It is a trick of pretended scholarship, to hide thought with massive word-boulders. What a difference in the process of this rare scholar?
A flying spark from his anvil lights up the dullest intellect. It is a stimulus to the weary brain, after wading through essays as to what constitutes an ideal, to have the gentle scholar, across the blazing pine logs, on a winter’s night, say: “A genius conceives and expresses a great thought. The conception so expressed delights. It enters men’s souls; it compels their admiration. They applaud and are rejoiced that another masterpiece has been brought into existence to grace the world of art and letters. The genius alone is dissatisfied. Where others see perfection, he perceives something unexpressed; beyond the reach of his art. Try as best he may, he cannot attain that indefinable something. Deep in his inner consciousness he sees a type so grand and perfect that his beautiful production appears to him but a faint and marred copy of that original. That original is the ideal; and the ideal it is that appeals to the aesthetic and calls forth men’s admiration.” What a divining power has this student, in plummeting the vagaries of modern culture!
“Every school of philosophy has its disciples, who repeat the sayings of their masters with implicit confidence, without ever stopping to question the principles from which those sayings arise or the results to which they lead.” These chattering disciples will affect to sneer at the Christian belief, while they lowly sit at the feet of one of their mud gods singing “thou art the infallible one.” They will not question their position simply because “these systems are accepted not so much for truth’s sake as because they are the intellectual fashions of the day.” Such men change their philosophy as quickly as a Parisian dressmaker his styles. It may yet be shown by some mighty Teuton that vagaries in philosophy and dress are closely allied, and that the synthetic philosophy of Herbert Spencer is responsible for the coming of crinoline. What a delightful thrust at that school of criticism that singles out an author or a book as the very acme of perfection, seeing wisdom in absurdities and truth in commonplace fiction, is given in these lines: “Paint a daub and call it a Turner, and forthwith these critics will trace in it strokes of genius.” With a twinkle in his eye he asks, “Think you they understand the real principles of art criticism?” You will be easily able to answer that question when you have mastered this pithy definition of true criticism, be it of literature or of art, “that it is all-embracing.” It has no antagonism to science so long as she travels in her rightful domain. When “science has her superstitions and her romancings as unreal and shadowy as those of the most ephemeral literature, then it is the duty of criticism to administer the medicine of truth and purge the wayward jade of her humors.”
To such a mind as that of the author of “Phases of Thought,” with its thorough knowledge of the art of criticism and its perfect equipment, the separating of the chaff from the meal of an author becomes not only a pleasure but a duty. This is best seen by a perusal of Chapter III, dealing with Emerson and Newman as types. With a few masterly strokes the real Emerson, not the phantom or brain figment of Burroughs and Woodberry and the long line of fad disciples, passes before us. Not an inch is taken from his stature. His intellectual beauties and defects, so strongly drawn, but confirm the reader in the truth of the portraiture. One catches not only a glimpse of the man, but the springs of his soul-struggles. Emerson in his hungry quest for intellectual food, ranged through the philosophies of the east and west, purposely ignoring that of the Catholic Church. This sin cost him whole worlds of thought hidden from his vision. Newman had the same hunger to appease, but where Emerson turned away Newman, ever in search for truth, kept on, and found it in the Catholic Church. The analysis of these two minds is done in a masterly way. Azarias has no prejudices. If he puts his fingers on defects and descants on their nature and treatment, he will, no less, point out beauties and lovingly linger among them. He is a knight in the cause of truth, and would not herd with the carping critics. He will tell you that Emerson’s mind was like an Æolian harp. “It was awake to the most delicate impressions, and at every breath of thought it gave out a music all its own,” and that the reading of him with understanding “is a mental tonic bracing for the cultured intellect as is Alpine air for the mountaineer.” The pages of this book teem with thought clothed in language whose sparkling beauty is all the author’s own. From such a book it is difficult to select. Emerson has well said, “No one can select the beautiful passages of another for you. Do your own quarrying.” I abide by this quotation, and should ask every lover of the beautiful and true to buy this fecund book.
Patrick Francis Mullaney, better known as Brother Azarias, was born in Killenaule County, Tipperary, Ireland, June 29th, 1847. Like the majority of eminent men that his country has given birth to, he came of its noble peasantry. The old tale was here enacted. The parents left the land of their birth in search of a home in our better land. This found, Azarias joined them. At the age of fifteen he joined the Christian Brothers. That great Order gave free scope to his fine abilities. In 1866 he was chosen professor of mathematics and English literature at Rock Hill College, Maryland. He continued in this position for ten years. At the expiration of his professorship he travelled a year through Europe, collecting materials and writing his “Development of Old English Thought.” On his return he became president of Rock Hill College, holding that position until recalled to Paris by his Superior in 1866. After an absence of three years Brother Azarias returned to the States as professor of English literature at the De La Salle Institute, New York. This is not only an important position, but it gives leisure, and that ready access to the great libraries, so prized by literary men.