The Catholic World, Vol. 08, October, 1868, to March, 1869.

by Various

Porter's Human Intellect.

[Footnote 281]

[Footnote 281: The Human Intellect; with an Introduction upon Psychology and the Soul. By Noah Porter, D.D., Clark Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics in Yale College. New York: Scribner & Co. 1868. 8vo, pp. 673.]

In returning to consider this elaborate volume more in detail, we would remark that its author has designed it as a text-book for college students in the class of philosophy, and has proceeded, in writing, on the presumption that they for whom he writes have not the slightest knowledge of the subject. Hence his pages are filled with matters which those who have made some proficiency in the science of the human understanding, and are not wholly ignorant of philosophy, properly so called, are already masters of, and which they cannot even read without great weariness of the body, and do not deem it worth their while to read at all. They feel that to be able to understand the author, it is enough to consult his principles and method, and his definitions of the several topics he takes up and discusses. They have neither the patience to read carefully through a huge volume which is, nine-tenths of it, filled with what is for them mere baby-talk. But the author does not, in composing his work, begin by stating and defining his theses, and then proceeding to elucidate and prove them; but attempts to begin where he supposes the infant begins, and proceeds as a learner, not as a master. Consequently, we are compelled to read his book from the beginning to the end, or not be sure of his doctrine on any one point.

It is true, the author sometimes attempts definitions, but they are seldom scientific, rarely embrace his whole thesis, and nothing else, and are pretty sure to mislead the unfortunate reviewer who relies on them. He seldom abides by his own definitions. In one place he defines consciousness a power, and in another he makes it an act. Sense-perception is defined to be the power by which the intellect gains the knowledge of material objects; then we are told that the object perceived is not the material existence, but "a joint product of the material agent and the sentient organism," a psychical transcript of the material object; while in another part of his work we find him denying that what the mind perceives is such transcript, and refuting, by plain and solid reasons, those who maintain that it is. A really scientific definition is a definition per genus et per differentiam; Dr. Porter sometimes gives the genus and forgets the differentia, and sometimes gives the differentia without giving the genus. He also adopts a terminology in many respects not familiar to us, though it may be to others, without the necessary explanation of the terms he uses: and even when the terms he uses are such as we are familiar with, they are used in a sense to which we are not accustomed. We cannot tolerate subject-object, for subject and object are distinct, and stand the one over against the other. The subject in thought is never the object, and the object is never the subject. Grammar teaches so much. Object-object says no more than simply object. Every object is object, and no object is more or less than object. The object is always real; for it is causative, since in the act of thought it resists the subject, and becomes a counter-pressure. We dislike percepts and concepts; for they are intended to imply that they exist, as it were, independent of the subject and the object, and that the product of subject and object may itself be object. We protest earnestly, in the name both of philology and philosophy, against calling existences, which are nothing except by the creative act of God, beings, and still more earnestly against so calling the products of second or third causes. This might pass with the Gentiles, who substituted generation for creation, but is inexcusable in a Christian philosopher. We know the schoolmen did so, but they are not to be commended for it. They speak of ens simpliciter, ens secundum quid, ens reale, and ens possibile, and even of ens rationis, as if being, the creations of being, mental abstractions, and the creations of fancy and imagination could be all of the same genus or placed in the same category! There is a philosophy in language which can never be disregarded without more or less injury to the philosophy of things.

The professor's method and technology render his work exceedingly difficult to be understood without as much study as would be necessary to construct the philosophy of the human mind without it; and therefore if we should happen at times to miss his meaning, he must blame himself. He is far more intent on explaining the processes of the mind in knowing than on setting forth what it knows. These processes have no interest for us; for they really throw no light on the power or fact of knowledge. We want to know what the author means by philosophy, and what is its value, and we therefore want him to speak as the professor, not as the pupil. We have no disposition to waste our time and weary the flesh, even, in reading the mass of stuff which he writes and which tells us nothing we want to know. But enough of this.

The professor divides, not very scientifically, his work into four parts.

Part I. treats of Presentation and Presentative Knowledge;
Part II., of Representation and Representative Knowledge;
Part III., of Thinking and Thought-Knowledge; and
Part IV., of Intuition and Intuitive Knowledge.

He says, p. 77, "The leading faculties of the intellect are three: the presentative or observing faculty, the representative or creative faculty, and the thinking or generalizing faculty. More briefly, the faculty of experience, the faculty of representation, and the faculty of intelligence." But experience is not a faculty; it is the result of the exercise of all our faculties, and a source of intelligence. Intelligence, as a faculty, is the intellect itself; as a fact, it is indistinguishable from experience, which is improperly restricted by some psychologists of the inductive sort to the knowledge of the external world through the senses, but extends to all acquired knowledge, whatever the faculty exercised in acquiring it or the object perceived. The real distinction is not between experience or empirical knowledge and intelligence, but between empirical knowledge or experience and the ideal principles which are given intuitively by the Creator, and neither acquired nor developed by the soul's own action. Distinctions should be real, not arbitrary or abstract.

We are able to know objects of various kinds and sorts, but the knowing is always the same fact, and by the same cognitive faculty, whatever the object known, the order to which it belongs, or the means and conditions of its cognition. The learned professor's division, making four sorts of knowledge, since he makes intuition empirical, or an act of the soul, appears to us, therefore, without any real foundation. All knowledge or actual knowing is presentative, and is in all cases by direct contemplation of the object in the light of ideal intuition. Demonstration only strips the object of its envelopes, removes the prohibentia, and presents it to direct contemplation. In the longest chain of reasoning, each link is, in the empirical sense, intuitively apprehended. The apprehension is always immediate, and the several mental processes serve only to bring the subject and object together, face to face. These processes, however named or whatever their character, never extend the matter of knowledge beyond the objects presented.

The presentative faculty the author subdivides into consciousness and sense-perception. But consciousness is not a presentative faculty, nor a faculty, nor a subdivision of a faculty at all. It is simply the recognition of the soul, as reflected from the object, of herself as subject. At most, it simply presents the subject of the thought. Sense-perception presents only material or sensible objects. The professor's doctrine is then that of Locke, who derives all our ideas from sensation and reflection, and confines all our knowledge to sensibles with the soul and her operations. Reflection only operates on the sense-perceptions without extending the matter of knowledge beyond them. This is pure sensism, which we are somewhat surprised to find held by an eminent professor in Yale College. Does Dr. Porter know his doctrine is sensism, and therefore materialistic? He says, though not truly, we apprehend the soul in consciousness as a spiritual being, but is the soul the only non-sensible he means to assert?

But, as we showed in our former article, the soul recognizes herself only as subject, and therefore only as the correlative of object. She knows her own operations only in the same correlation. Take away the object and you lose the subject or fact of consciousness. This, we fear, the professor does. He defines, p. 131, sense-perception to be "an act of objective knowledge, in which the soul knows and only knows;" but adds, "if the soul knows, it knows some being as its object. But what being does it affirm? We answer, The being which, is the joint product of the material agent and the sentient organism. … In perception proper we do not know the excitant apart, nor do we know the organism apart, only the result of their joint action. This we know as an object, with which the mind is confronted both as a sentient and as a percipient." But as there can be no thought without the conjunction of the intellective subject and the intelligible object, if the mind does not apprehend 'the material object itself, there can be no such joint product as pretended, and, consequently, no object at all. The object then vanishes, and leaves only the subject, which is, we need not say, pure idealism. As the subject is the correlative of object, and recognizes itself only in thinking the object, if the object vanishes, the subject, too, must vanish, and leave behind it only the sensation transformée of Condillac. But as sensation, however transformed, is still sensation, and as sensations are incapable of standing alone, or of subsisting without the subject, the sensations themselves must go, and nihilism alone remains—the result to which all psychologisms and ontologisms are necessarily tending, and in which Sir William Hamilton says all philosophy necessarily ends, if we may trust a passage which we saw quoted from him not long since in The New Englander, by a Princeton professor, in a striking article on The Present State of Philosophy, in which the writer has well stated the problem presented, but which he neither solves nor attempts to solve; a problem, the solution of which is in the ideal formula, or the real synthesis of principles of things and of science, of which he seems never to have heard.

The professor draws a proper distinction between sensation as feeling and sensation as perception, but we cannot agree with him that sensation as feeling is an affection of the soul. Those psycho-physiologers make a great mistake who call the body "The House I live in." The union of soul and body is too intimate for that. I am not soul, as distinguished from the body, nor am I body, as distinguished from the soul; but I am the union of the two. A General Council defines the soul to be "forma corporis," the informing and animating principle of the body. Yet there is a distinction between them. We can predicate of the one things which we cannot of the other. There is, indeed, no sensation without thought, or an act of the soul; but the sensation itself, as distinguished from the perception, is felt, not merely localized, in the body, not in the soul. When I feel the twinges of the gout, I feel them, not in my soul, but in my toe. We must distinguish two classes of affections, frequently confounded; the one sensible, of the body, the other spiritual, of the soul. The sensible affections or emotions, such as joy and grief, sorrow and delight, pain and pleasure, are of the body animated and informed by the soul. They indeed imitate in the sensible order the affections of the soul, but have in themselves no moral character. Hence, the masters of spiritual life make no account of what is called sensible devotion, and see in it nothing meritorious, and no reason why the soul, in its itinerary to God, should seek it. But very different is the other class, often called by the same name, and which may or may not be accompanied by sensible emotion. This difference is at once understood by all who have learned to distinguish between the love of the senses and the love of the soul, the love Plato meant when he represented the soul, in his fine poetical way, as having two wings, intelligence and love, on which it soars to the empyreum. This love, in one degree, is chivalric love, which the knight cherishes for his mistress whom he worships as a distant star; in a higher degree, it is heroic love, a love that braves all dangers for the beloved, whether friend or country; in a still higher degree, and informed by grace, it is charity or saintly love, with which the saint burns and is consumed as he contemplates the Beauty of Holiness, or "the First Good and the First Fair." This is not sensible love, and its glory is in struggling against the seductions of the senses, or the flesh, and by the grace of God winning the victory over them, and coming off conqueror through Him who hath loved us and given his life for us.

The professor has entered largely into the physiology of the senses, and the joint action of the soul in the fact of knowledge, and the process of the mind in forming what he calls percepts; but as all he says under these heads, whether true or not true, throws no light on the intellectual act itself, we pass it over, and proceed to his Part II., Representation and Representative Knowledge.

"Representation or the representative power," the author says, p. 248, "may be defined in general [that is, the genus] the power to recall, represent, and reknow objects which have been previously known or experienced in the soul. More briefly, it is the power to represent objects previously presented to the mind." Clearly, then, representation adds nothing to the matter previously presented by the presentative power. But the author continues: "It is obvious that, in every act of this power, the objects of the mind's cognition are furnished by the mind itself, being produced or created a second time by the mind's own energy, and presented to the mind's own inspection. It follows that representation, in its very essence, is a creative or a self-active power."

We cannot say that this is obvious to us. The definition of representation given by the author makes it what, in the language of mortals, is called memory; and we have never learned that memory is a creative power, or that in memory the mind creates the objects it remembers. To recall or to reknow is not to create. Even that the soul is self-active—that is, capable of acting from itself alone—is by no means obvious; nay, is impossible, unless we take the soul to be the first cause, instead of merely a second cause; and, even if it were self-active, it would not follow that it creates. God is self-active because self-existent, or being in its plenitude; but he is not necessarily a creator. He has infinite scope for his infinite activity in himself, and he is free to create or not to create as he pleases. That the mind does not in memory create the objects remembered, is evident from the fact that the facts remembered are, as the author himself admits, facts or objects previously known or experienced. The fact of memory, or the fact remembered, is the same fact that was known in presentation, accompanied by the recognition of it as an object previously present and known, and not now known for the first time. There is no creation a second time any more than there was the first time, or when the object was presented.

The professor says, p. 251, "The objects of the representative power are …. mental objects. They are not real things, nor real percepts, but the mind's own creations after real things. They are spiritual or psychical, not material, entities; but in many cases, they concern material beings, being psychical transcripts of them, believed to be real or possible." Does he mean this as a true description of the facts of memory? Probably not. Then his definition needs amending, for it does not include all that he means by representation. His definition includes only memory; but his description includes, beside memory, reflection, fancy, and imagination, things which have nothing in common except the fact that the mind operates in them all on matters which have been previously presented. Reflection and memory are in no sense creative faculties; fancy and imagination are sometimes so called, but even they do not create their own objects. Reflection is the mind operating on the ideal principles re-presented in language, and in their light, on the facts of experience in their synthetic relations with them. Memory is simply, as a faculty, the power to retain and to re-present, more or less completely and distinctly, the facts of experience. Its objects are those facts themselves, not a mental representation or transcript of them. The author confounds re-presenting with representation. In the one, the object previously presented is re-presented, or presented anew; in the other, the object itself is not presented for more elaborate consideration, but a certain mental transcript, image, or resemblance of it, which is the product of the mind fancying or imagining, yet is never its object in correlation with which it acts. This distinction alone upsets the author's whole theory of science, or Wissenschaftslehre, and renders worse than useless more than nine-tenths of his volume. His whole theory is vitiated by confounding representation, in the sense of showing or exhibiting by resemblance or similitude, with the etymological sense, that of re-presenting, and in taking the representation as the object of the soul in the intellectual act, which it never is. Neither reflection nor memory represents, in his sense of the word, the objects previously presented; they only re-present them.

In point of fact, we never know anything by mental representation; for we either know not at all, or we know the thing itself. Representation only replaces the phantasms and intelligible species of the schoolmen, for ever made away with, we had supposed, by the Scottish school of Reid and Hamilton, and the professor himself has given excellent reasons for not accepting them. Plato, indeed, asserts that we know by similitude, but in a very different sense. The idea is impressed on matter as the seal on wax, and the impression is a perfect fac-simile of the idea; and by knowing the impression, we know the idea impressed. But he never made either the idea or the impress of it on matter the product of the mind itself. He makes either always objective, independent of the mind, and apprehensible by it. In other words, he never held that the mind creates the similitude by which it knows, but, at most, only that by observation the mind finds it. The peripatetics never, again, made their phantasms and intelligible species mental creations, or represented them as furnished by the mind from its own stock; but always held them to be independent of the mind, and furnished to it as the means of apprehending the object. If they had referred their production to the mind itself, they would have called the species intellective, not intelligible species. The soul has, indeed, the faculty of representation; but in representing its correlative object, it is not the representation, but the thing, whatever it may be, that it attempts to represent. The product of the mind may be a representation, but the object of the mind is not. In all the imitative arts, as poetry, painting, sculpture, the artist seeks to represent, but operates always in view of that reality of which he produces the representation or resemblance.

The author himself distinguishes memory from representation, though very indistinctly. "Representation," p. 303> "recalls, memory recognizes." Here he uses representation in the sense of re-presenting; for what is recalled is not the mental representation or semblance, but the object itself; so, really, there is no representation in the case, and the professor should not have treated memory under the head of representation. "I see a face, and I shut my eyes and picture it to myself." This is not an act of representation, but of memory. There is a re-presenting, but no representation, in memory; for, so far as the fact is not reproduced in memory, there is no memory, but simply fancy or imagination. The objects of reflection are simply the objects originally presented with only this difference, that, in presentation, the fact of consciousness is myself as subject knowing, whereas in reflection it is myself as subject reflecting, and, in memory, myself as subject remembering.

Fancy and imagination are, in a loose way, called creative faculties; but properly creative they are not. Creation is production of substantial existences or things from nothing that is, without any materials, by the sole energy of the creator. Fancy and imagination can operate only on and with materials which have been or are presented to the mind. Fancy is mimetic and simply imitates imagination, as throughout the universe the lower imitates the higher, as the universe copies the Creator, or seeks to actualize the type in the Divine mind; and hence St. Thomas says, Deus similitudo est omnium rerum. God creates all things after the type or ideal in his own mind, and idea in mente divina nihil est aliud quam essentia Dei. Hence, man is said to be made after the image and likeness of God, ad imaginem et similitudinem, though he is not the image of God; for that is the Eternal Word, who, St. Paul tells us, is "the brightness of his glory and the express image of his substance," or being. (Heb. i. 3.) Fancy is mimetic, and plays with sensations and sensibles; but though it combines them in its own way, as a winged horse, the objects combined are always objects of experience. Imagination is of a higher order than fancy, and operates on and with objects of experience, sensibles, intelligibles, and the ideal principles intuitively given. It sweeps through the whole range of creation, descends to hell, and rises to heaven; but its objects are always those which have been presented to the mind, which it can only arrange and combine in new forms of its own. But the representations it produces are its products, not its object. In producing them, the mind has a real object as its correlate, as in presentation. Let the professor, then, abandon the absurdity which runs through his book that a mental creation or representation is the object of the soul in producing it. The object of the soul is the object whose activity joined to its own produces it.

Take the artist. The object in his richest and sublimest productions is the beautiful which he sees, which is his soul's vision and his soul's love, and which he seeks to express on canvas, in a statue, a temple, an oration, a poem, or a melody. Tell us not, as so many aesthetic writers do, that the artist projects from his own soul, or creates the beauty which he struggles to express in his work, and which he can never express to his satisfaction. The ideal infinitely transcends the expression. The soul contemplates the beautiful, but does not create it. The beautiful, as Plato somewhere says, "is the splendor of the Good." It is the splendor of the True and the Good, that is, of God; though Gioberti, in his Del Bello, seems to divorce it from the ideal, and, while asserting the reality of the object, would appear to resolve the beautiful into the subjective impression on the sensibility, produced by the apprehension of the object, which supposes that beauty exists only for sensible existences. It is as real as God himself, and as objective as the ideal formula. It is the divine splendor, inseparable from the Divine Being. Everything God has made participates, in a higher or lower degree, of beauty, because it participates of being; but beauty itself in its infinity is only in God himself, which exceeds all the power of men and angels to represent. The artist, by the noetic power of the soul, which, if a true artist, he possesses in a higher degree than ordinary men, beholds, contemplates, and loves it. It is; as we have just said, the vision of his soul and the object of his love. He detects it in creatures, in the region of fancy, in the mind, and in the soul itself, and adores it in the ideal. The power of detecting it in sensibles is fancy; in the ideal, is imagination. In seeking to represent it or express it in his productions, it is the real, the objective, he seeks to express or embody. He may form in his mind a representation of it, but that representation is not the object of the mind in either fancy or imagination, nor is it a pure mental representation, not only because it is formed after the real, but because it is formed only in conjunction with the activity of the real. [Footnote 282]

[Footnote 282: The artist ought always to be highly moral and devout, but whether so or not depends on the motive with which he acts, or purpose for which he seeks to embody the beauty he sees. The relation of aesthetics to ethics, of art to religion is easily understood. Art is not, as some Germans would persuade us, religion, nor is the culture of art true religious worship. Art may be licentious, and is, when it embodies only the sensual passions and affections of our nature, and the more so in proportion to the exquisite touch and skill in the execution. In no case can the brilliancy and perfection of the execution atone for the moral deformity of the object represented. Art which appeals simply to the senses, and inspires only sensible devotion, is not necessarily immoral, but is not positively moral or religious. But art which seeks to embody or express the ideal, the splendor of the real, the true, the good, whether as presented in the ideal intuition, or as participated by the creatures of God, can hardly fail to be moral and religious in its effect as well as in its ideal. God is worshipped in spirit and in truth, even worshipped in his works, for he enters into all his works as their cause, and their being is in him. We praise God in his saints, in all his works of nature or grace. The art is not the worship, but it is an adjunct to worship, and hence religion in all ages has called into its service the highest and richest forms of art.]

These remarks are sufficient to show that all that Dr. Porter says of the faculty of Representation is, when not confused or false, of no moment. He darkens instead of elucidating his subject. We pass on, therefore, to his Part III., on Thinking and Thought-Knowledge.

The mental operations treated by the author under the head of Thinking and Thought-knowledge, are those which Locke calls by the general name of reflection, and are conception, abstraction, or generalization, judgment, reasoning, deductive and inductive, and scientific or systematic arrangement. They are not faculties, but operations of the mind. The proper English name for the faculty on which they depend, so far as usage goes, is not thought, nor the power of thought—for every intellectual act, whether representative or presentative, is a thought—but understanding or reason. The old word was understanding, but it is objectionable, because it includes, according to present usage, only the intellectual activity of the soul, and implies nothing of voluntary activity. Reason is the better term; for it combines both the intellectual and the volitive activity of the soul.

The objection of the professor that "reason is used for the very highest of the rational functions, or else in a very indefinite sense for all that distinguishes man from the brute," does not appear to us to be conclusive. Every intellectual act, the highest as the lowest, is thought, an act of one and the same thinking faculty. The objects and conditions of knowledge may vary, but the faculty of knowledge does not vary with them. Reason is not used in a more indefinite sense when used for all that distinguishes man from the brute, than is thought as used by the professor. Man is well defined to be animal rationale, or rational animal; but this does not mean that man is animal plus reason, but the animal transformed by reason; and hence there is a specific difference between the sort of intelligence which it seems difficult to deny to animals, and the intelligence of man. All human intelligence is rational, the product of reason. Coleridge and our American transcendentalists, after Kant, attempted to distinguish between understanding [Verstand] and reason [Vernunft], and to restrict understanding to that portion of our knowledge which is derived through the senses, and reason to an order of knowledge that transcends all understanding, and to which only the gifted few ever attain. But they have not been successful. Knowledge of the highest objects, as of the lowest, is by the same faculty, and we may still use reason in its old sense, as the subjective principle of all the operations the professor calls thinking.

The word reason is, indeed, used in an objective as well as in a subjective sense. As subjective, it is a faculty of the soul; the objective reason is the ideal formula, and creates and constitutes the subjective reason. Cousin distinguishes between the two, but as between the personal and the impersonal—a mere modal distinction, not a distinction of substance. He identifies the objective reason with the

or Word of God, while it is really identical with the ideal formula, which embraces both being and existences, united and distinguished by the creative act of being, as explained in our former article. This asserts a distinction of subject and of substance between the objective and subjective reason asserted by Cousin. In the objective reason, God, in the subjective, man, is the actor; and there is all the difference of substance between them that there is between God and man, or between real, universal, and necessary being, and finite, contingent existence. They ought not to be both called by the same name, and we ourselves rarely so call them. We ourselves call the objective reason the ideal formula, or, briefly, the ideal; yet good writers and speakers do use the word in both senses. They say, "Man is endowed with reason," or has a "rational nature," in which they employ the term subjectively. They say, also, of such an assertion, "It is unreasonable, or it is contrary to reason;" that is, to the truth, or principle of things, in which they use it objectively, as they do when they speak of the principles affirmed in the ideal formula, and call them the reason, necessary and absolute ideas, or the principles of reason; for nothing necessary or absolute is or can be subjective.

We ourselves use the word in a subjective sense, and understand by it the faculty of reasoning, or the subjective principle of all our mental operations. It is not a simple power, but a complex power, embracing both the percipient and volitive capacities of the soul. In every rational operation of the soul, there is both perception and volition, and it is this fact that distinguishes reason from the simple power of perception, or intellectual apprehension. We see and we look, and we look that we may see; we hear and we listen, and listen that we may hear. The looking and the listening are peculiarly rational acts, in which the soul voluntarily, or by an act of the will, directs her intellectual capacities to a special intellectual purpose or end. This voluntary activity, or direction of the capacity to know, must not be confounded with free will; it is the voluntarium of the theologians, distinguished, on the one hand, from spontaneity, and on the other, from the liber arbitrium, or free will, which is the faculty of electing or choosing between right and wrong, and implies, whichever it chooses, the power to choose the contrary. It is the principle of all moral accountability. The voluntarium is a simple, voluntary activity, or power of directing our attention to this or that intellectual object, or of using the cognitive power in the service of science. The reason may be defined, then, the soul's faculty of using her intellectual and volitive powers for the explication and verification of the knowledge furnished by presentation.

With these preliminary remarks we proceed to consider some of the mental operations which give us what Professor Porter calls Thought-Knowledge. We do not question the fact of these operations, nor their importance in the development of our rational life; what we deny is, that they are a power or faculty of the mind, and that in performing them they are objects of the mind, or that they add anything to the matter of our knowledge.

The professor says, p. 383, "The power of thought [reason] as a capacity [faculty] for certain psychological processes, is dependent for its exercise and development on the lower powers of the intellect. These furnish the materials for it to work with and upon. We must apprehend the individual objects by means of the senses and consciousness [pure sensism] before we can think these objects." So in consciousness and sense-perception we do not think, and we must apprehend sensibles before we can think them! To intellectually apprehend an object is to think it. Intellectual apprehension and thought are one and the same fact. The professor continues, "We can classify, explain, and methodize only individual things, and these must first be known by sense and consciousness before they can be united and combined into generals." Here are two errors and one truth. The first error is in regarding consciousness as a cognitive power or faculty, and the second is in confining the individual things to sensibles, or the material world. We know in presentative knowledge not only the sensible but the supersensible, the intelligible, or ideal. The ideal principles cannot be found, obtained, or created by the mind's own activity, and are apprehended by the mind only as they are given intuitively by the act of the Creator; but being given, they are as really apprehended and known by the mind as any sensible object; nay, are what the mind apprehends that is most clear and luminous, so luminous that it is only by their light that even sensibles are mentally apprehensible or perceptible. The one truth is that the objects of the soul in her operations must first be known either by perception or intuition before they can be classified, explained, and methodized. Hence the operations of which the author treats under this head do not extend our knowledge of objects. They are all reflective operations, and reflection can only re-present what has already been presented.

The professor is right in maintaining that only individual objects are apprehensible, if he means that we apprehend things only in individuo or in concreto; for this is what we have all along been insisting on against him. Things are not apprehensible in general, but in the concrete. Hence Rosmini's mistake in making the first and abiding object of the intellect ens in genere, which is a mere possible ens, and no real being at all. It is simply conception or abstraction formed by the mind operating on the intuition of real being, which never is nor can be abstracted or generalized. Yet the author has argued under both presentative knowledge and representative knowledge that the mind, sometimes with, and sometimes without, anything distinct from and independent of itself, creates its own object; and that the object, as well as the act, may be purely psychical. Thus he tells us that in sense-perception we do not perceive the material thing itself, but the joint product of the material agent and the sentient organism; and that in representation the object represented may be unreal, chimerical, and exist only in the soul, and for the soul alone. And he dwells with great unction on the relief and advantage one finds in escaping from the real world to the unreal which the soul creates for herself. True, he says that whatever the object, real or unreal, abstract or concrete, it is apprehensible only as an individual object; but the unreal, the chimerical, the abstract, is never individual. Why does he call conceptions concepts, if not because he holds the conception is both the act and the object of the mind in conceiving? And does he hold the concept to be always individual, never general? Conception, in his system, is always a generalization, or a general notion, formed by the mind, and existing only in the mind. How, then, can it be an object of the mind? He says truly the object is individual, but "the concept (p. 391) is uniformly general." And yet, in the very first paragraph on the next page, he calls it an object of cognition! Farther on, he says, "The concept is a purely relative object of knowledge," whatever that may mean; and in the same section, section 389, he speaks of it "as a mental product and mental object.'" To our understanding, he thus contradicts himself.

Yet we hold that whatever the mind cognizes at all, it cognizes in the concrete, as an individual object. And therefore we deny that the ideas of the necessary, the universal, of necessary cause, and the like, which the author calls intuitions, and treats as first principles, necessary assumptions, abstract ideas, etc., are abstractions, mental conceptions, or generalizations; for there are no concretes or individual objects from which they can be abstracted or generalized. As we really apprehend them, when affirmed in the ideal formula by the divine act, and as we cannot apprehend what is neither being nor existence, as the author himself says, though continually asserting the contrary; and as every existence is a finite contingent existence, they must be real, necessary, and universal being. They cannot be generalizations of being; for nothing is conceivable more general and universal than being. Being, taken in its proper sense, as the ens simpliciter of the schoolmen, is itself that which is most individual and, at the same time, the most general, the most particular and the most universal. These so-called necessary ideas, then, are being; and in apprehending them as intuitively affirmed, we do really apprehend being. Hence, as being, real and necessary being, is God, whom the theologians call Ens necessarium et reale, God, in affirming the ideal formula, intuitively affirms himself, and we really apprehend him, not as he is in himself, in his essence, indeed, but as being, the ideal or the intelligible, that is, as facing our intelligence; or, in other words, we apprehend him as the subject of the judgment, Ens creat existentias, or as the subject of the predicate existences, united and distinguished by his creative act, the only real, as the only possible, copula.

The author makes man the analogon of God, and, indeed, God in miniature, or a finite God, and gravely tells us, p. 100, that "we have only to conceive the limitations of our being removed, and we have the conception of God." But as we are not being, but existence, we are finite and limited in our very nature; remove the limitations, and we are not God, but nothing. Eliminate the finite, says Père Gratry, and you have God, in the same way and by the same process that the mathematician has his infinitesimals. But this process of elimination of the finite gives the mathematician only the infinitely less than the finite number or quantity, and it would give the theologian not the infinitely greater but the infinitely less than the finite existence. Besides, the process could at best give us not God in his being, but a mere abstract God, existing only as a mental generalization. The universal cannot be concluded from the particular, nor the necessary from the contingent, because, without the intuition of the universal and the necessary, we have and can have no experience of the particular and the contingent—a fact we commend to the consideration of the inductive theologians.

As the conception is always general, it can never be the object of the mind in the fact of thought. It is a product of the mind operating on the individual object or objects with which the mind has thought, and is never the object itself. The same may be said of generalization, abstraction, and every form of reasoning. But if this be so, in what are conceptions, abstractions, etc., known? If they are known at all, they must be objects of knowledge; if not known at all, how can we think or speak of them? They are known in knowing their concretes, as the author himself tells us. As concepts, abstractions, generalizations, or general notions, they do not exist in nature, and cannot be known or thought. But they exist as qualities or properties of things, and are known in knowing the things themselves. Thus we know round things; all round things have the same property of being round; we may, then, consider only this property common to all round things, and form the general conception of roundness; but we do not see or apprehend roundness, and the object of thought is always the round thing. So of all so-called universals that are abstractions, conceptions, or generalizations. The object known is the concrete; the abstraction, abstracted from it, being nothing, is not known or even thought.

But Cousin, in his Philosophie Scholastique, has very properly distinguished general conceptions or general notions from genera and species. The former are real only in their concretes, and knowable only in them; the latter are real, and actually exist a parte rei. Genus has relation to generation, and is as real as the individual, for it generates the individual. Hence, we cannot agree with Leibnitz, when he makes the genus or species consist in resemblance, and declares that resemblance real. The individual does not merely mimic the genus, but is produced by it. The genus is always causative in relation to the species, and the species, in relation to the individual. The intelligible is always causative in relation to the sensible, which copies or imitates it. The genus is not the possibility of individuals, nor are they its realization. It is not a property or a quality of men as individuals, for it is, in the order of second causes, the cause producing them, and therefore cannot be generalized from them, or be a general notion or conception, like roundness, the generalization or abstract of round. Without the genus there could be no generation, as without a generator there could be no genus. Yet, though genera and species, the only universals, properly so-called, are, as the old realists held, real, existing a parte rei, and are distinguishable from the individuals, as the generator from the generated, the species from the specificated; they are not separable, and do not exist apart from them. Adam was an individual, lived, acted, sinned, repented, and died, as an individual man; yet was he the generic, as well as individual, man; for he was the whole human race, and the progenitor of all men that have been born or are to be born.

But while we adopt, in relation to genera and species, the doctrine of the mediaeval realists, we hold with regard to other so called universals with St. Thomas, who says they exist in mente cum fundamento in re. The fundamentum in re of conceptions, abstractions, and generalizations is precisely the individual objects apprehended by the mind from which reason abstracts or generalizes them. The only point which we now make against the author is that the object of thought or knowledge is not the conception or notion, but the object from which the reason forms it; and that in it nothing is thought beyond that object. Philosophy has been divested of its scientific character, made infinitely perplexing and most difficult to be understood, as well as utterly worthless, by being regarded as the science, not of things, but of these very conceptions, abstractions, and general notions, which, apart from their individuals or concretes, are pure nullities. We insist on this, because we wish to see philosophy brought back to the real, to objects of experience in their relation to the ideal formula; and our principal quarrel with the professor is, that his philosophy is not real, is not the science of realities, but of conceptions and abstractions.

We can hardly pause on what the professor says of judgment and the proposition. We can only remark in passing that every thought, every perception, even, is a judgment—a judgment that the object thought or perceived is real or really exists. Every affirmation is a judgment, and every judgment is an affirmation; for denials are made only by affirming the truth denied. Pure negations are unintelligible, present no counteraction to the mind, and cannot be thought. "The fool hath said in his heart, God is—not." It is only by asserting that God is that we can deny that he is. Every negation is the contradiction of what it affirms. So-called negative judgments are really affirmative. We do not mean that denials cannot be made, for we are constantly making them; but they can be made only by affirming the truth; and the denial that transcends the truth affirmed in the denial is simply verbal, and no real denial at all. Universal negation is simply impossible; and hence when we have shown that any system of philosophy leads logically to nihilism, or even universal scepticism, we have refuted it. Logicians tell us that of contradictories one must be false; but it is equally just to say, that of contradictories one must be true; for truth cannot contradict itself, and only truth can contradict falsehood.

But we pass on to Reasoning, which the professor holds to be mediate judgment, and to which we hold all the reflective operations of reason may be reduced. What a mediate judgment is, we do not know. Reasoning may be necessary as the means and condition of judging in a certain class of cases, but the judgment itself is in all cases direct. The error of the professor here, as throughout the whole of this Part III., and, indeed, of his whole treatise, is that he treats every question from the point of view of conception, or the general notion, instead of the point of view of reality, as he cannot help doing as an inductive psychologist.

Reasoning is a reflective operation. It operates on the matter presented by ideal intuition and experience; it clears up, explains, verifies, and classifies what is intuitively affirmed, together with what experience presents. Its instrument is language. We can think without language, and so far De Bonald was wrong, unless he understood, as the professor does, by thought, an act of reflection; but we cannot reflect or reason without language of some sort to re-present to the mind's contemplation the ideal or intelligible intuition. This re-presentation is not an act of the soul herself, nor the direct and immediate act of the Creator, as is the ideal intuition. It is effected only by language in which the ideal or intelligible is embodied and represented, and of which it is the sensible sign or representation. In other words, the ideal is an object of reflection only as taught through the medium of language; for we must bear in mind that man is not pure spirit or pure intelligence, but spirit united to body, and that he must have some sort of sensible representation in order to reflect. Hence the peripatetic maxim, nihil est in intellectu, quod non prius fuerit in sensu, which does not mean that only sensibles are cognizable, but that nothing can be reflectively thought, or as the Italians say, re-thought, (ripensare,) without sensible representation. That God is, can be proved with certainty by reason; for we have immediate intuition of that which is God in the intuition of real and necessary being; but we cannot reach the conclusion that the intuitively affirmed object really is God without reflecting on the intuition, and this we cannot do unless it is re-presented or held up to our contemplation in language, or without its being sensibly represented by the word God. Language is the necessary instrument of reason; we cannot reason without it, and only rational existences have language properly so called. No animal deprived of "the discourse of reason" has even articulation.

Those philosophers, or pretended philosophers, who regard language either as a human invention or as the spontaneous production of human nature, have never duly considered its office in the development of thought, and in the rational operations of the soul. Men could not have invented language without reflection, and without language they cannot reflect. It needs language to be able to invent language. The other theory is no better. The soul does not secrete language as the liver secretes bile, for language has in it more than human nature. The spontaneous productions of nature may be less than nature, but cannot be more. There is a philosophy in language broader and deeper than human thought, a philosophy that embraces elements which are known only by revelation, and which human nature does not contain. All language is modelled after the ideal formula. Its essential elements are subject, predicate, and copula, or the noun, adjective, and verb. The verb and adjective may be, and often are, combined in the same word, but they can be resolved always into the predicate and copula. The copula is always the verb to be, or its equivalent in other languages than our own, and this verb is the only verb in any language.

The verb to be is precisely the name of God himself, the SUM QUI SUM. We cannot make, then, a single assertion but by the Divine Being, and he enters as the copula into every one of our judgments without which no affirmation can be expressed. But God is supernatural, and is the author of nature; the ideal formula which is repeated in every judgment is not contained in human nature, is not in the human mind as in its subject, but is above our nature, and by affirming itself creates our nature, both physical and intellectual. How then could our nature, operating simply as second cause, produce spontaneously language which in its essential nature expresses what is beyond and above itself? Men, especially philosophers, or rather theorizers, have corrupted and still continue to corrupt language, as we can see in the book before us; but we have never yet heard of any one by the spontaneous action of nature secreting or producing a language, or of any one having a language without being taught it. Yet nature is all to-day that it ever was, and as fresh, as vigorous, as prolific. Even the fall has not deprived it of any of its primitive faculties, capacities, properties, or tendencies. If language is a spontaneous production of human nature, we ought to have some instances of children growing up and speaking a rich and philosophical language without having ever learned it. For ourselves, we have a huge distrust of all those theories which assume that nature could and did do in the past what she does not and cannot do in the present. Our savants employ themselves in seeking the types of domestic animals in the wild races; why not seek the type of the wild races in the domestic? Why suppose man could and once did domesticate races which he finds it difficult, if not impossible, to domesticate now? We do not believe much in the modern doctrine of progress, but we believe just as little in the wonderful superiority of nature and men in ante-historical times, which is sometimes assumed, especially by the champions of progress.

Language is neither a human invention nor a natural production, but was created by God himself and infused into man along with the affirmation of the ideal formula, when he made him and placed him in the Garden, and it has been perpetuated by tradition, or by being handed down from father or rather mother to child. It comes to us from the hand of the Creator; he who made man gave him speech. We can explain the origin of language in no other way, as we can explain the origin of man only by saying with the catechism, God made him. As language is the instrument of reason, and re-presents to his contemplation the ideal which the Creator fitted it to symbolize, its corruption or confusion has a most disastrous effect on philosophy. It was confounded at Babel, and men lost the unity of speech, and with it the unity of the ideal, and were dispersed. The Gentiles lost the unity of language, and they lost with it the unity of the ideal, or the copula of the divine judgment, and labored to explain, as our modern savants are laboring to explain, the existence and laws of the universe without the creative act of God. Language, corrupted re-presented to the ancient Gentiles, and as it does to our modern physiologists and psychologists, the ideal only in a mutilated form, and hence the fatal error of Gentilism and of modern so-called science, which asserts pantheism. It is necessary, in order to have a true philosophy, to have some means of preserving the purity and infallibility of speech, and at no former period was such means more necessary than it is now.

The instrument of reasoning is language; its form is the syllogism, which is given in the ideal formula. All the matter of knowledge is given in presentation, and the syllogism does not advance it; but it explains, distinguishes, arranges it according to the real relations of the objects known, clears up what is obscure, and verifies what is uncertain, doubtful, by reducing the whole to its principle or principles. The principle and model of the syllogism are in the ideal. Being and existences are the extremes, and the creative act is the medius terminus. The major represents being, the minor existences, and the middle term produces the conclusion. To this regular form of the syllogism every form of argument is reducible. If the major is universal, and the minor is proved, the conclusion is necessary and apodictic.

The modes in which reason operates are two, deduction and induction, or analysis and synthesis. Induction is simple analysis, or what Kant calls analytic judgment, and simply dissects the subject, analyzes it, and brings out to our distinct view what is in it. It is never illative, but always explicative, and enables us to distinguish the part in the whole, the property in the essence, or the effect in the cause. Dr. Porter entirely mistakes it in supposing it to be an imperfect induction. There is nothing inductive in it. Induction is what Kant calls a synthetic judgment a posteriori, and adds an element not contained in the subject analyzed. In synthetic judgments a posteriori, the added element is taken from experience; in synthetic judgments a priori, the added element is from the ideal formula, intuitively given, or rather, the ideal formula is that into which what Kant calls synthetic judgments a priori are resolvable. The syllogism is used in deduction and in induction; yet it is not properly either, but is productive. As being creates existences, so the major through the middle term unites the minor to itself and produces the conclusion. Such men as Sir William Hamilton and J. Stuart Mill, who reject the middle term, and hold the major may be a particular proposition, are misled by their philosophy, which excludes the creative act of God both from the universe and from science. No man who has a false or defective philosophy can understand logic as a science. Pantheism, which excludes the creative act, is the supreme sophism. It is not easy to say what Dr. Porter's views of logic, either as a science or as an art, really are.

The chief complaint against the professor here is, that he makes reasoning turn on the laws of the mind, on conceptions, and general notions, and reflecting, as logic, only the relations and forms of the creations or products of the mind, instead of the relations and forms of things. He studies everything from the point of view of the mental act, instead of studying them from the point of view of the ideal intuition, which is the point of view of God himself. He therefore gives in his science, not things as they are, but as the mind conceives them.

The conceptions and general notions play, no doubt, an important part in the process of reasoning, but they play not the chief part, nor do they impose upon logic the laws it must follow. The categories are not general conceptions or general notions, formed by generalizing individuals or particulars. M. Cousin assumes that he has reduced them to two, substance and cause, or being and phenomenon: but as with him substance is a necessary cause, and as phenomenon is only an appearance or mode of substance, his reduction is really to one, the category of substance, which it is needless to say is pure pantheism. They, however, may be reduced to the three terms of the ideal formula; for whatever is conceivable is being, existence, or the creative act of being. The categories are not, then, merely formal, simply conceived by the mind cum fundamento in re; but are the ideal principles of things themselves. Take the categories of space and time, which seem to puzzle the author as they have puzzled many greater and wiser men than he. Space is ideal and actual. Ideal space is the power or ability of God to externize his act, that is, to create or act ad extra; and actual space is the relation of coexistence of his externized acts or creatures. Ideal space pertains to being, is being itself; actual space being a real relation between creatures, and, like all relations, really existing in the related, comes under the head of existences, and is joined to being as well as distinguished from it by the creative act. The reason of space and time is the same. Time also is ideal and actual. Actual time is the relation of succession, and ideal time is the ability of God to create existences that, as second causes, are explicated and completed successively, or reach their end progressively. Ideal time is God. Actual time is creature, since all relations really exist in the related. The difficulty which so many eminent men have felt with regard to these two categories, evidently reducible to the terms of the ideal formula, grow out of their attempt to abstract them, the ideal from God, and the actual from the related, whether existences or events. Take away the body and the space remains, says Cousin. Certainly; because the intuition of the ability of God to externize his act—that is to create—remains. So of time. So of the infinite lines of the geometrician. No actual line is infinite, and the conception of its infinity is based on the intuition of the infinite power or ability of God, the real ground on which the line, when conceived to extend beyond the actual, is projected.

There are various other points presented by the learned professor in this part and in Part IV. on which we intended to comment, but we have exhausted our space and the patience of our readers. We have said enough, however, to show that he recognizes intuition only as an act of the soul, and therefore, however honorable his intention, since he fails to recognize ideal intuition, which is the act of God, he fails to get beyond experience, to extend science beyond the sensible or material world with the operations of the soul on sensations, and therefore cannot be followed as a safe guide in the philosophy of the human mind. He has learning, industry, and even philosophical instincts, but is ruined by his so-called Baconian method.

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Heremore-Brandon; Or,
The Fortunes Of A Newsboy.

Chapter VI.

I could not tell you one half the projects Dick formed and rejected as entirely hopeless before he at last succeeded in inducing a gentleman who had been very kind to him to make an offer to Mr. Brandon of some place in his office, which, while it would not be more than, with his now broken energies and failing health, he could easily perform, if he had the disposition, would give him something to help him live upon.

Soon after this offer was made and (with much grumbling) finally accepted, Dick, without really seeking it, found himself becoming known to Mr. Brandon; and, thanks to the patience with which he listened to that gentleman's railings against the world, and his own hard fortunes in it, taken into favor. It was a very sad sight for a hopeful, self-respecting, God-fearing Catholic like Dick to see this querulous man, from whom all vigorous spirit seemed to have fled, brooding over his losses, instead of holding up his head, and bravely going forth to make the most of what was left; a sad thing to hear these miserable repinings in which there was never a thought of gratitude for the long years of comfort and plenty with which God had blessed him. But Dick bore it patiently, and sought in every way which his simple experience could devise to draw him from his despondency; to inspire him with some trust in God. It was, however, without any apparent success, other than greater condescension from Mr. Brandon, who, at last, weak and nervous, would gladly avail himself of Dick's young strength in his walks home.

And so, in time, that which had seemed the impossible came to pass very naturally. Mr. Brandon urged Dick to enter the house, and he was received as a guest in Miss Brandon's home. Home it must be called, I suppose; though it was a dreary, desolate room, with "boarding-house" stamped in glaring letters all over the grey walls and badly-assorted furniture. Even Dick could realize that it must be a very different home from any which Miss Brandon had ever seen before; for it was far different from the only pretty rooms he had ever entered—those dear, clean, sweet rooms at Mrs. Alaine's.

"Mr. Heremore, Mary," was his introduction, accompanied by a patronizing wave of Mr. Brandon's hand. Do not be surprised; you know I have never said—not even in his days of prosperity—that he was a gentleman—"Mr. Heremore, Mary; a young man who has thought it not worth while to be unkind and disrespectful to an old man who has lost every thing."

"I have heard my father speak of you often," said Mary very quietly; but in such gentle tones that Dick wondered how any man could count himself poor—knowing her.

"I really felt very nervous," Mr. Brandon further explained, "about coming home alone. I have been so very uncomfortable to-day. But that's of no consequence, of course, now."

"I am very glad you brought Mr. Heremore," Mary answered readily, and with more warmth than before; and I am sure he was very careful of you."

After that, conversation became somewhat easier; although Dick felt half like an impostor, and could not do much to second Miss Brandon's efforts to make the hour go by pleasantly. She had several albums and scrap-books of engravings with which she tried to entertain him; but to do his best, he could think of little else than the languid, weary manner which had replaced the quick steps and stately sweetness he had known of old. When Mr. Brandon left them for a few minutes, she turned with animation and said:

"Mr. Heremore, I must thank you for your kindness to my father. I would not have him suppose I consider it kindness, but in my heart I know it is, and I know you mean it as such. Since things have gone wrong with him, he seems to have changed his whole nature; he does not appear to have any courage to stand against the tide. I suppose it would have been very different if Mrs. Brandon had lived; a wife would have kept his spirits up as no one else can."

"I know," stammered Dick, not knowing what to say under the gaze of her beautiful eyes, "I know—that the death of your mother last summer—"

"Mrs. Brandon, you mean," she interrupted in her quietest tones, "that is, my father's second wife. This Mrs. Brandon was not my mother; my own mother died long ago." This so coldly that, for some inexplicable reason, Dick fancied she was glad to correct him.

"You were in the carriage at the same time," said Dick, feeling that he must say something.

"Yes," answered Mary, "but I remember little about it; as soon as we found the horses were running away, Mrs. Brandon became very much alarmed, and almost before I could say a word to her, we were thrown out, and were both picked up senseless. She was not conscious of anything again. All these things together have completely unnerved poor papa, and I really feel very grateful to any one who is interested in him. His old friends have received but little encouragement to visit us here, although it is only a fancy of papa's, I am sure, that they feel any difference, and he is often quite lonely."

Mr. Brandon soon returned, and seeming to wish his daughter's undivided attention, Dick rose and said, "good-night."

It need hardly be said that he was after this more enthusiastically devoted to their fortunes than ever before. He spent a few hours there at different times during the winter and spring, and soon found himself at ease in that dreary room; but as he knew Mary better, his reverence for her, while it diminished not in the least, became a deep and fervent feeling, which kept her always in his thoughts. She, too, seemed to regard him with very kindly feelings, and the sympathy between them was so strong that it bore down many of their differences of association and education, and each was astonished to find an unexpectedly ready understanding in the other. But as yet Dick had said nothing of the little girl on the steps who gave him her candy one cold Christmas morning years ago.

Once at New-Year's, and again on the 22d of February, holidays on which he was free, Dick had been down to the cottage in the country, and had seen Rose and the boys skate and make snow-houses, and spent two of the coziest, happiest evenings of his life around the bright fire, talking pleasant talk with those dear people, among whom alone he realized the faintest idea of the word home. Now time had gone by so rapidly that he was to spend a whole week there as he had the year before. But not exactly the same; for the last time he had been there a clear, bright day in February, when they were all coming home from the skating-pond together—it had chanced that he and Rose had fallen far in the rear of the children, who, having skated since one o'clock in the keen air, professed themselves "ever so hungry," and, as Dick would not hurry with them, walked off in disgust, each declaring to the other that they didn't like Mr. Dick, half so much this time as before; he was "no good" at all.

"What a magnificent day!" Dick said, for about the tenth time, as he tramped by Rose's side through the crisp snow, just as the sun was going down in one great glow before them. "I think I never saw a more splendid winter day in all my life."

Not thinking of any addition to this speech, and not being able with truth to contradict it, Rose kept on her way, her neat little boots cutting the snow, and making, Dick thought, the most delicious music there ever was. Rose looked especially charming that afternoon; from the very crown of her head, with her wealth of golden hair, only half hidden by her felt hat, to the dainty little boots before mentioned, which her warm skating dress, looped up, did not even affect to conceal, Rose was charming. Dick thought that her very cloak seemed to nestle more lovingly to her plump figure than another's would; and as for the tiny muff, Uncle Carl's present, and the blue silk handkerchief knotted around her neck, Dick was certain that Stewart never sold anything half so pretty. So, if his lips talked about the weather, it is hardly surprising that his eyes embraced another subject; and I question if, when her demure glances met his gaze, Rose needed words to tell her its meaning; for, after all, are words, the dearest and sweetest that come from the lips, any dearer or sweeter than those the eyes speak?

But whatever she knew, Rose was a true little woman, and showed no sign.

"This is the place where Mrs. Brandon was thrown," she said, as they passed a broad street cutting across the narrow road they were following. "Just by those trees. They say the horses could have been managed only for her screams; a woman who screams at such a time must have very little sense."

"I think so," answered Dick, looking sadly toward the place Rose pointed out.

"Miss Mary behaved wonderfully well," continued Rose, with one quick look into Dick's face as they passed on. "She was perfectly calm, and tried to quiet Mrs. Brandon. She was very much hurt herself."

"Yes, so I have heard; she shows it, too; you would hardly recognize her now, she is so thin and altered."

"But, of course, she is more beautiful for that," said little, plump Rose, who had a great idea of delicate, fragile girls.

"Not more beautiful, exactly," answered Dick, who had not a great idea of delicate, fragile girls, "but it makes one feel for her more."

"I know you feel for her very much," said Rose.

"I have always honored her very much," answered Dick warmly. "It almost seems presumption for me to say I feel for her; but I do, indeed I do."

"I am sure of it," Rose responded with great warmth, and then there was silence for a long time.

Rose broke it with a little trembling in the first word or two at her own audacity, but gathering courage as she went on: "I knew you did when you were here last summer; then I heard of her father's failure, and then it seemed more natural; and—now—I am very glad for your sake. I hope you will be very happy. I do, indeed."

Now, Dick was no fool, and when the strangeness of this speech caused him to look harder than ever into the glowing but demure little face by the side of him, he felt for the moment a great inclination not to say a word; for provokingly innocent as she looked, he did not believe she was at all so ignorant of the real state of things. Rose felt the moment's hesitation, and, poor little thing, got frightened at her own conjuring, which fright so changed the expression of her face that Dick's hesitation vanished, and he answered:

"Of course I know what you mean, Rose, although it is so strange. I do not think of such a thing—it would be very strange if I did. You know better, don't you, Rose?"

Rose looked up with a careless answer, but thought better of it, and said nothing.

"You never did really think it, did you, Rose?" he added, pursuing his advantage, and repeating it until there was no escape for Rose, who had to answer truthfully, "No." She having made this concession, he made one, and told her the story of his boyish days, and of the Christmas day when he first saw Mary Brandon. He had not felt very easy about Rose's opinion of much he had to tell her, and was greatly relieved when he saw all her assumed carelessness depart, and that she listened to him with earnest sympathy. He was so encouraged by the gentle, womanly interest she gave him that he did not stop with the history of his boyish days, but went on to narrate a later experience; very few words sufficed for this. When he told it, Rose understood very well why, if Mary Brandon were a queen upon her throne, she would be no more than friend or sister to him.

After that, there seemed no more to be said; for they finished the walk in the still winter twilight almost in silence.

That was in February, when Dick went down to Carlton to spend Washington's birthday, and it inaugurated a new era for Will. Rose had a sudden interest in the post-office, which was a long walk from the cottage, and, in rainy weather or on very busy days, was beyond her reach. I believe all her spare pennies went into Will's coffers about that time, and I am sure all her cakes and apples went into his possession; but, for all that, he was an ungrateful page, and wished "there wasn't no post-offices in the world," which opinion Will may alter when his own time comes.

This was in February, and it was now August, and Dick was going down for a week, one whole week in the country. Rose was at the gate as she had been a year ago; but she did not say "you are welcome," as she had said before. The children took him into favor when they found he had not come empty-handed, but had brought the books for Will, the doll for Trot, and just such toys for the rest as were most desired; and though many times in their rambles Will did have his patience sorely tried by "Mr. Dick's everlasting lagging," he was, on the whole, admitted to be an acquisition. I believe, though, that Rose's bosom-friend, Clara Hays, who was always urged to be of every party, and sadly neglected when she got there, was the greatest sufferer; it is not every day you see lovers who are perfectly well-bred and considerate for everybody. My excuse for Rose and Dick is, that they only had a week, and a week is such a short time when one is very happy!

Dick's week was nearly at its end when his birthday, his twenty-first birthday came, and his good friends made a little rejoicing for him in their homely way. It was a very beautiful August day, and was celebrated like a holiday by all the family. Yet it was not exactly a cloudless day for Dick, though it was the first birthday of his that had ever received the slightest notice from any one, and ought to have made him radiantly happy. He had received a present made for him with her own hands, with no one could tell how many loving thoughts of him worked in it, from his own dear Rose. His little table was covered with the first keepsakes he had ever received from any one, and still he was not happy. Among the treasures on his little table there stood one—which reminds me that I should not have called the others the first—from the mother whose face he could not remember, and what might it not contain? Hitherto he had thought but little of the box of which Carl spoke so slightingly years ago; but now that the day of opening it had come, he grew really afraid of it. He remembered stories of vengeance bequeathed from the grave, of crimes to be expiated by the children of the perpetrators years afterward, of fearful confessions of sin and sorrow and wrong in countless forms; and Dick, in the first glow of his first joyous days, did not know how he could bear even a mist upon the rising sun of his happiness.

"Not until the last thing to-night," he said finally, laying down the box and turning away from the table. "I will be happy to the last minute," and he went down to ask Rose to walk with him in the beautiful twilight after tea. It was earlier than he had thought when he went down, and Rose was reading in the shadow of the porch, or seeming to read, for a book was in her hand, and not, as he supposed, engaged in getting tea.

"I did not suppose I should find you here," said Dick.

"Shall I go away?" she asked, looking up and smiling.

"Yes, do," he replied, sitting by her, "you know there's nothing would please me better." But for all he tried to be gay, Rose saw that the shadow she had observed over him all day was deeper than before.

"Dear friend," she said, softened and made earnest at once, "something troubles you to-day."

"Yes, dear Rose, I am troubled to-day in spite of all the kindness shown me. My little box troubles me; I am afraid to open it."

"Then the best thing is to do it at once, is it not? One only makes such things worse by thinking about them."

"I know it. No, I will not open it now; I will have every moment of happiness I can first."

"What happiness can it take from you? You will be yourself still, let there be in it what there will. Our happiness is our own."

"O Rose!"

"O Dick! if we are good, are we not happy? And nobody can make us bad against our will."

"But, Rose, this may tell me something that you—there is my fear, Rose, it may take you away from me."

"Oh! no, Dick, dear Dick, how can anything take me away from you? But even if it did, you know we always said, 'If it were for the best.' If it were not for the best, we would not wish it, would we, dear? Yes, we could help wishing it; when the good God saw it was not best, he would give us strength to bear it."

"I never could bear it," said Dick.

"Yes, you would; but I am not afraid. One should not be afraid of one's own parents. Come, there is a long time before tea. We will go up the hill where no one will interrupt us, and where we shall be within call if we are wanted. Won't you get the box, Dick, and we will open it up there? that is, if you want me with you."

"You make me brave, dear Rose. Perhaps, after all, it is nothing."

So he did as she advised; and, seated a little back of the house, the only spot in which there could be five minutes' reading possible, he broke the seal, undid the wrapping, now yellow with age, while Rose spoke a word or two of courage, then turned her head a little away from him, and you may be sure prayed hard and fast for strength and grace for both to hear whatever of good or of evil was in store for them. Inside the wrapper Dick found a tiny key with which he eagerly unlocked the little mahogany box which was, perhaps, to make great revelations to him.

Then Rose drew still further away, from him, and with a more earnest gaze watched the sun going down to the west; for they were young, and many things that you and I would count the merest trifles, were of great importance to them; neither thought of anything worse than of something which should separate them. Poor little Rose trembled lest he should find a will therein—as she had read in story-books—that would make him too rich and great for her to think of him; and Dick, to whom her love for him had always seemed a wonder—so great was his reverence for her and his own feeling of unworthiness—trembled lest he should find some legacy of disgrace that would make it impossible for him ever to see Rose again. So in silence and with wordless but earnest prayers, they sat together in the softening August sunlight, with hearts beating heavily for fear it might be for the last time.

Chapter VII.

After all, there was not much in the mysterious box. A square package, looking like a letter, folded in the old style, and just fitting in the box, lay uppermost; upon the outside of which, in a clear, round hand, was written the name Richard Heremore. Before breaking the seal of this, Dick took out two paper boxes, in each of which was a miniature, painted on ivory; he glanced at one, then with an expression of intense relief, not unmingled with something of awe, he, for the first time, turned to Rose.

"Look, Rose," he said, in a low voice.

"Do you think this is your mother?" she asked, in a voice even lower and more reverential than his, after a long, long look; for it was a young and beautiful face, with clear eyes that looked frankly at you, and that bore in every feature the unmistakable stamp of true womanliness. 'Do you think this is your mother?"

"I cannot tell yet," said Dick; "but as this is here, it's all right; there's nothing more to dread now!"

But Rose did not answer. Her quick eyes had seen more than the character; they had placed the original of that portrait in her proper social sphere, and that—the highest.

The other miniature was of a man somewhat older, though not more than twenty-five or thirty, if so much; but it was a face of less character and less culture. Dick showed it to Rose, but neither made any comment upon it. Dick then broke the seal of the letter, and again Rose turned away her face. A few slips of paper fell out as he unfolded the package; these he gathered up without looking at them, and then, calling Rose's name once more, he read in a low voice, from the yellow paper, his mother's letter:

"My Dear Child: I have put aside a few little things that have been treasures to me, and as I may not live to see the day when I can give them to you, I write a few lines with them, which possibly may come to your eyes some day. A healthy, ruddy little fellow you are, creeping around my feet and trying to climb up my dress as I write, and I am so weak a woman that I may hardly stoop to raise my darling to my lap. It is hard for me, seeing you so, to write to you as a man; and what kind of a man I have no way to judge. I fear I shall not live long enough to leave any impression of your mother's face upon you; and what will become of you, my own dear child, in this terrible world after I am gone, I dare not think. You are so tender and good now that I cannot realize that you will change; but you will have no one to guide you. You put your arms up to me, your brown, hard little arms, as if to beg me not to speak of this, and I will try to believe that God will save you through everything; so that when you read this, you will be one whom I would be proud to own if I lived.

"You are my greatest comfort, and such a comfort! It seems as if you knew everything, and could console for everything; and often I think that for you I shall in some way find strength to struggle on for a few years more. Dear child, I know not how much or how little to tell you. I would like to write volumes for you, that you might know me in the future days when no father, mother, or brother will be near to help you in your troubles. But I can only write a little.

"I have been married five years, and you are my oldest but not my only child. You have a sweet little sister asleep on the bed. I say the words to you aloud, and you creep on tiptoe to look at her, turning and smiling at me as you go. Even if she should live after I am gone, which I cannot wish for, I cannot tell whether you will be kept together; if not, I know you will care for her if it is possible, if only because your dead mother asks it. I cannot believe the wonderful child-love you have for her and me will be permitted to die out, or that your heart can ever grow hard, your heart so tender now. There! kiss the dimpled hand ever so softly and come away, for you must not wake the darling now. Will you love her always, let what may be her fate? Remember always, she had no mother to guide her. Your father I have not seen for two years, since Mamie was a few months old. I have since heard that he is dead. I know none of his relatives; for he brought me an entire stranger to New York three years ago, and seemed unwilling that I should make many acquaintances. I have no relatives whom I have ever seen, in the world, except my father, who lives, or did live, at Wiltshire, in Maine. I do not know if he is living or not; I have written to him again and again, but I have heard nothing from him. He would have come to me if he were alive, for he was always devoted to me. I could write you a hundred letters about his love and devotion; and now, if I could only let him know where I am, he would come to me wherever he might be. I have named you for him. He saw you once when you were a month old; he came and took me home for the summer; he loved you dearly, as he loved me, and was proud enough of you. If only I could put you and Mamie in his hands now, how contentedly I could die! For this I toiled and struggled from the day I saw your father last, until this poverty and sickness have killed all hope. Not all hope; for I think every step I hear—and I hear thousands passing by—that my father has come to me to save me, to take my darlings under his care, and to let me die on my own white bed in my own dear room at home.

"There, darling, there's no more to tell. Why should I tell more? You come of good blood, my child, of a brave, upright race. My child, my darling, put your arms tight, tight around mamma's neck, and promise for the man that you will be worthy of your name and race. Be good, be true, be honest. How I should blush in my grave, it seems to me, if child of mine, if these dear children, so pure and innocent, who cling to me now, covering me with kisses, should soil their white souls with falsehood, deceit, or dishonesty. God knows what I would say. Fatherless, motherless, I must leave my little ones; no earthly help, no comfort, nothing, only the one hope that will not leave me to my latest breath, that my father lives, will find me out, save me, and take care of you.

"It has been hard for me to write this poor, childish letter; one poor apple-woman—poor, yet not so poor as I—has been my only friend; to her I have talked for hours of you, and she has listened earnestly, and will do her utmost for you two. God will aid her, I know. I will not put any 'good-byes' on paper so little likely ever to be seen by your eyes; but I will kiss you a thousand times, my darling, while I take one last look at these portraits of your father and me, you leaning against my knee looking at them too. You, pure, unsullied child, shall cling to me, and answer, though you cannot understand, the promises to be good I ask of you to fulfil through all your life. Your mother,

"Mary Heremore Brandon."

"Brandon!" repeated Rose and Dick together, when he read the signature. Then Dick read the slips of paper that had fallen out of the letter; they were all the same, notices of her marriage from different papers:

"MARRIED. At the residence of the bride's father, on Wednesday, May 5th, Charles Brandon, of New-York, to Mary, only daughter of Dr. Richard Heremore, of Wiltshire, Maine."

Rose looked at Dick almost with terror in her face. Dick knew not how to answer her.

"It may not be the same," she said at last.

"The letter does not seem sure of his death," suggested Dick.

"But you have met him—would he not have noticed your name?"

"I should think so. But it was long ago, and perhaps he has known others of the name. Besides, Miss Brandon—O Rose! if she should be that sister!—Miss Brandon told me her mother died long ago; she seemed so proudly to disclaim this Mrs. Brandon, whom I called her mother."

"How could he be with your father, if Mr. Brandon is that, and he not know any thing about you?"

"I cannot understand it. I will go to see him to-morrow."

"O Dick!"

"Yes, dear Rose, I must. I have only two days of vacation left, and I must know all before I go back."

"And then you will not be here for so long?"

"Yes, I will, Rose; I'll be here if I have to walk all night, see your windows, and go back before daylight! Yes, I will see you. I will not bear all the long separation as I did before, it is too much! Now, may I go to-morrow?"

"Yes, Dick, you must go. O Dick! what a mother she was! I can just see her, so weak she could not lift little you in her arms; and yet, I am sure, giving you a thousand caresses, and crying over you as she wrote that letter! If she could only see you now!"

"I know she does see me; but she does not see me as I ought to be, having had such a mother."

"She is proud of you if she sees you."

"See how patient she was, Rose! She says she is poorer than the poor apple-woman, and yet no complaint; and she was not used to trouble, I am sure, from her face."

"So sweet and grave as she is! Really, Richard, look! Upon my word, Miss Brandon has just such eyes! It is so! See! the same blue-gray eyes, so clear, deep, and looking at you so frankly and graciously; not with the frankness of a question asked; but—I can't describe it—but that calm, straightforward way Miss Mary has when she listens to you; always as if she would encourage you, too, to go on. Indeed, you must go to-morrow!"

"It is so strange, Rose. I feel my head almost turning. Have we time to read it over once more?"

"I fear not, for it is already quite late; but you will tell mamma and Aunt Clara about it, and Uncle Carl?"

"Oh! at once; as soon as I can. I shall think of nothing else until to-morrow. Rose, he must have treated her badly, or she would have given me his name instead of her father's."

"I think, perhaps she meant Brandon to be added."

"She does not say a word against him; but she does not praise him. I will make him tell me, himself, if he is the man. Do you think he is?"

"I am sure of it! And Miss Brandon is your sister; perhaps that is why she spoke to you that Christmas day, and why you have always been so attracted to her."

"How strange it is! Will she be sorry to have me for a brother, I wonder?"

"Sorry! She will be very proud of you."

"I wonder how I should speak to her. O Rose, Rose! do say something to steady me; I feel so strange, and as if I were talking so foolishly!"

"You are not talking foolishly, dear Dick; and if you were, there is only Rose to hear you, and shall you not talk as you please to her?"

"Thank God, my darling! this has not separated us."

"No, not yet."

"Not yet!"

"What will your new father and your grand sister think of me?"

"Well, Rose, wait till I ask them!"

"Perhaps a grandfather, too," said Rose.

"I love him already. If he should be living, that would be something grand, wouldn't it? You may be sure she loved him."

"And you may be sure she never let him know until perhaps the very last, that she was in trouble. Women and children never tell their sorrows to those who are entitled to help them."

"Why, Rose?"

"Oh! I cannot tell you that! I only know it's so. Here we are at home. Have patience; for though to-morrow you will have the news, to night is all I have!"

"And no matter what happens, Rose," said Dick, as they lingered a moment outside the house, "you will trust me just the same?"

"Of course I will," Rose answered readily. A question and answer that have been given—and falsified—I wonder how many times since the world began; falsified, for even a woman's faith is not without limit; though Rose thought it was, as many had thought before her. "Of course I will; why should you ask, Dick?"

"I don't know; only that everything seems whirling around with me to-night, and the only thing that seems clear to me is that I must not lose you."

"It will be your own fault if you do," said Rose. "But you must not try me too much; for things might get whirling around with me, too, some day, and I should not know faith from want of pride; so be good."

"And if it is possible, I must come down at once and tell you how it all ends. If it could only be that I could have you close at hand to tell you all!"

"Indeed! I am glad," exclaimed Rose, who, much as she loved Dick, could not endure to think of the time when she should have to leave her home. "Come in, now. What will Uncle Carl say to all this, I wonder?"

Uncle Carl did not say much, when, the children having been sent out to play, the elders drew their chairs closer around the still standing tea-table, and listened intently to Dick's story. The others received it with many exclamations and much wiping of eyes; but the stolid German smoked his big pipe and looked, or tried to, as if he had known it all before.

"I'll know before this time tomorrow if it's the same," said Dick, when the reading was finished, and many conjectures had been put forward and discussed.

"It is the strangest thing ever was heard of," exclaimed Mrs. Alaine, "that he should meet you so often and not know who you were!"

"With your mother's name, too," added Mrs. Staffs.

"Perhaps, after all, he is not so ignorant," suggested Dick. "It may be that it was on account of my name he made so much of me."

"I think he must be devoured with remorse," Mrs. Alaine said forcibly, "whenever he thinks of his beautiful wife."

"This Mrs. Brandon couldn't hold a candle to her," added Mrs. Stoffs.

"I never saw her," said Dick.

"She was very pretty," explained Carl, speaking unexpectedly.

"Pretty!" cried Mrs. Stoffs, in great surprise.

"Pretty!" repeated Mrs. Alaine, with great contempt.

"Pretty!" echoed Rose, with great incredulity. "Why, Uncle Carl, she was a little doll-baby!"

"She was very pretty," persisted Carl.

"Well, indeed, if you call such a baby pretty, I give up!" said Mrs. Stoffs. "Why, Mr. Dick, she did not look as if she could say boo to a goose, and yet she ruled the whole house; it was her extravagance that ruined the poor man."

"I think it was his own dishonesty," said Carl.

"O Uncle Carl!" remonstrated Rose, "right before Mr. Richard."

"We don't know yet that he has anything to do with 'Mr. Richard,' as you call him; but I'd say it, if need were, to the man's own face. His wife may have been a little, tyrannical, extravagant fool; but the more fool he for letting her take other men's money out of his purse."

"Indeed, Carl, that's a thing they'll never say of you," responded his wife, laughing. "But now come away, and let Mr. Dick get some rest, for I suppose he'll be off by daylight."

"I shall, indeed," said Dick.

"Well, good-night! Mr. Dick, you must not let these things keep you awake; if you find your family out, it may be the last time you will sleep under our roof."

"If I thought that, Mrs. Stoffs, I should seek them with a heavy heart; but nothing can make that so but death, can it?"

"Go to bed, good people," grumbled Carl; "all your noise makes my head ache."

He went up with Dick and had a long conversation with him, after the rest were asleep.

"Go find Dr. Heremore, of Wiltshire, unless there comes to be no doubt that he is gone away, or dead," were his parting words; "he is better worth seeking than any other. You will need money, and you shall owe me for this." And he gave him a few gold pieces which Mrs. Stoffs, in the sanctuary of her own room, had hurriedly and gladly brought out from countless rags, all tied up in an old stocking, at her liege lord's command, for this purpose.

"But, Mr. Stoffs, I have, I think, enough for this."

"Then do not spend mine, but take it with you for fear of accident. Good-night; do not be fooled by anything Mr. Brandon may say—he's an artful one—but find out all you can about your grandfather; remember that."

So Dick was left to pass a sleepless, fevered night, filled with the strangest fancies, and perplexed by a thousand fruitless conjectures. At the first glimmering of daylight he was up, and, after making a show of eating the substantial breakfast his kind friends had prepared for him, turned, without being able to say more than a word or two, to leave.

"Dood-by," said Trot, sliding down from her chair, with her bib on, and her face not over clean, to get his parting kiss, as well as to put in a reminder for his return. "What 'oo bing Trot from the 'tore?"

"What do you want, Trot?" asked Dick, lifting her up.

"Me wants putty tat," she answered with animation; "dear 'ittle titten!"

Dick promised to do his best, shook hands silently all around, tried to laugh at the old shoe Minnie had ready to throw after him, at last heard the gate close behind him, and was alone on his way to the little yellow station-house.

"He'd better be alone," Rose had said when something had been said privately about accompanying him. "He has a great deal to think about, and he can do that best while he is walking in this fresh morning air."

"O mamma!" she said, when Mrs. Alaine stood beside her, after Dick had passed out of sight, "O mamma! if Mr. Brandon should take it angrily!"

"You may be sure he will not," replied Mrs. Alaine, "he is so broken down, he will be very thankful to find a son like our Dick who will be worth so much to him. He is the most selfish man ever lived, Mr. Brandon is."

"Well, I wish it were over," sighed Rose, turning back to the house and the day's round of household duties.

To Be Concluded.

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Translated From The French.