NEW PUBLICATIONS.
[My Clerical Friends], and Their Relation to Modern Thought. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.
We are glad to announce the publication of the American edition of this work, our previous notice having been based upon the advance sheets of the English edition.
The Catholic Publication Society has done good service to religion by its handsome edition of this most important book. It is divided into four chapters, which treat of “The Vocation of the Clergy,” “The Clergy at Home,” “The Clergy Abroad,” and “The Clergy and Modern Thought.” Under these divisions, the distinguished author has grouped together a most interesting series of facts and arguments which cannot fail to carry conviction to any honest mind. He deals principally with what may be called the advanced clergy of the Anglican Church, shows their real position in the present state of controversy, and the utter absurdity of their claims. If there is anything properly called ridiculous, it is the aspect of a small portion of a sect pretending to be that which every one else in the world denies them to be, and flaunting their professions to the entire denial of history, tradition, and even common sense. Our Ritualistic friends have no regard for anything in the past, present, or future but themselves, and, therefore, they cannot be reasoned with. Their half-way house may be a stopping-place for a time for honest hearts, but no sincere mind can rest there, for Almighty God never leaves the true in mind without the assistance of his grace or the use of their natural faculties. We commend this book to all in the Anglican communion who desire to look facts in the face or to save their souls. And we beg in all charity to tell them that they cannot save their souls without sacrifice. If they prefer to keep this world, they will lose the next. There may be in our author’s clear and bright presentation of truth something that may seem to them harsh or severe. We can assure them that there is no kinder heart than that of our distinguished friend, the author; but he has such keen perceptions of right and wrong that he cannot fail to put, with telling effect, the absurdity of their religious position. And deny it as they may, and perhaps will, the whole world appreciates the inconsistency of their actions with their professions. Kind people pity them, while worldly people laugh at them.
Beginning with the theory that the one church of God can be divided, which is a contradiction in terms, they claim to be a branch of something that confessedly can have no branches. Then, they are not simply a branch, but a branch of a branch. And the branch of which they form part renounces them, and casts them out, but they will not be cast out. Their mother, the Church of England, does not know herself as these her children do. Then, there is one thing they can hang on to the last, even if everything else fails. They were admitted to apostolical ordination by Barlow, whom they will have a bishop, though there is no proof whatever that he was one, and while he himself denied the necessity or the virtue of the sacrament of order. “If schism,” as Dr. Newman says, “depends on the mere retention of the Episcopal order, there never was and there never will be a schism,” for bishops are as likely to be corrupted as priests. But the truth is, nobody ever pretended to any apostolical succession in the English Church until the Dissenters became so strong that, out of opposition to them, “a few Anglican prelates began to talk of pretensions which, during several generations, they had treated as a jest and a fable.” “According to Barlow, an English bishop could dispense with orders; and, according to Cranmer, with grace.” There was no pretence of any doctrine of priesthood on the part of the founders of the Church of England, and surely these intelligent men ought to have known what they intended to do. Hooker is one of their greatest defenders, and he expressly denies the necessity of Episcopal ordination. “Being about to appear before God, he sent—not for an Anglican minister—but for his friend Saravia, and accepted from his unconsecrated hands those quasi-sacramental rites which, according to Ritualistic views, he had no power to dispense.” These divines were the faithful interpreters of the mind of their church.
“‘It is quite clear,’ observes Bishop Tomline, expounding the 25th Article, ‘that the words of the Article do not maintain the necessity of episcopal ordination.’ Bishop Hall, again, though he wrote a well-known book in defence of episcopacy, gave up the whole question when he said: ‘Blessed be God, there is no difference, in any essential matter, betwixt the Church of England and her sisters of the Reformation.’ And this was the language even of men who had written the most earnest apologies for episcopal government. They never attempted to maintain that the apostolical succession was necessary to the integrity of a church. Thus Bramhall said, with easy composure: ‘The ordination of our first Protestant bishops was legal,’ i.e. it had the royal sanction; ‘and for the validity of it, we crave no man’s favor.’ Andrewes is a more important witness. Though Ritualists may not approve his subservience to that robust theologian, James I., he is still held in honor among them as almost a High-Church prelate, and is regarded as the most imposing figure of his time. Yet Andrewes, on their own principles, was as flagrant a betrayer of the doctrine of the Christian priesthood, if he ever held it, as Hooker himself, or even as Barlow or Whittaker. He not only gave the Anglican sacrament to a Swiss Protestant, Isaac Casaubon, but related afterwards, with impassioned and approving eloquence, that his friend died loudly professing with his latest breath the strictest tenets of the Calvinists of Geneva.”
There are many other points that will attract the attention of the reader, and which we cannot speak of in this short notice. The last chapter, upon “The Clergy and Modern Thought,” is particularly adapted to the superficial age in which we live, and answers all the objections which are made by the really shallow thinkers who, according to the language of the apostle, “professing themselves to be wise, have become fools.”
We bespeak for this most interesting and instructive book a large circulation and many attentive readers, who will unite with us in thanking the accomplished author for the pleasure and profit they have received from him. May God grant him yet many years to live in which to do good with his able pen!
The following letter of the author, correcting a mistake into which he had fallen, appeared in the London Tablet of February 8:
“MR. LECKY AND ‘MY CLERICAL FRIENDS.”
“To the Editor of the Tablet:
“Sir: I am assured by friends of Mr. Lecky, the well-known author of the histories of Rationalism in Europe and of European Morals, that I have misunderstood a passage in the latter work, and attributed to the distinguished writer sentiments which he disavows. Mr. Lecky has displayed in his remarkable writings such unusual candor, and even, in spite of much that is painful to a Christian, such elevation of thought, that to do him wilful injustice is a fault of which no Catholic ought to be capable. I ask your permission, therefore, to make the following explanation.
“The passage which I am said to have misunderstood is this: ‘Had the Irish peasants been less chaste, they would have been more prosperous. Had that fearful famine, which in the present century desolated the land, fallen upon a people who thought more of accumulating subsistence than of avoiding sin, multitudes might now be living who perished by literal starvation.’ Interpreting these words by the light of other statements of the same author, and especially by his announcement that ‘utility is perhaps the highest motive to which reason can attain,’ they seemed to me, as they seemed to all whom I have been able to consult, to bear only one meaning. I was mistaken. They really meant, I now learn, ‘that the habit of early marriages in a nation is detrimental to its economical prosperity.’ I am further reminded that Mr. Lecky has written admirably on the grace of chastity which adorns the Irish nation, and could not, therefore, have wished to say that sin is a less evil than famine and destitution.
“I am too familiar with the writings of Mr. Lecky, which I have read more than once, and always with extreme interest, not to recognize his great moral superiority over the contemporary school of Rationalists. The study of his books has even created in me a strong personal sympathy for the writer. In quoting him frequently, I think I have manifested this feeling. But if I have done him injustice in the case referred to, I regret that he did not more carefully guard himself from a misapprehension which was purely involuntary, and into which others fell who share my admiration of his candor and ability. I have only to add that, if the opportunity should occur, I will suppress the passage to which Mr. Lecky’s friends have called my attention. Yours faithfully,
“The Author of ‘My Clerical Friends.’”
Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster. American Edition. Vol. II. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.
This dauntless champion of the faith is once more in the field. In the present volume, the great Archbishop of England presents himself in that which is his special character and vocation, to wit, as the defender of the rights and doctrines maintained and promulgated by Pius IX. in the face of his enemies and of some timid or misguided persons among his friends. The sermons are not all new ones, since they range in time from 1866 to 1872; but as now collected they make a new whole out of previously separate parts belonging to one great theme, the rights of the Holy See and the church as opposed to the nefarious system of modern liberalism. The masterpiece of the volume is, however, the Introduction, a most able and eloquent analysis and confutation of the principles of the revolutionary party in Europe which aims at the overthrow of the Catholic Church and of the Christian religion. Archbishop Manning has done immense service to religion, and his power seems to have been continually and steadily increasing since he first entered the lists as a champion of the true church. Before the Council of the Vatican, he was one of those who contributed most efficaciously to the preparation of the greatest event of this age, the definition of the dogma of Papal Infallibility, by which Gallicanism, the mother error of that brood of false doctrines condemned in the Syllabus of 1864, was destroyed. During and since the Council he has combated these errors with equal ability and courage, and seconded the great Pope, who now fills the place of Christ on the earth, by re-echoing the divine harmonies of his doctrine through the English-speaking world. It is most important that all our educated laity should be thoroughly imbued with this pure and saving doctrine, in which alone is contained, not only the salvation of the soul, but of sound science, of nations, of society, and of all human interests. We know of no such thorough and perfect interpreter of Pius IX., the infallible teacher of the nations, in the English language, as the Archbishop of Westminster. His writings are those which ought especially to be circulated and read among the educated laity, as the exposition of that truth which is the special antidote to the fatal errors of the times. They are especially suitable for this purpose, because they are the writings of a bishop; and it is to the priests of the church, and especially to the chief priests and pastors, to whom is committed the office not only of teaching the faithful personally, but of giving to the writings of the subordinate clergy and of learned laymen the only canonical sanction which they possess, that the laity are to look for instruction in sound doctrine under the supreme authority of the Holy See. The private opinions of a bishop have, indeed, no more weight than is given them by their argumentative value. This is always very great in the writings of Archbishop Manning, who is accustomed to sustain his positions by a very great force of evidence and reasoning. But a still greater merit of his writings is found in the fact, that he never obtrudes his private opinions as Catholic doctrine, or goes beyond the mark placed by the authority of the church or the common teaching of approved theologians. Not only does he avoid extenuating, but he equally avoids exaggerating statements respecting Catholic doctrine. And, moreover, although of uncompromising strictness in his orthodoxy, and apostolic severity in his language respecting contumacious heretics and rebels against divine authority, he is considerate and gentle towards those whose errors may, in charity, be regarded as excusable. In this respect, his writings are a model for those who undertake the advocacy of the great Catholic truths which are opposed to the errors of the day. May God preserve the worthy successor of the great English cardinal to see the triumph of the church in the land of S. Edward and S. Thomas of Canterbury!
Lenten Thoughts: Drawn from the Gospel for Each Day of Lent. By the Bishop of Northampton. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.
We recommend this little book to all who wish to spend the season of Lent in conformity with the spirit and intention of the church. The style is simple and chaste; the thoughts are elevated and suggestive. There is, too, an air of serenity and even cheerfulness about the book which we cannot but consider as in perfect accord with the true nature of penance as understood by the church:
“Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure
Thrill the deepest notes of woe.”
“When you fast, be not as the hypocrites, sad,” says the church to her children on Ash-Wednesday, re-echoing through the ages the words of her divine Spouse.
Meditations for the Use of the Clergy, for Every Day in the Year, on the Gospels for the Sundays. From the Italian of Mgr. Scotti, Archbishop of Thessalonica. Revised and Edited by the Oblates of S. Charles. With a Preface by His Grace the Archbishop of Westminster. Vol. I. From the First Sunday in Advent to the Sixth Saturday after the Epiphany. London: Burns & Oates. 1872. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
The remaining three volumes of this work, we are told, may be looked for in the course of the present year. The whole will form a manual of meditations for priests to which we have seen nothing comparable. That such a work is needed who will deny? For if any one ought to meditate, it is a priest; and how few books of meditation in our language are at all what he wants! Of the present compilation, then, his grace the Archbishop of Westminster, in his prefatorial letter to his clergy, says: “In dedicating to you this first part of Scotti’s Meditations for the Clergy, I need only add that it is a book held in high esteem at Rome. Having found by the experience of many years its singular excellence, its practical piety, its abundance of Scripture, of the fathers, and of ecclesiastical writers, I have thought that it would be an acceptable and valuable addition to your books of devotion.”
After this recommendation, let us simply express a wish that the work may become known to every priest who speaks the English language. And again let us thank the good Oblate Fathers for one of the most estimable services they have ever done for religion.
S. Anselm’s Book of Meditations and Prayers. Translated from the Latin by M. R. With a Preface by His Grace the Archbishop of Westminster. London: Burns & Oates. 1872. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
These meditations differ very much from ordinary compositions with that name. They are divided into brief sections, a single one of which will suffice the devout soul for a whole day’s food. There is nothing stiff and formal, nothing meagre, nothing dry. While, together with honeyed colloquies—now with ourself, now with God or the saints—there is a deep philosophy in a very simple guise. We are, therefore, most grateful for such an addition to our devotional literature.
The ‘Old Catholics’ at Cologne. New York: J. A. McGee. 1873
This clever jeu d’esprit is by the brother of Dr. T. W. M. Marshall, who was one of the joint authors of the Comedy of Convocation. It is a little coarse in some parts, too much so for our taste, and in this respect inferior to the famous Comedy, which was unexceptionable in that respect. Nevertheless, it has a great likeness in some of its salient points to that remarkable piece of logical sarcasm. The argument is unanswerable, and very cleverly put; and terrible as the ridicule is which is heaped on the Janus clique, whose final fiasco was made at Cologne, they deserve it richly; for never was there a more absurd as well as detestable little generation of vipers among the whole of the noxious brood of heretics who in various ages have hissed against the decrees of the Œcumenical Councils. We can assure all readers that they will be amused and instructed by this brochure.
[Sœur] Eugénie: The Life and Letters of a Sister of Charity. Baltimore: J. Murphy & Co. 1873.
The subject of this memoir was a French lady of rank, brought up a Protestant, but converted in early life to the Catholic faith. It is an interesting, edifying, and well-written, as well as beautifully printed, little book, not at all commonplace, but with the freshness of unusual incidents told in the charming style which belongs to modern English literature of the best class.
There is something very attractive in the French character when unperverted by scepticism and frivolity. The energy, zeal, and enthusiasm they throw into their work for God are very captivating to colder natures. And the higher one ascends in the social scale, the more decided, apparently, do these traits become. Whereas, in other nationalities, prosperity and position frequently have a deleterious effect; they often bring a Frenchman’s better qualities into higher relief. In the religious orders, many illustrious examples of this remark may be found—of men brought up in ease and affluence who have adopted the mortified life of missionaries, braved every danger, and courted death itself, if thereby they could win some souls for Christ. The French nuns and Sisters of Charity have also been preeminent, as the unwritten history of the late war alone would demonstrate. The charitable spirit which lies at the foundation of that suavity and grace too often characterized as surface politeness, peculiarly fits them for the delicate and trying duties they assume.
In the subject of this memoir we recognize the same winning characteristics to which we have adverted. Of high birth, she left all which usually attracts youthful ambition for a life of self-abnegation and charity. The name Eugénie, already endeared to thoughtful readers through the Letters and Journal of Mlle. de Guérin (for we learn to appreciate a character full as much through the productions of the subject as by the portrayal of others), will receive new lustre from the memoirs of another saintly wearer. Such a record, though simple, is full of beauty and edification to those who follow in the same path, as well as those whose sphere of duty, though lying in the world, is yet elevated above it.
[Truth] and Error. By the Rev. H. A. Brann, D.D. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1873.
This book is of small size, but on an important subject, viz., the nature and sources of certitude. It is clear, logical, sound, and written in a good style. As an antidote to the wretched, poisonous trash sold under the name of philosophy, which is nothing but methodical scepticism and materialism, this little book must do good if it is read and understood by those who have need of it. The unhappy intellectual vagrants of our day are afflicted with the two great miseries which poor “Jo” complained of: “Not knowing nothink, and starwation.” Jo often sadly muttered to himself, “I don’t know nothink!” Mr. Bain and all that set are so many Joes, repeating for ever, “I don’t know nothink, you don’t know nothink, nobody don’t and nobody can’t know nothink.” The sophist of Königsberg was a Jo of genius, nothing more. Dr. Brann will give a substantial breakfast to any one of these hungry Joes who will read his book.
[Aunt] Jo’s Scrap-Book. Vol. II. Shawl-Straps. By Louisa M. Alcott, author of Little Women, An Old-fashioned Girl, Little Men, Hospital Sketches. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1872.
This book is written in a light, trifling, flippant style, which may be very pleasant and appropriate when used to describe certain things, but when applied indiscriminately to all that one sees abroad, it certainly is not agreeable, to say the least of it. Neither is it pleasant, in a book of travels, to find that nothing is considered true, or even worthy of respect, unless the author believes in it. A Mass at S. Mark’s, Venice, is described in this way: “The patriarch was a fat old soul in red silk, even to his shoes and holy pocket-handkerchief; and the service appeared to consist in six purple priests dressing and undressing him like an old doll, while a dozen white-gowned boys droned up in a gold cockloft, and many beggars whined on the floor below.” A visit to the Carthusian Convent, Pavia, calls forth the following comment: “A nice way for lazy men to spend their lives, when there is so much work to be done for the Lord and his poor! Wanted to shake them all round,” etc. In the description of the inundation of parts of the city of Rome we read: “Livy indulged the sinful hope that the pope would get his pontifical petticoats very wet, be a little drowned and terribly scared by the flood, because he spoiled the Christmas festivities,” etc. Victor Emmanuel is spoken of as “the honest man,” with the remark that “that is high praise for a king.” Such expressions as “sullen old gentleman in the Vatican,” “silly Madonna,” and others of the same character, enliven the pages in various places.
We can scarcely believe that this book is from the same pen as Little Women, and we think it would be far better, when one is only willing to see things through their ignorance and prejudices, not to attempt to make others see with their eyes.
[God] our Father. By a Father of the Society of Jesus, author of The Happiness of Heaven. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1873.
After reading this little book, we felt an ardent desire to tell everybody we had found a treasure. Its title, a rather unusual thing nowadays, is the true exponent of its contents. That God is our Father—our kind, indulgent, beneficent, merciful, loving Father—it proves as we have never seen proved before. We do think, if Voltaire had seen this little treatise, he would not have called God a “tyrant and the father of tyrants,” and he, Voltaire, would not have been a fool and the father of a generation of fools. Some Christians other than Calvinists are accustomed to regard God as a stern judge or an exacting master, ignoring altogether his parental relationship. This way of regarding God not unfrequently produces a morbid spirituality, if not worse. Under its baneful influence, the soul is parched up and rendered incapable of any other sentiment than that of fear. It is true that “fear is the beginning of wisdom”; but it is no less true that “love is the fulfilment of the law” and the sublime summary of the new dispensation. And who can love a being whom he sees only in the light of a stern judge, an exacting master? God, as he is represented in this work, is a being whom you cannot but love. In very truth, the author himself must love much, or he could never write so eloquently of divine love.
To all Catholics who look with a filial confidence to God, and love him as their Father, we recommend this book as a means of strengthening their confidence and increasing their love. To those Catholics, happily few, who see in God only a rigid master, we prescribe the perusal of this work as the best remedy for their dangerous disease. To our separated brethren, who want to get a Christian idea of our common Father, we would respectfully suggest the careful study of this treatise; they will find it sufficiently scriptural and sufficiently simple for their tastes.
We cannot, perhaps, pay the publishers a higher compliment than by saying that the setting is in every way worthy of the gem.
[Lectures] on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic Church. By Cardinal Wiseman. New York: P. O’Shea.
These two volumes belong to the uniform series of Cardinal Wiseman’s works now being issued by Mr. O’Shea, and, as we understand, are printed from the same plates as the one-volume edition heretofore issued by Kelly, Piet & Co.
It is a strong evidence of the permanent interest which attaches to Catholic doctrine—the faith ever ancient, ever new—that these lectures are read now with almost equal avidity with that which greeted their appearance almost forty years ago, while as many weeks suffice to lay on the shelf the productions of many a popular preacher of the day.
This course constituted the Lent at S. Mary’s, Moorfields, in 1836, when the Oxford movement had already acquired considerable headway, and the public mind was alive to the subjects discussed. In view of the audience which he addressed, they were doubtless prepared with great care, and may therefore be considered most favorable specimens of the distinguished author’s style.
One is struck, in looking over Cardinal Wiseman’s works, by the fact of the singular diversity of his gifts, and his preeminence in the varied fields of research and discussion—as if he had made each a specialty. His Lectures on the Connection of Science and Religion, delivered the preceding year, has maintained a position in the front rank of works devoted to that subject, and may be said to have become obsolete only in so far as science has presented new phenomena and discoveries for elucidation; while the present work has remained, to our thinking, the most exhaustive popular exposition of Catholic doctrine in the language. His more elaborate historical and critical essays have attracted marked attention, and been thought worthy of publication in separate volumes, while his distinctively belles-lettres works have enjoyed almost universal favor. His Fabiola confessedly stands at the head of Christian fiction. It is a little remarkable that The Hidden Gem, and one of the most acute critiques of the day upon Shakespeare, should have been the production of one who it is fair to infer scarcely ever-witnessed an acted drama.
The same house has brought out in similar style the Four Lectures on the Offices and Ceremonies of Holy Week by the same author, which we hope will prove a valuable aid to the intelligent participation in the devotions of the present season. The interest in the Lectures is enhanced by the fact that they were delivered at Rome, and relate to the ceremonies in the Papal chapels.
The Catholic Publication Society will publish in a few days, from advance sheets, a new work by the author of My Clerical Friends, entitled Church Defence: Report on the Present Dangers of the Church.
Card of the Editor of The Catholic World.
An error in respect to a matter of Catholic faith into which the author of an article in our last number inadvertently fell, and which escaped my notice until it was too late to make any earlier correction, requires me to make the present explanation. I do it for the sake of the reverend gentleman who first animadverted upon this erroneous statement, and for others at a distance who are not in a position to know personally the utter impossibility of any statement bordering on “Gallicanism” being admitted into The Catholic World with the knowledge of the editor. The passage in question is as follows, and is found on p. 784: “Who can wonder if the Church, in this dire emergency, delegates to one man the power she can no longer collectively exercise in peace?” The mistake of the writer, who is a lay Catholic and not a theologian, is very excusable. The responsibility for the doctrine of the articles published rests exclusively with me, as the editor in the absence of the Very Rev. F. Hecker. If any statement which is contrary to Catholic doctrine or sound theology is allowed to pass in any article, it is by accident, and any reverend gentleman or layman who notices anything of the kind will oblige me by sending a communication to me directly, pointing out the error. Any such communication will receive due attention from myself or from the editor-in-chief, when he is in town and able to attend personally to the duties of his office. In this connection, I take occasion to remark that another worthy clergyman, entirely unknown to me, who has recently expressed himself as aggrieved by the remarks of The Catholic World upon Italy, has wholly misapprehended their intention. The articles on this subject which have appeared have been generally written by myself, or prepared under my direction. I have no hostility except against the wicked party which tyrannizes over the Catholic people of Italy, and would with pleasure have admitted the letter of the Italian missionary, pleading the cause of his country, to the columns of The Catholic World. It is the aim of the editors of The Catholic World to make it Catholic in its spirit and tone of charity and courtesy, as well as orthodox in doctrine, and to remember that it becomes those who profess a special loyalty to the Holy Father to pay attention to all his admonitions, especially to that one in which he gave such an emphatic warning against the violation of charity by those who are very zealous for his authority.
Augustine F. Hewit, C.S.P.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XVII., No. 98.—MAY, 1873.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
[THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE.][47]
The question of the origin of species—the question, namely, whether the vegetable and animal species now on the earth, and those which from the study of its strata we know to be extinct, were in the beginning called into existence by the direct creative fiat, and substantially with the forms they now have; or whether they have been developed from other and pre-existing beings with forms essentially different from their own, in obedience to natural law—is one upon which, since Charles Darwin published the first edition of his book upon the subject, now about twelve years ago, much has been said. We may add that the answer given to it by Mr. Darwin has been much misunderstood. It has been misunderstood in itself by those who would not take the trouble to inquire in what its precise merits consisted: how much of certainty, and how much of mere theory, it contained; what facts or series of facts, if admitted, it was incompetent to throw light upon; and whether there were any facts, botanical or zoological, in conflict and irreconcilable with it. It has been misunderstood, too, in its bearings on revelation, and that by two classes of men: on the one hand, by mere scientists, for the reason that they knew nothing of theology, and were therefore not in a way to decide whether the Bible and the theory of development are compatible with each other; and, on the other, by well-intentioned advocates of Christianity, because frequently they knew nothing of science in general—little of this question, and the precise meaning and worth of Darwin’s answer to it in particular. The former have been at fault in asserting that a science—theology, Catholic theology, we mean, is a science—of which they knew nothing did not harmonize with a hypothesis of which they knew perhaps all that is to be known; the latter, in not acknowledging distinctly the grain of truth or of certainty contained in the speculations of Darwin.
The question is an interesting one, and has accordingly called forth a large literature in England, Germany, France, and Italy. Mr. Chapman’s book is, we believe, the only one written in this country, and professedly devoted to the advocacy of the theory that, to use the author’s own words, “the development of the higher forms of life from the lower has been brought about by natural selection, and that man has descended from a lower extinct form of which the gorilla and chimpanzee are the nearest living representatives”—which is Darwinism pure and simple, and which ought to be distinguished from the more general theory of “evolution.” That Mr. Chapman’s book has been published in America, and that we wish to say a few words on the question which it treats, and especially on the bearings of that question on revealed religion, constitute its only claims on our attention; for neither the style of the writer nor the lucidity of his argument, much less its originality, entitles it to any particular notice. The work is a mere compilation, which, however, may be of service to those who desire to possess in a convenient shape the facts, and to examine the nature of the reasoning, by which the Darwinian hypothesis is supported.
When we have said this, and that Mr. Chapman devotes a chapter of his book to the argument from zoology, geology, embryology, etc., respectively, in favor of Darwinism; that these arguments are neither as elegant, scholarly, or cogent as they might be made; that he has followed the materialists of Germany in their version of the theory, and further than there is even the shadow of a warrant to follow it, we have said all that we wish to say about his book, and bestowed upon it the highest praise it is in our power to bestow consistently with truth.
What our views on the Darwinian theory are will appear in the sequel. Here we wish simply to say a few words on certain doctrines drawn from it by Mr. Chapman, or, if not drawn from it, associated with it both by him and others—doctrines which, in our view, are not part and parcel of it because mere assumptions in no way countenanced by facts. Thus, Mr. Chapman desires us expressly to understand that “natural selection,” the meaning of which we will explain in a moment, does not imply the existence of a “natural selector”; and this, without any forced interpretation, may be construed into a profession of atheism. Now, as we will see a little further on, the admission of the Darwinian theory does not necessarily lead to any such conclusion. Again, he informs us, p. 14, that life is only a “physical phenomenon, and that the nervous system produces ideas and all the acts of intelligence”—which is rank materialism. That Mr. Chapman advocates fatalism is no less plain, for he assures us that morality is necessarily progressive. On the last page of his book, he defines morals to be “duty to one’s self.” We confess that we do not understand how he reconciles his assertion that morality is necessarily progressive with his definition of morals. It seems to us that, if necessarily moral, men will necessarily do their duty; or rather, they will have no duty to do, since necessity and duty exclude each other. According to this theory, there can be no distinction between good and evil, and all the crimes that are committed are the necessary consequences of man’s origin. Indeed, the author tells us, p. 180: “Crimes and outrages are committed even among the most civilized, simply, in the words of Mr. Spencer, because man ‘partially retains the characteristics that adapted him for an antecedent state. The respects in which he is not fitted to society are the respects in which he is fitted for his original predatory life. His primitive circumstances required that he should sacrifice the welfare of other beings to his own; his present circumstances require that he should not do so; and in as far as his old attribute still clings to him, in so far he is unfit for the social state. All sins of men against each other, from the cannibalism of the Carib to the crimes and venalities we see around us, have their causes comprehended under this generalization.’”
Now, if all this be so, we cannot see why murder, or robbery, or any other crime, is not perfectly legitimate. If to the exercise of his “old attributes” in the struggle for existence man owes his “survival” and his place among the fittest, in any degree, however small; and if there be nothing in man not produced by natural selection, we cannot see why he should not even now continue the exercise of these “attributes”; in other words, we do not see why any propensity, passion, or inclination originated by the agency of “natural selection,” to the exclusion of all other agencies, cannot legitimately be exercised to the full extent to which “natural selection” has developed it. If man exercises these “attributes” simply in obedience to a law of nature, we should not if we could, nor could we if we would, resist them. If, indeed, these views of morality be correct, then might is right, the Decalogue a code against nature, civilization an abnormal condition for man, and barbarism his only true state.
So much for the atheism, materialism, and fatalism, we do not say of Darwin—for we have reason to believe that that gentleman himself is none of these—but of Mr. Chapman’s version of evolution. There is one very important point, however, on which Mr. Darwin, the man of science, and the compiler, Mr. Chapman, are at one—a point of very great consideration because of its bearings on revelation—the doctrine that the difference between man and the lower animals is not one of “kind,” but of “degree.” We do not wish to argue this point here in full. What we wish to say is that men of the school of Darwin, etc., should be the very last persons in the world to make an assertion of this character, for the reason that they confine our knowledge to appearances, to phenomena. The question, however, whether man and the lower animals differ in “kind” or only in “degree” is not a question of phenomena or appearances: it is a question of noumena, of essence, of reality. We do not grant that even appearances warrant the assertion that man differs from the lower animals in nothing essential. There are appearances which forbid any such conclusion. But we maintain that, whether they so differ or not, Darwin and his school are, by the principles of their philosophy, estopped from asserting that they do or do not. They cannot say that the same phenomena imply the same noumena, the same accidents, the same essence, the same appearances, the same reality, because, to assert the identity of nature of two things, both must be known in what constitutes their essence, whereas these men expressly say that of noumena, reality, or essence nothing can be known.
Mr. Chapman is more a disciple of Haeckel than of Darwin, and follows that gentleman in all his vagaries—a course well calculated to increase rather than decrease the amount of prejudice against what there may be of truth in Darwinism. Among the advocates of this, as of almost all theories, there are extremists. Our author seems to have gone to school to all of them, and swallowed all they told him, no matter how paradoxical, no matter how little proof to substantiate it. On the other hand, of all that has been said against pure Darwinism, not a word has been recorded by Mr. Chapman; and of those who, like Prof. Agassiz, do not agree with Mr. Darwin, or who, like St. George Mivart, have, as we think, dealt his theory blows from which it will not recover, he does not make the smallest mention. Yet it cannot be that Agassiz and Mivart are too small to be noticed by Mr. Chapman. Agassiz is too venerable a name in science to need any demonstration that his opinion on scientific matters is entitled to consideration. Mivart is, we take it, a younger man; yet, if he has not made himself an abiding reputation by what he has the modesty to call his “little book,” the Genesis of Species, he has made a name which must live, if Darwin’s, and Lyell’s, and Huxley’s do; since all these men have found in him a foe worthy of their steel—and the latter of the vials of his wrath.
We would not consider this article complete without a condensed history of the controversy between Mr. Huxley and Mr. Mivart, occasioned by the publication by the latter of his admirable work, the Genesis of Species. We give it here for this, as well as for the reason that it will serve as the best general answer it is in our power to give to Mr. Chapman and other writers of his character.
But first a few remarks on Darwin’s theory. It is only a theory, a mere hypothesis. Mr. Darwin does not pretend to have proved it himself; nor does his advocate, Mr. Huxley, who seems to have taken Mr. Darwin and the Darwinian theory under his special protection, pretend that it is proved.
Bearing in mind that the Darwinian theory is only a hypothesis, we must estimate its value as we estimate that of other hypotheses, viz., by its ability to account for all the facts of which it pretends to be the solution.
The Copernican system of astronomy, for instance, is only a hypothesis; yet, as there is no known astronomical fact absolutely contradictory to it, we accept it as true. If there were only one fact which it did not explain and could not explain; above all, if there were one fact at variance with the hypothesis, the hypothesis must give way, and the fact stand; for one fact is worth a thousand hypotheses, and one fact in cases of this kind, as Mr. Huxley says, as good as five hundred.
Are there, then, any facts which the Darwinian theory of development by natural selection should explain and does not? Mr. Huxley himself says there is one set of such facts—the facts of hybridism; and, as we will presently see, there are a great many others.
To St. George Mivart, a scientist, but more than a scientist, a philosopher in a degree, somewhat of a theologian as well, and therefore a man of greater intellectual grasp than either Darwin or Huxley, we are indebted for the fullest presentation of the facts inexplicable by natural selection that has yet been given to the reading world. This that gentleman has done in his book before referred to, The Genesis of Species.
One of Mr. Mivart’s great merits is that he accords to Mr. Darwin’s theory its full meed of praise. He is a scientific man, and as such a good judge of its merits and demerits, therefore competent to acknowledge the one and point out the other.
We are not at all prejudiced against Mr. Darwin or his theory. We agree entirely with Mr. Mivart that it “is perhaps the most interesting theory, in relation to natural science, which has been promulgated during the present century.” Before pointing out, however, why it is the most interesting theory of the kind, let us see in brief what the Darwinian theory of natural selection is.
In the words of Mr. Mivart it may be stated thus:
1. “Every kind of animal and plant tends to increase in numbers in a geometrical proportion.
2. “Every kind of animal and plant transmits a general likeness with individual differences to its offspring.
3. “Every individual may present minute variations of any kind in any direction.
4. “Past time has been practically infinite.
5. “Every individual has to endure a very severe struggle for existence, owing to the tendency to geometrical increase of all kinds of animals and plants, while the total animal and vegetable population (man and his agency excepted) remains almost stationary.
6. “Thus, every variation of a kind tending to save the life of the individual possessing it, or to enable it more surely to propagate its kind, will in the long run be preserved, and will transmit its favorable peculiarity to some of its offspring, which peculiarity will thus become intensified till it reaches the maximum degree of utility. On the other hand, individuals presenting unfavorable peculiarities will be ruthlessly destroyed. The action of this law of ‘natural selection’ may thus be well represented by the convenient expression, ‘survival of the fittest.’”
Now as to the series of facts which this theory throws light upon. Here they are as enumerated by Mr. Mivart. It explains:
1. Some singular facts “relating to the geographical distribution of animals and plants; as, for example, on the resemblance between the past and present inhabitants of different parts of the earth’s surface.
2. “That often, in adjacent islands, we find animals closely resembling and appearing to represent each other; while, if certain of these islands show signs of more ancient separation, the animals inhabiting them exhibit a corresponding divergence.
3. That “‘rudimentary structures’ also receive an explanation by means of this theory.
4. “That the singular facts of ‘homology’ are capable of a similar explanation.”
5. That “that remarkable series of changes which animals undergo before they attain their adult condition, which is called their process of development, and during which they more or less closely resemble other animals during the early stages of the same process, has also great light thrown on it from the same source.”
6. That “by this theory, and as yet by this alone, can any explanation be given of that extraordinary phenomenon which is metaphorically termed ‘mimicry.’”
To explain in detail the exact import of each of these heads would carry us beyond the limits of a magazine article; and the reader who wishes for more minute and definite information on them we must refer to Mivart’s own book, or to Darwin’s Origin of Species.
Pass we now to those facts which Darwin’s theory is incompetent to explain, and to the arguments against it. Mr. Mivart enumerates them thus:
1. “That ‘natural’ selection is incompetent to account for the incipient stages of useful structures.
2. “That it does not harmonize with the coexistence of closely similar structures of diverse origin.
3. “That there are grounds for thinking that specific differences may be developed suddenly instead of gradually.
4. “That the opinion that species have definite though very different limits to their variability is still tenable.
5. “That certain fossil transitional forms are absent which might have been expected to be present.
6. “That some facts of geographical distribution supplement other difficulties.
7. “That the objection drawn from the physiological difference between ‘species’ and ‘races’ still exists unrefuted.”
Our readers will readily understand that, if species, or rather individual animals, were originated by natural law, and if that law be “natural selection,” the action of “natural selection” must be able to explain not only the production of the animal as a whole, but of its several organs, both when they have reached the point of maximum utility, and at all stages previous thereto.
Mr. Mivart shows that it does not accomplish this; that it does not account for “the incipient stages of useful structures, e. g. the heads of flatfishes, the baleen of whales, vertebrate limbs, the laryngeal structures of the new-born kangaroo, the pedicellariæ of echinoderms”; and thus he established his first charge on purely scientific grounds, as a scientist writing for scientists. The other charges are equally well sustained. It would, however, require the rewriting of Mr. Mivart’s book to follow him through all his facts and arguments, and we must beg again to refer the reader who would study the matter in detail, to the book itself.
Another series of objections brought forward by Mr. Mivart against the same theory is equally well sustained—objections that go to show that “it cannot be applied at least to the soul of man,” as Mr. Darwin has applied it.
Here, again, everyone will see that, if the human soul is not created by God, it, too, must have been gradually evolved from what, for lack of a more convenient term, though not without protest, we must call an animal soul, by the process of natural selection; and therefore there is nothing in man’s soul which was not in the ape’s—the same faculties, moral and intellectual, in kind, different only in degree. This question Mr. Mivart discusses in a separate chapter on “Evolution and Ethics.”
The result of the discussion he thus sums up:
1. “Natural selection could not have produced, from the sensations of pleasure and pain experienced in brutes, a higher degree of morality than was useful; therefore it could have produced any amount of ‘beneficial habits,’ but not an abhorrence of certain acts as impure and sinful.
2. “It could not have developed that high esteem for acts of care and tenderness to the aged and infirm which actually exists, but would rather have perpetuated certain low social conditions which obtain in some savage localities.
3. “It could not have evolved from ape sensations the noble virtues of a Marcus Aurelius, or the loving but manly devotion of a S. Louis.
4. “That it alone could not have given rise to the maxim, Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum.
5. “That the interval between material and formal morality is one altogether beyond its power to traverse.”
Mr. Mivart further shows “that the anticipatory character of moral principles is a fatal bar to that explanation of their origin which is offered to us by Mr. Herbert Spencer”; and “that the solution of that origin proposed recently by Sir John Lubbock is a mere version of simple utilitarianism, appealing to the pleasure or safety of the individual, and therefore utterly incapable of solving the riddle it attacks.”
It is hardly necessary that we should dwell on these points. Our Christian readers need no demonstration of them. Knowing, on the one hand, what Christian morality is, and, on the other, what mere animal behavior, they must know the difference between them, and, knowing this difference, that by no possibility could the one be developed from the other, there being no oneness of kind in them.
Just here we would remark that, in addition to his other arguments, Mr. Mivart might have added that from philology against Darwinism, and with good effect. There are those who, from that science, argue the other way. But, in a series of able articles on “Darwinism and the Science of Language,” the Rev. J. Knabenbauer, S. J., has shown that philology points to a diversity of origin for man and the lower animals.
He argues that the ultimate elements, the roots of all language, are expressive of general ideas. Now, general ideas are the products of the intellectual processes known as abstraction and generalization. Hence, before the formation of roots, before the beginnings of language, man was man, since he could abstract and generalize. Hence, also, language is not a development of animal cries, nor man of the brute, since the brute can neither abstract nor generalize.
Finally, Mr. Mivart shows in his chapter on “Evolution and Theology” that evolution and creation by no means exclude one another; and that a Catholic—Mr. Mivart is a Catholic—may accept the theory of evolution, ancient writers of authority in the church having “asserted abstract principles such as can perfectly harmonize with the requirements of modern science,” and, “as it were, provided for the reception of its most advanced speculations.”
In support of this view, Mr. Mivart quotes from S. Augustine, S. Thomas, Cornelius à Lapide, and refers to the Jesuit Suarez, with the doctrines of all of whom it is perfectly consistent to hold that animal species were created only potentially, potentialiter tantum.
By that we do not mean to insinuate that the naked Darwinian theory is compatible with Catholic faith; but of this more hereafter.
It was not to be expected that Mr. Mivart, in his criticism on Darwinism, would meet with no opponents. He must have expected to be attacked from two quarters, and by two different classes of men: by those committed to the Darwinian hypothesis, in the first place; and, again, by those who value that hypothesis less for its scientific merit than for—as they suppose—its incompatibility with Christian doctrine, and the service they think it might render in the disintegration of the Christian societies. Among the latter we are compelled to class Mr. Huxley, who, if a very good scientist, is, notwithstanding, one of the most arrogant of men.
He replied to Mr. Mivart, and in his reply does neither more nor less than constitute himself the infallible teacher of all mankind, the supreme pontiff of science, empowered to speak with authority on all matters pertaining to religion and philosophy, as well as to anatomy. He has the commendable modesty, even, to tell Catholics what they may believe, and what they must reject. He interprets the Bible for them, expounds the teachings of the Fathers of the church, comments on the schoolmen, all for their benefit; in fact, entirely forgets the good old maxim, “Let the cobbler stick to his last,” and imagines that, because he has learned a considerable amount about brains and stomachs—dead brains and stomachs, for the most part—he can legislate for the Christian world; that anything in heaven or on earth which he cannot weigh or measure, upon which he cannot bring the knife, or the blowpipe, or the spectroscope to bear, does not exist, or exist otherwise than as it takes form in his own by no means humble mind.
In his reply to Mr. Mivart, he virtually passes over all of the latter gentleman’s scientific objections, and fastens on his assertion that evolution is at all compatible with Catholic doctrine.
Mr. Mivart had, as we have seen, referred to Suarez, and that, Mr. Mivart assures us, because, in Mr. Huxley’s words, “the popular repute of that learned theologian and subtle casuist was not such as to make his works a likely place of refuge for liberality of thought.”
Of course Mr. Mivart did not intend to represent Suarez or the other writers we have mentioned above as advocating the very modern doctrine of evolution, but only abstract principles harmonizing with it; and, if anything, broader than it, inasmuch as they are broad enough not only to take in the recent theory of evolution, but any other theory of development which may be yet advocated; yet Mr. Huxley assumed that Mr. Mivart meant to convey the impression that F. Suarez was a Darwinian or a disciple of Herbert Spencer, which he could not well be, having lived some centuries too early to enjoy any such good-fortune. Having erected this theory, Mr. Huxley went, in his “More Criticisms on Darwin,” deliberately to work to demolish it, in doing which he left his way considerably, raising questions on which Mr. Mivart had said nothing whatever, and which in the discussion are wholly irrelevant; as, for instance, the meaning of the word “day” in the first chapter of Genesis, as advocated by some authorities.
Mr. Mivart retorted through the pages of the Contemporary Review, and demonstrated that Suarez was “an opponent of the theory of a perpetual direct creation of organisms,” and “that the principles of scholastic theology are such as not to exclude the theory of development, but rather to favor it.” He quoted again from Suarez, to show that that writer, treating of the opinion that individuals of kinds like the mule, leopard, lynx, etc., must have been created from the beginning, expressed the view that the contrary seemed to him more probable, thus asserting the principle that those kinds of animals which are potentially contained in nature need not be supposed to be directly and immediately created. More than this, Mr. Mivart shows that the same authority recognizes the possibility that certain organisms may be originated directly from the inorganic world by cosmical influences.
Our readers already know what were the views of S. Augustine on this matter. Mr. Mivart shows that other theologians besides S. Thomas, such as S. Bonaventure, Albertus Magnus, Denis the Carthusian, Cardinal Cajetan, Melchior Canus, Bannes, Vincentius Contenson, Macedo and Cardinal Noris, Tosti, Serri, “and others down to the present day,” agree with S. Augustine in his views on the question we are considering.
The great result—the only result in which we feel especially interested—of this controversy was the bringing into clearer light the fact that the kernel of truth contained in Darwinism or in evolution is not at variance with revelation, as indeed it cannot be and be true. This is what Mr. Huxley has done for the church.
Of Mr. Huxley’s treatment of his opponent’s objections on the score of morality we have nothing to say which would be of the least service to our readers.
Remains the question: How far may a Catholic accept the special Darwinian theory or the doctrine of evolution? Mr. Mivart asserts that a miraculous origin of the body of man is not necessary; that it might have been evolved from that of some lower being by natural law. Darwinians and evolutionists generally maintain an analogous origin for the human soul. Is there anything in this contrary to revelation?
We have not space, if we had the ability, to go into a lengthy examination of this question. Nor is there any reason that we should. It has already received the attention of able Catholic writers, and we can do no better than give the results of their investigation. They have shown[48] that, with respect to all organisms lower than man, the doctrine of the fathers is that Catholic faith “does not prevent any one from holding the opinion that life, both vegetable and animal, was in the world in germ at its creation, and afterwards developed by regular process into all the various species now on the earth”; therefore, that “all living things up to man exclusively were evolved by natural law out of minute life-germs primarily created, or even out of inorganic matter,” is an opinion which a Catholic may consistently hold if he thinks fit so to do.
As to the question of the body of man, the same writers have shown, and we take it to be the safer opinion—in which, perhaps, we differ from Mr. Mivart—“that to question the immediate and instantaneous (or quasi-instantaneous) formation by God of the bodies of Adam and Eve—the former out of inorganic matter, the latter out of the rib of Adam—is at least rash, and probably proximate to heresy.”
That the human soul was specially and separately created is an article of Catholic faith.
There is not a fact in science at variance with these views of the origin of the body of man and of the human soul. Even Mr. Wallace—to whom the credit of pointing out the influence of “natural selection” in modifying organic beings belongs by right of a title not less valid than that of Mr. Darwin—believes, and he has reason to believe, in the action of an overruling Intelligence in the production of “the human form divine”; and that, in view of man’s special attributes, “he is, indeed, a being apart”—not, therefore, evolved, either as to his body or his soul, from any inferior organism. When a man like Mr. Wallace holds such a view, we may rest assured that the facts in the case do not require any one to hold the contrary. Let us now endeavor to sum up the results in relation to the Darwinian theory and the bearings thus far obtained:
1. The tendency of every kind of animal and plant to increase in geometrical progression, and to transmit a general likeness with individual differences, as well as to present minute variations of any kind in any direction, the great length of past time, the struggle of animals and plants for existence, and the preservation and intensification of favorable variations, are facts on which the theory is based.
We accept these facts.
2. We do not accept the theory, because, although it throws light on some facts, there are others with which it is not compatible; and because those even on which it does throw light do not require us to accept it.
3. There is nothing in the Darwinian theory, or in the more general theory of evolution countenanced by facts bearing on the development of life, which a Catholic may not accept, if he wishes so to do.
4. The teaching of Darwinism as to the origin of man’s body is probably next to heretical. At all events, the only safe opinion is that it was not evolved from the body of a lower being, but was directly and quasi-instantaneously created by God.
5. Its teaching concerning the origin of the human soul is in direct and irreconcilable contradiction with an article of Catholic faith.
6. There is—apart from revealed doctrine—an absolute scientific certainty of the truth of that same doctrine respecting the creation of the human soul, and the highest probability of the immediate creation of the human body.
So much for the facts, so much for the theory, so much for its bearings on revelation.
In all we have said, we do not wish to be understood as advocating the Darwinian theory, even in so far as it does not conflict with Catholic faith, nor as committing ourselves to the general doctrine of evolution. The fact is, we do not care as Catholics to pledge ourselves hastily to any hypothesis whatever. We know some little of the history of hypotheses, and we know that it has been a history of failures.
When the Darwinian hypothesis or the theory of evolution shall have stood the test of years and facts, and the most searching investigations, let the Catholics who will be then alive accept them. There is no special reason why we should profess our faith in them. We do not need them to account for the phenomena about us.
On the other hand, we can readily understand why a certain class of minds should subscribe to it.
The human mind naturally seeks for an explanation of the origin of things. Intelligent men know the human race has not always been on the earth, that the phenomena about us are not eternal, that animal and vegetable life must have had a beginning here. Catholics know the same, and knew it before science had demonstrated it or discovered its minutiæ.
Men who wish to get rid of God welcome any hypothesis which seems to remove him to a greater distance from them, even before that hypothesis has more in its favor than against a it. Catholics, who believe in God, have no such anxiety. They are willing to wait, since they have already an explanation of the origin of things in their belief in God, and in the teachings of his revelation that he in the beginning created the heavens and the earth, and all that they contain. The minutiæ, the How of that creation, they leave it to science to discover. When discovered and proved, they will accept it. But science can never give them anything not contained in the first article of the Creed: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.” All it can do is to explicate and confirm this.
If it be objected that scientists accept the theory, and that we therefore should, we reply, mere scientists do; and of all men, the least safe of guides is the mere scientist. No other man is more apt to become a blind worshipper of the idols of the Cave. He confines himself within the narrow limits of his laboratory, among instruments of death, and then would excogitate a solution to the problems of life and of the universe; as if with bolts and screws he could wring from nature the secret it will not yield.
Goethe well knew that from such men we need not expect the answer to the riddle of the universe; that one glance at the world as a whole as it lies bathed in the sun on a summer’s day tells us more than all the tomes of philosophers.
“Ah me! this dungeon still I see,
This drear, accursed masonry,
Where even the welcome daylight strains
But darkly through the painted panes,
Hemmed in by many a toppling heap
Of books worm-eaten, gray with dust,
Which to the vaulted ceiling creep,
Against the smoky paper thrust,
With glasses, boxes, round me stocked,
And instruments together hurled,
Ancestral lumber stuffed and packed:
Such is my world: and what a world!
And do I ask wherefore my heart
Falters, oppressed with unknown needs?
With some inexplicable smart
All movement of my life impedes?
Alas! in living nature’s stead,
Where God his human creature set
In smoke and mould, the fleshless dead
And bones and beasts surround me yet!”
And although we can see some force in the general theory of evolution, we cannot accept it till it settles its account with the principle on which the whole inductive method is raised—the constancy of the laws of nature.
The theory of evolution strikes, it seems to us, at the very root of this principle. It proclaims that there is not and has never been any constancy in nature. It devours all other law, or rather destroys it. It means simply change. Permanency, constancy, and their synonymes are opposed to it; and thus the theory of evolution must invalidate all the sciences which are founded on the assumption that nature is constant; in other words, that it does not change, does not evolve. The definition of evolution given by Mr. Spencer makes it simply a change. True, he states the method or law of that change. But the method is discovered by induction. Induction is in turn annihilated by evolution. The fabric as it rises loses its foundation, and floats in the air, a baseless vision.
But if we are in no haste to yield assent to Darwinism or evolution in general; as applied to man’s soul by advocates like Spencer or Chapman, we reject it in toto. It is incompetent to account for the facts, nay, in glaring contradiction to them.
We take our stand against man’s relation to the ape on facts as undeniable as any the zoologist or anatomist advances in its favor. These compare man’s body and the ape, and find no very great superiority of the one over the other as they lie recently dead on the anatomist’s table. Let the two lie there only a little longer, and none at all will be discoverable. A little dust which the winds of heaven will soon scatter to the four points of the compass is all that will be left of either. Shall we therefore infer their oneness of kind? By no means.
We know that man is in some respects not unlike the ape in form; but we know, too, that there are Godlike faculties in man which are not in the ape. We know this, and we know, moreover, that the philosopher through whose brain roll vast choruses of thought; who stands on the heights of Christian philosophy and human speculation, and discourses on death and immortality; who, from the eminence to which Christianity has raised him, looks down, not with indifference and not with contempt, but with deep serenity, on the little loves and little hates of the world, because conscious of his eternal destiny—we know, we have an intuition, which we trust more than we trust Darwin and Huxley, that this philosopher is more than a developed ape.
And when the anatomist tells us there is little anatomical difference between man and the ape, therefore between man as man and the ape as ape there is little difference or a difference only of degree, we reply: Between man and the ape, between a Newton or even a savage and a monkey, there is, in the intellectual order, a vast difference, an infinite difference. This we take as the fact, and draw the conclusion that the amount of anatomical difference between a monkey and a man is no criterion or measure of the real difference.
We treat the argument from embryology in the same way. Because at a certain stage in its development the human embryo cannot be distinguished from that of certain of the lower animals, we are assured that man differs from these only in degree. We grant the fact, we reject the inference; and we reason: notwithstanding you can detect no difference at certain stages between the two, time develops one so great that the one may become a Shakespeare, the other becomes only a Shakespeare’s dog. What follows? Simply this: that there is a something in the human embryo which is not in the other—a something which the sense cannot detect, but the existence of which the mind may infer; that there is more of life than the embryologist can find out by his methods, as there is more of the rose than is found in its ashes—more of life than we would be apt to see in a dissecting-room or a charnel-house.
No; whatever force the special Darwinian theory may have to the student of animal life, to the student of man as an animal, it can have very little to him who views man in his higher manifestations. Whatever else it may account for, it never can throw any light on the facts of man’s moral nature. It never can explain the origin of a being who believes in purity or pity.
Let the Darwinian, indeed, explain, if he can, how, if man owes his existence and his development, physical, moral, and mental, to success in the struggle for existence—in other words, to natural selection—and this success, in turn, to the exercise of the selfish or combative faculties, or to both combined—faculties which, according to this theory, he must have exercised, his present and previous states taken together, for ages unnumbered—so long, indeed, that they ought to have grown into uncontrollable instincts—and which are the only ones he can have exercised from the beginning, to which, therefore, as the most imperious, all others should be subordinate—let him, we say, explain who can how this tendency to battle, inherited through infinite ages, has not taken complete possession of man, nor caused his life to be a continual strife with his fellows; let him explain how, instead of all this, there are men who have learned, not to hate, but to love their enemies, to compassionate the weak, the poor, and the lowly, to nurse the sick and the dying, to care even for the dead; nay, how it comes that there are men who are guided by the sublime command: “Love them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that persecute and calumniate you”; or, further yet, how, in spite of the exercise of the selfish and combative faculties, in the struggle for existence, the tendency of which must have been to strengthen by use the organs of destruction, the same organs should gradually disappear, and that in man not one of them should be left.
Let him explain, again, how out of mere animality, by “natural selection,” out of the mere brute, in a “struggle for existence,” beings should come—men to whom this would be a law: Be pure; for “he that looketh after a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart.” There are such men—men to whom this is a law, and who obey it. Will a Vogt or a Büchner believe it? Will a Darwin account for it by “natural selection”?
Finally, let him explain how, if man has always been only growing out of some lower condition, he has yet learned, in a measure, to go beyond himself, to harbor an ideal which he has never reached, but towards which he ever strives, inasmuch as he endeavors to fulfil the command of the Son of God: “Be ye perfect, as my heavenly Father also is perfect.”
[PEACE.]
This supplication of the Suffering was that also of the Militant Church, which daily offered it as now with sighs and tears, and, by the light which this reflection casts on history, we can catch a glimpse for an instant at the immense multitude of the pacific men who in the middle ages were existing upon earth; for as many as were joined in spirit to the church, were united with her in this ardent, insatiable desire of peace. How do we know that the Catholic Church, which the holy Fathers call the house of peace, was so profoundly attached to peace? From a simple review of her liturgy: for in the first place, her great daily sacrifice itself was nothing else but the mystery of peace, the pledge of future and eternal, the diffusion of present peace to man. At this holy and tremendous celebration in which God hath given peace reconciling the lowest with the highest in himself, the good of temporal peace was also formally invoked, at the Gloria, at the Te igitur, at the spreading of the hands before the consecration, at the Libera nos at the salutation of the people, at the Agnus Dei, at the three prayers which follow it, and in the prayer for the king; for as the apostle assigns the reason for the latter, that we may lead a secure and peaceable life, so with that intention the holy church prays for all rulers, even for such as are transgressors of the divine law;[49] which intention is formally expressed in her solemn litany, where she prays that kings and Christian princes may have peace and true concord, and all the people peace and unity. The innumerable priests, who celebrated throughout the earth, knew that the inestimable price of the world, and the great Victim for the salvation of men, could only be immolated in a spirit of peace, and with a contrite heart; and that, as Peter of Blois says, it is never lawful to offer it without that preparation.[50]—Digby, Mores Catholici.
[DANTE’S PURGATORIO.]
CANTO EIGHTH.
In this Canto, Dante introduces the souls of Nino Visconti, judge of Gallura in Sardinia; and of Conrad Malaspina, who predicts to the poet his banishment.
‘Twas now the hour that brings to men at sea,
Who in the morn have bid sweet friends farewell,
Fond thoughts and longing back with them to be;
And thrills the pilgrim with a tender spell
Of love, if haply, new upon his way,
He faintly hear a chime from some far bell,
That seems to mourn the dying of the day;
When I forbore my listening faculty
To mark one spirit uprisen amid the band
Who joined both palms and lifted them on high
(First having claimed attention with his hand)
And towards the Orient bent so fixed an eye
As ‘twere he said, “My God! on thee alone
My longing rests.” Then from his lips there came
Te lucis ante, so devout of tone,
So sweet, my mind was ravished by the same
The others next, full sweetly and devout,
Fixing their gaze on the supernal wheels,
Followed him chanting the whole Psalm throughout.
Now, reader, to the truth my verse conceals
Make sharp thy vision; subtle is the veil
So fine ‘twere easily passed through unseen.
I saw that gentle army, meek and pale,
Silently gazing upward with a mien
As of expectancy, and from on high
Beheld two angels with two swords descend
Which flamed with fire, but, as I could descry,
They bare no points, being broken at the end.
Green robes, in hue more delicate than spring’s
Tender new leaves, they trailed behind and fanned
With gentle beating of their verdant wings.
One, coming near, just over us took stand,
Down to th’ opponent bank the other sped,
So that the spirits were between them grouped
Full well could I discern each flaxen head;
But in their faces mine eyes’ virtue drooped,
As ‘twere confounded by excess and dead.
“From Mary’s bosom they have both come here,”
Sordello said—“this valley to protect
Against the serpent that will soon appear:”
Whence I, unknowing which way to expect
This object, turned me, almost froze with fear,
And to those trusty shoulders closely clung.
Again Sordello: “Go we down and see
These mighty shades, and let them hear our tongue:
Thy presence will to them right gracious be.”
Only three steps I think brought me below
Where one I noticed solely eyeing me
As if who I might be he fain would know.
‘Twas dusk, yet not so but the dusky air,
Between his eyes and mine, within the dell,
Showed what before it did not quite declare.
Towards me he moved, and I towards him as well:
Gentle Judge Nino, when I saw thee there
What joy was mine to find thee not in hell!
We left unsaid no form of fair salute:
Then he inquired: “How long since thou didst come
O’er the far waters to the mountain’s foot?”
“O but this morn,” said I, “the realms of gloom
I passed: in the first life I am, but fain
Would find the next by following on this track.”
Like to men suddenly amazed, the twain,
He and Sordello, hearing this, drew back.
One looked at Virgil, one into the face
Of a companion sitting there, and cried,
“Up, Conrad! see what God hath of his grace
Bestowed,” then turning unto me replied:
NINO VISCONTI.
“By that especial reverence, I beseech,
Which thou ow’st him whose primal way is hid
So that none sound it, if soe’er thou reach
The shore beyond the vasty waters, bid
My child Giovanna for my peace implore
There where the cry of innocents heaven heeds.
Her mother I am sure loves me no more
Since she put off her widow’s paly weeds,
But in her misery fain would wear this day.
From her full readily may one be taught
How soon love’s flame in woman dies away
If sight or touch full oft relume it not.
The chanticleer upon Gallura’s shield
Had graced her sepulchre with fairer show
Than will that viper, which to battle-field
Marshals the men of Milan.” With such glow
He uttered this as in his face revealed
The heart’s just passion smouldering yet below.
Still that sole part of heaven I fondly eyed
Where the stars move, even as a wheel doth move
More slowly next the axle. Said my Guide:
“Son, what dost thou so gaze at there above?”
“Up there! at yon three torches,” I replied,
“Whose splendor makes this pole here all ablaze.”
And he to me: “The four clear stars that rose
This morn before thee have abased their rays,
And these have mounted in the place of those.”
While thus he spake, Sordello to his side
Drew Virgil, and exclaimed: “Behold our Foe!”
And pointed to the thing which he descried.
And where that small vale’s barrier sinks most low
A serpent suddenly was seen to glide,
Such as gave Eve, perchance, the fruit of woe.
Through flowers and herbage came that evil streak,
To lick its back oft turning round its head,
As with his tongue a beast his fur doth sleek.
I was not looking, so must leave unsaid
When first they fluttered, but full well I saw
Both heavenly falcons had their plumage spread.
Soon as the serpent felt the withering flaw
Of those green wings, it vanished, and they sped
Up to their posts again with even flight.
The shade who had approached the judge when he
Accosted him, had never moved his sight
Through this encounter, looking fixed on me.
CONRAD MALASPINA.
“So may that light,” the spirit began to say,
“Which leads thee up, find in thine own free will
Sufficient wax to last thee all the way,
Even to th’ enamelled summit of the Hill.
If thou true news of Val di Magra know’st,
Or of those parts, inform me of the same,
For I was mighty once upon that coast,
And Conrad Malaspina was my name.
Not the old lord, but his descendant, I:
The love which once I to my kindred bore
Is here refined.” “O,” thus I made reply,
“That realm of yours I never travelled o’er;
But where throughout all Europe is the place
That knows it not? The honor Fame accords
Your house illustrates not alone the race,
But makes the land renowned as are its lords;
He knows that country who was never there:
Still the free purse they bear, and still bright swords
So mount my soul as this to thee I swear!
Custom and nature privilege them so,
That, if through guilt the world’s guide lead astray,
They in the path of right straightforward go
Sole of all men, and scorn the evil way.”
To these my words, “Now go,” the spirit said,
For the sun shall not enter seven times more
That part of heaven where Aries o’er his bed
Stretches and spreads his forked feet all four,
Ere this thy courtesy’s belief shall be
Nailed in the middle of thy head with nails
Of greater force than men’s reports to thee
If, unimpeded, Judgment’s course prevails.
THE RUSSIAN IDEA.
FROM THE GERMAN OF CONRAD VON BOLANDEN.
CONCLUDED.