Chapter III: Seraphin and Louise (1)

Sombre spirits flitted about the head of the young man with the blooming cheeks and light eyes. He was unable to rid himself of a feeling of depression; for he had taken a step into the domain of progress, and had there witnessed things which, like slimy reptiles, drew a cold trail over his warm heart. Trained up on Christian principles, schooled by enlightened professors of the faith, and watched over with affectionate vigilance by a pious mother, Seraphin had had no conception of the state of modern society. For this reason, both Greifmann _Senior_ and Gerlach _Senior_ committed a blunder in wishing to unite by marriage three millions of florins, the owners of which not merely differed, but were the direct opposites of each other in disposition and education.

Louise belonged to the class of emancipated females who have in vain attempted to enhance the worth of noble womanhood by impressing on their own sex the sterner type of the masculine gender. In Louise’s opinion, the beauty of woman does not consist in graceful gentleness, amiable concession and purity, but in proudly overstepping the bounds set for woman by the innate modesty of her sex. The beautiful young lady had no idea of the repulsiveness of a woman who strives to make a man of herself, but she was sure that the cause and origin of woman’s degradation is religion. For it was to Eve that God had said: “Thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee.” Louise considered this decree as revolting, and she detested the book whose authority among men gives effect to its meaning. On the other hand, she failed to observe that woman’s sway is powerful and acknowledged wherever it exerts itself over weak man through affection and grace. Quite as little did Miss Louise observe that men assume the stature of giants so soon as women presume to appear in relation to them strong and manlike. Least of all did she discover anything gigantic in the kind-hearted Seraphin. In the consciousness of her fancied superiority of education, she smiled at the simplicity of his faith, and, as the handsome young gentleman appeared by no means an ineligible _parti_, she believed it to be her special task to train her prospective husband according to her own notions. She imagined this course of training would prove an easy undertaking for a lady whose charms had been uniformly triumphant over the hearts of gentlemen. But one circumstance appeared to her unaccountable--that was Seraphin’s cold-bloodedness and unshaken independence. For eight days she had plied her arts in vain, the most exquisite coquetry had been wasted to no purpose, even the irresistible fire of her most lovely eyes had produced no perceptible impression on the impregnable citadel of the landholder’s heart.

“He is a mere child as yet, the most spotless innocence,” she would muse hopefully. “He has been sheltered under a mother’s wings like a pullet, and for this I am beholden to Madame Gerlach, for she has trained up an obedient husband for me.”

Seraphin sauntered through the walks of the garden, absorbed in gloomy reflections on the leaders of progress. Their utter disregard of honor and unparalleled baseness were disgusting to him as an honorable man, whilst their corruption and readiness for deeds of meanness were offensive to him as a Christian. Regarding Greifmann, also, he entertained misgivings. Upon closer examination, however, the unsuspecting youth thought he discovered in the banker’s manner of treating the leaders and their principles a strong infusion of ridicule and irony. Hence, imposed upon by his own good nature, he concluded that Greifmann ought not in justice to be ranked among the hideous monstrosities of progress.

With head sunk and rapt in thought, Gerlach strayed indefinitely amid the flowers and shrubbery. All at once he stood before Louise. The young lady was seated under a vine-covered arbor; in one hand she held a book, but she had allowed both hand and book to sink with graceful carelessness upon her lap. For some time back she had been observing the thoughtful young man. She had been struck by his manly carriage and vigorous step, and had come to the conclusion that his profusion of curling auburn hair was the most becoming set-off to his handsome countenance. She now welcomed the surprised youth with a smile so winning, and with a play of eyes and features so exquisite, that Seraphin, dazzled by the beauty of the apparition, felt constrained to lower his eyes like a bashful girl. What probably contributed much to this effect was the circumstance of his being at the time in a rather vacant and cheerless state of mind, so that, coming suddenly into the presence of this brilliant being, he experienced the power of the contrast. She appeared to him indescribably beautiful, and he wondered that this discovery had not forced itself upon him before. Unfortunately, the young gentleman possessed but little of the philosophy which will not suffer itself to be deceived by seductive appearances, and refuses to recognize the beautiful anywhere but in its agreement with the true and good.

Louise perceived in an instant that now was at hand the long-looked-for fulfilment of her wishes. The certainty which she felt that the conquest was achieved diffused a bewitching loveliness over her person. Seraphin, on the other hand, stood leaning against the arbor, and became conscious with fear and surprise of a turmoil in his soul that he had never before experienced.

“I have been keeping myself quiet in this shady retreat,” said she sweetly, “not wishing to disturb your meditations. Carl’s wager is a strange one, but it is a peculiarity of my brother’s occasionally to manifest a relish for what is strange.”

“You are right--strange, very strange!” replied Seraphin, evidently in allusion to his actual state of mind. The beautiful young lady, perceiving the allusion, became still more dazzling.

“I should regret very much that the wager were lost by a guest of ours, and still more that you were deprived of your splendid racehorses. I will prevail on Carl not to take advantage of his victory.”

“Many thanks, miss; but I would much rather you would not do so. If I lose the wager, honor and duty compel me to give up the stakes to the winner. Moreover, in the event of my losing, there would be another loss far more severe for me than the loss of my racers.”

“What would that be?” inquired she with some amazement.

“The loss of my good opinion of men,” answered he sadly. “What I have heard, miss, is base and vile beyond description.” And he recounted for her in detail what had taken place.

“Such things are new to you, Mr. Seraphin; hence your astonishment and indignation.”

The youth felt his soul pierced because she uttered not a word of disapproval against the villany.

“Carl’s object was good,” continued she, “in so far as his manœuvre has procured you an insight into the principles by which the world is just now ruled.”

“I would be satisfied to lose the wager a thousand times, and even more, did I know that the world is not under such rule.”

“It is wrong to risk one’s property for the sake of a delusion,” said she reprovingly. “And it would be a gross delusion not to estimate men according to their real worth. A proprietor of fields and woodland, who, faithful to his calling, leads an existence pure and in accord with nature’s laws, must not permit himself to be so far misled by the harmlessness of his own career as to idealize the human species. For were you at some future day to become more intimately acquainted with city life and society, you would then find yourself forced to smile at the views which you once held concerning the present.”

“Smile at, my dear miss? Hardly. I should rather have to mourn the destruction of my belief. Moreover, it is questionable whether I could breathe in an atmosphere which is unhealthy and destructive of all the genuine enjoyments of life!”

“And what do you look upon as the genuine enjoyments of life?” asked she with evident curiosity.

He hesitated, and his childlike embarrassment appeared to her most lovely.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Seraphin! I have been indiscreet, for such a question is allowable to those only who are on terms of intimacy.” And the beauty exhibited a masterly semblance of modesty and amiability. The artifice proved successful, the young man’s diffidence fled, and his heart opened.

“You possess my utmost confidence, most esteemed Miss Greifmann! Intercourse with good, or at least honorable, persons appears to me to be the first condition for enjoying life. How could any one’s existence be cheerful in the society of people whose character is naught and whose moral sense expired with the rejection of every religious principle?”

“Yet perhaps it might, Mr. Seraphin!” rejoined she, with a smile of imagined superiority. “Refinement, the polished manners of society, may be substituted for the rigor of religious conviction.”

“Polished manners without moral earnestness are mere hypocrisy,” answered he decidedly. “A wolf, though enveloped in a thousand lambskins, still retains his nature.”

“How stern you are!” exclaimed she, laughing. “And what is the second condition for the true enjoyment of life, Mr. Seraphin?”

“It is evidently the accord of moral consciousness with the behests of a supreme authority; or to use the ordinary expression, a good conscience,” answered the millionaire earnestly.

A sneering expression spontaneously glided over her countenance. She felt the hateful handwriting of her soul in her features, turned crimson, and cast down her eyes in confusion. The young man had not observed the expression of mockery, and could not account for her confusion. He thought he had perhaps awkwardly wounded her sensitiveness.

“I merely meant to express my private conviction,” said Mr. Seraphin apologetically.

“Which is grand and admirable,” lauded she.

Her approbation pleased him, for his simplicity failed to detect the concealed ridicule. After a walk outside of the city which Gerlach took towards evening, in the company of the brother and sister, Carl Greifmann made his appearance in Louise’s apartment.

“You have at last succeeded in capturing him,” began he with a chuckle of satisfaction. “I was almost beginning to lose confidence in your well-tried powers. This time you seemed unable to keep the field, to the astonishment of all your acquaintances. They never knew you to be baffled where the heart of a weak male was to be won.”

“What are you talking about?”

“About the fat codfish of two million weight whom you have been successful in angling.”

“I do not understand you, most mysterious brother!”

“You do not understand me, and yet you blush like the skies before a rainstorm! What means the vermilion of those cheeks, if you do not understand?”

“I blush, first, on account of my limited understanding, which cannot grasp your philosophy; and, secondly, because I am amazed at the monstrous figures of your language.”

“Then I shall have to speak without figures and similes upon a subject which loses a great deal in the light of bare reality, which, I might indeed say, loses all, dissolves into vapor, like will-o’-the-wisps and cloud phantoms before the rising sun. I hardly know how to mention the subject without figures. I can hardly handle it except with poetic figures,” exclaimed he gaily, seating himself in Louise’s rocking-chair, rocking himself. “Speaking in the commonest prose, my remarks refer to the last victim immolated to your highness--to the last brand kindled by the fire of your eyes. To talk quite broadly, I mean the millionaire and landholder Seraphin Gerlach, who is head and ears in love with you. Considered from a business and solid point of view, it is exceedingly flattering for the banker’s brother to see his sister adored by so considerable a sum of money.”

“Madman, you profane the noblest feelings of the heart,” she chidingly said, with a smile.

“I am a man of business, my dear child, and am acquainted with no sanctuary but the exchange. Relations of a tender nature, noble feelings of the heart, lying as they do without the domain of speculation, are to me something incomprehensible and not at all desirable. On the other hand, I entertain for two millions of money a most prodigious sympathy, and a love that casts the flames of all your heroes and heroines of romance into the shade. Meanwhile, my sweet little sister, there are two aspects to everything. An alliance between our house and two millions of florins claims admiration, ’tis true; yet it is accompanied with difficulties which require serious reflection.” The banker actually ceased rocking and grew serious.

“Might I ask a solution of your enigma?”

“All jesting aside, Louise, this alliance is not altogether free from risks,” answered he. “Just consider the contrast between yourself and Seraphin Gerlach’s good nature is touching, and his credulous simplicity is calculated to excite apprehension. Guided, imposed upon, entirely bewitched by religious phantasms, he gropes about in the darkness of superstition. You, on the contrary, sneer at what Seraphin cherishes as holy, and despise such religious nonsense. Reflect now upon the enormous contrast between yourself and the gentleman whom fate and your father’s shrewdness have selected for your husband. Honestly, I am in dread. I am already beginning to dream of divorce and every possible tale of scandal, which would not be precisely propitious for our firm.”

“What contradictions!” exclaimed the beauty with self-reliance. “You just a moment ago announced my triumph over Seraphin, and now you proclaim my defeat.”

“Your defeat! Not at all! But I apprehend wrangling and discord in your married life.”

“Wrangling and discord because Seraphin loves me?”

“No--not exactly--but because he is a believer and you are an unbeliever; in short, because he does not share your aims and views.”

“How short-sighted you are! As you conceive of it, love is not a passion; at most, only, a cool mood which cannot be modified by the lovers themselves. Your apprehension would be well grounded concerning that kind of love. But suppose love were something quite different? Suppose it were a passion, a glowing, dazzling, omnipotent passion, and that Seraphin really loved me, do you think that I would not skilfully and prudently take advantage of this passion? Cannot a woman exert a decisive and directing influence over the husband who loves her tenderly? I have no fears because I do not view love with the eyes of a trader. I hope and trust with the adjurations of love to expel from Seraphin all superstitious spirits.”

“How sly! Surely nothing can surpass a daughter of Eve in the matter of seductive arts!” exclaimed he, laughing. “Hem--yes, indeed, after what I have seen to-day, it is plain that the Adam Seraphin will taste of the forbidden fruit of ripened knowledge, persuaded by this tenderly beloved Eve. Look at him: there he wanders in the shade of the garden, sighing to the rose-bushes, dreaming of your majesty, and little suspecting that he is threatened with conversion and redemption from the kingdom of darkness.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE NECESSITY OF PHILOSOPHY AS A BASIS OF HIGHER EDUCATION.

BY F. RAMIERE, S. J.

FROM THE ETUDES RELIGIEUSES.

We have shown what secondary education does for the formation of man, and how powerfully it is aided by philosophy in the accomplishment of its task. Secondary education in the soul of the young man completes the work sketched out by the primary lessons given to the child; it develops his faculties, teaches him their use, invests him with full dominion over himself, and prepares him to carry out, according to his high vocation, the great duty of life. Philosophy is the necessary complement of this education, since it is indispensable for the development of the sovereign faculty, reason, and consequently for the complete formation of the man, and the perseverance of the Christian.

We might dispense with further proofs of the utility of philosophy, although we are still very far from having examined it from every point of view. The man whom primary and secondary education have placed in possession of his faculties is not destined to live alone in the world, and employ those admirable instruments wherewith his Creator has endowed him simply for his own advantage. He is made to live in society; it is to society he owes, after God, his existence, his nurture, his instruction, his development, his physical and moral being, in a word, all that he is. During the period of his education, he has remained almost passive in its hands, and has received everything from it. Arrived at the term of this long career, justice obliges him to set to work to pay back to it the immense debt he has contracted. Moreover, that which in him is but a just duty is at the same time a necessary condition of his dignity and happiness. For, if he does not force himself to utilize his faculties in the interests of his fellows, those faculties will infallibly become for him a source of wasting _ennui_ and cruel torment. If, then, he wishes to become an honorable man, let him see that he become a useful citizen.

For this purpose a multitude of careers open out before him; for there is many a way of serving society; and the most useful of all is not always that whose results are the most immediate, and whose fruits are the most easily gathered.

Undoubtedly the father of a family who improves his land or devotes himself laboriously to the exercise of a mechanical profession accomplishes his whole duty to society; and, if he gives to it virtuous children, he pays it in overrunning measure the debt which he has contracted in its regard. We do not deny that these more humble callings are the most common, and we acknowledge that to fulfil all their conditions it is enough to have learned well that divine philosophy which is contained in the maternal teachings of the church. But a society could never attain a great development, it could scarcely exist, whose members possessed no higher knowledge than that which goes to make a good agriculturist, a diligent workman, or an honest father of a family. Beyond these common callings there are others more choice which present themselves to souls more richly endowed. Some more inclined to the theoretical, rush at the conquest of science; others of a more practical tendency betake themselves to the study of laws and the administration of justice. One studies deep the experience of the past in order to illustrate the present; another would be an orator, and is ambitious of the triumphs of eloquence; a third is a poet, and he believes, and believes rightly, that he makes himself of use enough to his fellows by lifting up their souls to the contemplation and love of the beautiful. Others, again, feel themselves called upon from on high to become the representatives of God before men, and the interpreters to them of his oracular teachings. We have named the principal careers which lie open to the young man whose mind has been cultivated by a liberal education. But to whatever side his choice may bend, he will find philosophy of an almost indispensable utility for the attainment of solid success. After having made him a finished man, it will aid powerfully in making him a true scholar; it will provide the lawyer, the historian, the orator, the poet, with the seeds of truth, which each one of them should cause to fructify after his fashion. In fine, to form the summit of its glory, it will lend to revelation an invincible arm for the defence of its dogmas; and in uniting its light to that flowing from this divine torch, it will form the first and most divine of all sciences--theology. Such in a few words are the various aspects under which we have still to present its utility.

NECESSITY OF PHILOSOPHY FOR THE FORMATION OF THE SCIENTIST.

I do not ignore to what I expose myself when I dare affirm that without philosophy there is no true scientist. People will tell me that therein lies a prejudice of the middle ages, the defence of which no one can undertake to-day without denying all the progress which science has made within three centuries. They will sing me the old song of the panegyrists of Bacon. They will point out to me the incomparable advance of the physical sciences in modern times, dating precisely from the day when they shook off the yoke of metaphysics, and when, laying aside the syllogism which clogged their march, they claimed a right to their own process and an independent existence.

I will not stop to discuss the truth of these assertions; but, accepting them all provisionally, I will maintain my thesis, and, with God’s help, will prove it.

What is the legitimate conclusion derived from the fact they oppose to us? It is that the physical sciences are distinct from philosophy, and that the middle ages were perhaps mistaken in identifying them too closely with it. But because metaphysics and physics are distinct sciences, does it follow that the man who pretends to the title of a scientist can content himself with the one and neglect the other altogether? Clearly not. Such a man, on the contrary, condemns himself in despising philosophy to remain imperfect, not merely as a man, but also as a scientist.

To demonstrate this truth let us define science, and give an exact account of its conditions.

All knowledge does not deserve the name of science. The animal knows after a certain fashion; the infant and the idiot know still more; there is no man so ignorant as not to know an innumerable multitude of things; but neither the one nor the other possesses science. Science is, in relation to a certain order of truths, what philosophy is in relation to man and to God; it is knowledge reasoned out; that which places in a state of explication the wherefore of things, to tell of them their essence and their laws, their causes and their effects, their faculties and their destinations; to connect their consequences with their principles, and draw their principles from their consequences: “the knowledge of things by their causes.” Man is, therefore, a greater scholar in proportion as he is capable of mounting higher in the region of principles, and of embracing in a more general conception a greater number of particular truths. Science indeed is like a luminous mountain composed of many a height, some more elevated than others. As we mount, the horizon expands, and we are able to embrace with the same glance a vaster space. He alone will possess complete science, and he alone consequently will deserve, in its absolute sense, the title of a man of science, who arrived at its loftiest height, and grasping in its infinite simplicity the first principle of all things, shall behold in the splendor of this focus all the rays which burst forth from it and spread abroad to illumine the whole sphere of truth.

But this complete science is not within the reach of mortal man, and in its absolute perfection belongs alone to God.

Fettered by his nature, and fettered still more by the conditions of his earthly existence, man can only aspire to a partial science; and it is left him to choose in this immense sphere that particular ground whereon to pursue his investigations with more profit. The entire field is open to us. “God,” says the Scripture, “has delivered the world to the searchings and the disputes of men.” In bestowing on us the faculty of finding a reason for things, he has authorized us to make use of this faculty in regard to all the truths of the natural order, provided we see on all sides the boundary of the mysterious, which reminds us of our essential infirmity.

But though every science is equally lawful, they are not all equally useful. We may divide them into three classes, which form the three circles of the great sphere of truth. There are the sciences which concern the inferior world, the mathematical and physical sciences; those whose object is humanity, the psychological and moral sciences; thirdly, those which concern the higher world, the science of first principles and of the primal cause of all things. This last, which holds the centre of the great sphere of truth, is called metaphysics; and it is joined to the psychological and moral sciences, which are drawn from the same principles, under the common name of philosophy.

This simple statement of the place which belongs to philosophy in the hierarchy of the sciences is enough to prove our thesis, namely, the necessity of philosophy for the formation of the true _savant_.

What man, in fact, is truly worthy of this name, unless it be he who is possessed of the necessary science? But I would ask: Does that man possess this science, does he know what he ought to know, who possesses a perfect knowledge of the inferior world, and who ignores himself; who has passed his life away in studying the laws of bodies, yet has never given a thought to his own nature and the destiny of his own soul? Tell me that that man is a great physicist, and I will not gainsay it; but I can never consent to your bestowing on him the title of a man of science. The ancient Greek unites with me in denouncing an error so opposed to the dignity of the human intelligence. “Know thyself.” Such was the precept impressed on all those who went to Delphi to consult the oracle of Apollo. The gate of the true temple of wisdom opens only to those who have put this recommendation into practice. But wisdom is the true science. The true scholar is not he who knows something, but he who knows enough of it. No one thinks of praising unreservedly a statue whose head and bust are scarcely outlined, and whose lower members alone are finished. It is to the whole, it is above all to the principal parts, that we look, when we wish to estimate a work definitely. Reason commands that we act in the same manner when we wish to judge of the absolute value of an intelligence. As there are for a people liberties which are necessary, so is there also for a man knowledge which is indispensable, of his own nature, his origin, and his destiny; and he who is deprived of this, although he possess all sorts of superfluous knowledge, cannot pretend to the title of a man of science.

To this first motive for the necessity of philosophy derived from its object we are able to add another deduced from the very idea of science. Science, we have said, is the knowledge of things by their principles. Its perfection consists in attaching particular truths to truths which are more general, which comprise them, and which enable the intelligence to catch them at a single glance. But this unity, which forms the perfection of the sciences, and which each of them establishes among the particular truths which constitute their several objects, it is the province of philosophy to establish among the sciences themselves. Metaphysics, in fact, which is the principal part of philosophy, has for its special object not the study of particular truths, but of those general principles which throw a light upon the other sciences. It is then their necessary complement, and their indispensable crown. Set in the very centre of the great sphere of knowledge, it is to the other sciences the polar star, whereon they must turn their eyes in order to see their way. It points out to each one of them the relation of the truths which constitute their special object with the primary truth which is their common centre. The geometrician and the physicist, who occupy themselves exclusively with the relations of numbers and the laws of bodies, are like explorers voyaging in regions where the disc of the sun is never seen, placed without the power of tracing to their luminous focus the rays of truth which their studies permit them to catch.

But far beyond this, philosophy alone can make the geometrician or the physicist acquainted with the inner essence of the objects which form the special material of their studies. Geometry analyzes the relations of magnitudes, but it does not seek to give an account of the very idea of magnitude: natural philosophy evolves from experiments the laws of bodies; but it cannot, by induction at least, which is its special process, arrive at a knowledge of the essence of bodies. Philosophy alone scrutinizes, as far as it is possible for human reason so to do, the mystery of that inner essence by which each thing is what it is. Philosophy is therefore necessary for the completion of the special sciences, and to furnish scholars with the knowledge of their different objects.

Lastly, a fourth and still more incontestable motive for the necessity of philosophy for the formation of the true scientist is deduced from the scientific education of the intelligence, which philosophy alone is capable of undertaking. One of the most important parts of philosophy is logic; that is, the science of reasoning, and of the different processes by means of which the human intelligence can find truth. These processes are not only those which philosophy avails itself of, but also those which obtain among the other sciences. It belongs to philosophy, and to philosophy alone, to study their nature, to fix their laws, to prevent their wandering. The other sciences borrow these processes from it; they make use of them; but they would depart from their object if they studied them in themselves. One cannot, then, dispute the utility of philosophy for the formation of the scientist, without maintaining an evident absurdity; to wit, that it is useless for the workman to obtain a knowledge of the instrument he uses in the exercise of his craft. Who can fail to see that, without a profound knowledge of the different intellectual processes, the scientist is exposed to a double danger--on the one hand, to the danger of deceiving himself in the use of the special process which is proper to him; on the other, to the danger of exaggerating its importance, and not holding in sufficient estimation those processes equally legitimate which are in use among other sciences? The first of these dangers is to be feared, above all, in the inductive sciences. Induction is a mode of reasoning perfectly legitimate in itself; but of all the intellectual processes it is the one which is most easily abused, and which, pushed beyond its just limits, may lead to the gravest of errors.

The mathematical sciences which work by equation are not equally exposed to the danger of diverging from their track, but they threaten with a still greater peril the mind of the scholar whom the study of philosophy has not set on his guard against the too exclusive influence of this process. Equation, as its name indicates, does not pass from one truth to another, but from a like to a like, from the expression of a relation of number or magnitude to another simpler expression of the same relation. It is not, then, surprising that this process offers to the mind an exactness far more easy of comprehension than that by means of which we are enabled to grasp moral truths and give ourselves a reason for our own nature. The philosophic mathematician will take this difference perfectly into account, and his progress in the science of numbers will hinder him in no wise from seizing upon substantial truths. But the man who all his life long has occupied himself with nothing save the study of mathematics is very much exposed to becoming incapable of comprehending that which is not demonstrated by equation; and he will experience a greater estrangement and inaptitude for the science of God and of himself in proportion as he advances further in the science of the inferior world.

In good faith, can we see progress in this? Is it not, on the contrary, a degradation, not only from the moral, but also from the intellectual point of view? Has not the absence of a sound philosophy stood as much in the way of that man’s scientific elevation as of his moral greatness? Though he may have become a more able manipulator of formulas, he surely has not become a greater _savant_. Nothing, on the contrary, is more calculated to cramp and mutilate the faculties of the soul than this exclusive concentration on one of the collateral objects of its activity. In the same way as a limb which is never set in motion wastes away and becomes paralyzed, so the powers of the soul cannot cease to act without losing their vigor. Such is the state to which a too exclusive study of what are called the exact sciences reduces certain minds: these are the minds whose higher faculties have been wasted. All their activity is turned to one side; the eye of their intelligence is so constructed for the lesser light of equation, that, when they rise from the subterranean world of geometrical abstractions to enter into the region of moral realities and into the world of souls, they are dazed, and can see naught but darkness. True it is that they are much enamored of their blindness, and attribute it to excess of light. Fain to acknowledge that their formulas, the only legitimate arguments according to them, are powerless to solve the great moral problems, they suppress those problems with the declaration that it is folly in human reason to trouble itself with them, and that for him who wishes to ascertain truth and possess certainty it is enough to study the relations of numbers and the laws of bodies. Such is true science in the eyes of the disciples of Auguste Comte. These men are perfectly logical. They adopt the only means to ensure their title to be really scientific men without the aid of philosophy; they suppress philosophy altogether, and suppress consequently its object, that is, the human soul and God, the beginning and the end of things. With adversaries of this stamp I refuse to dispute. I can only appeal to their conscience against the disdain which their lips affect for the formidable questions whose suppression they in vain decree. They exist in spite of them; and wherever they go they carry about in themselves the problems which they refuse to examine. As for those for whom God and the soul have still a meaning, I believe I have said enough to compel them to admit that no one has a right to the title of a wise man so long as he ignores the science which learns all that reason can know of those grand objects, and that the other sciences when separated from it are often more hurtful than useful to the real improvement of the intellect.

I might go still further; and, coming back to the concession which I appeared to make in favor of the loud-voiced preachers of the exact sciences, I stand on perfectly firm ground in denying that the excessive importance which a very great number of minds bestows on them, and the exclusive study to which they give themselves up, are for the sciences themselves a condition of progress. What this study can produce is able practitioners, who will solve successfully problems whose data somebody has already furnished them; the artisans of science, who may build up with skill the edifice whose plan they find traced out beforehand; watchful pilots, who by the aid of their compass and marine chart may guide their ship safely into port. But the geniuses capable of discovering new lands, of opening up to science new horizons, you will never find among the minds who have only learnt to navigate by the compass of equation. Not by the aid of formulas are great discoveries made; they are the effect of that sort of divination which those intelligences possess which are accustomed to raise themselves in all things to the most general principles, and grasp in the variety of phenomena the analogy of laws. If Kepler had only proceeded by the aid of formulas, he would never have discovered the laws of worlds; and Leibnitz would undoubtedly have been a far less distinguished geometrician had he not been an equally eminent philosopher.

We may, then, affirm that the study of philosophy--which is necessary to enlarge the mind of the scholar--is of immense utility in the advancement of the sciences, even of those very ones which seem to have the least connection with this queen of sciences.

II.

NECESSITY OF PHILOSOPHY FOR THE FORMATION OF THE JURISCONSULT.

If it is thus with the sciences whose objects are distinct from that of philosophy, what shall we say of jurisprudence, which treats of the rights and duties of the members of human society? Here the connection is much more direct, since the object which we are about to indicate is precisely that which moral philosophy treats of. Between the two sciences there is no other difference than this: while moral philosophy treats only of essential rights and duties, that is to say, of those which result from the very nature of man, and depend on the necessary will of the Creator, jurisprudence has for its more particular object those rights which are derived immediately from the civil authority, and which have been established by a positive law. But who does not see that this second species of rights and duties presupposes the first and leans upon it for its necessary support? In order to proceed rationally to the study of the acts of civil authority, and take into account the duties which it imposes, we must know whence proceeds this authority, from whom does it hold the right of making laws, what is its mission, and how far does its power extend. We must know also what is law, what are its conditions, when it begins and when it ceases to compel, what are the causes which dispense with its observance, what the objects to which its provisions should extend. Where shall we seek the solving of these questions, and of many others which form the necessary preliminary of all rational jurisprudence, unless from philosophy? Open the most celebrated treatises; the _Treatise on Laws_ by Domat, for instance, and see if he is ashamed to borrow from the metaphysicians their principles and their definitions. By how many eminent jurisconsults has the _Treatise on Laws_ of Suarez been used? How often have his general theories, though altogether removed from the different special legislations, served, nevertheless, as the connecting clue to lead them out of the labyrinth of their provisions, and furnished the most precious indications for the determination of the rights which they only defined imperfectly?

More than ever has it become necessary in our days to establish solidly, in the minds of those who are destined to make laws or watch over their execution, these fundamental notions on the origin, the end, and the extent of civil authority, and on the conditions of its exercise. For one must be blind not to comprehend that from the ignorance and reversing of these notions springs the overturning of modern societies. Strange it is that public order, which has never had to withstand such radical attacks as in these our days, should find its worst foes, not in those who deny the legitimacy of law, but, on the contrary, in the very men who have exaggerated beyond measure the power of the law. What in effect is that system but socialism, according to which we must recognize no other right, no other duty, save such as emanate from the social will; which extends to everything the power of the law; and which, grinding under this pitiless roller every natural right and every relation of property and family, leaves nothing to subsist before the state, save isolated individualities? Since the hand of God first founded human society, never has an error so fatal to its existence sprung up. Yet this error, since we must confess it, has had for its upholders, through many ages, a great number of jurisconsults, who have done their best to establish the principles on which it leans, detesting all the while the consequences which it deduces from them. In place of borrowing from a sound philosophy the true notions with regard to the mission of civil authority, they are pleased to give it an extension without limits, not perceiving that they thereby impose on it an overwhelming responsibility, and that in lessening the rights which should give it equilibrium, they weaken at the same time its solidity. Alas! how many “men of order,” how many grave jurisconsults, are in our days completely socialistic in their ideas, and yet fail to perceive that their doctrines only furnish that party, whose criminal efforts they oppose with all the force that is in them, with arms which are only too powerful!

Philosophy is not only useful to the jurisconsult in furnishing him with the general notions on the origin, end, and exercise of legislative power; in addition, it throws a light over the detail of laws, atones for their deficiencies, fixes their uncertainties, reconciles their opposition, and by discovering the motives of their provisions, determines the limits within which they ought to be restrained.

The written law, in fact, is not enough for itself. Its end is not to promulgate all duties. There are a great number, and they are the most essential, which are anterior to it, and which the finger of God has graven on the soul of every man coming into this world, and which his Eternal Word promulgates in the depth of every conscience. It is on this unwritten law that human society leans; it is only in virtue of the rights and duties of which it is the source that men have been able to unite themselves into different groups and establish civil societies. Unless they had been previously submitted the one to the other by some obligation, they would never have bound themselves by any contract; their agreements would have been determined by convenience; they would never have believed in duties. The civil law presupposes, then, a law anterior and superior to it, by which all the necessary relations of men are defined with a sovereign authority, since it is the authority of God himself, and with an irresistible clearness, since it is the very light of reason. The mission of the human legislator consists merely in adding to the essential duties, which the natural law prescribes for all men, those which result from the constitution of the different groups which form civil societies. It is the natural law which bids man love his fellows and co-operate for their happiness; the civil law, supporting itself on this general obligation, determines the particular services which the citizens owe one another for the common defence of their interests. The natural law establishes the family, and promulgates the essential rights of parents and children; the civil law surrounds the exercise of these rights by the guarantees necessary to certify their existence, to ward off the dangers which threaten them, to ensure their stability, and prevent their conflict. The natural law lays the foundation of property, in bestowing on each man the fruit of his labor, and commanding him to provide for his own future and that of his children; but it belongs to the civil law to determine the necessary forms for the authentication of the acquisition and transfer of property, and to prevent this right, which is so necessary to social order, from becoming a source of disorder.

We see, then, that in all its provisions the civil law presupposes the natural law, of which it is but the complement and final determination. The rights which it establishes are real rights beyond doubt; they are sacred and inviolable rights, which divine justice, the protector of all order, takes under its guarantee, and for which it reserves a sanction as eternal as for the rights of which it is the immediate source: but nevertheless these are but secondary rights, which are only binding so long as they are conformable with the rights which are preordained, and lose all their force from the moment that they become contrary to them; for there is no such thing as right against right, as Bossuet has so well said. Whence it follows that no man can acquire a complete and sure knowledge of civil legislation, unless he has first of all made a serious study of that part of philosophy which is called _natural right_.

But it is clear that this moral and practical part of philosophy does not subsist alone; it is only the consequence of principles established in the speculative and metaphysical part; it is, then, philosophy in its entirety which he ought to study with the most laborious attention who destines himself for the teaching or the practice of jurisprudence. There alone will he find the final reason of human laws: thence will he draw those great principles to which he ought to go back at all times when he wishes to solve one of those difficult cases which the civil law has not foreseen, or for which she has furnished insufficient data. It will often happen that two laws appear in opposition, and right will clash against right. To whom shall we turn to reconcile these apparent or real antinomies, which are found in the letter of the law? To whom, unless to the supreme lawgiver, of whom the framers of laws are but the interpreters; to the spirit of the law, to that eternal reason whose oracular decisions philosophy records? Unhappy the jurisconsult who, before investing himself with the toga of the magistracy, or taking upon himself the defence of the rights of his fellows, shall not have entered into the sanctuary where these luminous oracles are expounded by the mouth of sages, and who persuades himself that the letter of the code is enough to enable him to acquit himself of his difficult functions! The letter is a useful instrument undoubtedly, an instrument necessary even, indispensable; but it is nothing more than instrument. To hit its mark it requires to be ably handled. Philosophy alone gives this power and freedom in the management of the written law, because it alone shows its end, mechanism, and motives. Guided by its light, the true jurisconsult will advance with confidence, and apply the law with intelligence; he will resolve it into its different parts, take in his hands the links that bind them together, and show their connection with the different problems, whose complexity rendered their solution more difficult. The superficial jurisconsult, on the contrary, unaided by the torch of philosophy, will always grope upon the earth when he seeks to penetrate the inner mechanism of laws and the essence of things; as the law cannot foresee the diversity of particular cases, he will ever be embarrassed in the application of its general provisions; a slave to the letter, he allows himself to be guided by, instead of guiding it, as every good workman ought to guide his instrument. If he strives to free himself from it, and lift himself above it, it is only to wander at haphazard in the region of guesswork. So he goes on, pushed from one extreme to another, not fleeing a servile application of the written law, more or less opposed to its spirit, and always uncertain, only to lose himself in conjecture more uncertain and more dangerous still; in place of being the defender and the minister of justice, he will too often be its executioner, and will verify but too faithfully the truth of that saying: “The letter without the spirit can only be a principle of death.”

III.

UTILITY OF PHILOSOPHY FOR THE FORMATION OF THE HISTORIAN.

History is not a science properly so-called, since it only occupies itself with contingent facts, and does not pretend to deduce those facts from first principles by any necessary connection. Differing from the physical world, where phenomena seemingly the most accidental are the effect of constant laws, the moral world is the product of human liberty, acting under the control of the Divine Providence in all the spontaneity of its expansion. History, which presents us with the faithful tableaux of this world, must refuse therefore to admit into its process that severe order which constitutes science; and if at times in the recital of human acts it can point out to us the accomplishment of the moral law, far more frequently does it show the most flagrant and persistent violation of it.

Must we say, then, that history ought to resign itself to presenting to the mind a mere disconnected and aimless chaos of facts, and that it cannot seek to cast on its recitals the light of principles, and give to them that order and that unity without which there is nothing truly beautiful? Who dare say this? To what purpose would the study of history serve us if it were nothing else than an incoherent tableau of the caprices of human liberty? In place of being one of the most useful studies for the formation of the mind and heart of a young man, it would be nothing but an idle pastime and dangerous food for curiosity. Instead of illumining the present by the light of the past, it would only serve to transmit to the present generations the consequence of the scandals of the generation which went before; in place of pointing out a God still working in the world and thus becoming a school for religion, it would be simply a school for atheism, in permitting us to see in the moral world nothing but human liberty abandoned to itself, a worthy emulation of that blind and impious science which in the physical world would show us nothing save a nature self-produced, self-acting by its own power.

History, then, is a study truly worthy of man; with a power to charm his intellect and make a beneficial impression on his heart, only so long as it marches ever under the light of principles, and keeps its eyes ever fixed on the moral laws, to show where they agree or where they clash with the facts with whose recital it is charged. That is to say, history cannot fulfil its mission without calling in philosophy to its aid; and, however able a writer may be in the narration of facts, he can never merit the title of historian if he is not a philosopher.

Not that I wish to bring myself forward here as the defender of the _philosophy of history_, as understood by the greater portion of modern historians. I know well that this pretended science, so vaunted in our days, is one of the deadliest engines of war which impiety has set in action in its attack on the church. The philosophy of history thus understood is to true history, such as St. Augustine and Bossuet taught, what the philosophy of the sophist is to the philosophy of reason. I cannot help, therefore, repudiating with all my power this word, if they persist in giving it the sense which Voltaire, who first introduced it, gave, or the still more impious sense which the pantheistic school gives it. I maintain that there is no philosophy of history if you understand thereby the fatalist development of human activity, after certain fixed formulas as necessary as those which govern the movements of matter; such a philosophy of history is nothing else than a denial of the human soul and of God, the legitimizing of all crime, the exciting of all the worst passions, the overthrow of all society, that is to say, the destruction of all philosophy and of all history.

But the false philosophy of fatalism and pantheism is not the only one, thank God, which can be applied to history. There is also a true philosophy of history, which shows us God glorifying himself in the reparation of the disorders of the moral world after a manner as admirable in its kind as is the maintenance of the order of the physical world. If he showed his power and wisdom, when with sovereign hand he caused the splendors of the heavens to radiate from the womb of chaos with the harmony of the stars and the life of nature, how much wiser and more powerful does he not seem to us when we behold him making use of a chaos a thousand times more rebellious, the chaos of the passions and perverseness of humanity, in order to produce the most beautiful of all his works--the manifestation of his truth and the triumph of his goodness!