“Yes,” said Madame de Beaucœur, “M. le Maréchal will win his bâton by taking the Rhine for us!”
“Bravo,” cried in chorus the Legitimist, the Droite, and the Gauche. “Le Rhin! le Rhin! Vive le Rhin!”
“I will be willing to shake hands with ce gaillard lâ, and to cry Vive l’Empereur myself, if he comes back with the Rhine in his pocket,” declared the Legitimist with desperate patriotism.
And the sentiment was echoed by every one present. Orleanist, Bourbonist, Bonapartist, and Republican all united in a common thirst for the blue waters of the Rhine, and avowed themselves ready to vote the war, whatever its motive, a wise war and a righteous, if it gave the Rhine to France. All with one exception: the old academician shook his head, and muttered some broken sentences in which the words, démence, fanfaronnade, ruine du commerce, feu follet de la gloire, décadence des mœurs, jour de rétribution, etc., were audible through the general hubbub.
“What a people, mon Dieu!” murmured the philosopher to himself, as, descending the softly carpeted stairs, cries of “A Berlin! A Berlin dans six semaines! Vive le Rhin! Vive la guerre!” followed him through the open door of Berthe’s apartment; “fitful as the wind, passing from reason to madness, from heroism to absurdity, as the weathercock turns with the breeze.” The word that touches our vanity, touches every chord in our nature, and sets us in a blaze, just as the spark fires the powder-flask. Quel peuple? Mon Dieu, quel peuple!
REVIEW OF DR. STÖCKL’S PHILOSOPHY. [74]
We have already called attention to the necessity of providing sound philosophical text-books and manuals in the vernacular tongues, particularly the English, with which we are specially concerned. We have also expressed our conviction that the only philosophy which has any claim or fitness to be adopted in our places of education is the scholastic philosophy. Those who are capable of studying this philosophy in the more extensive and elaborate works of our great Catholic authors, have all they need for prosecuting their studies to any degree they please. More elementary treatises and compendiums in the Latin language are also at hand for those who can make use of them with facility. But those who cannot do so need to have books in their own language, and made level to their mental capacity and actual knowledge. And even those who are able to study in Latin text-books may derive great assistance from a good manual written in their own vernacular, for many reasons which are obvious, especially if they are not perfect in their knowledge of Latin. Besides this, there are many persons whose education is already completed, who would derive great pleasure and profit from a book of this kind. The English and American educated world is so unfamiliar with the ancient philosophy of the Catholic schools, that there is need of an interpreter who can make it intelligible, and domesticate it in our vernacular scientific literature. Numbers of educated persons, and even clergymen, who are converts and have received a Protestant collegiate education, or, if old Catholics, have not been thoroughly taught philosophy according to the scholastic method, have derived their information on the subject mostly from the miscellaneous philosophical literature of England and America, and perhaps, also, of France and Germany. In this miscellaneous literature there is much that is valuable, and even of great value, the product of highly gifted and cultivated minds imbued with sound and elevated principles, containing a vast amount of truth and conclusive argument. There is wanting, however, the scientific precision, definiteness and fixedness of terminology, and completeness, which are found only in the masters and disciples of the scholastic method. Protestants, and to a great extent Catholics also, have been at sea in philosophy ever since the unfortunate epoch of the Lutheran schism. The evil began in that fresh outbreak of paganism, miscalled renaissance; a revolt against the science and the civilization founded by the Holy See, the hierarchy, and the monastic orders, the only truly Christian science and civilization; a retrograde movement of the most fatal sort under the name of progression. The vain and frivolous scholars of that period brought St. Thomas and the scholastic theology and philosophy into contempt among the crowd of their followers. They affected to be Platonists, because the philosophy of Plato was at that time something strange and novel, and afforded them the chance of displaying their knowledge of Greek. The leaders of the religious revolt of the age of Leo X., at which time the disorder culminated, pretended to go back to the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures and the Fathers; where they could evade the contest with scholastic theology, and make a show of learning and pure Biblical and patristic doctrine for a considerable time. The scholastic theology has, however, fully avenged itself. It has defeated the enemies of the church who have attacked the Catholic faith from without. Within the church, it has established its supremacy, and subdued all those who have professed and endeavored to substitute a new system of theology for the old, while retaining the dogmas of faith. The pitiable and abortive effort to produce a new renaissance, which occasioned so much both of scandal and ridicule during the time of the Vatican Council, was marked by a specially violent assault on St. Thomas and St. Alphonsus, the two great doctors of the church in dogmatic and moral theology respectively. The result has been the triumph of both. The Angel of the Schools has gone up to a pinnacle of honor and glory above that which he had ever before attained, and it is safe to predict that his supremacy as the master of sacred science will never more be seriously questioned. The great champion of the thoroughly Roman teaching in doctrine, piety and morals, has been crowned with the doctorate at the petition of a vast body of the men highest in learning and office in the church. The great theological controversies are substantially finished and settled, and Catholic theology is very nearly complete. Philosophy is now the great field for intellectual activity, and that consolidated union in philosophical teaching which has been secured in theology is the end toward which the efforts of all the ardent and loyal lovers of the divine Truth should be directed.
This end can be secured only by following the same principles and methods in philosophy which have effected and secured unity and uniformity in theological doctrine. The scholastic philosophy must accompany the scholastic theology. This is obvious, without entering into the intrinsic merits of the question. No other system has that authority, that general prevalence, that scientific precision and completeness, that sanction of the rulers of the church, the great teaching orders, and the body of directors and professors of seminaries and strictly Catholic colleges, which are requisite for producing unity and uniformity in instruction. Those who do not follow the scholastic philosophy are divided into small parties holding the most opposite opinions and mutually hostile to each other; and these parties are again subdivided into smaller sections. The subject matter of this difference is not the mere corollaries and remote conclusions, or the high speculative questions of philosophy, not essentially affecting its substance; as is the case with the differences among strict adherents to scholastic theology and philosophy; but the very substance, the first principles, the guiding rules of philosophy itself. What likelihood is there that any one of these systems will ever conquer for itself sufficient territory or unite a sufficient number of suffrages to become the reigning doctrine? The history of the disputes which have gone on within and without the church during three centuries, since the decay of the influence of scholastic philosophy, may answer the question. Either we must give up the hope of attaining unity, and let philosophy degenerate into a mere theme of endless discussion among rival parties, like doctrine among the Protestants, or we must range ourselves under the banner of the ancient and still numerous and powerful school of the Angelic Doctor.