was the foundation of all his philosophy, and of what afterward became the Monadology. ... But has Leibnitz, in identifying the notion of substance with that of cause, presented it with justness? Certainly, substance is revealed to us by cause; for, suppress all exercise of the cause and force which is in ourselves, and we do not exist to ourselves. It is, then, the idea of cause which introduces into the mind the idea of substance. But is substance nothing more than cause which manifests it? .... The causative power is the essential attribute of substance; it is not substance itself. In a word, it has seemed to us surer to hold to these two primitive notions; distinct, though inseparably united; one, which is the sign and manifestation of the other, this, which is the root and foundation of that.'
"One would think this sufficiently explicit for all who are not afflicted with the blindness that will not see." (P. 539.)
We see no self-contradiction in our statement, and no contradiction of M. Cousin. We maintain that M. Cousin really, though probably not intentionally or consciously, reduces the categories of Kant and Aristotle to the single category of substance, and prove it by the words italicized by the reviewer, which are our translation of Cousin's own words. Cousin says, in his own language, in a well-known passage in the first preface of his Fragments Philosophiques, "Le Dieu de la conscience n'est pas un Dieu abstrait, un roi solitaire, rélegué pardelà la création sur le trône desert d'une éternité silencieuse, et d'une existence absolue qui ressemble au néant même de l'existence: c'est un Dieu à la fois vrai et réel, à la fois substance et cause, toujours substance et toujours cause, n'étant substance qu'en tant que cause, et cause qu'en tant que substance, c'est-à-dire, étant cause absolue, un et plusieurs, éternité et temps, espace et nombre, essence et vie, indivisibilité et totalité, principe, fin, et milieu, au sommet de l'être et à son plus humble degré, infini et fini, tout ensemble, triple enfin, c'est-à-dire, à la fois Dieu, nature, et humanité. En effet, si Dieu n'est pas tout il n'est rien." [Footnote 37] This passage justifies our first statement, because Cousin calls God substance, the one, absolute substance, besides which there is no substance. But as our purpose, at the moment, was not so much to show that Cousin made substance and cause identical, as it was to show that he made substance a necessary cause, we allowed, for reasons which he himself gives in the passage cited by the reviewer from his course of 1818 on the Absolute, that he might be said to distinguish them, and to have reduced the categories to two, instead of one only, as he professes to have done. But the reviewer hardly needs to be told that, when it is assumed that substance is cause only on condition of causing, that is, causing from the necessity of its own being, the effect is not substantially distinguishable from the substance causing, and is only a mode or affection of the causative substance itself, or, at best, a phenomenon.
[Footnote 37: Fragments Philosophiques, t. i. p. 76.]
5. Accepting substance and cause as two categories, we contend that Cousin requires a third; namely, the creative act of the causative substance, and contingent existences, as asserted in the ideal formula. Ens creat existentias. To this the reviewer cites, from Cousin, the following passage in reply:
"In the fifth lecture of the course of 1828, M. Cousin says:
"'The two terms of this so comprehensive formula do not constitute a dualism, in which the first term is on one side and the second on the other, without any other connection between them than that of being perceived at the same time by the intelligence; so far from this, the tie which binds them is essential. It is a connection of generation which draws the second from the first, and constantly carries it back to it, and which, with the two terms, constitutes the three integrant elements of intelligence. ... Withdraw this relation which binds variety to unity, and you destroy the necessary bond of the two terms of every proposition. These three terms, distinct, but inseparable, constitute at once a triplicity and an indivisible unity. ... Carried into Theodicy, the theory I have explained to you is nothing less than the very foundation of Christianity. The Christians' God is at once triple and one, and the animadversions which rise against the doctrine I teach ought to ascend to the Christian Trinity.'" (P. 540.)
We said in our article, "Under the head of substances he (Cousin) ranges all that is substantial or that pertains to real and necessary being, and under the head of cause the phenomenal or the effects of the causative action of substance. He says he understands, by substance, the universal and absolute substance, the real and necessary being of the theologians; and by phenomena, not mere modes or appearances of substance, but finite and relative substances, and calls them phenomena only in opposition to the one absolute substance. They are created or produced by the causative action of substance. [Footnote 38] If this has any real meaning, he should recognize three categories as in the ideal formula, Ens creat existentias, that is, Being, existences, or creatures, and the creative act of being, the real nexus between substance or being and contingent existences, for it is that which places them and binds them to the Creator."
[Footnote 38: Fragments Philosophiques, t i. pp. xix. xx.]
The passage cited by the reviewer from Cousin is brought forward, we suppose, to show that it does recognize this third category; but if so, what becomes of the formal statement that he has reduced the categories to two, substance and cause, or, as he sometimes says, substance or being and phenomenon? Besides, the passage cited does not recognize the third term or category of the formula. It asserts not the creative act of being as the nexus between substance and phenomenon, the infinite and the finite, the absolute and the relative, etc.; but generation, which is a very different thing, for the generated is consubstantial with the generator.
6. We were arguing against Cousin's doctrine, that God, being intrinsically active, or, as Aristotle and the schoolmen say, actus purissimus, most pure act, must therefore necessarily create or produce exteriorly. In prosecuting the argument, we anticipated an objection which, perhaps, some might be disposed to bring from Leibnitz's definition of substance, as a vis activa, and endeavored to show that, even accepting that definition, it would make nothing in favor of the doctrine we were refuting, and which Cousin undeniably maintains. We say, "The doctrine that substance is essentially cause, and must, from intrinsic necessity, cause in the sense of creating, is not tenable. We are aware that Leibnitz, a great name in philosophy, defines substance to be an active force, a vis activa, but we do not recollect that he anywhere pretends that its activity necessarily extends beyond itself. God is vis activa, if you will, in a supereminent degree; he is essentially active, and would be neither being nor substance if he were not; he is, as Aristotle and the schoolmen say, most pure act; ... but nothing in this implies that he must necessarily act ad extra, or create. He acts eternally from the necessity of his own divine nature, but not necessarily out of the circle of his infinite being, for he is complete in himself, is in himself the plenitude of being, and always and everywhere suffices for himself, and therefore for his own activity. Creation, or the production of effects exterior to himself, is not necessary to the perfection of his activity, adds nothing to him, as it can take nothing from him. Hence, though we cannot conceive of him without conceiving him as infinitely, eternally, and essentially active, we can conceive of him as absolute substance or being, without conceiving him to be necessarily acting or creating ad extra."
The reviewer says, sneeringly, "This is the most remarkable passage in this remarkable article." He comments on it in this manner:
"Thus appearing to accept the now exploded Leibnitzian theory, which Cousin has combated both in its original form, and as maintained by De Biran, our critic tries to escape from it by this subtle distinction between the southern and south-eastern sides of the hair. He enlarges upon it. God, according to him, is indeed vis activa in the most eminent degree, but this does not imply that he must act ad extra, or create. He acts eternally from the necessity of his nature, but not necessarily out of the circle of his own infinite being. Hence, though we cannot conceive of him but as infinitely and essentially active, we can conceive of him as absolute substance without conceiving him to be necessarily creating, or acting ad extra. M. Cousin, he says, evidently confounds the interior acts of the divine being with his exterior or creative acts.
"We have no wish to deny that he does make such a confusion. To one who holds that 'to the operation of reason no objective reality is necessary, and that such reality can never be established,' this kind of subjective activity of the will, which seems so nearly to resemble passivity—these pure acts, or volitions, which never pass out of the sphere of the will into causation—may be satisfactory; but to one who believes that God is not a scholastic abstraction—to one who worships the 'living God' of the Scriptures—it will sound like a pitiful jugglery with words thinly veiling a lamentable confusion of ideas. God is a person, and he acts as a person. The divine will is no otherwise conceivable by us than as of the same nature as man's will; it differs from it only in the mode of its operation—for with him this is always immediate, and no deliberation or choice is possible—and it is as absurd to speak of the activity of his will, the eminently active force, never extending 'out of the circle of his own infinite being,' as it would be to call a man eminently an active person whose activity was all merely purpose or volition, never passing into the creative act ad extra, or out of the circle of his own finite being.
"If St. Anselm is right, that, to be in re is greater than to be in intellectu, then has the creature man, according to the critic, a higher faculty than his Creator essentially and necessarily has. For his will is by nature causative, creative, productive ad extra, and it is nothing unless its activity be called forth into act external to his personality, while the pure acts of the divine will may remain for ever enclosed in the circle of the divine consciousness without realizing themselves ad extra!" (Pp. 540, 541.)
We do not like to tell a man to his face, especially when he assumes the lofty airs and makes the large pretensions of our reviewer, that he does not know what he is talking about, or understand the ordinary terms and distinctions of the science he professes to have mastered, for that, in our judgment, would be uncivil; but what better is to be said of the philosopher who sees nothing more in the distinction between the divine act ad intra, whence the eternal generation of the Son and the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost, and the divine act ad extra, whence man and nature, the universe, and all things visible and invisible, distinguishable from the one necessary, universal, immutable, and eternal being, than in "the distinction between the southern and south-eastern sides of the hair"? The Episcopalian journals were right in calling the Church Review's criticism on us "racy," "rasping," "scathing;" it is certainly astounding, such as no mortal man could foresee, or be prepared to answer to the satisfaction of its author.
In the passage reproduced from ourselves we neither accept nor reject the definition of substance given by Leibnitz, nor do we say that Cousin accepts it, although he certainly favors it in his introduction to the Posthumous Works of Maine de Biran, and adduces the fact of his having adopted it in his defence against the charge of pantheism, [Footnote 39] but simply argue that, if any one should adopt it and urge it as an argument for Cousin, it would be of no avail, because Leibnitz does not pretend that substance is or must be active outside of itself, or out of its own interior, that is, must be creative of exterior effects. This is our argument, and it must go for what it is worth.
[Footnote 39: Fragments Philosophiques, t i. p. xxi.]
We admit that in some sense God may be a vis activa, but we show almost immediately that it is in the sense that he is most pure act, that is, in the sense opposed to the potentia nuda of the schoolmen, and means that God is in actu most perfect being, and that nothing in his being is potential, in need of being filled up or actualized. When we speak of his activity, within the circle of his own being, we refer to the fact that he is living God, therefore, Triune, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. As all life is active, not passive, we mean to imply that his life is in himself, and that he can and does eternally and necessarily live, and in the very fulness of life in himself; and therefore nothing is wanting to his infinite and perfect activity and beatitude in himself, or without anything but himself. This is so because he is Trinity, three equal persons in one essence, and therefore he has no need of anything but himself; nothing in his being or nature necessitates him to act ad extra, that is, create existences distinct from himself. Does the reviewer understand us now? He is an Episcopalian, and believes, or professes to believe, in the Trinity, and, therefore, in the eternal generation of the Son, and the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost. Do not this generation and this procession imply action? Action assuredly and necessarily, and eternal action too, because they are necessary in the very essence or being of God, and he could not be otherwise than three persons in one God, if, per impossibile, he would. The unity of essence and trinity of persons do not depend on the divine will, but on the divine nature. Well, is this eternal action of generation and procession ad intra, or ad extra? Is the distinction of three persons a distinction from God, or a distinction in God? Are we here making a distinction as frivolous as that "between the southern and south-eastern sides of a hair"? Do you not know the importance of the distinction? Think a moment, my good friend. If you say the distinction is a distinction from God, you deny the divine unity—assert three Gods; if you say it is a distinction in God, you simply assert one God in three persons, or three persons in one God, or one divine essence. If you deny both, your God is a dead unity in himself, not a living God.
The action of God ad intra is necessary, proceeds from the fulness of the divine nature, and the result is the generation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Ghost. Now, can you understand what would be the consequence, if we made the action of God ad extra, or creation, proceed from the necessity of the divine nature? The first consequence would be that creation is God, for what proceeds from God by the necessity of his own nature is God, as the Arian controversy long ago taught the world. The second consequence would be that God is incomplete in himself, and has need to operate without, in order to complete himself, which really denies God, and therefore creation, everything, which is really the doctrine of Cousin, namely, God completes himself in his works. Can you understand now, dear reviewer, why we so strenuously deny that God creates or produces existences distinguishable from himself, through necessity? Cousin says that God creates from the intrinsic necessity of his own nature, that creation is necessary. You say he has retracted the expression. Be it so. But, with all deference, we assert that he has not retracted or explained away his doctrine, for it runs through his whole system; and as he nowhere makes the distinction between action ad intra and action ad extra, his very assertion that God is substance only in that he is cause, and cause only in that he is substance, implies the doctrine that God, if substance at all, cannot but create, or manifest himself without, or develop externally. What say we? Even the reviewer sneers at the distinction we have made, and at the efforts of theologians to save the freedom of God in creating. Thus, in the paragraph immediately succeeding our last extract, he says, "But all this quibbling comes from an ignorant terror, lest God's free-will should be attacked." The reviewer, on the page following, admits all we asserted, and falls himself, blindfold, as it were, into the very error he contends we falsely charge to the account of Cousin. "The necessity he (Cousin) speaks of is a metaphysical necessity, which no more destroys the free-will of God, than the metaphysical necessity of doing right, that is, obligation, destroys man's free-will." [Footnote 40] (P. 542.)
[Footnote 40: The reviewer, misled by the evasive answer of Cousin, supposes the objection urged against his doctrine, that creation is necessary, is, that it destroys the free-will of God; but that, though a grave objection, is not the one we insisted on; the real objection is, that if God is assumed to create from the necessity of his own nature, he is assumed not to create at all, for what is called his creation can be only an evolution or development of himself, and consequently producing nothing distinguishable in substance from himself, which is pure pantheism. Of course, all pantheism implies fatalism, for if we deny free-will in the cause, we must deny it in the effect; but it is not to escape fatalism, but pantheism that Cousin's doctrine of necessary Creation is denied, as we pointed out in our former article.]
Metaphysical necessity, according to the reviewer, p. 537, means real necessity, since he says, "Metaphysics is the science of the real," and therefore God is under a real necessity of creating. Yet it is to misrepresent Cousin to say that, according to him, creation is necessary! But assume that, by metaphysical, the reviewer means moral; then God is under a moral necessity, that is, morally bound to create, and consequently would sin if he did not. But we have more yet, in the same paragraph: "A power essentially creative cannot but create." Agreed. But to assert that God is essentially creative, is to assert that he is necessary creator, and that creation is necessary, for God cannot change his essence or belie it in his act. But this assertion of God as essentially creative, is precisely what we objected to in Cousin, and therefore, while asserting that God is infinitely and essentially active in his own being, we denied that he is essentially creative. He is free in his own nature to create or not, as he pleases. The reviewer does not seem to make much progress in defending Cousin against our criticisms.
7. That Cousin was knowingly and intentionally a pantheist, we have never pretended, but have given it as our belief that he was not. We do not think that he ever comprehended the essential principle of pantheism, or foresaw all the logical consequences of the principles he himself adopted and defended. But his doctrine, notwithstanding all his protests to the contrary, is undeniably pantheism, if any doctrine ever deserved to be called by that name. It is found not here and there in an incidental phrase, but is integral; enters into the very substance and marrow of his thought, and pervades all his writings. We felt it when we attempted to follow him as our master, and had the greatest difficulty in the world to give him a non-pantheistic sense, and never succeeded to our own satisfaction in doing it.
Cousin's pantheism follows necessarily from two doctrines that he, from first to last, maintains. First, there is only one substance. Second, Creation is necessary. He says in the Avertissement to the third edition of his Philosophical Fragments that he only in rare passages speaks of substance as one, and one only, and when he does so, he uses the word, not in its ordinary sense, but in the sense of Plato, of the most illustrious doctors of the church, and of the Holy Scripture in that sublime word, I AM that I AM; that is, in the sense of eternal, necessary, and self-existent Being. But this is not the case. The passages in which he asserts there is and can be only one substance, are not rare, but frequent, and to understand it in any of these passages in any but its ordinary sense, would make him write nonsense. He repeats a hundred times that there is, and can be, only one substance, and says, expressly, that substance is one or there is no substance, and that relative substances contradict and destroy the very idea of substance. He is talking, he says in his defence, of absolute substance. Be it so; interpret him accordingly. "Besides the one only absolute substance, there is and can be no substance, that is, no other one only absolute substance." Think you M. Cousin writes in that fashion? But we fully discussed this matter in our former article, and as the reviewer discreetly refrains from even attempting to show that we unjustly accused him of maintaining that there is and can be but one substance, we need not attempt any additional proof. The second doctrine, that creation is necessary, the reviewer concedes and asserts, "In Cousin, as we have attempted to explain, creation is not only possible, but NECESSARY," repeating Cousin's own words.
"As to Cousin's pantheism, if any one is disposed to believe that the systems of Spinoza and of Cousin have anything in common, we can only recommend to him a diligent study of both writers, freedom from prejudice, and a distrust of his own hastily formed opinions. It is too large a question to enter upon here, but we would like to ask the critic how he reconciles the two philosophers on the great question he last considered—the creation. In Spinoza, there is no creation. The universe is only the various modes and attributes of substance, subsisting with it from eternity in a necessary relation. In Cousin, creation, as we have attempted to explain, is 'not only possible but necessary.' The relation between the universe and the supreme Substance is not a necessary relation of substance and attribute, but a contingent relation of cause and effect, produced by a creative fiat." (P. 545.)
A necessitated creation is no proper creation at all. And Cousin denies that God does or can create from nothing; says God creates out of his own fulness, that the stuff of creation is his own substance, and time and again resolves what he calls creation into evolution or development, and makes the relation between the infinite and the finite, as we have seen, not that of creation, but that of generation, which is only development or explication. He also denies that individuals are substances, and says they have their substance in the one absolute substance. Let the reviewer read the preface to the first edition of the Fragments, reproduced without change in subsequent editions, and he will find enough more passages to the same effect, two at least in which he asserts that finite substances, not being able to exist in themselves without something beyond themselves, are very much like phenomena; and his very pretension is, that he has reduced the categories of Kant and Aristotle to two, substance or being, and phenomenon.
Now, the essential principle of pantheism is the assertion of one only substance and the denial of all finite substances. It is not necessary, in order to be a pantheist, to maintain that the apparent universe is an eternal mode or attribute of the one only substance, as Spinoza does; for pantheism may even assert the creation of modes and phenomena, which are perishable; its essence is in the assertion of one only substance, which is the ground or reality of all things, as Cousin maintains, and in denying the creation of finite substances, that can act or operate as second causes. Cousin, in his doctrine, does not escape pantheism, and we repeat, that he is as decided a pantheist as was Spinoza, though not precisely of the same school.
The reviewer says, p. 544, "We proceed to another specimen of the critic's accuracy; 'M. Cousin says pantheism is the divinization of nature, taken in its totality as God, But this is sheer atheism.'" Are we wrong? Here is what Cousin says in his own language: "Le panthéism est proprement la divinisation du tout, le grand tout donné comme Dieu, l'universe Dieu de la plupart de mes adversaires, de Saint-Simon, par example. C'est au fond un veritable athéisme." [Footnote 41] If he elsewhere gives a different definition, that is the reviewer's affair, not ours. We never pretended that Cousin never contradicts himself, or undertook to reconcile him with himself; but the reviewer should not be over-hasty in charging inaccuracy, misrepresentation, or ignorance where none is evident. He may be caught himself. The reviewer stares at us for saying Cousin's "exposition of the Alexandrian philosophy is a marvel of misapprehension." Can the reviewer say it is not? Has he studied that philosophy? We repeat, it is a marvel of misapprehension, both of Christian theology and of that philosophy itself. The Neoplatonists were pantheists and emanationists, and Cousin says the creation they asserted was a creation proper. Let that suffice to save us from the scathing lash of the reviewer.
[Footnote 41: Fragments Philosophiques, t i. pp. 18, 19.]
8. We said, in our article, "It was a great misfortune for M. Cousin that what little he knew of Catholic theology, caught up, apparently, at second hand, served only to mislead him. The great controversies on Catholic dogmas have enlightened the darkest passages of psychology and ontology, and placed the Catholic theologian on a vantage-ground of which they who know it not are incapable of conceiving. Before him your Descartes, Spinozas, Kants, Fichtes, Hegels, and Cousins dwindle into pigmies." The reviewer replies to this:
"This is something new indeed, and we think the great Gallican churchmen of the seventeenth century, whom Cousin understood so intimately, and for whom he had so sincere an admiration, would be the last to claim an exclusive vantage-ground from their knowledge of the controversies on Catholic dogma. For these men, alike of the Oratory and of Port Royal, were Cartesians, and their faith was interwoven with their philosophy; it was not in opposition to it. And they knew that that philosophy was based upon a thorough understanding of the great 'controversies on Catholic dogma,' which had been carried on in the schools by laymen as well as by ecclesiastics.
"But who is the Romish theologian the critic refers to, and how is it he makes so little use of his 'vantage-ground'? Since Descartes brought modern philosophy into being by its final secularization, we do not recollect any theologian so eminent that all the great men he has named dwindle into pigmies before him. Unless, indeed, this should take place from their being so far out of the worthy man's sight and comprehension, as to be 'dwarfed by the distance,' as Coleridge says." (Pp. 546, 547.)
We referred to no Romish theologian in particular; but if the reviewer wants names, we give him the names of St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, St. Anselm, St. Bonaventura, St. Thomas of Aquino, Fonseca, Suarez, Malebranche, even Cardinal Gerdll, and Gioberti, the last, in fact, a contemporary of Cousin, whose Considerazioni sopra le dottrine del Cousin prove his immense superiority over him, and of the others named with him. Cousin may have admired the great Gallican churchmen of the seventeenth century, but intimately understand them as theologians, he did not, if we may judge from his writings; moreover, all the great churchmen of that century were not Frenchmen. As great, if not greater, were found among Italians, Spaniards, Poles, and Germans, though less known to the Protestant world. Has the reviewer forgotten, or has he never known, the great men that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries flourished in the great religious orders, the Dominicans, Franciscans, the Augustinians, and especially the Jesuits—men whose learning, genius, and ability were surpassed only by their humility and sanctity?
But we spoke not of Cousin's little knowledge of churchmen, but of his little knowledge of Catholic theology. The reviewer here, probably, is not a competent judge, not being himself a Catholic theologian, and being comparatively a stranger to Catholic theology; but we will accept even his judgment in the case. Cousin denies that there is anything in his philosophy not in consonance with Christianity and the church; he denies that his philosophy impugns the dogma of the Word or the Trinity, and challenges proof to the contrary. Yet what does the reviewer think of Cousin's resolution of the Trinity, as cited some pages back, in his own language, into God, nature, and humanity? He says God is triple. "Cest-à-dire, à la fois Dieu, nature, et humanité." Is that in consonance with Catholic theology?
Then, of the Word, after having proved in his way that the ideas of the true, the beautiful, and the good are necessary and absolute ideas, and identified them with the impersonal reason, and the impersonal reason with the Logos, he asks what then? Are they God? No, gentlemen, they are not God, he answers, but the Word of God, thus plainly denying the Word of God to be God. Does that prove he knew intimately Catholic theology? What says the reviewer of Cousin's doctrine of inspiration and revelation? That doctrine is, that inspiration and revelation are the spontaneous operations of the impersonal reason as distinguished from the reflective operations of the personal reason, which is pure rationalism. Is that Catholic theology, or does it indicate much knowledge of Catholic theology, to say it is in consonance with that theology?
In his criticism on the Alexandrians or Neoplatonists, he blames them for representing the multiple, the finite, what they call creation, as a fall, and for not placing them on the same line with unity, the infinite, or God considered in himself. Is that in accordance with Catholicity, or is it a proof of his knowledge of Catholic theology to assert that it is, and to challenge the world to prove the contrary? But enough. No Catholic theologian, not dazzled by Cousin's style, or carried away by his glowing eloquence and brilliant generalizations, can read his philosophical works without feeling that he was no Christian believer, and that he neither knew nor respected Catholic faith or theology. In his own mind he reduced Catholic faith to the primitive beliefs of the race, inspired by the impersonal reason, and as he never contradicted these as he understood them, he persuaded himself that his philosophy did not impugn Christianity and the church.
9. The reviewer says:
"One more extract, by way of capping the climax. Seemingly ignorant of Cousin's criticism upon De Bonald's now exploded theory of language, and his exposition of De Biran's, the critic thinks, 'He would have done well to have studied more carefully the remarkable work of De Bonald; had he done so, he might have seen that the reflective reason cannot operate without language.' Has this man not read what Cousin has written, on the origin, purpose, uses, and effects of language, that he represents him as believing that the reflective reason can operate without language, without signs!" (P. 547.)
If M. Cousin maintains that the reflective reason cannot operate without language, as in some sense he does, it is in a sense different from that in which we implied he had need to learn that fact. We were objecting to the spiritualism—we should say intellectism, or noeticism—which he professed, that it assumed that we can have pure intellections. Cousin's doctrine is that, though we apprehend the intelligible only on the occasion of some sensible affection, yet we do apprehend it without a sensible medium. This doctrine we denied, and maintained, in opposition, that, being the union of soul and body, man has, and can have in this life, no pure intellections, and that we apprehend the intelligible, as distinguished from the sensible, only through the medium of the sensible or of a sensible representation, as taught by Aristotle and St. Thomas. The sensists teach that we can apprehend only the sensible, and that our science is limited to our sensations and inductions therefrom; the pure transcendentalists, or pure spiritualists, assert that we can and do apprehend immediately the noetic, or, as they say, the spiritual; the peripatetics hold that we apprehend it, but only through the medium of sensible representation; Cousin, in his eclecticism, makes the sensation the occasion of the apprehension of the intelligible, but not its medium. On his theory the sensible is no more a medium of noetic apprehension than on that of the transcendentalists; for the occasion of doing a thing is very different from the medium of doing it.
Now, language is for us the sign or sensible representation of the intelligible, and, as every thought includes the apprehension of the intelligible, therefore to every thought language, of some sort, is essential. The reviewer stumbles, and supposes that we are accusing Cousin of being ignorant of what he is not ignorant, because he supposes that we mean by reflective reason the discursive as distinguished from the intuitive faculty of the soul, which, if he had comprehended at all our philosophy, he would have seen is not the case. Intuition with us is ideal, not empirical. It is not our act, whether spontaneous or reflective, but a divine judgment affirmed by the Creator to us, and constituting us capable of intelligence, of reason, and reasoning. Reflective reason is our reason, and the reflex of the divine judgment, or the divine reason, directly and immediately affirmed to us by the Creator in the very act of creating us. Not only discursion, then, but what both Cousin and the reviewer call intuition, or immediate apprehension, is an operation of the reflective reason. Hence, to the operation of reason in the simple, direct apprehension of the intelligible, as well as in discursion or reasoning, language of some sort, as a sensible medium, is necessary and indispensable. When the reviewer will prove to us that Cousin held, or in any sense admitted this, he will tell us something of Cousin that we did not know before, and we will then give him leave to abuse us to his heart's content.
But we have already dwelt too long on this attempt at criticism on us in the Church Review—a Review from which, considering the general character of Episcopalians, we expected, if not much profound philosophy or any very rigid logic, at least the courtesy and fairness of the well-bred gentleman, such as we might expect from a cultivated and polished pagan. We regret to say that we have been disappointed. It sets out with a promise to discuss the character of Dr. Brownson as a philosopher, and confines itself to a criticism on an article in our magazine without the slightest allusion to a single one of that gentleman's avowed writings. Even supposing, which the Review has no authority for supposing, that Dr. Brownson wrote the article on Cousin, that article was entitled to be treated gravely and respectfully; for no man in this country can speak with more authority on Cousin's philosophy, for no one in this country has had more intimate relations with the author, or was accounted by him a more trust worthy expositor of his system.
As to the reviewer's own philosophical speculations, which he now and then obtrudes, we have, for the most part, passed them over in silence, for they have not seemed to us to have the stuff to bear refuting. The writer evidently has no occasion to pride himself on his aptitude for philosophical studies, and is very far from understanding either the merits or defects of such a man as Victor Cousin, in every respect so immeasurably above him. We regret that he should have undertaken the defence of the great French philosopher, for he had little qualification for the task. He has provoked us to render more glaring the objectionable features of Cousin's philosophy than we wished. If he sends us a rejoinder, we shall be obliged to render them still more glaring, and to sustain our statements by citation of passages from his works, book and page marked, so express, so explicit, and so numerous, as to render it impossible for the most sceptical to doubt the justice of our criticism.
The Tears Of Jesus.
"And Martha said: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. ... Jesus saith to her: Thy brother shall rise again. ... And Mary saith to him: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. ... And Jesus wept."
DISCIPLE.
"Kind Lord,
Dost Martha's love prefer?
Cheer Mary's heavy heart likewise,
And say to her,
Thy brother once again shall rise.
"Why fall those voiceless tears
In sad reply
To her, as if thine ears
Heard not her cry?
"What opens sorrow's deep abyss
At Mary's word?
When Martha spoke, no grief like this
Thy spirit stirred."
MASTER.
"My child,
Remember what I said to her—
The elder of the twain,
When she, the busy minister,
Of Mary did complain.
"Know, they who choose the better part
And love but me alone.
Ask only that my loving heart
Shall make their griefs mine own.
"To Martha is the promise given
That Lazarus shall rise from sleep;
But Mary is the bride of heaven—
With her shall not the bridegroom weep?"
DISCIPLE.
"Kind Lord,
When breaks my heart in agony,
Dost ever shed a tear with me?"
MASTER.
"My Child,
Wilt all things else for me resign?
Wilt others' love for mine forego
Wilt find thy joy alone in me?
Then will I count thy griefs as mine.
And with thy tears my tears shall flow
In loving sympathy."