Chapter VII: A Providential Event (5)

So much for the atheism, materialism, and fatalism, we do not say of Darwin—for we have reason to believe that that gentleman himself is none of these—but of Mr. Chapman’s version of evolution. There is one very important point, however, on which Mr. Darwin, the man of science, and the compiler, Mr. Chapman, are at one—a point of very great consideration because of its bearings on revelation—the doctrine that the difference between man and the lower animals is not one of “kind,” but of “degree.” We do not wish to argue this point here in full. What we wish to say is that men of the school of Darwin, etc., should be the very last persons in the world to make an assertion of this character, for the reason that they confine our knowledge to appearances, to phenomena. The question, however, whether man and the lower animals differ in “kind” or only in “degree” is not a question of phenomena or appearances: it is a question of _noumena_, of essence, of reality. We do not grant that even appearances warrant the assertion that man differs from the lower animals in nothing essential. There are appearances which forbid any such conclusion. But we maintain that, whether they so differ or not, Darwin and his school are, by the principles of their philosophy, estopped from asserting that they do or do not. They cannot say that the same phenomena imply the same noumena, the same accidents, the same essence, the same appearances, the same reality, because, to assert the identity of nature of two things, both must be known in what constitutes their essence, whereas these men expressly say that of noumena, reality, or essence nothing can be known.

Mr. Chapman is more a disciple of Haeckel than of Darwin, and follows that gentleman in all his vagaries—a course well calculated to increase rather than decrease the amount of prejudice against what there may be of truth in Darwinism. Among the advocates of this, as of almost all theories, there are extremists. Our author seems to have gone to school to all of them, and swallowed all they told him, no matter how paradoxical, no matter how little proof to substantiate it. On the other hand, of all that has been said against pure Darwinism, not a word has been recorded by Mr. Chapman; and of those who, like Prof. Agassiz, do not agree with Mr. Darwin, or who, like St. George Mivart, have, as we think, dealt his theory blows from which it will not recover, he does not make the smallest mention. Yet it cannot be that Agassiz and Mivart are too small to be noticed by Mr. Chapman. Agassiz is too venerable a name in science to need any demonstration that his opinion on scientific matters is entitled to consideration. Mivart is, we take it, a younger man; yet, if he has not made himself an abiding reputation by what he has the modesty to call his “little book,” the _Genesis of Species_, he has made a name which must live, if Darwin’s, and Lyell’s, and Huxley’s do; since all these men have found in him a foe worthy of their steel—and the latter of the vials of his wrath.

We would not consider this article complete without a condensed history of the controversy between Mr. Huxley and Mr. Mivart, occasioned by the publication by the latter of his admirable work, the _Genesis of Species_. We give it here for this, as well as for the reason that it will serve as the best general answer it is in our power to give to Mr. Chapman and other writers of his character.

But first a few remarks on Darwin’s theory. It is only a theory, a mere hypothesis. Mr. Darwin does not pretend to have proved it himself; nor does his advocate, Mr. Huxley, who seems to have taken Mr. Darwin and the Darwinian theory under his special protection, pretend that it is proved.

Bearing in mind that the Darwinian theory is only a hypothesis, we must estimate its value as we estimate that of other hypotheses, viz., by its ability to account for all the facts of which it pretends to be the solution.

The Copernican system of astronomy, for instance, is only a hypothesis; yet, as there is no known astronomical fact absolutely contradictory to it, we accept it as true. If there were only one fact which it did not explain and could not explain; above all, if there were one fact at variance with the hypothesis, the hypothesis must give way, and the fact stand; for one fact is worth a thousand hypotheses, and one fact in cases of this kind, as Mr. Huxley says, as good as five hundred.

Are there, then, any facts which the Darwinian theory of development by natural selection should explain and does not? Mr. Huxley himself says there is one set of such facts—the facts of hybridism; and, as we will presently see, there are a great many others.

To St. George Mivart, a scientist, but more than a scientist, a philosopher in a degree, somewhat of a theologian as well, and therefore a man of greater intellectual grasp than either Darwin or Huxley, we are indebted for the fullest presentation of the facts inexplicable by natural selection that has yet been given to the reading world. This that gentleman has done in his book before referred to, _The Genesis of Species_.

One of Mr. Mivart’s great merits is that he accords to Mr. Darwin’s theory its full meed of praise. He is a scientific man, and as such a good judge of its merits and demerits, therefore competent to acknowledge the one and point out the other.

We are not at all prejudiced against Mr. Darwin or his theory. We agree entirely with Mr. Mivart that it “is perhaps the most interesting theory, in relation to natural science, which has been promulgated during the present century.” Before pointing out, however, why it is the most interesting theory of the kind, let us see in brief what the Darwinian theory of natural selection is.

In the words of Mr. Mivart it may be stated thus:

1. “Every kind of animal and plant tends to increase in numbers in a geometrical proportion.

2. “Every kind of animal and plant transmits a general likeness with individual differences to its offspring.

3. “Every individual may present minute variations of any kind in any direction.

4. “Past time has been practically infinite.

5. “Every individual has to endure a very severe struggle for existence, owing to the tendency to geometrical increase of all kinds of animals and plants, while the total animal and vegetable population (man and his agency excepted) remains almost stationary.

6. “Thus, every variation of a kind tending to save the life of the individual possessing it, or to enable it more surely to propagate its kind, will in the long run be preserved, and will transmit its favorable peculiarity to some of its offspring, which peculiarity will thus become intensified till it reaches the maximum degree of utility. On the other hand, individuals presenting unfavorable peculiarities will be ruthlessly destroyed. The action of this law of ‘natural selection’ may thus be well represented by the convenient expression, ‘survival of the fittest.’”

Now as to the series of facts which this theory throws light upon. Here they are as enumerated by Mr. Mivart. It explains:

1. Some singular facts “relating to the geographical distribution of animals and plants; as, for example, on the resemblance between the past and present inhabitants of different parts of the earth’s surface.

2. “That often, in adjacent islands, we find animals closely resembling and appearing to represent each other; while, if certain of these islands show signs of more ancient separation, the animals inhabiting them exhibit a corresponding divergence.

3. That “‘rudimentary structures’ also receive an explanation by means of this theory.

4. “That the singular facts of ‘homology’ are capable of a similar explanation.”

5. That “that remarkable series of changes which animals undergo before they attain their adult condition, which is called their process of development, and during which they more or less closely resemble other animals during the early stages of the same process, has also great light thrown on it from the same source.”

6. That “by this theory, and as yet by this alone, can any explanation be given of that extraordinary phenomenon which is metaphorically termed ‘mimicry.’”

To explain in detail the exact import of each of these heads would carry us beyond the limits of a magazine article; and the reader who wishes for more minute and definite information on them we must refer to Mivart’s own book, or to Darwin’s _Origin of Species_.

Pass we now to those facts which Darwin’s theory is incompetent to explain, and to the arguments against it. Mr. Mivart enumerates them thus:

1. “That ‘natural’ selection is incompetent to account for the incipient stages of useful structures.

2. “That it does not harmonize with the coexistence of closely similar structures of diverse origin.

3. “That there are grounds for thinking that specific differences may be developed suddenly instead of gradually.

4. “That the opinion that species have definite though very different limits to their variability is still tenable.

5. “That certain fossil transitional forms are absent which might have been expected to be present.

6. “That some facts of geographical distribution supplement other difficulties.

7. “That the objection drawn from the physiological difference between ‘species’ and ‘races’ still exists unrefuted.”

Our readers will readily understand that, if species, or rather individual animals, were originated by natural law, and if that law be “natural selection,” the action of “natural selection” must be able to explain not only the production of the animal as a whole, but of its several organs, both when they have reached the point of maximum utility, and at all stages previous thereto.

Mr. Mivart shows that it does not accomplish this; that it does not account for “the incipient stages of useful structures, _e. g._ the heads of flatfishes, the baleen of whales, vertebrate limbs, the laryngeal structures of the new-born kangaroo, the pedicellariæ of echinoderms”; and thus he established his first charge on purely scientific grounds, as a scientist writing for scientists. The other charges are equally well sustained. It would, however, require the rewriting of Mr. Mivart’s book to follow him through all his facts and arguments, and we must beg again to refer the reader who would study the matter in detail, to the book itself.

Another series of objections brought forward by Mr. Mivart against the same theory is equally well sustained—objections that go to show that “it cannot be applied at least to the soul of man,” as Mr. Darwin has applied it.

Here, again, everyone will see that, if the human soul is not created by God, it, too, must have been gradually evolved from what, for lack of a more convenient term, though not without protest, we must call an animal soul, by the process of natural selection; and therefore there is nothing in man’s soul which was not in the ape’s—the same faculties, moral and intellectual, in kind, different only in degree. This question Mr. Mivart discusses in a separate chapter on “Evolution and Ethics.”

The result of the discussion he thus sums up:

1. “Natural selection could not have produced, from the sensations of pleasure and pain experienced in brutes, a higher degree of morality than was useful; therefore it could have produced any amount of ‘beneficial habits,’ but not an abhorrence of certain acts as impure and sinful.

2. “It could not have developed that high esteem for acts of care and tenderness to the aged and infirm which actually exists, but would rather have perpetuated certain low social conditions which obtain in some savage localities.

3. “It could not have evolved from ape sensations the noble virtues of a Marcus Aurelius, or the loving but manly devotion of a S. Louis.

4. “That it alone could not have given rise to the maxim, _Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum_.

5. “That the interval between material and formal morality is one altogether beyond its power to traverse.”

Mr. Mivart further shows “that the anticipatory character of moral principles is a fatal bar to that explanation of their origin which is offered to us by Mr. Herbert Spencer”; and “that the solution of that origin proposed recently by Sir John Lubbock is a mere version of simple utilitarianism, appealing to the pleasure or safety of the individual, and therefore utterly incapable of solving the riddle it attacks.”

It is hardly necessary that we should dwell on these points. Our Christian readers need no demonstration of them. Knowing, on the one hand, what Christian morality is, and, on the other, what mere animal behavior, they must know the difference between them, and, knowing this difference, that by no possibility could the one be developed from the other, there being no oneness of kind in them.

Just here we would remark that, in addition to his other arguments, Mr. Mivart might have added that from philology against Darwinism, and with good effect. There are those who, from that science, argue the other way. But, in a series of able articles on “Darwinism and the Science of Language,” the Rev. J. Knabenbauer, S. J., has shown that philology points to a diversity of origin for man and the lower animals.

He argues that the ultimate elements, the roots of all language, are expressive of general ideas. Now, general ideas are the products of the intellectual processes known as abstraction and generalization. Hence, before the formation of roots, before the beginnings of language, man was man, since he could abstract and generalize. Hence, also, language is not a development of animal cries, nor man of the brute, since the brute can neither abstract nor generalize.

Finally, Mr. Mivart shows in his chapter on “Evolution and Theology” that evolution and creation by no means exclude one another; and that a Catholic—Mr. Mivart is a Catholic—may accept the theory of evolution, ancient writers of authority in the church having “asserted abstract _principles_ such as can perfectly _harmonize_ with the requirements of modern science,” and, “as it were, provided for the reception of its most advanced speculations.”

In support of this view, Mr. Mivart quotes from S. Augustine, S. Thomas, Cornelius à Lapide, and refers to the Jesuit Suarez, with the doctrines of all of whom it is perfectly consistent to hold that animal species were created only potentially, _potentialiter tantum_.

By that we do not mean to insinuate that the naked Darwinian theory is compatible with Catholic faith; but of this more hereafter.

It was not to be expected that Mr. Mivart, in his criticism on Darwinism, would meet with no opponents. He must have expected to be attacked from two quarters, and by two different classes of men: by those committed to the Darwinian hypothesis, in the first place; and, again, by those who value that hypothesis less for its scientific merit than for—as they suppose—its incompatibility with Christian doctrine, and the service they think it might render in the disintegration of the Christian societies. Among the latter we are compelled to class Mr. Huxley, who, if a very good scientist, is, notwithstanding, one of the most arrogant of men.

He replied to Mr. Mivart, and in his reply does neither more nor less than constitute himself the infallible teacher of all mankind, the supreme pontiff of science, empowered to speak with authority on all matters pertaining to religion and philosophy, as well as to anatomy. He has the commendable modesty, even, to tell Catholics what they may believe, and what they must reject. He interprets the Bible for them, expounds the teachings of the Fathers of the church, comments on the schoolmen, all for their benefit; in fact, entirely forgets the good old maxim, “Let the cobbler stick to his last,” and imagines that, because he has learned a considerable amount about brains and stomachs—dead brains and stomachs, for the most part—he can legislate for the Christian world; that anything in heaven or on earth which he cannot weigh or measure, upon which he cannot bring the knife, or the blowpipe, or the spectroscope to bear, does not exist, or exist otherwise than as it takes form in his own by no means humble mind.

In his reply to Mr. Mivart, he virtually passes over all of the latter gentleman’s scientific objections, and fastens on his assertion that evolution is at all _compatible_ with Catholic doctrine.

Mr. Mivart had, as we have seen, referred to Suarez, and that, Mr. Mivart assures us, because, in Mr. Huxley’s words, “the popular repute of that learned theologian and subtle casuist was not such as to make his works a likely place of refuge for liberality of thought.”

Of course Mr. Mivart did not intend to represent Suarez or the other writers we have mentioned above as advocating the very modern doctrine of evolution, but only abstract principles harmonizing with it; and, if anything, broader than it, inasmuch as they are broad enough not only to take in the recent theory of evolution, but any other theory of development which may be yet advocated; yet Mr. Huxley assumed that Mr. Mivart meant to convey the impression that F. Suarez was a Darwinian or a disciple of Herbert Spencer, which he could not well be, having lived some centuries too early to enjoy any such good-fortune. Having erected this theory, Mr. Huxley went, in his “More Criticisms on Darwin,” deliberately to work to demolish it, in doing which he left his way considerably, raising questions on which Mr. Mivart had said nothing whatever, and which in the discussion are wholly irrelevant; as, for instance, the meaning of the word “day” in the first chapter of Genesis, as advocated by some authorities.

Mr. Mivart retorted through the pages of the _Contemporary Review_, and demonstrated that Suarez was “an opponent of the theory of a perpetual direct creation of organisms,” and “that the principles of scholastic theology are such as _not to exclude_ the theory of development, but rather to favor it.” He quoted again from Suarez, to show that that writer, treating of the opinion that individuals of kinds like the mule, leopard, lynx, etc., must have been created from the beginning, expressed the view that the contrary seemed to him more probable, thus asserting _the principle_ that those kinds of animals which are _potentially_ contained in nature need not be supposed to be directly and immediately created. More than this, Mr. Mivart shows that the same authority recognizes the possibility that certain organisms may be originated directly from the inorganic world by cosmical influences.

Our readers already know what were the views of S. Augustine on this matter. Mr. Mivart shows that other theologians besides S. Thomas, such as S. Bonaventure, Albertus Magnus, Denis the Carthusian, Cardinal Cajetan, Melchior Canus, Bannes, Vincentius Contenson, Macedo and Cardinal Noris, Tosti, Serri, “and others down to the present day,” agree with S. Augustine in his views on the question we are considering.

The great result—the only result in which we feel especially interested—of this controversy was the bringing into clearer light the fact that the kernel of truth contained in Darwinism or in evolution is not at variance with revelation, as indeed it cannot be and be true. This is what Mr. Huxley has done for the church.

Of Mr. Huxley’s treatment of his opponent’s objections on the score of morality we have nothing to say which would be of the least service to our readers.

Remains the question: How far may a Catholic accept the special Darwinian theory or the doctrine of evolution? Mr. Mivart asserts that a miraculous origin of the body of man is not necessary; that it might have been evolved from that of some lower being by natural law. Darwinians and evolutionists generally maintain an analogous origin for the human soul. Is there anything in this contrary to revelation?

We have not space, if we had the ability, to go into a lengthy examination of this question. Nor is there any reason that we should. It has already received the attention of able Catholic writers, and we can do no better than give the results of their investigation. They have shown[48] that, with respect to all organisms lower than man, the doctrine of the fathers is that Catholic faith “does not prevent any one from holding the opinion that life, both vegetable and animal, was in the world in germ at its creation, and afterwards developed by regular process into all the various species now on the earth”; therefore, that “all living things up to man exclusively were evolved by natural law out of minute life-germs primarily created, or even out of inorganic matter,” is an opinion which a Catholic may consistently hold if he thinks fit so to do.

As to the question of the _body_ of man, the same writers have shown, and we take it to be the safer opinion—in which, perhaps, we differ from Mr. Mivart—“that to question the immediate and instantaneous (or quasi-instantaneous) formation by God of the bodies of Adam and Eve—the former out of inorganic matter, the latter out of the rib of Adam—is at least rash, and probably proximate to heresy.”

That the human soul was specially and separately created is an article of Catholic faith.

There is not a fact in science at variance with these views of the origin of the body of man and of the human soul. Even Mr. Wallace—to whom the credit of pointing out the influence of “natural selection” in modifying organic beings belongs by right of a title not less valid than that of Mr. Darwin—believes, and he has reason to believe, in the action of an overruling Intelligence in the production of “the human form divine”; and that, in view of man’s special attributes, “he is, indeed, a being apart”—not, therefore, evolved, either as to his body or his soul, from any inferior organism. When a man like Mr. Wallace holds such a view, we may rest assured that the facts in the case do not require any one to hold the contrary. Let us now endeavor to sum up the results in relation to the Darwinian theory and the bearings thus far obtained:

1. The tendency of every kind of animal and plant to increase in geometrical progression, and to transmit a general likeness with individual differences, as well as to present minute variations of any kind in any direction, the great length of past time, the struggle of animals and plants for existence, and the preservation and intensification of favorable variations, are facts on which the theory is based.

We accept these facts.

2. We do not accept the theory, because, although it throws light on some facts, there are others with which it is not compatible; and because those even on which it does throw light do not require us to accept it.

3. There is nothing in the Darwinian theory, or in the more general theory of evolution countenanced by facts bearing on the development of life, which a Catholic may not accept, if he wishes so to do.

4. The teaching of Darwinism as to the origin of man’s body is probably next to heretical. At all events, the only safe opinion is that it was not evolved from the body of a lower being, but was directly and quasi-instantaneously created by God.

5. Its teaching concerning the origin of the human soul is in direct and irreconcilable contradiction with an article of Catholic faith.

6. There is—apart from revealed doctrine—an absolute scientific certainty of the truth of that same doctrine respecting the creation of the human soul, and the highest probability of the immediate creation of the human body.

So much for the facts, so much for the theory, so much for its bearings on revelation.

In all we have said, we do not wish to be understood as advocating the Darwinian theory, even in so far as it does not conflict with Catholic faith, nor as committing ourselves to the general doctrine of evolution. The fact is, we do not care as Catholics to pledge ourselves hastily to any hypothesis whatever. We know some little of the history of hypotheses, and we know that it has been a history of failures.

When the Darwinian hypothesis or the theory of evolution shall have stood the test of years and facts, and the most searching investigations, let the Catholics who will be then alive accept them. There is no special reason why we should profess our faith in them. We do not need them to account for the phenomena about us.

On the other hand, we can readily understand why a certain class of minds should subscribe to it.

The human mind naturally seeks for an explanation of the origin of things. Intelligent men know the human race has not always been on the earth, that the phenomena about us are not eternal, that animal and vegetable life must have had a beginning here. Catholics know the same, and knew it before science had demonstrated it or discovered its minutiæ.

Men who wish to get rid of God welcome any hypothesis which seems to remove him to a greater distance from them, even before that hypothesis has more in its favor than against a it. Catholics, who believe in God, have no such anxiety. They are willing to wait, since they have already an explanation of the origin of things in their belief in God, and in the teachings of his revelation that he in the beginning created the heavens and the earth, and all that they contain. The minutiæ, the How of that creation, they leave it to science to discover. When discovered and proved, they will accept it. But science can never give them anything not contained in the first article of the Creed: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.” All it can do is to explicate and confirm this.

If it be objected that scientists accept the theory, and that we therefore should, we reply, _mere_ scientists do; and of all men, the least safe of guides is the mere scientist. No other man is more apt to become a blind worshipper of the idols of the Cave. He confines himself within the narrow limits of his laboratory, among instruments of death, and then would excogitate a solution to the problems of life and of the universe; as if with bolts and screws he could wring from nature the secret it will not yield.

Goethe well knew that from such men we need not expect the answer to the riddle of the universe; that one glance at the world as a whole as it lies bathed in the sun on a summer’s day tells us more than all the tomes of philosophers.

“Ah me! this dungeon still I see,
This drear, accursed masonry,
Where even the welcome daylight strains
But darkly through the painted panes,
Hemmed in by many a toppling heap
Of books worm-eaten, gray with dust,
Which to the vaulted ceiling creep,
Against the smoky paper thrust,
With glasses, boxes, round me stocked,
And instruments together hurled,
Ancestral lumber stuffed and packed:
Such is my world: and what a world!
And do I ask wherefore my heart
Falters, oppressed with unknown needs?
With some inexplicable smart
All movement of my life impedes?
Alas! in living nature’s stead,
Where God his human creature set
In smoke and mould, the fleshless dead
And bones and beasts surround me yet!”

And although we can see some force in the general theory of evolution, we cannot accept it till it settles its account with the principle on which the whole inductive method is raised—the constancy of the laws of nature.

The theory of evolution strikes, it seems to us, at the very root of this principle. It proclaims that there is not and has never been any constancy in nature. It devours all other law, or rather destroys it. It means simply change. Permanency, constancy, and their synonymes are opposed to it; and thus the theory of evolution must invalidate all the sciences which are founded on the assumption that nature is constant; in other words, that it does not change, does not evolve. The definition of evolution given by Mr. Spencer makes it simply a change. True, he states the method or law of that change. But the method is discovered by induction. Induction is in turn annihilated by evolution. The fabric as it rises loses its foundation, and floats in the air, a baseless vision.

But if we are in no haste to yield assent to Darwinism or evolution in general; as applied to man’s soul by advocates like Spencer or Chapman, we reject it _in toto_. It is incompetent to account for the facts, nay, in glaring contradiction to them.

We take our stand against man’s relation to the ape on facts as undeniable as any the zoologist or anatomist advances in its favor. These compare man’s body and the ape, and _find_ no very great superiority of the one over the other as they lie recently dead on the anatomist’s table. Let the two lie there only a little longer, and none at all will be discoverable. A little dust which the winds of heaven will soon scatter to the four points of the compass is all that will be left of either. Shall we therefore infer their oneness of kind? By no means.

We know that man is in some respects not unlike the ape in form; but we know, too, that there are Godlike faculties in man which are not in the ape. We know this, and we know, moreover, that the philosopher through whose brain roll vast choruses of thought; who stands on the heights of Christian philosophy and human speculation, and discourses on death and immortality; who, from the eminence to which Christianity has raised him, looks down, not with indifference and not with contempt, but with deep serenity, on the little loves and little hates of the world, because conscious of his eternal destiny—we know, we have an intuition, which we trust more than we trust Darwin and Huxley, that this philosopher is more than a developed ape.

And when the anatomist tells us there is little anatomical difference between man and the ape, therefore between man as man and the ape as ape there is little difference or a difference only of degree, we reply: Between man and the ape, between a Newton or even a savage and a monkey, there is, in the intellectual order, a vast difference, an infinite difference. _This_ we take as the fact, and draw the conclusion that the amount of anatomical difference between a monkey and a man is no criterion or measure of the real difference.

We treat the argument from embryology in the same way. Because at a certain stage in its development the human embryo cannot be distinguished from that of certain of the lower animals, we are assured that man differs from these only in degree. We grant the fact, we reject the inference; and we reason: notwithstanding you can detect no difference at certain stages between the two, time develops one so great that the one may become a Shakespeare, the other becomes only a Shakespeare’s dog. What follows? Simply this: that there is a something in the human embryo which is not in the other—a something which the sense cannot detect, but the existence of which the mind may infer; that there is more of life than the embryologist can find out by his methods, as there is more of the rose than is found in its ashes—more of life than we would be apt to see in a dissecting-room or a charnel-house.

No; whatever force the special Darwinian theory may have to the student of animal life, to the student of man as an animal, it can have very little to him who views man in his higher manifestations. Whatever else it may account for, it never can throw any light on the facts of man’s moral nature. It never can explain the origin of a being who believes in purity or pity.

Let the Darwinian, indeed, explain, if he can, how, if man owes his existence and his development, physical, moral, and mental, to success in the struggle for existence—in other words, to natural selection—and this success, in turn, to the exercise of the selfish or combative faculties, or to both combined—faculties which, according to this theory, he must have exercised, his present and previous states taken together, for ages unnumbered—so long, indeed, that they ought to have grown into uncontrollable instincts—and which are the only ones he can have exercised from the beginning, to which, therefore, as the most imperious, all others should be subordinate—let him, we say, explain who can how this tendency to battle, inherited through infinite ages, has not taken complete possession of man, nor caused his life to be a continual strife with his fellows; let him explain how, instead of all this, there _are_ men who have learned, not to hate, but to love their enemies, to compassionate the weak, the poor, and the lowly, to nurse the sick and the dying, to care even for the dead; nay, how it comes that there are men who are guided by the sublime command: “Love them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that persecute and calumniate you”; or, further yet, how, in spite of the exercise of the selfish and combative faculties, in the struggle for existence, the tendency of which must have been to strengthen by use the organs of destruction, the same organs should gradually disappear, and that in man not one of them should be left.

Let him explain, again, how out of mere animality, by “natural selection,” out of the mere brute, in a “struggle for existence,” beings should come—men to whom this would be a law: Be pure; for “he that looketh after a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart.” There are such men—men to whom this is a law, and who obey it. Will a Vogt or a Büchner believe it? Will a Darwin account for it by “natural selection”?

Finally, let him explain how, if man has always been only growing out of some lower condition, he has yet learned, in a measure, to go beyond himself, to harbor an ideal which he has never reached, but towards which he ever strives, inasmuch as he endeavors to fulfil the command of the Son of God: “Be ye perfect, as my heavenly Father also is perfect.”

PEACE.

THIS supplication of the Suffering was that also of the Militant Church, which daily offered it as now with sighs and tears, and, by the light which this reflection casts on history, we can catch a glimpse for an instant at the immense multitude of the pacific men who in the middle ages were existing upon earth; for as many as were joined in spirit to the church, were united with her in this ardent, insatiable desire of peace. How do we know that the Catholic Church, which the holy Fathers call the house of peace, was so profoundly attached to peace? From a simple review of her liturgy: for in the first place, her great daily sacrifice itself was nothing else but the mystery of peace, the pledge of future and eternal, the diffusion of present peace to man. At this holy and tremendous celebration in which God hath given peace reconciling the lowest with the highest in himself, the good of temporal peace was also formally invoked, at the _Gloria_, at the _Te igitur_, at the spreading of the hands before the consecration, at the _Libera nos_ at the salutation of the people, at the _Agnus Dei_, at the three prayers which follow it, and in the prayer for the king; for as the apostle assigns the reason for the latter, _that we may lead a secure and peaceable life_, so with that intention the holy church prays for all rulers, even for such as are transgressors of the divine law;[49] which intention is formally expressed in her solemn litany, where she prays that kings and Christian princes may have peace and true concord, and all the people peace and unity. The innumerable priests, who celebrated throughout the earth, knew that the inestimable price of the world, and the great Victim for the salvation of men, could only be immolated in a spirit of peace, and with a contrite heart; and that, as Peter of Blois says, it is never lawful to offer it without that preparation.[50]—DIGBY, _Mores Catholici_.

DANTE’S PURGATORIO.

CANTO EIGHTH.

In this Canto, Dante introduces the souls of Nino Visconti, judge of Gallura in Sardinia; and of Conrad Malaspina, who predicts to the poet his banishment.

‘Twas now the hour that brings to men at sea,
Who in the morn have bid sweet friends farewell,
Fond thoughts and longing back with them to be;
And thrills the pilgrim with a tender spell
Of love, if haply, new upon his way,
He faintly hear a chime from some far bell,
That seems to mourn the dying of the day;
When I forbore my listening faculty
To mark one spirit uprisen amid the band
Who joined both palms and lifted them on high
(First having claimed attention with his hand)
And towards the Orient bent so fixed an eye
As ‘twere he said, “My God! on thee alone
My longing rests.” Then from his lips there came
_Te lucis ante_, so devout of tone,
So sweet, my mind was ravished by the same
The others next, full sweetly and devout,
Fixing their gaze on the supernal wheels,
Followed him chanting the whole Psalm throughout.

Now, reader, to the truth my verse conceals
Make sharp thy vision; subtle is the veil
So fine ‘twere easily passed through unseen.
I saw that gentle army, meek and pale,
Silently gazing upward with a mien
As of expectancy, and from on high
Beheld two angels with two swords descend
Which flamed with fire, but, as I could descry,
They bare no points, being broken at the end.
Green robes, in hue more delicate than spring’s
Tender new leaves, they trailed behind and fanned
With gentle beating of their verdant wings.
One, coming near, just over us took stand,
Down to th’ opponent bank the other sped,
So that the spirits were between them grouped
Full well could I discern each flaxen head;
But in their faces mine eyes’ virtue drooped,
As ‘twere confounded by excess and dead.
“From Mary’s bosom they have both come here,”
Sordello said—“this valley to protect
Against the serpent that will soon appear:”
Whence I, unknowing which way to expect
This object, turned me, almost froze with fear,
And to those trusty shoulders closely clung.
Again Sordello: “Go we down and see
These mighty shades, and let them hear our tongue:
Thy presence will to them right gracious be.”
Only three steps I think brought me below
Where one I noticed solely eyeing me
As if who I might be he fain would know.
‘Twas dusk, yet not so but the dusky air,
Between his eyes and mine, within the dell,
Showed what before it did not quite declare.
Towards me he moved, and I towards him as well:
Gentle Judge Nino, when I saw thee there
What joy was mine to find thee not in hell!
We left unsaid no form of fair salute:
Then he inquired: “How long since thou didst come
O’er the far waters to the mountain’s foot?”
“O but this morn,” said I, “the realms of gloom
I passed: in the first life I am, but fain
Would find the next by following on this track.”
Like to men suddenly amazed, the twain,
He and Sordello, hearing this, drew back.
One looked at Virgil, one into the face
Of a companion sitting there, and cried,
“Up, Conrad! see what God hath of his grace
Bestowed,” then turning unto me replied:

NINO VISCONTI.

“By that especial reverence, I beseech,
Which thou ow’st him whose primal way is hid
So that none sound it, if soe’er thou reach
The shore beyond the vasty waters, bid
My child Giovanna for my peace implore
There where the cry of innocents heaven heeds.
Her mother I am sure loves me no more
Since she put off her widow’s paly weeds,
But in her misery fain would wear this day.
From her full readily may one be taught
How soon love’s flame in woman dies away
If sight or touch full oft relume it not.
The chanticleer upon Gallura’s shield
Had graced her sepulchre with fairer show
Than will that viper, which to battle-field
Marshals the men of Milan.” With such glow
He uttered this as in his face revealed
The heart’s just passion smouldering yet below.
Still that sole part of heaven I fondly eyed
Where the stars move, even as a wheel doth move
More slowly next the axle. Said my Guide:
“Son, what dost thou so gaze at there above?”
“Up there! at yon three torches,” I replied,
“Whose splendor makes this pole here all ablaze.”
And he to me: “The four clear stars that rose
This morn before thee have abased their rays,
And these have mounted in the place of those.”
While thus he spake, Sordello to his side
Drew Virgil, and exclaimed: “Behold our Foe!”
And pointed to the thing which he descried.
And where that small vale’s barrier sinks most low
A serpent suddenly was seen to glide,
Such as gave Eve, perchance, the fruit of woe.
Through flowers and herbage came that evil streak,
To lick its back oft turning round its head,
As with his tongue a beast his fur doth sleek.
I was not looking, so must leave unsaid
When first they fluttered, but full well I saw
Both heavenly falcons had their plumage spread.
Soon as the serpent felt the withering flaw
Of those green wings, it vanished, and they sped
Up to their posts again with even flight.
The shade who had approached the judge when he
Accosted him, had never moved his sight
Through this encounter, looking fixed on me.

CONRAD MALASPINA.

“So may that light,” the spirit began to say,
“Which leads thee up, find in thine own free will
Sufficient wax to last thee all the way,
Even to th’ enamelled summit of the Hill.
If thou true news of Val di Magra know’st,
Or of those parts, inform me of the same,
For I was mighty once upon that coast,
And Conrad Malaspina was my name.
Not the old lord, but his descendant, I:
The love which once I to my kindred bore
Is here refined.” “O,” thus I made reply,
“That realm of yours I never travelled o’er;
But where throughout all Europe is the place
That knows it not? The honor Fame accords
Your house illustrates not alone the race,
But makes the land renowned as are its lords;
He knows that country who was never there:
Still the free purse they bear, and still bright swords
So mount my soul as this to thee I swear!
Custom and nature privilege them so,
That, if through guilt the world’s guide lead astray,
They in the path of right straightforward go
Sole of all men, and scorn the evil way.”
To these my words, “Now go,” the spirit said,
For the sun shall not enter seven times more
That part of heaven where Aries o’er his bed
Stretches and spreads his forked feet all four,
Ere this thy courtesy’s belief shall be
Nailed in the middle of thy head with nails
Of greater force than men’s reports to thee
If, unimpeded, Judgment’s course prevails.

THE RUSSIAN IDEA.

FROM THE GERMAN OF CONRAD VON BOLANDEN.

CONCLUDED.

III.

RUSSIAN VICTIMS.

THE following morning, Rasumowski sat with his guests at a sumptuous breakfast in his elegant summer-house, the roof of which rested upon beautifully ornamented pillars. Adolph von Sempach appeared very sad; for he had again received evidences of Alexandra’s indomitable pride and want of feeling. Beck remarked the disposition of his friend, and he thought with satisfaction of the deeply afflicted mother in her lonely palace at Posen.

“Some years ago, the emperor emancipated the serfs—did he act prudently?” asked the high official of Berlin.

“Whatever the czar does, is well done,” answered the governor; “and if the future czar again introduces the former system of servitude, that also will be right. But you must not understand the abolition of servitude in a literal sense. The serfs; were freed only from servitude to the nobility; the Russian nobility have lost by it. But both peasant and noble will always remain slaves of the emperor. Consequently servitude still exists in Russia, the same kind that you desire to establish in the new German Empire. Ah! there comes the Roman Catholic pastor!” exclaimed the governor, his features assuming at once their accustomed look of ferocity. “Now, gentlemen, see how I shall deal with this hero of liberty, who preaches rebellion to the people!”

The pastor timidly approached the Russian dignitary, and allowed himself to be treated in a manner unworthy of his priestly dignity.

But the priest had seen many thousands of his Catholic brethren put to death and transported to Siberia. He knew that, by a stroke of the pen, Rasumowski could doom him to the same fate; and to this must also be added the fact that in Poland Catholic clergyman are educated by professors appointed by the Russian government. These professors very naturally train and discipline the seminarians according to the commands of a government hostile to the Roman Catholic religion. Solid theological learning and a proper appreciation of the dignity of the priesthood are not sufficiently esteemed, for which reason we must make allowances for the cringing deportment of the village pastor.

After having made a low reverence before the governor, the latter rudely accosted him by saying, “Have you your sermon with you?”

“It is at your service, your honor,” replied the priest, taking with trembling hands from his pocket a written sheet of paper, which he handed to the governor.

Rasumowski began to read, while now and then a sign of contempt or a shade of anger would spread itself over his face.

“By the heavens above me! pastor, this is incredible; in your sermon there is not one word said about his most high majesty the emperor! What is the meaning of this? Do you wish to go to Siberia?”

The priest shook like an aspen-leaf.

“Pardon me, your honor, pardon me!” stammered the priest. “I preached, as your honor may condescend to see, not about the most high emperor, but concerning Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, who has redeemed men through his death upon the cross, and has freed them from the servitude of Satan.”

“Bah!—Saviour of the world—nonsense!” interrupted the governor. “You must always preach about the most high the emperor. Your remarks about the Saviour of the world are altogether superfluous. And then,” he continued, with a threatening frown, “in your sermon you repeatedly use words not approved of by the government; that is, _freedom_ and _servitude_. You must never again use such expressions, for, if you do—remember Siberia!”

“Pardon, your honor! My intention was to show the people that we must obey God from motives of gratitude.”

“That, again, is nonsense!” exclaimed the governor. “If God wishes the people to obey him, let him march his soldiers against the disobedient. Our first duty is to the emperor; this you must preach to your parishioners!”

He rang the bell, which was immediately answered by a Cossack.

“Bring me a sheet of official paper, and the pen and ink!” said Rasumowski to the servant. “Now, listen, pastor, to what I say! If you again preach upon _liberty_ or _servitude_, you will be sent to Siberia; for in the holy Russian Empire there is neither _freedom_ nor _servitude_; and, in order that you may become a practical preacher, you must preach for a whole year on nothing else but on the _kindness_, _mildness_, _glory_, _wisdom_, _power_, and _benevolence_ of the emperor, but, above all, on the strict obligation of unconditional obedience due to him. Will you do this?”

“At your honor’s command,” replied the intimidated priest.

Rasumowski wrote upon a sheet of paper which bore the printed superscription: “Police Notice.” He then read aloud what he had written: “In this church the only topic to be preached upon for a whole year is on the high qualities of the emperor, and on the obligations of his subjects to him.”

He then folded the paper, and gave it to the priest.

“That your congregation may be informed of my command,” said he, “you must nail this police notice upon the church door. Now go!”

Before the priest had left the garden, the Berlin official burst into a loud laugh.

“Oh! this is sublime!” he exclaimed. “I must confess that you have these priests under splendid subjection. The Russian method is admirable, and must be introduced into the new German Empire.”

“My opinion,” said the professor, in a tone of indescribable sarcasm, “is that this Russian method is even excelled by the Prussian. The governor has not forbidden the pastor to preach, he has simply given him matter for his sermons; but upon the doors of several churches in certain cities of Prussia _police notices_ are placed, which forbid preaching altogether; and not only preaching, but even the hearing of confessions and the celebration of Mass. I think, therefore, that we have surpassed the Russians.”

“That is so,” replied Herr Schulze; “but the order of which you speak is unfortunately directed only against the Jesuits.”

“It is all the same,” answered Beck. “Catholic preaching, the holy Mass, and confession were forbidden. The war of destruction is not made solely against the Jesuits, but against the church.”

“You are correct, professor!” answered Schulze. “Do you know Dr. Friedberg, of Leipzig?”

“Not personally,” replied Beck; “but I am familiar with some of his writings.”

“Well,” continued Schulze, “Dr. Friedberg is Bismarck’s most faithful adviser and assistant in the combat against the ultramontanes, who are so hostile to the empire. Friedberg has lately published a work in which he expressly says that war is to be made not on the Jesuits alone, but on the whole Catholic Church, and that this war must be energetically carried out.”

“Without reference to Dr. Friedberg’s pamphlet,” said Beck, “it is clearly evident to every man of judgment, that the destruction of the Catholic Church is the one thing aimed at. It is really amusing to see how opinions change. Some years ago, the liberal press spoke of the Catholic religion with the greatest disrespect and contempt. The Pope was a feeble old man, and Catholicity tottering to its fall; it was, in fact, not only lifeless, but even unfit to live. To-day, however, this same liberal press proclaims the very reverse. The Pope is now so dangerous that Bismarck is already using every effort to secure at the next election of a pope a man who has what is popularly called _extended views_, and who will make very little use of the extraordinary powers of his office. It has become evident to the liberals that Catholicity is by no means a worn-out, dead thing, but that it is to be feared and is strong enough even to overthrow the new German Empire.”

“You make the newspapers of too much consequence,” replied Schulze. “Our journalists write under great restrictions, of course; but they are well paid for their work, and cost us a great deal of money. Bismarck’s organ, _The North-German General Gazette_, alone costs the empire every year over twenty thousand dollars. Bismarck, nevertheless, has a very low opinion of newspaper-writers; he calls them, as is well known, _his swine-herds_. You cannot, however, deny the fact, professor, that the Catholic Church is hostile to the empire.”

“If you ask me as an historian, Herr Schulze, I must contradict some of your assertions,” said Beck. “The Catholic Church is a spiritual power, but is not hostile to the empire, as far as the new empire aspires after the liberal development of noble ideas. Culture, freedom, civilization, true humanity, are children of the Catholic Church. As you know, Herder, our great writer, has said: ‘Without the Catholic Church, Europe would have become in all probability the prey of despots, the theatre of perpetual discord and strife, or else a vast desert.’ If, however, the new German Empire intends to introduce a Russian form of government, and with it servitude and the knout, then, of course, the Catholic Church will fearlessly manifest her displeasure.”

The governor and Herr Schulze opened their eyes, and gazed with astonishment and suspicion upon the daring speaker.

“Do not forget,” remarked Von Sempach, “that my friend speaks only from a historical standpoint.”

“On the whole you are right, Herr Beck!” exclaimed the governor. “The Catholic Church confuses the minds of the people by preaching about _liberty_, _about being the children of God_, about _the dignity of man_, and all such absurdities. The Pope and his priests make their people proud, obstinate, and rebellious, and difficult to manage. Mark my prediction, Herr Schulze: you cannot introduce the Russian form of government into Germany until Catholicity is exterminated.”