MIVART’S CONTEMPORARY EVOLUTION.[100]
If in our contemporary evolution a great genius should appear, worthy to continue the work of St. Thomas, it would be requisite that he should combine in himself the gifts and acquirements of a metaphysician, a theologian, and a master of natural science. We accentuate strongly the last of these requisites, because we are not so much in need of pure metaphysics and theology, possessing both already in a state of high perfection and completeness, as we are of the mixed science in which the relations of the higher and the lower orders of being, truth and good, are developed and manifested. There have been some men already, since the modern period began, who have combined metaphysical and natural science in a remarkable degree. Such a man was Leibnitz. The famous Jesuit Boscovich was perhaps superior intellectually, as he certainly was morally, even to this prodigy of talent and learning. He was a great mathematician and physicist, a great metaphysician, and a great statesman, besides being eminent in Christian perfection and apostolic zeal. Balmes was a man of a similar stamp, though especially eminent in social science. Among living men a high place belongs to Father Bayma as a metaphysician, mathematician, and physicist, although he has published little under his own name, except
his remarkable work on Molecular Mechanics. Such men are invaluable at the present time. And for all those who are aiming at a thorough education for important positions in the service of the church and humanity, the conjoined cultivation of these various branches of science, in the due proportion for acquiring what we have called the mixed science, is of the highest importance. We are happy to know that it is not neglected, and is likely to be advanced to a higher and more extensive state of excellence in the near future. One who has the chance of looking over the theses in physics which are prepared for the examinations at Woodstock will be convinced that there is one Catholic seminary, at least, in this country where such matters receive due attention. The articles published from time to time in the Catholic reviews of Europe, as well as an occasional volume from the pen of a Catholic professor, are another evidence of what we have stated. The English hierarchy, aided by the band of gifted and learned priests and laymen who adorn the Catholic Church of England, is distinguishing itself in the promotion of this scientific culture. Dr. Mivart is one of this band. We have, in former numbers, taken occasion to notice several of his works, and express our high estimation of the courage and ability with which he is constantly laboring for the advancement of true, Catholic science. Dr. Mivart’s specialty is natural
science; but he is not a mere physicist or scientist. He has the genuine philosophical spirit, and shows in his writings that he has studied to some purpose metaphysics, theology and ethics, history, politics, and belles-lettres. The essays contained in the volume we are at present reviewing were first published in the Contemporary Review, with the exception of the last one, which appeared in the Dublin Review. We propose, at present, to do little more than give an analysis of their contents and of the author’s argument.
The title informs us that his topic of discussion is, “Some great Social Changes.” These social changes, in his idea, are very deep and universal alterations in the social fabric which have been going on during the entire post-mediæval period, are still in progress, and are likely to proceed much further as time goes on. It is in view of their bearing on the perpetuity and action of the Catholic Church that they are considered. In the introductory chapter a general view is taken of their nature, origin, causes and probable development, and the plan to be followed in pursuing the particular scope of the essay is laid down. The second chapter is on Political Evolution. The third presents the three ideals of social organization, which are proposed by as many different classes of political philosophers: 1. The pagan, or monistic. 2. The civic, or that which is based on some maxims of natural right and expediency. 3. The theocratic or mediæval. The fourth chapter treats of Scientific Evolution, the fifth of Philosophical and the sixth of Æsthetic Evolution.
We may as well premise a statement of Dr. Mivart’s idea of evolution
before we proceed to analyze his argument. It is a procession from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, whose origin is God as first cause, whose ultimatum is God as final cause or end, whose principle of continuity is the intelligent volition of God as ruler, embracing all the phenomena of the universe, physical, biological, political, moral, and religious, in one enchainment of activities, which rise in a graduated series from the lowest to the highest toward their Ideal in God.[101] A similar idea is laid by Leo at the foundation of his Universal History: “The Christian view of the history of the world takes all facts, not as something new superadded by the power of man to the creative act of God, but only as a further evolution of the facts of creation.”[102] In the introductory chapter Dr. Mivart begins by noting the fact that there are crises or great epochs in this historical evolution, and expressing his conviction that the present is one of these, and particularly marked by being a period of conscious development. As the outcome of the changes occurring in the past, he traces its logical connection with the periods of the French Revolution, the revolt of the sixteenth century, the Renaissance, and the conflict of Philip the Fair with the Holy See. The process of this evolution is designated as a struggle of reviving paganism to reject the domination of mediæval theocracy, which, gradually obtaining success, is likely to be carried to a much further point than it has yet reached. Two questions are proposed for consideration: 1. “The effect on Christianity of the further development
of the great movement.” 2. “The probable result of the renewed conflict between such a modified Christianity and a revived paganism.”
In order clearly and fully to understand the author’s method of treating these questions, it is necessary to place and keep distinctly in view with whom he is arguing and on what principles. It is not with professed Christians or Catholics that he primarily intends to discuss these topics, on their principles, but with those who are mere naturalists, and who admit nothing but what is evident or provable by purely scientific and rational arguments. The truth of revelation and the Catholic faith is therefore left on one side, and nothing is taken into consideration except “obvious or admitted tendencies of known natural forces and laws.” It is the author’s purpose to extort from the enemies of revelation and the Catholic Church, by using their own principles and ideas, evidence for the ability of the church to cope with, overcome, and bend to her own superior force of intelligence and will the new and hostile environments, political, scientific, and philosophical, by which she is surrounded. In respect to the political aspect of the question, he argues that, supposing the changes in this order to proceed in their evolution until a complete disintegration of the mediæval, theocratic system is effected, an interior, latent capacity will be evolved in the church, by which she will be integrated and strengthened for a more complete and extensive triumph than was ever before achieved. Briefly, his argument amounts to this: Violent, red-republican, or despotic subversions of the liberty of the masses and social order cannot be lasting. Some kind of
basis for liberty with order must be found in natural law and right, consisting of maxims of ethical truth and expediency. The political maxims of England and the United States are referred to for illustration, and the author anticipates for the English-speaking nations, their maxims of policy and their language, an universal, predominating influence in the future. Now, the church, he argues, can avail herself of this liberty. The laboring classes, once liberated from and raised above that misery and oppression which are the active cause of their hostility against both the hierarchy and the aristocracy, can be won over to the cause of the church. Religious orders, founded on poverty and labor, whose members are drawn from these classes and associated with them, can gain new life, power, and extension. Opposition and persecution will only purify and invigorate the intellectual and moral constitution of the church, and intensify its unity of organic life and action. That part of society which is corrupted by pagan immorality will be weakened and diminished by its errors and vices, while the Catholic portion will become always stronger and more numerous by the effect of its ethical maxims carried out in practice. The past history of the church enables us to augur for her future history that there are no circumstances, however difficult and apparently destructive to her life, which she cannot surmount, and over which she cannot achieve a complete triumph, in virtue of the organic strength which she possesses. At the end of his long and minute process of argument, in which he says he has “endeavored dispassionately to estimate what, at the very utmost, must be the destructive