Chapter XIX (4)

3. _Measles_ was long confounded with scarlet fever, and, like it, is supposed to have been originally imported from the East. During twenty-four years (1838-1861) this disease destroyed 31,595 of the population of London, and 181,868 persons in England and Wales. It is known to occur in all parts of the world, and is highly contagious. There is no evidence that any hygienic defects or meteorological conditions can generate the poison of measles. Hildenbrand, a great authority, thought it might arise where numbers of men and cattle were confined together in close, unventilated buildings; and in later times American and Irish physicians have described a disease corresponding in every respect with the measles, which appeared to arise from sleeping on old musty straw, or from the inoculation of the fungi of wheat straw. Measles in England is much less of an epidemic disease than either small-pox or scarlet fever. The number of deaths which it causes in years when it is most prevalent, is rarely much more than double what it causes in years when it is at least prevalent. Although often most fatal in winter, there is no proof that its prevalence is influenced by season.

4. _Typhus Fever_ has been well known for upward of three centuries, and there are grounds for believing that from remote ages it has prevailed in most parts of the world under favorable conditions. It is impossible to estimate the precise extent of its prevalence, inasmuch as many other diseases are included under the designation "typhus," in the reports of the Registrar-General; but it is the acknowledged scourge of the poor inhabitants of our large towns. There is no evidence that typhus, such as we see it in this country, has as yet been observed in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Africa, or the tropical parts of America. Even in Britain it is confined, for the most part, to the large towns, and to the poorest and most densely crowded parts of them. It is a disease almost unknown among the better classes, except in the case of clergymen and doctors who visit the infected poor. {424} It is undoubtedly contagious; but in a spacious dwelling with a free ventilation, it almost ceases to be so. There is also ample evidence that the poison may be generated _de novo_; and the circumstances under which this occurs are overcrowding, with defective ventilation and destitution. Hence it is that the disease was formerly so apt to show itself in prisons and ships, and that, even at the present day, it is so common an attendant on warfare and so prevalent in the wretched hovels of the poor. This was the disease that before the days of Howard was never absent from our prisons and hospitals, and that decimated the armies of the first Napoleon and of the allies in the Crimea. "If," says an able writer on fever in the last century, "any person will take the trouble to stand in the sun, and look at his own shadow on a white plastered wall, he will easily perceive that his whole body is a smoking dunghill, with a vapor exhaling from every part of it. This vapor is subtle, acrid, and offensive to the smell; if retained in the body, it becomes morbid; but if re-absorbed, highly deleterious. If a number of persons, therefore, are long confined in any close place not properly ventilated, so as to inspire and swallow with their spittle the vapors of each other, they must soon feel its bad effects. Bad provisions and gloomy thoughts will add to their misery, and soon breed the _seminium_ of a pestilential fever, dangerous not only to themselves, but also to every person who visits them or even communicates with them at second-hand. Hence it is so frequently bred in gaols, hospitals, ships, camps, and besieged towns. A _seminium_ once produced is easily spread by contagion." But if overcrowding produces typhus, why is it that the disease prevails in the epidemic form, and then in a great measure disappears? The explanation is in this way. All the great epidemics of typhus have occurred during seasons of famine or of unusual destitution. One of the most common consequences of general destitution is the congregation of several families in one house, in consequence of their inability to pay their rents, and of the concentration in the large towns of many of the inhabitants of country districts. Famine pre-disposes to typhus by weakening the constitution; and it also tends to produce it, in so far as it causes an unusual degree of overcrowding. It has been the custom with many writers to refer epidemics of typhus to some subtle "epidemic influence;" and thus, where a failure of the crops has been followed by typhus, both of these disasters have been ascribed to a common atmospheric cause. But of such atmospheric influences, capable of producing typhus, we know nothing; their very existence is doubtful, and the employment of the term has too often had the effect of cloaking human ignorance, or of stifling the search after truth. If typhus be due to any "epidemic influence," why does this influence select large towns and spare the country districts? why does it fall upon large towns in exact proportion to the degree of privation and overcrowding among the poor? in large towns, why does it indict the crowded dwellings of the poor and spare the habitations of the rich? and why did the varying prevalence of typhus among the French and English troops in the Crimea correspond, exactly to the varying degree of overcrowding in either army? Moreover, famine _artificially_ induced by warfare, by commercial failures, by strikes, or by any cause that throws large bodies of men out of employment, is equally efficacious in originating epidemics of typhus, as famine from failure of the crops.

5. _Relapsing Fever_ is so called from the fact that after a week's illness there is an interval of good health for a week, followed by a second attack. It is contagious, and is epidemic in a stricter sense than even typhus. Although sometimes more prevalent in this country than any other fever, it may disappear for so many years that {425} on its return it has more than once been thought to be a new malady. For upwards of ten years not a case of it has been observed in Britain, but it has constitute the chief component of many of the greatest epidemics of fever which has devastated this country and Ireland, and it was one of the diseases composing the "Russian Plague," which in the spring of the present year caused such unnecessary alarm in this country. It usually prevails in the epidemic form in conjunction with typhus, and it is connected in its origin more directly with protracted starvation and the use of unwholesome food than even the latter disease. Hence, in this country, it is familiarly known as "Famine Fever," and in Germany as "_Hungerpest_."

6. _Oriental Plague_ is still met with in Egypt and in other eastern countries; but in the middle ages it frequently overran the whole of Europe and invaded England, and, from the extent of its ravages, it was known as the "_Black Death_," and the "_Great Mortality_." The Great Plague of London, of 1665, is a familiar fact in history. Since then the disease has not been met with in this country. But British typhus is merely a modified form of Oriental plague, or, in other words, plague is merely typhus complicated with numerous abscesses beneath the skin. Cases of typhus are occasionally met with in this country, corresponding in every respect with true plague. Both diseases appear under similar circumstances, but those which generate plague are of a more aggravated character than those which suffice to produce typhus. The disappearance of plague from London, notwithstanding our vastly increased communications with Egypt, has been chiefly due to the better construction of our dwellings since the "Great Fire" of 1666. "It is probable," says an able writer on the plague, "that if this country has been so long forsaken by the plague as almost to have forgotten, or at least to be unwilling to own, its natural offspring, it has been because the parent has been disgusted with the circumstances under which that hateful birth was brought to light, has removed the filth from her doors in which it was matured, and has adopted a system of cleanliness fatal to its nourishment at home. But if ever this favored country, now grown wise by experience, should relapse into former errors, and recur to her odious habits, as in past ages, it is not to be doubted that a mutual recognition will take place, and she will again be visited by her abandoned child, who has been wandering a fugitive among kindred associates, sometimes in the mud cots of Egypt, sometimes in the crowded tents of Barbary, and sometimes in the filthy kaisarias of Aleppo."

7. _Yellow Fever_ is a contagious fever with a limited geographical range. Its geographical limits, as regards the new world, are from about 43° N. lat. to 35° S. lat; and in the old world from 44° N. to 8° or 9° S. lat. It is a common disease on board our ships stationed in the West Indies and off the west coast of Africa. As in the case of typhus, overcrowded and defective ventilation are the main causes which favor its origin and propagation, and, indeed, it is still a subject for investigation whether yellow fever may not be typhus modified by climate and other circumstances. One of the most recent and best authorities [Footnote 64] on the disease thus writes: "Overcrowding in the between-decks of steamships seems to be the principal cause of the extreme fatality of the disease in the navy. What in this respect is true of typhus may with equal force be said of yellow fever. There is no such powerful adjuvant to the virulence of the poison, and to its power of propagation, as an unrenewed atmosphere, loaded with human exhalations."

[Footnote 64: Dr. Gavin Milroy, President of the Epidemiological
Society.]

8. _Diarrhoea_ is always more or less prevalent in this country during the summer and autumn. There is no {426} reason to believe that epidemic diarrhoea is contagious, but there is a direct ratio between its prevalence and the temperature of the atmosphere and the absence of ozone. As the temperature rises the cases increase in number, and as it falls they diminish, and the disease is always most prevalent in very hot seasons. Diarrhoea may be due to many different causes, but its epidemic prevalence in autumn is chiefly accounted for by the absorption into the system of the products of putrefaction of organic matter, either in the form of gaseous effluvia or through the vehicle of drinking-water.

9. _Typhoid or Enteric Fever_ is very commonly confounded with typhus, with which, however, so far as its origin is concerned, it has nothing in common. It is not, like typhus, confined to the poor, but it prevails among rich and poor alike; and, indeed, there are some reasons for believing that the rich and well-fed are more prone to be attacked by it than the destitute. It is the fever by which Count Cavonr, several members of the royal family of Portugal, and our own Prince Consort, came to their untimely end. It differs also from typhus in the circumstances that its origin and propagation are quite independent of overcrowding with defective ventilation, and are so intimately connected with bad drainage that by some physicians the fever is now designated _pythogenic_, or fever born of putridity. It is asserted by some writers that the poison of enteric fever is never generated in obstructed drains, but that the drains are merely the vehicle of transmission of the poison from an infected person. But if this were so, enteric fever must needs be a most contagious disease, whereas all experience goes to show that it rarely spreads, even under the most favorable circumstances. The disease, in fact, is so slightly contagious that many excellent observers have doubted if it be so at all. It is probable that certain meteorological conditions, such as a high temperature, a defective supply of ozone, or a peculiar electrical state, may be necessary for the production of the poison of enteric fever; and thus, nuisances which are offensive to the senses may exist for a long time without producing the disease. The necessity of a high temperature is undoubted, and is itself a strong alignment against the view which makes drains merely the vehicle of transmission of the poison. It is well known that enteric fever, like ordinary diarrhoea, becomes epidemic in this country every autumn, and almost disappears in spring, while the autumnal epidemics are always greatest in seasons remarkable for their high temperature. Enteric fever is much later in commencing and in attaining the acme of its autumnal prevalence than diarrhoea, showing that a longer duration of hot weather is necessary for its production; but, when once produced, a more protracted duration of cold weather seems necessary for its destruction.

10. _Cholera_.--Epidemic cholera is generally described as having originated at Jessore, in the delta of the Ganges, in the year 1817, and as having spread thence over Hindostan, and ultimately to Europe. Since 1817 Europe has been visited by three great epidemics of cholera, viz.: in 1832, in 1848-9, and in 1854; and at the present moment it is threatened with a fourth. During the past autumn the disease has appeared at Ancona and Marseilles, and at many other places in the basin of the Mediterranean. In England and Wales cholera destroyed 53,273 lives in 1849, and 20,097 in 1854. Although the great epidemics of cholera have appeared to take their origin in India, and gradually to have spread to Europe, following often the lines of human intercourse, the evidence in favor of its being a very contagious malady is small. The attendants on the sick are rarely attacked; and, on the other hand, the disease has often appeared in isolated localities, where it was impossible to believe that it was imported. It is a remarkable {427} circumstance, also, that some of the greatest epidemics which have occurred in India, as that of 1861, have shown no tendency to travel to Europe, notwithstanding the constant communication that exists. Even on the supposition, then, that cholera is of necessity imported from India, there must be something as yet unknown to us that favors its transmission at one time and not at another. But it is very doubtful if the disease is imported in the manner generally believed. Unequivocal cases of "Asiatic cholera" have been met with almost every year in the intervals of the great epidemics; and, as Dr. Farr has observed, it is highly probable that true cholera has always existed in England. The researches of the late Dr. Snow render it highly probable that the disease often arises from drinking water impregnated with the _fermenting_ excreta of persons suffering from the disease; and if this be so, from what we know of other diseases, it is not unreasonable to infer that, in certain conditions of the atmosphere, the poison of cholera may be generated during the fermentation of the excreta of healthy persons. It can readily be conceived how the necessary meteorological conditions might originate in the East and gradually extend to this country, and thus lead to the supposition that the disease has been propagated by a specific poison.

11. _Dysentery_.--Epidemics of dysentery are confined to tropical countries, and need not occupy much attention at present. Atmospheric states which unduly or suddenly depress the temperature of the surface of the body are the most common exciting causes. They are most apt to take effect in the case of persons whose constitutions have been weakened by long exposure to extreme heat, to malaria, or to other debilitating causes. There is no positive evidence that dysentery is contagious.

12. _Agues and Remittent Fevers_ are now but little known, and scarcely ever fatal, in this country. Many years ago, however, they were among the most common and the most fatal diseases of Britain. James I. and Oliver Cromwell both died of ague in London. The disappearance of ague has been in direct relation to the drainage and cultivation of the soil, and this remark applies not only to England, but to all parts of the globe. The fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridge are almost the only parts of England where agues arc now known; but in many countries, and particularly in the tropics, where the vegetation is very rank, they are still the most common of all diseases. Agues are not contagious, but result from the _malaria_ given off during the evaporation from marshy uncultivated land. These malaria may be wafted to a considerable distance by the wind. A high temperature and rank vegetation seem to favor their production and to increase their virulence.

13. _Influenza_.--Severe and widespread epidemics of influenza have been observed in various parts of the world, from time immemorial. In the present century the disease has been epidemic in this country in 1803, 1831, 1833, 1837, and 1847. On each occasion it has been particularly fatal in aged and debilitated persons, and it has often been followed by an increased prevalence of other epidemic diseases. Influenza is not contagious, but depends on some unknown condition of the atmosphere. Sudden alternations of temperature have been thought to favor its origin.

14. _The Sweating Sickness_.--This remarkable and very fatal disease is happily now unknown in this country; but in the middle ages many great epidemics of it were observed, and nowhere were they more common than in England. Many of the epidemics were in fact confined to England. There are records of five distinct visitations of the disease during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, viz., in 1485, 1506, 1517, 1529, and 1551. The disease attacked all classes alike, and {428} was often fatal within a few hours. From the accounts handed down to us it is impossible to form any accurate idea as to the causes of its origin and extension; but the prevalent opinion at the time seems to have been that it was due in the first instance to atmospheric influences.

15. _The Dancing Mania_.--The present brief summary of the principal epidemic diseases would not be complete without alluding to the dancing mania of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The effects of the _Black Death_ of the fourteenth century had not yet subsided, and the graves of millions of its victims were scarcely closed, when we are told by Hecker a strange delusion arose in Germany, which took possession of the minds of men, and, in spite of the divinity of our nature, hurried away body and soul into the magic circle of the wildest superstition. It was a convulsion which in the most extraordinary manner infuriated the human frame, and excited the astonishment of contemporaries for more than two centuries, since which time it has never reappeared. It was called the dance of St. John or of St. Vitus, on account of the Bacchantic leaps by which it was characterized, and which gave to those affected, whist performing their wild dance, and screaming and foaming with fury, all the appearance of persons possessed. It was propagated by the sight of the sufferers, like a demoniacal epidemic, over the whole of Germany and the neighboring countries. While dancing, the infected persons were insensible to external impressions, but were haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked out. Some asserted that they felt as if immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high; while others saw the heavens open, and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary. The accounts of the dancing mania collected by Hecker at first sight seem almost fabulous, but cease to be so when we recollect the practices of certain modern religious sects and the accounts of the so-called "revivals" in the middle of the nineteenth century.

From the preceding summary, it is obvious that epidemic diseases vary greatly in their nature.

1. First we have diseases, such as small-pox, scarlet fever, and measles, which at the present day can only be traced to contagion, and some of which probably took their origin in the lower animals.

2. There are diseases, such as typhus, relapsing fever, enteric fever, and probably also plague, yellow fever, and cholera, which are capable of propagation by contagion in varying degrees, but which may also originate from the neglect of sanitary laws, aided by certain meteorological conditions.

3. A third class, including agues, remittent fevers, and diarrhoea are not at all contagious, but arise from malarious exhalations.

4. A fourth class, including influenza, dysentery, and, perhaps, the sweating sickness, are also not contagious, and, arise from certain atmospheric conditions.

5. The dancing mania differed from all other epidemic diseases in being purely mental, and in depending on the mere sight of a disagreeable nervous malady.

------ {429}

Translated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques, et Littéraires, par des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus.

ANGLICANISM AND THE GREEK SCHISM.

In a previous number we made our readers acquainted with a certain project of union between the Anglican and the Russo-Greek Churches. [Footnote 65] The Russian as well as the English journals have since spoken much of this project, and seemed to think that it was on the eve of ending. There is one difference, however, to be observed in the language held by the organs of the two countries. The Russian journals gave us to understand that the Anglicans would renounce the Protestant doctrines which form a prominent portion of their belief, to adopt purely and simply the orthodox faith such as it is expressed in the symbolical books of the Eastern Church. The Anglicans did not place themselves in the same point of view. They would not change belief; they admitted that both sides should remain as they now are, but that there would be _intercommunion_ between the two Churches; that is to say, that the Anglicans should be allowed to participate in the sacraments of the Greek Church, and reciprocally.

[Footnote 65: "_Etudes_" May, 1865. _Vide_ "CATHOLIC WORLD," Vol.
I., No. 7, October, 1865. ]

A certain Mr. Denton, rector of one of the largest Anglican parishes in London, was especially animated by these thoughts. He went to Servia and asked Mgr. Michael, metropolitan of Belgrave, to admit him to communion in his quality of priest of the Church of England. Mgr. Michael refused; but Mr. Denton, nowise discouraged, betook himself to travelling all over Servia, and at last found an archimandrite who appeared to be more accommodating than the metropolitan. After having communicated in this way in the Servian Church, the Rev. Mr. Denton returns to England triumphantly announcing that the _intercommunion_ was an accomplished fact. Great rejoicings there were, to be sure, in the little coterie. There could be no doubt, whatever, that all was happily arranged.

But behold, Mgr. Michael, informed of what had taken place, removed the archimandrite and struck him with ecclesiastical censures. The joy that had prevailed in Mr. Denton's camp was changed to mourning. On the other hand, the Anglicans who form no part of the coterie, enjoy exceedingly the reverend gentleman's discomfiture.

As for us, we are well pleased to see that Mgr. Michael does not seem disposed to follow the footsteps of Cyril Lucar.

But another check was reserved for the famous project. The archpriest Joseph Wassilief, chaplain to the Russian embassy in Paris, after having shown himself rather favorable to the contemplated union, has just laid down, with as much wisdom as firmness, the conditions of the proposed treaty. "However much explanations may be avoided, they will forcibly recur, sooner or later," he justly observes in the _Christian Union_, 24th September, 1865. And, resting on this principle, he passes in review the three questions of the procession of the Holy Ghost, the invocation of saints, and prayer for the dead; he then shows that it is not possible to establish _intercommunion_ between the two Churches until they have come to an agreement on all these points; Among other things, he shows that the Church has always, been careful {430} to preserve the entire deposit of doctrine, and that she has not permitted herself to establish a difference between what is fundamental and what is secondary. He concludes with these wise words: "Charitable in our explanations, we are bound to be very candid one with the other. If rigorous discussions on all points of divergence appear to retard the final agreement, they secure its solidity and duration; whilst reservations, though accelerating the agreement, would leave therein a germ of weakness and instability."

We attach the more importance to this declaration because the authority of the archpriest Joseph Wassilief is enhanced by the consideration shown him by the synod. Latterly there was a vacancy in the ranks of that assembly, which forms the supreme council of the Russian Church. There was question of replacing the chaplain-general of the armies by land and sea. Three names were proposed to the sovereign's choice: that of M. Wassilief was one of the three. He has not been appointed; but, in proposing him, the synod sufficiently testified that it would have wished to see him seated in its midst, raised to the highest dignity to which, in Russia, a member of the secular clergy can pretend.

After the energetic act of the metropolitan of Belgrade and the words of the archpriest Wassilief, it remains for us to quote the _Levant Herald_ an English and Protestant journal published at Constantinople. In its number of the 20th September, 1865, that paper endeavors to make the Anglican clergy understand that they flatter themselves with a delusive hope if they believe in the possibility of a union, or even of an alliance, between the two communions.

It results from all we have just said that if the Anglo-Americans have entertained the project of Protestantizing the Greek Church, they must perceive that the enterprise is more arduous than they had supposed. The Russians, on their side, must see that it is not so easy to make the Anglican Church enter into the bosom of theirs. As to establishing the _intercommunion_ between the two churches without having come to an agreement on questions of faith, it is a dream which the archpriest Wassilief must have dispelled once and for ever.

------

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

REASON IN RELIGION. By Frederic Henry Hedge. Boston: Walker, Fuller & Company, 245 Washington St. 1863. pp. 458.

The author of this work, who is a professor in Harvard University, enjoys a deservedly high reputation as an accomplished scholar and writer, and is looked upon by numbers of intelligent and thoughtful persons, especially in Massachusetts, as their most revered and trusted guide in religious matters. On that account whatever he writes is worthy of consideration. In the work before us he has not attempted a systematic treatise on the topic indicated in his title, but has thrown together a series of essays touching on it and its kindred topics, indicating difficulties more than aiming at solving them, and suggesting a method by which anxious minds may separate a certain modicum of belief which is practically certain and safe from that which is doubtful, and wait patiently until they can get more truth by the slow progress of science.

Any one who looks in this work for metaphysical solutions which are satisfactory or plausible of the great theological problems will be disappointed. The author sees too clearly the want of sufficient data, and the want of a sufficient criterion in his system, to attempt to dogmatize much. We think this {431} course more sensible and honest than the opposite. At the same time, it lays open the defects of his system; but so much the better, and so much the more hope of getting at the truth. He cannot satisfy, however, either the consistent rationalist or the consistent believer in revelation. On the rationalistic side he has received a severe criticism from the _Christian Examiner_. To a Catholic the positively theological part of his work has but little interest. Some incidental topics are handled with considerable acuteness and ability, as, for instance, the quality of sin and evil, the relation between spirit and matter, the compensations of providence, etc. The impartial testimony of such a bold and subtle critic as the author in favor of certain facts and doctrines--_e.g._, miracles, the resurrection, future punishment, etc., is of value. There are half truths, incidental thoughts, scintillations of light, through the book, which show how much the author's merits are his own, and his defects those of the system he was trained in. The style in which he writes has many most admirable and peculiar qualities, fitting it to be the vehicle of the highest kind of thought. Nevertheless, although we do not question the author's scholarship in his own proper field of study, what he says of specially Catholic questions and matters appears to us commonplace, superficial, and sometimes quite gratuitously introduced. Through a want of care in studying up the Catholic question, he has made one or two quite remarkable mistakes. One of these is in speaking of the synod of Valentia as if it were a general council. Another is the statement that Pope Hildebrand (St. Gregory VII.) has not been canonized. These remarks are by the way, for we are not attempting to follow Dr. Hedge over the area covered by his essays for the purpose of controverting his positions.

The real point of interest it a work like this is the author's thesis respecting the source and criterion of religious truth. If we differ here, there is very little use in discussing the particular conclusions or inferences we draw respecting doctrine. While the difference continues, it is better to keep the discussion upon it; if we ever come to an agreement, it will be comparatively easy to proceed with the discussion of specific doctrines.

Although Dr. Hedge does not proceed by a formal analytic method, yet he has a thesis, and states it intelligibly in his chapter on "The Cause of Reason the Cause of Faith." In philosophy he is a Kantian, and in theology he adopts the system condemned in the late encyclical of Pius IX. under the name of "moderate rationalism." According to him, we cannot get the idea of God, or of spiritual truths, from pure reason. All we know of these truths comes from revelation, and the truths of revelation are subject to the critical judgment of reason, which cannot originate, but can approve or reject, conceptions of spiritual truth.

There are two rather serious objections to this theory. The first is, that it destroys reason by denying to it either the original intuition of God, or the capacity of acquiring the idea of God by reflection; without which it has no capacity of apprehending or judging of the conception of God proposed to it by revelation. The second is, that it destroys revelation, making it identical with the conscience or moral sense; that is, individual and subjective. What is this revelation or inspiration in the spiritual nature of an individual? Is it his reason or intelligence elevated and illuminated? That cannot be; for then reason and revelation are identical, and the proposition that we know nothing of spiritual truths by reason would be subverted. What then is it? We can conceive of nothing in the spiritual nature of man which is not reducible to intelligence or will. It must be will, then. But will is a blind faculty. It is a maxim of philosophy, "Nil volitum, nisi prius cognitum." The will cannot choose the supreme good unless the intelligence furnishes it the idea of the supreme good. You cannot have a revelation without first establishing sound rationalism as a basis. Reason may be indebted for distinct conceptions even of those truths which it is able to demonstrate to an exterior instruction given immediately by Almighty God through inspiration. But it must have the original idea or intuition in itself which is explicated by this instruction and is its ultimate criterion of truth. If by revelation is understood merely the outward assistance given to the mind to develop its own idea and attain the full perfection of reason, there is no sense in distinguishing revelation from {432} philosophy, science, or the light of reason itself, since all alike come from God. A revelation, properly so called, is a manifestation of truths above the sphere of reason--truths which reason cannot demonstrate from their intrinsic contents. In this case, reason can only apprehend the evidence of the fact that they are revealed, that they are not contrary to any truths already known, and that they have certain analogies with truths perceived by reason. But they must be accepted as positively and absolutely true only on the authority of revelation. You must therefore be a pure rationalist, and maintain that we have no knowledge of any truth beyond that which the educated intelligence of man evolves from its own primitive and ultimate idea; or you must accept revelation in the Catholic sense, as proposed by an extrinsic authority. Dr. Hedge gives us no basis for either science or faith. There cannot be a basis for faith without one for science; and give us a basis sufficient for science, we will demonstrate from it the truth of revelation.

We conclude by quoting one or two remarkable passages, which show that the author instinctively thinks more soundly and justly than his theory will logically sustain him in doing:

"The mass of mankind must receive their religion at second-hand, and
receive it on historical authority, as they receive the greater part
of all their knowledge."

"We want a teacher conscious of God's inpresence, claiming attention
as a voice out of the heavens. We want a doctrine which shall
announce itself with divine authority; not a system of moral
philosophy, but the word and kingdom of God. Without this stamp of
divine legitimacy, without the witness and signature of the Eternal,
Christianity would want that which alone gives it-weight with the
mass of mankind, and the place it now holds in human things." (pp.
64, 242.)

Well spoken! spoken like a philosopher, like a Christian, like a Catholic! Apply now Kant's and Dr. Hedge's principle of _practical reason_. They say, Mankind feel the need of a God, therefore there is and has always been a God. So we say, Mankind feel and always did feel the necessity of an infallible church, of a distinct, positive, dogmatic faith. Therefore they exist, and always did exist. Only in the Catholic Church are these wants realized; therefore the Catholic Church is the true Church of God.

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS, ETC. Edited by the Oblate Fathers of St. Charles. London: Longmans & Company. 1864.

This is the most superb work on spiritual subjects in our English Catholic literature. Mr. Lewis has made his translation in such a manner as to merit the highest encomium from the late Cardinal Wiseman, who has written the preface to the edition. The paper, typography, and mechanical execution are in the highest style of English typographical art. The fathers of St. Charles deserve the thanks of the entire English-speaking Catholic and literary world for this costly and noble enterprise which they have achieved.

It is needless to say that the works of St. John of the Cross are among the highest specimens of genius and spiritual wisdom to be found in the Spanish language or any other. St. John was a poet of the first order, and an equally great philosopher. In this view alone his works are worthy of profound study. The base of his doctrine is the deepest philosophy, and its summit is ever varied and enlightened by the glow of poetic fervor. It is philosophy and poetry, however, elevated, purified, and hallowed by sacred inspiration, and derived not merely from human but from divine contemplation. As a book for spiritual reading and direction, it is most proper for a certain class of minds only, who have difficulties and inward necessities for which they cannot find the requisite aid in the ordinary books of instruction. It is also the best guide for those who have the direction of persons of this character.

We learn that the Messrs. Appleton have in press, and will soon publish "The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost," by the Most Rev. H. E. Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, which has just been issued by the Longmans, of London.

---------- {433}

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. II., NO. 10--JANUARY, 1866.

----

Translated from Le Correspondant

LEIBNITZ AND BOSSUET. [Footnote 66]

[Footnote 66: "_Oeuvres de Leibnitz, publiées pour la prémière fois
d'après les Manuscrits's, avec des notes et une introduction,_" par
A. Foucher de Carcil. Paris: Firmin-Didot. Tomes. I. et II.]

Every friend of letters must greet with sincere pleasure the literary enterprise of M. de Careil in undertaking a complete edition of the writings of Leibnitz, a large part of which has hitherto remained unpublished and even unknown, and especially to make that great genius live anew for us in all his fulness and integrity. No greater literary undertaking ever seduced the imagination of a young erudite, is better fitted to attract the sympathy of the European republic, or more difficult of execution. For it was precisely the peculiarity of Leibnitz that, while he labored to embrace with a firmness of grasp never equalled the whole of moral and physical nature, all things real, ideal, or possible, in one and the same system, he uniformly abstained from giving, in his writings, to that system its full and entire development. Possessing the amplest and most complete mind that ever lived, he took no care to give to any of his works the seal of completeness and perfection. The inventor of so many methods, mathematical and metaphysical, he never arranged his ideas in a methodical order. He leads his readers, with a rapid and firm step, through a labyrinth of abstract conceptions and boundless erudition, but he suffers no hand but his own to hold the guiding thread. He has left us numerous tracts and fragments of great value indeed, but no work that reveals the unity of his system, and gives us a summary of his doctrines. There is no _summa_ of the Leibnitzian science and philosophy. We might say that, by a sort of coquetry, while he sought to know and explain everything in nature, he took care that the secret of his own heart should not for a moment escape him.

Hence it becomes important to bring together and arrange in their natural order his scattered members, so as to give them the cohesion they lack, to combine his several personages, the philosopher, the moralist, the geometrician, the naturalist, the erudite, the diplomatist, and the courtier, in one living being, and present the giant armed at all points as he came forth from the hands of his Maker. Hence also the difficulty {434} of the task. It requires to accomplish it the universality of tastes, if not of faculties, possessed by the model to be reconstructed. It presents one of those cases in which to reproduce nature it is almost necessary to equal nature, and to resuscitate is hardly less difficult than to create. Only a Cuvier is able to collect and put in their place the gigantic bones and powerful fins of Leviathan.

_Ab Jove principium_. M. de Careil begins with theology. These two volumes placed at the head of his edition are taken up with writings some of which had already been printed, others had remained in manuscript, but all subjected to a careful revision and enriched by learned notes, which pertain exclusively to matters of religion. If the ancient classification, which gave to theology the precedence of all other matters, had not every claim to our respect, we might, perhaps, permit ourselves to find fault with this arrangement of the works of Leibnitz, which will cause, I am sure, some surprise to the learned public. His theological writings were his first neither in the order of time nor in the order of merit. He did not open his brilliant career with religious discussions, nor was it by them that he was chiefly distinguished, or left his deepest trace. He made in theology, no discoveries as fruitful as the infinitesimal calculus, and gave it no problems that have fetched so many and so distant echoes as his theories of optimism and monadology. Why, then, open the series with those writings which did not begin it, and which do not give us its summary, and give the precedence to works, merely accessory and of doubtful value, over so many others which earlier, more constantly, and more gloriously occupied his laborious life?

There is still another objection to this distribution of matters which M. de Careil has made. The theological writings of Leibnitz consist almost exclusively in his correspondence, and are parts of the negotiation for the reunion of the different Christian communions of which, for a brief time, he was the medium. Correspondences are admirable means of gaining an insight into the private and personal character of men whose public life and works are already known, but taken by themselves they are always obscure and difficult to be understood. The reason is, that people who correspond are usually mutual acquaintances, and understand each other by a hint or half a word. They are familiar with contemporary events, and waste no time in narrating them, or in explaining what each already knows. Facts and ideas are treated by simple allusions, intelligible enough to the correspondents, but unintelligible to a posterity that lacks their information. The correspondence of Leibnitz, which M. de Careil publishes, is far from being free from this grave inconvenience. Leibnitz appears in it in the maturity of his age, and the full splendor of his renown. He speaks with the authority of a philosopher in full credit, and of a counsellor enjoying the confidence of an important German court. His correspondents treat him with the respect due to an acknowledged celebrity, and even a power. In the course of the discussion he is carrying on he introduces many of his well known metaphysical principles, but briefly, as ideas familiar to those whom he addresses, and less for the purpose of teaching than of recalling them to the memory.

His manner of writing, of rushing, so to speak, _in medias res_, takes the inexperienced reader by surprise, and appears to conform to the adventurous habits of dramatic art much more than to the sound rules of erudition, which proceeds slowly, with measured step, marking in advance the place where it is to plant its foot. Few among us are sufficiently acquainted with the facts in detail of the life of Leibnitz, or know well enough the secret of his opinions, to be able to render an account to {435} ourselves of the part we see him--a lay-citizen--playing among emperors, kings, princes, and prelates, or the relation that subsists between his system of monads and scholastic theology. Hence it often happens that we neither know who is speaking, nor of what he is speaking. This frequently causes us an embarrassment to which M. de Careil is himself too much a stranger to be able sufficiently to compassionate it. He has lived ten years with Leibnitz in the Library of Hanover, his habitual residence, and he knows every lineament of the face of his hero, and--not the least of his merits--deciphers at a glance his formless and most illegible scrawl. We are not, therefore, astonished that in his learned introductions and his notes, full of matter, he makes no account of difficulties which we in our ignorance are utterly unable to overcome.

But we are convinced that the knowledge the editor has acquired by his invaluable labors would have been far more available to his readers if he had condensed it into a detailed biography, such as he only could write, than as he gives it, scattered at the beginning of each volume, or in a note at the foot of each page. An historical notice, comprising the history of the intellect as well as of the life of Leibnitz, an exposition of ideas as well as of facts, and the arrangement of the didactic works according to the order of their subjects and their importance, followed by the fragments and correspondence, the order adopted by nearly all collectors of great polygraphs, would, it seems to us, have been much better, and simply the dictate of reason and experience. Introduced by M. de Careil into the monument he erects not by the front, through the peristyle, but by a low, side door, we run at least great risk of not seizing the whole in its proportions.

I confess that I have also a personal reason for regretting the arrangement adopted by M. de Careil. I had occasion formerly, among the sins of my youth, to examine, with very little preparatory study I admit, and in documents by no means so abundant and so exact as those which are now placed within our reach, the negotiations pursued by Leibnitz for the union of Christian communions, which take up the whole of these two volumes. From that examination, along with that of a small tract naturally attached to it, I came, on the religious opinions of the great philosopher, to certain conclusions which I set forth in the 32d number of the first series of this periodical, which M. de Careil, even then deeply engaged in this study of Leibnitz, has felt it his duty, in a discussion marked by great urbanity, to combat. It is my misfortune to persist in those conclusions, and more strenuously than ever in consequence of the new light which seems to me to be furnished by this publication, and to which I cannot dispense myself from briefly recurring. In so doing I fear that I shall appear to some readers to have sought or to have accepted too readily an occasion for resuming a discussion of little importance, and which probably few except myself remember. M. de Careil, I hope, will do me the justice to acquit me of a thought so puerile. Nobody would have been more eager than myself to admire, in the picture he presents us, the figures which naturally occupy the foreground; but if the eye is forced to pause at first on some insignificant detail, it perhaps is not a defect of taste in the spectator; may it not be a defect of skill in the artist?

I.

These reserves made, we proceed to examine, with some care, the changes rendered necessary, by this new and complete edition, in the opinion previously adopted by the biographers of Leibnitz in regard to the religious negotiation of which he was for a moment the accredited medium, and in which we find mingled the great name of Bossuet. Several important {436} points are much modified by the documents now brought to light for the first time.

We learn, in the outset, that the negotiation for the union of the Protestant communions with the Holy See was far more important than is commonly thought, and was continued for a much longer time. The earliest documents in relation to it published by M. de Careil date from 1671, whilst the previous editors of Leibnitz and Bossuet suppose that the first overtures were made only in the year 1690, a difference of twenty years; and it appears from these documents, hitherto perfectly unknown, that it was precisely during those twenty years that success came the nearest being obtained, and that the highest influences were employed to obtain it.

During this period, from 1670 to 1690, the Catholic revival of the seventeenth century was at its apogee, and nearly all the German sovereigns were animated by a strong desire to effect the religious pacification of their subjects. The wounds caused by the Thirty Years' War were hardly closed by the peace of Westphalia, and every one felt the mortal blow which religious dissension had struck to the Germanic power by breaking the old unity of the empire. Beside, all eyes were turned toward France, where religion and royalty seemed to move on together in perfect harmony, and displayed an unequalled splendor. France, under her young monarch, Louis XIV., was at once the object of envy and of dread; and the re-establishment of religious unity in Germany, torn by mutually hostile communions, seemed to the sovereign princes the only means of resembling France, and at the same time of resisting her power.

When, therefore, Rogas Spinola, confessor to the empress, the wife of Leopold I., at first Bishop of Tina, afterward of Neustadt, a man of mild temperament and sound sense, became the intermediary agent of the general desire for peace, and after having sounded the leading Protestant theologians, went to Rome to ascertain the extent of the concessions to which the maternal authority of the Church could consent, he was warmly supported not only by his own sovereign, the emperor, but also by fourteen other reigning sovereigns of Germany, some of them Catholic and others Protestant. Such was the strange religious confusion in the German States that in more than one the sovereign was Catholic and the nation Protestant, or the sovereign was Protestant and the nation Catholic. In the former condition was the Elector of Hanover, John Frederic of Brunswick, of whom Leibnitz was librarian and private secretary. This prince could not fail to enter with zeal into a plan which promised to fill up the gulf between him and his Protestant subjects.

If the propositions of which Spinola was the bearer were warmly supported in Germany, they were no less warmly supported at Rome. The interest which the chief of the Church could not fail to take in the re-establishment of Catholic unity, was greatly enhanced at the time by the special need which that wise and prudent pontiff, Innocent XI., felt of creating in Europe allies for the Holy See against the offensive pretensions of France. At Rome as in Germany Louis XIV. was the target and the bugbear. That most Christian king, who consented to protect the faith in his own kingdom on the condition of tacitly subjecting it to his royal will, took strange liberties, as everybody knows, with the common Father of the faithful. Innocent XI., almost besieged in his palace by the arms of France, and seeing his bulls handed over, by magistrates sitting on _fleurs de lis_, to the common hangman to be publicly burned, was strongly tempted to seek in converted schismatics, and in prodigal sons returning to the fold, a support against the arrogant pretensions of the _elder_ son of the Church. {437} Spinola, therefore, was everywhere well received. Rome listened to him, entered into his views, even annotated the bases of the negotiation he was charged to transmit, and for several years the winds on both sides of the Alps blew in favor of peace.

Leibnitz, holding relations with both Spinola and the principal Protestant doctors, serving as the medium of intercommunication between them, and frequently taking his pen to give precision to their respective views, was already the king-bolt of the negotiation, and very early in its prosecution. Bossuet's name began to be mentioned. The controversies of this great prelate with the French Protestants, his writings, strongly marked by a doctrine at once so firm and enlightened, and which placed Catholic truth on so broad and so solid a foundation, were more than once used to smooth the way to reunion, either by solving difficulties or by reconciling differences. Twice he was even directly solicited to give his advice, and to put his own hand to the work; but he gave vague and embarrassed answers, and refused to accept the overtures made to him. Wherefore? Is it necessary to think, as M. Foucher de Careil leaves it to be understood, that the King of France viewed with an evil eye a reunion not likely to turn to his profit, or to strengthen his influence, and that as on other occasions the submission, a little blind, of the subject to his sovereign, arrested with Bossuet the accomplishment, I will not say of the duty, but of the desire of the Catholic bishop?