We rank Sir William Hamilton with the Positivists, as we do Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. J. Stuart Mill, because he restricts our science to the sensible and material order, and denies virtually that we can know principles and causes. We do not pretend that he, Mill, or Spencer agrees in all things with Auguste Comte, the founder of Positivism; we have no reason to suppose that he sympathized knowingly with Comte's avowed atheism, or with his deification and worship of humanity. But the fundamental principle of positivism, that which excludes ontology from the domain of science, is common to them all; and it is impossible to establish the existence of God, the spirituality of the soul, or the liberty of man, or anything else without the aid of ontological principles. Mr. Mansel, the ablest of Sir William Hamilton's disciples, seems well aware of it, and attempts to found science on faith, and faith on—nothing.
We would willingly comply with our friend's request, but we know of no philosophical work in our language such as he wishes us to name. The English-speaking world, since Hobbes and Locke, has had no philosophy, and we are aware of no English treatise on philosophy that has any philosophical value, though some good things may be found in old Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, and in Reid and Beattie. We know nothing within a moderate compass in any other modern tongue that would meet the wishes of our friend much better. Balmes's Fundamental Philosophy, translated from the Spanish by H. F. Brownson, with an introduction by his father, Doctor O. A. Brownson, and published by the Sadliers in this city, is the best that occurs to us. Several Latin text-books, used in our colleges, such as Rothenflue's, Fournier's, Branchereau's, and the Lugdunensis, are, though not free from objection, yet good introductions to the study of philosophy. For ourselves, we collect our philosophy from Plato, Aristotle, the fathers and theologians, more especially from the mediaeval doctors of the church, aided by various modern writers, and our own reflections. We follow no one author, but regard St. Augustine and St. Thomas as the two greatest masters of Catholic philosophy that have yet appeared. As philosophy is the science of reason, we depend on the reason common to all men to confirm or to reject such philosophical views as we from time to time put forth.
Father Lacordaire. [Footnote 65]
[Footnote 65: The Inner Life of the Very Reverend Père Lacordaire, of the Order of Preachers. Translated from the French of the Rev. Père Chocarne, O.P., with the author's permission. By a Religious of the same Order. With preface by the Very Rev. Father Aylward, Prior Provincial of England. Small 8vo, pp. 556. Dublin: William B. Kelly. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.]
A complete biography of the eloquent Dominican whose name is one of the most brilliant in the history of the modern French Church is yet to be looked for. If it is ever adequately written, it will be a work of singular fascination. Rich, however, as Father Lacordaire's life was in materials for such a book, it was a life comparatively poor in striking incidents—a life whose best side lay apart from the world, and whose beauty could be clearly seen only by the light of a genuine religious spirit. In a word, it was his inner life which best merits our notice and awakens our sympathy. We shall hardly be going too far if we say that the history of his soul is a positive romance. This romance Father Chocarne has endeavored to relate in his excellent narrative of "The Inner Life of the Very Rev. Père Lacordaire." As a biography, it is defective; but it does not pretend to be a biography. It is, rather, a description of the mental and spiritual progress of the man, and a picture of his virtues.
Henry Lacordaire was the son of a village doctor of Recey-sur-Ource, in Burgundy, where he was born in 1802. The gentleness of temper for which he was afterward remarkable, distinguished him from his cradle, and the fiery eloquence by which he was to work such wonders may almost be said to have been a gift of his boyhood. As a child, his favorite amusement was to play at being priest, and from his mimic pulpit to inveigh against the sins of the world with an energy which often became alarming. An incident, which he relates himself, and which may be found in his "Letters to Young Men," published by the Abbé Perreyve, illustrates at once the remarkable delicacy of feeling which formed, through life, so important an element of his character, and the piety which distinguished his early youth. At the age of ten he had been sent to school at the Lyceum of Dijon.
"From the very first day," says he, "my schoolfellows selected me as a kind of plaything or victim. I could not take a step without being pursued by their brutality. For several weeks they even deprived me, by violence, of any other food than my soup and bread. In order to escape their ill-treatment, I used, as often as possible, to get away from them during the time of recreation, and, going into the schoolroom, conceal myself under a bench from the eyes alike of my masters and companions. There, alone, without protection, abandoned by every one, I poured out religious tears before God, offering him my childish troubles, as a sacrifice, and striving to raise myself, by tender sentiments of piety, to the cross of his divine Son."
Father Chocarne's remark upon this story, though it may seem not altogether free from French fancifulness, is, after all, a just one.
"This little sufferer, hidden under a bench in the college of which he was afterward to be the honor, and taking refuge at the feet of the Great Victim, gives the key to the entire life of Father Lacordaire. He was not to be raised by God until he had been abased. He was to know glory, but only at the price of hard humiliations and bitter disappointments; and in the hour of success, as in that of trial, his refuge, his resource, his life, his very passion, was to be the cross, the cross of Him who sought the little schoolboy hidden under his bench."