It is in vain, I know, for me to endeavor to bring back to a sounder and nobler conception of the most beautiful of all arts those poets who debase it by their very idolatry. But, though they may despise the voice of a Christian, let them listen at least to a pagan—a poet like themselves. It is a disciple of Epicurus, it is Horace who tells them to what a shameful barrenness they condemn themselves in refusing to draw from those sources which philosophy opens up to them.
This great master of the poetic art declares to them plainly enough that “unless they first learn to think well, it is vain for them to hope to write well; that it is from philosophy they must borrow the subjects which it is for poetry to adorn with her rich ornaments; that beauty of style can only be the result of beauty of things; and that a work which contains solid truths under an inelegant form, has far more legitimate titles to real success than verses bare of thought and resonant with trifles.”
“Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons.
Rem tibi Socraticæ poterunt ostendere chartæ;
Verbaque provisam rem non invita sequentur....
Interdum speciosa locis morataque recte
Fabula, nullius veneris, sine pondere et arte,
Valdius oblectat populum meliusque moratur,
Quam versus inopes rerum nugæque canoræ.”
If Horace returned among us, he would have no cause to congratulate us on our fidelity in following those precepts, which good sense dictated to him, and which all of us have learned by heart from our childhood. Modern poetry has something far different to do than demand of wisdom the theme of its song. It drinks, generally at least, at founts of beauty of quite another character; the ideal is nothing to it; the living expression of reality in its every imperfection, of the revolting, of the hideous, such is the task which it imposes on itself; emotion, such its aim—a surprising strangeness of imagery, novelty of expression, peculiarity of character, harshness of pictures, harmony of rhyme replacing harmony of thought—behold its means of success. Behold the merits which an effete society looks for in those whose mission is to amuse it, and to which these easy-going poets sacrifice the most magnificent gifts of the Creator.
Dante places in one of the circles of his hell a lost one whose crime consisted in having, by vileness of heart, made a great abdication (Che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto). It is difficult to recognize this criminal, on whose brow inexorable justice or the political rancor of the Florentine poet branded this burning stigma. But to whom can it be applied more justly than to these kings of poetry whom we see in our own days making themselves slaves of a vile popularity; to these prophets of the natural order, who prostitute to error the power which was given them to embellish truth, and who employ the creative force which makes them participators of the most noble attribute of Almighty God, in order to form the idols which draw away the crowd from the altars of Jehovah? O traitor poets! veritable apostates of genius, what gain is yours in debasing thus the most beautiful of arts! In place of profaning your lyre by songs which awake in hearts nothing but the lowest desires and most guilty passions, would it not be worthier of you to avail yourselves of this irresistible power of seduction which you exercise over your brothers, in drawing them in your train to the pursuit of true beauty? Do you alone fail to perceive the forfeiture which threatens your genius from the moment that it denies to truth the glorious testimony which truth demands of it? Do you not see that the beauty of forms fails you from the time that you seek it outside of the beauty of thoughts? Can you be astonished that your influence over souls is null, when you are pleased to destroy it with your own hands? Is it not you who, in denying the philosophy which would elevate your art to the height of a priesthood, reduce it to nothing more than a frivolous pastime for the idle, unless, indeed, you place it as an incendiary torch in the hands of the factious?
Still less than poetry may eloquence consent to lower its dignity to the botching up of incoherent images and the nice balancing of periods as empty as they are sonorous. More serious in its aim, more positive in the immediate results which it has in view, it can still less dispense with the assistance of philosophy. Listen to one of its princes, who is at the same time the chief of its lawgivers, while he proclaims loudly this dependence. “Let us lay down in the beginning,” says Cicero, in the book De Oratore, “that the aid of philosophy is indispensable for the formation of the perfect orator whom we seek. It alone can open up to him an inexhaustible source of great thoughts and developments as large as they are varied. It is to it that Pericles owed, according to the testimony of Plato, his superiority over all his rivals. The lessons of Anaxagoras developed the fecundity of his genius; they taught him, among other things, the great secret of eloquence, the art of discerning the proper incentives for moving the passions and the different faculties of the soul. Plato rendered the same service to Demosthenes. And how,” continues Cicero, “how can we without philosophy know the properties of things, whether generic or specific, how can we define them, divide them, discern the true from the false, deduce consequences, refute that which is repugnant, distinguish that which is ambiguous? How can we penetrate into the nature of things, a knowledge of which imparts its chief richness to the discourse? How can we speak pertinently of the moral life, of duties, of virtues, if we have not searched deeply into these truths, aided by the light of philosophy?”
In these words, Cicero displays admirably the superiority of the philosophic orator over the one who depends for the guarantee of success on the facility of his memory, the wealth of his imagination, or the vehemence of his feeling. Such a one without doubt can carry off triumphs; he may reap the applause of the crowd, and drag the masses in his train. The masses, who live much more by imagination than by intelligence, scarcely perceive the want of depth, and allow themselves to be captivated by the splendor of imagery and the rush of movements. But he who would seek a success more real than passing applause, he who would understand that the aim of eloquence is to render men better, and that imagery and feelings are for it but the instruments destined to make truth triumph—such a man will strive above all to place himself in possession of that truth which he is called upon to communicate to his fellows, to know the nature and extent of the duties whose observance he must inculcate, to acquire, in order to communicate it to them, the true science of good and evil. Besides this, he will study the nature of the souls over whom God destines him to hold sway, by the all-powerful sceptre of speech; he will inquire into the conditions and the requirements of each one of those faculties and passions, which he ought alternately to move like an obedient army, and push forward to the conquest of good and the banishment of evil. When philosophy shall have given him this knowledge, when it shall have arranged it in his mind in luminous order, then the orator will be a priest. He will have nothing more to do than, following the circumstances, to give to each of his teeming thoughts the form which befits it: on whatever subject he has to speak, the great principles will offer themselves, his plan will be all arranged beforehand, the framework of his discourse all laid out; his march will be firm, his divisions clear, his advance irresistible; and, while the orator of imagination will go on groping, without order and without light, contenting himself with flowering the surface of the soul, the philosophic orator will penetrate into the depths of the intellect, and will establish therein, on convictions which cannot be broken down, the motives of which he will avail himself victoriously to persuade the will.
VI.
NECESSITY OF PHILOSOPHY FOR THE FORMATION OF THE THEOLOGIAN.
That we may comprehend in all its extent the utility of philosophy, there remains still to be examined its relation with the divine science—theology. A single glance will suffice to convince us that there is no science with which it should be more intimately bound up than with this queen of sciences, which occupies uncontested the first place in the hierarchy of knowledge. This first rank would have belonged of right to philosophy, had not God thought it good to make us acquainted by his Word with the treasures of his own science. But far from revelation having lowered our reason by adding to its light a higher light; far from philosophy being abased in receiving from the sovereign truth illuminations which of itself it could never have attained, it has on the contrary acquired thereby a wealth and an elevation incomparable; for, in allying itself with the word of God, in uniting its gifts with the gifts of faith, in applying its principles and processes to the dogmas revealed, it has produced a science greater than itself, though born in its bosom—a science divine in its object, like the Word who is its father, although it remains human in form, like the philosophy of which it has this form—the scholastic theology.
There is, then, between theology and philosophy a connection of dependence, which renders the study of the first of these sciences impossible without the preliminary study of the second. It is not with theology as it is with faith: faith is entirely supernatural, and consequently it cannot depend directly on any natural cause. Thus we have established above that the utility of philosophy for the acquirement and keeping of faith can only be a negative utility.