The fact is plain, although Mr. Alger makes sorry work in attempting to philosophize upon it. A month's experience in the confessional, if that were possible for him, would teach him with whom "religion is an element fused into the life," and that the faith of a Catholic is not a matter of sentiment only, and it might reveal to him, also, the secret of that holy friendship of which, in truth, the world outside knows nothing. It certainly does surprise us that, from his close perusal of the lives of these friends in God, he has failed to discover it. We can tell him, however, the reason why he has not found the secret of their affection, for we read it plainly on every page of his book. He fails to recognize the reality of the supernatural, and therefore has no appreciation of any friendship which is not wholly human in its foundation and motive. This is the fault we have to find with modern non-Catholic literature, and which renders it so cold and sterile. We are not the ones to carp at human love and human friendship. Both are of God, and blessed by him. The doctrines of Calvinism, which has darkened the spiritual life of those who have been nourished under its influence, and which stigmatizes the nature of man, with all its aspirations, as of the devil, devilish, is alone responsible for the degradation of the heart's affections, and that dearth of human friendship of which the author complains in his introduction, and the desire to reestablish which appears to have moved him to the composition of this work. The revolt against the doctrine of total depravity has resulted in pure naturalism and transcendentalism. Hence, human reason is deified together with the instincts. Reason is the highest, for there is nothing above it; and "act out thy instincts," is the holiest, for they are divine.
May not this inordinate cultivation of the passions, and their unbridled gratification, which is the burden of the sensational literature of our day, be a reaction from the unnatural restraints of puritanism? The actual state of things we leave our author to give in his own words. "The proportionate number of examples of virtuous love, completing itself in marriage, will probably diminish, and the relative examples of defeated or of unlawful love increase, until we reach some new phase of civilization, with better harmonized social arrangements— arrangements both more economical and more truthful. In the mean time, everything which tends to inflame the exclusive passion of love, to stimulate thought upon it, or to magnify its imagined importance, contributes so much to enhance the misery of its withholding or loss, and thus to augment an evil already lamentably extensive and severe." Why does not Mr. Alger ask himself the reason of this increasing immorality, and the diminution of the number of marriages? He says, again, "There never were so many morally baffled, uneasy, and complaining women on the earth as now." And why? His answer confirms what we have before said. "Because never before did the capacities of intelligence and affection so greatly exceed their gratification." Mr. Alger sees no other heaven than this earth, no "better part" than marriage; is blind to the supernatural end of man; fails to appreciate the examples of divine friendships he cites, and has no remedy to offer for the evils he deplores, but the stimulation of another human sentiment, purer in its conception, and less liable to abuse than the more ardent passion of love, and the establishment and cultivation of "woman's rights," to replace (we cannot help thinking it) the convent and its supernatural life of divine love; and substituting personal friendships for that charity which embraces the whole race. For, he says: "Now, the most healthful, effective antidote for the evils of an extravagant passion, is to call into action neutralizing or supplementary passions; to balance the excess of one power by stimulating weaker powers, and fixing attention on them; to assuage disappointments in one direction by securing gratification in another." And, again: "The good wife and mother fills a beautiful and sublime office—the fittest and the happiest office she can fulfil. If her domestic cares occupy and satisfy her faculties, it is a fortunate adjustment; and it is right that her husband should relieve her of the duty of providing for her subsistence. But what shall be said of those millions of women who are not wives and mothers; who have no adequate domestic life, no genial, private occupation or support? Multitudes of women have too much self-respect to be desirous of being supported in idleness by men, too much genius and ambition to be content with spending their lives in trifles; and too much devotedness not to burn to be doing their share in the relief of humanity, the work and progress of the world. If these were but all happy wives and mothers, that might be best. But denied that function, and being what they are, why should not all the provinces of public labor and usefulness which they are capable of occupying, be freely opened to them! What else is it save prejudice that applauds a woman dancing a ballet or performing an opera, but shrinks with disgust from one delivering an oration, preaching a sermon, or casting a vote? Why is it less womanly to prescribe as a physician than to tend as a nurse? If a woman have a calling to medicine, divinity, law, literature, art, instruction, trade, or honorable handicraft, it is hard to see any reason why she should not have a fair chance of pursuing it."
Mr. Alger, however, catches some faint glimpses of the truth to which we have alluded, and we wish that he would ponder well the full meaning of his own language, when speaking of the friendship of Madame Swetchine and Father Lacordaire—a friendship which appears to have been a subject of intense interest to him, and to have awakened his unqualified admiration. "No one who has not read their correspondence, reaching richly through a whole generation, can easily imagine the services rendered by this gifted and saintly woman to this holy and powerful man. Community of faith, of loyalty, of nobleness, joined them. It was in looking to heaven together that their souls grew united. Drawn by the same attractions, and held by one sovereign allegiance, such souls need no vows, nor lean on any foreign support. The divinity of truth and good is their bond." What is this "divinity of truth and good"? Is it God, the living, personal God, who redeems, inspires, regenerates, sanctifies, and glorifies humanity, or is it not? What is the character of the life born of this communion in God? Are such friendships possible outside of revealed religion? We think not, and we regret that a mind of such culture as our author has shown his to be, should not see that he has been forced to go outside of the bounds of his own theory to find the realization of his ideal.
The final chapter of his work, "On the present needs and duties of women," is not so foreign to the title of the volume as one might be tempted to believe on a cursory reading. Mr. Alger finds, as he says in his introduction, that the position of woman in society is descending. He looks for some "new phase of civilization" to bring her back to a position of honor and usefulness equivalent to that which she is so rapidly losing. He blames Christianity and its traditions for making woman the weaker vessel, and reducing her to subjection under the rule of man, as the head of the divine institution of the family. It seems to us that this relative position of the man and the woman is established by pretty high authority.
"To the woman, also, he said, I will multiply thy sorrows and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband's power, and he shall have dominion over thee." This, however, Mr. Alger conveniently rejects as a legend. But does he forget that the Christian church emancipated woman, and redeemed her from that degraded condition, into which, for want of the regenerating influence of the supernatural life of that church, she is once again descending? We are not surprised to see Mr. Alger throwing all revelation aside, denying original sin and its consequences. But let him beware. He will drag humanity back into the state of barbarism, or drown it in the sink of heathen licentiousness. This modern spirit of materialism, this throwing off the yoke of divine authority, is the result of the old temptation, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good from evil," and we are present witnesses to the curse that is falling upon those who give ear to the tempter. Men and women forget God, and there is a fearful resuscitation of the basest forms of heathen immorality among them. Will Mr. Alger tell us to what principle (either of civilization or of religion) he attributes the dying out of the non-Catholic native American stock in New England, and what new phase of civilization will prevent its total extinction?
Mr. Alger would regenerate the millions of women whose aimless life he deplores, by making woman equal in all the duties of life to the man. No matter what the whole world has said before, no matter what superstitious revelations have said, no matter if the teaching of the Bible distinctly shows the contrary, no matter if the Christian church affirms by the mouth of St. Paul, "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence; for Adam was first formed, then Eve." "We are led," says our author, "by teachings of philosophy and science which we cannot resist," to differ with the traditions of the whole world and the Christian church, and as for the Apostle, "his logic limps;" for, "did priority of creation confer authority to govern, then man should obey the lower animals." (!)
Mr. Alger has a theory, and endeavors to illustrate it, and draw the logical conclusions. We fear that those conclusions will harmonize but ill with the experience of the human race, and will be found sadly wanting in their adaptability to its needs.
An Illustrated History Of Ireland.
With ten first-class full-page Engravings of Historical Scenes, designed by Henry Doyle, and engraved by George Hanlon and George Pearson; together with upwards of 100 woodcuts by eminent artists, illustrating the Antiquities, Scenery, and Sites of Remarkable Events.
1 vol. 8vo, pp. xiv., 581.
London: Longman & Co.;
New York: Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau Street.
We extend a most cordial welcome to this "Popular Illustrated History of Ireland." It is precisely such a manual of that deeply interesting and suggestive history, as should be in the hands of every man or woman who claims connection with the ancient race of the Gael, or who wishes to obtain a correct knowledge of that people. Such a manual could only have been produced in our generation. Thirty or forty years ago, it were an impossibility. Little was then known of the genuine materials of the history of Ireland; of the vast body of annals, which Eugene O'Curry deliberately affirmed, some twelve years since, must form the basis of any really intelligible version of the story of "ancient Erinn;" of the Genealogies and Pedigrees, the Historic Tales, the Law Books, the Topographical Poems, and of the whole mass of miscellaneous historical literature, which the national historian must avail himself of, before he can give us anything more than a dry and meagre outline; before he can bring out in full relief, the pregnant record of the colonization, conversion, invasions, persecutions, wars, struggles, triumphs and reverses; sufferings and sorrows of Innisfail; before he can supply those lights and shades, all those minute circumstances, "which explain not only historical events, but those equally or even more important descriptions, in which the habits and manners, the social ideas and cultivation, the very life of the actors in those events are" depicted for our instruction as well as entertainment. It is true there were then as now accessible scores, even hundreds of so-called "Histories of Ireland," from Dermod O'Connor's rude and ruthless translation of the Foras Feasa Ar Eirinn of Dr. Geoffrey Keating, down through the ponderous volumes of Leland, and Warner, and O'Halloran, and Plowden, and Ledwich, and Musgrave, to the crude compilations of Taaffe, and Gordon, and Crawford, and Commerford, and Lawless; to the more polished and pretentious, but not practically more useful, rather more pernicious epitome of Thomas Moore. There were Ogygias, Itineraries, Collectanea, Chronicles of Eri, and such pedantic rubbish, in heaps on the shelves of public libraries, in old book-stores, in the closets and chests of fossilized book-worms. All of those pseudo-histories served rather to discourage than advance the study of the real history of Ireland; to bring into disrepute, rather than to exalt, the Irish name, and race, and nation, and the glorious church founded by the great apostle of the faith.