“Exempt from all passion, one could hardly tell if he had ever had any to fight against, so calmly and sovereignly did virtue rule over his soul. I believe the love of pleasure never made him lose a single instant of his life. It even seemed as if he needed no relaxation to balance the exhaustion of his mind, and, if he allowed himself any at rare intervals, a little historical or literary reading, a short conversation with a friend, or a chat with my mother was enough to strengthen his mind for more work; but these relaxations were so few and far between that one would have thought he grudged them to himself. Ambition never disturbed his heart; for himself, he had never had any, and in his children’s careers he looked only for opportunities for them to serve their country and avoid idleness and luxury, which he considered a perpetual temptation to evil. How could avarice come near a soul so generous?... Twenty years’ labor on public works and thirty-one in the council never suggested to him the idea of asking for anything.[[180]] ... He died at the age of eighty-one, never having received any extraordinary gratuity, pension, or grant. Even his salary, in spite of his share in the distribution of the public treasury, was always the last to be paid. Mr. Desmarets, finance minister, said to me one day as we were walking in his garden: ‘I must say your father is an extraordinary man. I found out by chance that his salary has not been paid for some time, though he needs it. Why did he not tell me? He sees me every day, and he knows there is no one I would oblige sooner than him.’ I answered with a laugh that the salary never would be paid, if he waited for my father to ask for it, for he well knew that the word ask was the hardest in the world for my father to utter.... What defects could a man have who was so insensible to pleasure, ambition, even legitimate self-interest? Nearly all human weaknesses are the results of these three passions, ... and Despréaux was only literally in the right when he said of your grandfather: ‘Such a man makes humanity despair.’ He did not know justice only through the discernment of his mind; he felt it as the natural instinct and impulse of his heart, spite of all prejudices and predilections. Diffident of his own judgment, he feared the illusions of a first impulse and the snares of a hasty conclusion. Wisely lavish of his time in listening to causes and reading the memoranda of his clients, he was never contented till he had got to the smallest details of the truth, for to judge aright was the only anxiety or disturbance of mind he ever experienced. Mindful only of things in the abstract, he wholly lost sight of names and persons; and if in the exercise of his functions he was ever known to give way to emotion, it was only on behalf of endangered justice, never of individuals as such. In this there was no obstinacy or arrogance. Zeal for justice and love of truth would often so move him that he was unable to contain his thoughts, and would admonish others of the danger of trusting too much to what is erroneously called common sense, though it be so rare a gift; of the duty of learning accurately the principles of justice, and of forming one’s judgment on the experience of the wisest men.”
His gentleness and patience, his prudence and discretion, were no less conspicuous; his son says further: “No one knew men better, and no one spoke less of them.” His gentleness was a companion virtue of his courage. Apparently timid, he was yet impassible; neither moral nor physical danger awed him.
“From this mixture of justice, prudence, and bravery resulted a perfect equipoise as little in danger from variations of temper as from tempests of passion.... He was always the same, always himself, always lord of his thoughts and feelings. Hence that groundwork of moderation that kept him in an atmosphere so serene that pride never puffed him up, nor weakness degraded him, nor extreme joy upset him, nor immoderate sorrow depressed him. Duty, ever present to his mind, kept him within the bounds of the most solid wisdom, and one might epitomize his character thus: he was a living reason, quickening a body obedient to its lessons and early accustomed to bear willingly the yoke of virtue.”
Of lesser qualities, having these greater ones, he could not be destitute, and in his daily life, his eating and drinking, his recreations, his domestic relations, he was equally steady and perfect. He disliked dinner-parties especially, as involving a loss of time, though, if obliged to be at them, he never went beyond the frugal portion equivalent to his home meals; he drank so little wine that it scarcely colored the water with which he mixed it; and as to display, he was such an enemy to it that he would use only a pair of horses where his colleagues and subordinates ostentatiously used two pair. He was sickly of body, but retained his gentle and equable temperament throughout his life; his servants found him too easy to serve, so careless was he of his personal comfort; his friends, few but sincere, found in him another self, so forgetful was he of his interests in theirs. In conversation he repressed his natural turn for pleasantry, because he despised such frivolous talents; but his esprit pierced his gravity at times, and he was always a hearty laugher. Piety was inborn in him, and his faith was as childlike as his morals were pure. Scripture was his favorite reading, the Gospels especially, and his grave devotion in church was a rebuke to younger and more thoughtless men. He laid aside a tenth of his income for the use of the poor, whom he looked upon collectively as an additional child of his own; and a famine, or local distress of any kind, always found him with a reserve fund ready to help the needy. On the other hand, he practised the strictest domestic economy, and on principle shunned all display beyond what was necessary for simple comfort and the respect due to his official position. We might go further in this eulogium, but, having pointed out the steadiness of character which was peculiar to him, we need not enlarge on qualities which he shared with many weaker but still well-meaning men. All real saints are first true men; wherever an element of weakness crosses the life of a servant of God there is a corresponding flaw in his perfection. The death of Henri d’Aguesseau was worthy of his life; the consideration for others, the solicitude for some poor clients whose interests he feared would suffer through the time lost in formalities after his death, the strong reliance on God, the frequent repetition of the Psalms, “the possessing his soul in patience,” which distinguished his dying hours, all pointed to the “preciousness” which it must have worn in God’s sight.
The Chancellor d’Aguesseau walked in his father’s footsteps. Among his teachings to his son, who at nineteen was leaving home, he insists especially on the study of Holy Scripture, supplemented by a practice of marking and bringing together in writing all such passages as relate to the duties of a Christian and a public life, to serve as a body of moral precepts for his own guidance. Others, he says, have commented upon Scripture in this direction, but he does not advise his son to follow them in their methods, for “the true usefulness and value of this sort of work is only for the person himself, who thereby profits at his leisure, and imbues himself with the truths he gathers.” In his book, Reflections on Christ, he says: “The characteristic of Gospel doctrine is that it is as sublime, while it is also as simple, as one, as God himself. There is but one thing needful: to serve God, to imitate him, to be one with him. This truth includes all man’s duties.” Simplicity and uprightness, singleness of purpose and love of truth, were for him the practical synonym of religion. His father’s death he calls “simple and great”; Job’s eulogium he emphatically points out as having been that of “a man simple and upright, fearing God and eschewing evil.” Other moralists, public and private, have harped, not unnecessarily, on the same string. The Provençal poet, Frederick Mistral, adds another element to the definition of goodness—work. Brought up on a farm, among all the interests and details of agriculture and the vintage, in a household whose head was his father and teacher, and where daily family prayer and reading in common ended a day of hard work, he was a strong and rustic boy. All old customs were in vogue: the father solemnly blessed the huge Yule-log at Christmas, and then told his children of the worthy doings of their ancestors. He never complained of the weather, rebuking those who did in these words: “My friends, God above knows what he is about, and also what is best for us.” His table was open to all comers, and he had a welcome for all but idlers. He would ask if such and such a one was a good worker, and, if answered in the affirmative, he would say: “Then he is an honest man, and I am his friend.” The men and women on the farm were busy, healthy, strong, and pious. The old man had been a soldier under Napoleon, and had harbored proscribed and hunted fugitives in the Reign of Terror. His adventures were a never-ending source of interest to his family, his hired men, and to strangers. We are perhaps wrong in saying so, but there is always a tendency, when we see or hear of such men, to say: “There are none such now.” Certainly there are fewer, but in every age the same lament has been raised. The “good old times,” if you pursue them closely, vanish into the age of fable; yet in hidden corners one may always find some of their representatives, and goodness, alas! has always been exceptional. M. Taine, in his Sources of Contemporary France, wisely says: “In order to become practical, to lord it over the soul, to become an acknowledged mainspring of action, a doctrine must sink into the mind as an accepted, indisputable thing, a habit, an established institution, a home tradition, and must filter through reason into the foundations of the will; then only can it become a social force and part of a national character.” Unfortunately, it takes centuries, or at least generations, to produce such results; but the continual and unchanging teaching of religion, running parallel to, and yet distinct from, all local changes of circumstance, may often supply much of this natural tradition. In the sixteenth century Olivier de Serres, in a manual of agriculture, touches on the duties of a landholder, and the old principles of the Bible are revived in his archaic French. He bids masters, “according to their gifts, exhort their servants and laborers to fly sin and follow virtue.”
“He (the master) shall show them how industry profits every business, specially farming, by means of which many poor men have built houses; and, on the other hand, how by neglect many rich families have been ruined. On this subject he shall quote the sayings of the wise man, ‘that the hand of the diligent gathers riches,’ and that the idler who will not work in winter will beg his bread in summer. Such and like discourses shall be the ordinary stock of the wise and prudent father of a family concerning his men, whence also he will learn to be the first to follow diligence and virtue, and to let no word of blasphemy, of lasciviousness, of foolishness, or of backbiting ever pass his lips, in order that he may be a mirror of all modesty.”
Gerebtzoff’s History of Ancient Russian Civilization gives curious details of the patriarchal rules of life in that country, the respect lavished on parents and elders, the early-imbibed love of truth, and the familiar use of proverbs embodying these doctrines. Why do these things seem new to us, or at least why is their repetition so necessary? St. Marc Girardin, lecturing at the Sorbonne thirty years ago on the fifth chapter of Proverbs, distrusted the effect on his audience of youths “of the period.” He handled the subject manfully, but so well that his audience caught his own enthusiasm and rained down applause on those noble, ancient Hebrew maxims, so dignified in theory, so beautiful in practice. But if the world would not listen to such teaching, the same precepts would meet it unawares in the books of classic writers—in the Republic of Plato, in the speeches of Cicero, the Politics of Aristotle, in the laws of Solon. The ancients constantly startle us with their maxims of more than human virtue; much of their heathen teaching puts to shame the practice of their pseudo-Christian successors. Those among them who do not uphold piety, filial respect, obedience, and faith belong to a time when literature as well as morals was degenerating; but it would have required a Sardanapalus in literature to teach unblushingly what Rousseau taught to the most polished society of Europe. All law is contained in the Ten Commandments, and in China, relates one of the missionaries whose “letters,” unpretentious as they are, are the greatest help to science, a committee of learned men, on being ordered to report flaws in Christian doctrine, said they had considered well, but dared not do it, for all the essential doctrine was already contained in their own sacred books, the King. Again, Christian practice in old times revived the precept of Deuteronomy to bear the commandments “on the wrist, and engrave them on the threshold of the house and the lintel of the door” (Deut. vi. 6–9). In Luneburg, Hanover, a farm-house built in 1000, and which for six hundred years has been in the family of its present owner, a small yeoman, Peter Heinrich Rabe, has this text over the door: “The blessing of God shall be thy wealth, If, mindful of naught else, thou art Faithful and busy in the state God has given thee, And seekest to fulfil all thy duties. Amen.” English and Dutch, German and French, houses have more or less such decorations and reminders on their walls; churches abounded with them, and men and women wore illuminated texts as jewels. The immutable law of which Cicero, in his Republic, gives a definition worthy of the Bible, and to deny which, he says, is to fly from one’s self, deny one’s own nature, and be therefore most grievously tormented, even if one escapes human punishment; the law of conscience, of which a Chinese family register says: “Nothing in the world should turn your heart away from truth one hair’s breadth,” and “If you set yourself above your conscience, it will avenge itself by remorse; heaven and earth and all the spirits will be against you”; the law which Père Gratry resumed in three passages of Scripture: “Increase and multiply, and possess the earth,” “Man is put on earth to set order and justice in the world,” and “Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all things else shall be added unto you”; the law which Garron de la Bévière, a victim of the Revolution, though himself a sincere advocate of liberty, translates thus: “He who knows not how to suffer knows not how to live”; that law which does not deal only in magnificent generalities, but carries its dignity into the smallest details of practical life, so that Père de Ravignan could apply it from the pulpit of Notre Dame to the sore point of a fashionable audience whom he startled by asking if they paid their debts—that law was the shield and the groundwork of the heroic old family life of French provinces. Simple tradesmen and untaught peasants lived under it as blamelessly as gentlemen and statesmen, and taught their sons the same traditions, the same honesty, the same truth, the same deference to their conscience, the same fear of evil for evil’s sake, and not for the punishments it involves or the misfortunes it often brings on. The custom of keeping family registers is a very old one; even before St. Louis’ famous instructions to his children it was common: Bayard’s mother left him a similar manual, and people of all conditions made a practice of it. From these documents, and the sentiments written in them from time to time by fathers for the guidance of their children, M. de Ribbe has collected many memorials of domestic life in France—chiefly in remote and happy neighborhoods, but also in more populous and disturbed ones; and the sameness of the precepts in all is less strange than the likeness they bear to those of the Chinese family books, which date back often more than 2,000 years. He has found in the recently-discovered papyri in Egyptian tombs the same eternal rules, set forth in language almost equal to the simple grandeur of the Bible, while the Hindoo hymns and books of morals teach in many instances the same truths in nearly the same words.
DR. DRAPER AND EVOLUTION.
At a meeting of Unitarian ministers held at Springfield, Massachusetts, on the 11th of October, 1877, Dr. J. W. Draper delivered a lecture on “Evolution: its Origin, Progress, and Consequences.” Prof. Youmans publishes it in the Popular Science Monthly, with the remark that “some passages omitted in the lecture for want of time are here introduced”; which means, so far as we can understand, that Dr. Draper, before allowing the publication of his lecture, retouched it, and introduced into it some items, views, or considerations which the lecture delivered to the Unitarian meeting did not contain, but which he considered necessary as giving the last finish to his composition. It seems, in fact, that the doctor must have felt a little embarrassed in the performance of the task which he had accepted; for he well knew that in speaking to a body of sectarian ministers he could not make the best use of the ordinary resources of free-thought without breaking through the barriers of conventional propriety; and he himself candidly informs his hearers that, when he received the request to deliver this lecture before them, he was at first disposed to excuse himself, giving the following reason for his hesitation: “Holding religious views which perhaps in many respects are not in accordance with those that have recommended themselves to you, I was reluctant to present to your consideration a topic which, though it is in truth purely scientific, is yet connected with some of the most important and imposing theological dogmas.” This was, perhaps, one of the motives (besides the want of time) why in the delivery of the lecture some passages were omitted which have subsequently found their way into the pages of the scientific monthly.