Chapter XLIII: Part IV: She Sang (4)

_Büchner._ “Logic and our daily experience teach us that no natural motion or change, consequently no manifestation of force, can take place without producing an endless chain of successive motions and changes, as every effect becomes immediately the cause of succeeding effects. There is no repose of any kind in nature; its whole existence is a constant cycle, in which every motion, the consequence of a preceding motion, becomes immediately the cause of an equivalent succeeding one; so that there is nowhere a gap, nowhere either loss or gain. No motion in nature proceeds from or passes into nothing; and as in the material world every individual form can only realize its existence by drawing its materials from the immense storehouse of matter, so does every motion originate from the equally immense storehouse of forces, to which sooner or later the borrowed quantity of force is again returned. The motion may become latent—_i.e._, apparently concealed; but nevertheless it is not lost, having merely been converted into equivalent states, from which it will escape again in some shape. During this process force has changed its mode; for force may, though essentially the same, assume in the universe a variety of modes. The various forms may, as already stated, be converted into others without loss, so that the sum‐total of existing forces can neither be increased nor diminished, the forms only changing” (pp. 17, 18).

_Reader._ What do you mean by “forms of forces”?

_Büchner._ Physics, as I stated to you on another occasion, “makes us acquainted with eight different forces—gravitation, mechanical force, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, affinity, cohesion, which, inseparably united to matter, form and give shape to the world. These forces are, with few exceptions, mutually convertible, so that nothing is lost in the process of conversion” (p. 18).

_Reader._ “With few exceptions”? I fear that any exception will prove fatal to your theory. But go on, doctor; I wish to hear more about your conversion of forces.

_Büchner._ “We may cite a few instances of transformation or convertibility of forces. Heat and light are produced by combustion. Heat again is converted into mechanical power in steam, and mechanical force can again by friction be reconverted into heat, and, as in the electro‐ magnetical machine, into heat, electricity, magnetism, and light. One of the most frequent conversions of force is that of heat into mechanical force, and _vice versa_” (pp. 18, 19).

_Reader._ What conclusion do you draw from these and similar facts?

_Büchner._ I draw the conclusion that in speaking of forces “the word _lost_ is an incorrect expression; for in all these and similar cases there is not a minim of power lost as regards the universe, but merely as regards the immediate object. The expended force has in reality only assumed different forms, the sum‐total of which is equivalent to the original force. Innumerable examples may be adduced to establish this law, which is expressed in the axiom that _force can neither be created nor destroyed_—an axiom from which results the immortality of force, and the impossibility of its having a beginning or an end. The consequence of this recently‐discovered natural truth is the same as that deduced from the immortality of matter, and both form and manifest from eternity the sum of phenomena which we term _world_. The cycle of matter sides, as a necessary correlate, with the cycle of force, and teaches that nothing is generated anew, that nothing disappears, and that the secret of nature lies in an eternal and immanent cycle, in which cause and effect are connected without beginning or end. That only can be immortal which has existed from eternity; and what is immortal cannot have been created” (pp. 21, 22).

_Reader._ I have heard with great attention all you have said, doctor, and I am sorry to see that you are as wrong as ever. Your argument is altogether ludicrous.

_Büchner._ It is, however, a mere statement of known facts.

_Reader._ I question this very much. But even if the alleged facts were unquestionable, and could not receive any other interpretation than that which you give of them, your conclusion about the “immortality of force” would still be groundless. In fact, the forces of which you speak are all material, and have their existence in matter alone. It is therefore vain and preposterous to argue about the immortality of such forces when you have already failed to show the immortality of matter itself. You boast that your argument is a mere statement of facts; and so do all modern sciolists, more or less awkwardly, when pushed to the wall. But what are the facts? Is heat a form of force? Is it a form convertible into another form? I perceive from your style that you never studied this subject; you only repeat like a parrot what other parrots have learned to say, without the least notion of the true state of things. Tell me, what is a form of force? What is force itself?

_Büchner._ It is not my duty to define force. I accept the definition of the physicists.

_Reader._ This is exactly what I expected to hear. Yet when a man undertakes to philosophize on anything, he ought to know very distinctly what that thing is. Do you make any difference between “forces” and “powers”?

_Büchner._ No, sir, as is evident from my terminology.

_Reader._ Do you discriminate between “force” and “quantity of action”?

_Büchner._ No, sir.

_Reader._ Do you identify “force” with “quantity of movement”?

_Büchner._ Yes, sir.

_Reader._ Then it is evident that you confound force, power, quantity of action, and quantity of movement.

_Büchner._ All these terms are substantially identical in science.

_Reader._ True, the lowest school of physicists considers them as substantially identical, and in this manner they succeed in persuading themselves and many others that the quantity of living force existing in the world is always invariably the same. But, after all, those physicists speak very incorrectly, and are not to be followed in their blundering terminology. A quantity of movement is not an action, but the result of action; and a quantity of action is not a power, but the exertion of power. In fact, the same power acts with different intensity in different conditions; and equal actions produce different movements in bodies actually subject to different dynamical determinations. Hence it is impossible to admit that powers, actions, and movements are synonymous.

And now, which of these three notions do you choose to identify with force? If you say that force is “a quantity of movement,” then it will be false that no force is ever lost; for any quantity of movement can be lost _without compensation_. Thus a stone thrown up vertically loses its quantity of movement without compensation.(153) If you say that force is “a quantity of action,” it will again be false that no force is ever lost; for all successive actions successively pass away, and continually change their direction and their intensity, according as the distances and positions of the bodies acted on are altered. Lastly, if you say that force is “power,” then it is false that forces are transformed or convertible; for the power of each element of matter remains unalterably the same, as you yourself acknowledge, throughout all the vicissitudes of time. “A particle of iron,” you say with Dubois‐Reymond, “is and remains the same, whether it crosses the horizon in the meteoric stone, rushes along in the wheel of the steam‐engine, or circulates in the blood through the temples of the poet.”

_Büchner._ Would you, then, repudiate science?

_Reader._ By no means. I love and respect true science. I only repudiate that false and presumptuous dogmatism which prompts a class of physicists to draw general conclusions from particular, and often questionable, premises.

_Büchner._ Do you, then, condemn the method of induction?

_Reader._ Not at all. I condemn the abuse of that method. What right have modern scientists of extending the principle of the “conservation of force” beyond the boundaries marked by observation and experiment? All they have a right to say is that _in the impact of bodies an equal quantity of movement __ is lost by one body and acquired by another_. This is the fact. But does it follow that therefore the movement lost by the one body passes _identically_ into the other? This is what they imagine; and this is what cannot be proved, because it is absurd. Movement is an affection of matter, and has no independent existence, as you well know. It cannot, therefore, pass identically from body to body any more than a movement of anger can pass identically from man to man. And yet it is on this absurd notion of _nomadic_ movement that the whole theory of the conservation of force, as now held by your advanced thinkers, has been raised. They say: “The quantity of movement which is lost by one of the bodies, and that which is acquired by the other, are perfectly equal; therefore a quantity of movement passes identically from one body to another.” In other terms they say: “There is equality; therefore there is identity.” Is this legitimate induction? Good logic would lead us to argue in the following manner: The actions of the two struggling bodies, being equal and opposite, must produce equal and opposite quantities of movement; hence the quantity of movement which is _destroyed_ in the impinging body must equal the quantity of movement _produced_ in the body impinged upon. Such is the only logical view of the subject; it agrees both with reason and with fact, and it strikes your theory at the root. For what is destroyed is no more; and what is produced had no existence before its production.

We might allow you to talk of the “conservation” and “conversion” of forces, were you reasonable enough to consider such expressions as mere conventional technicalities suited to explain the relations of effects to effects rather than of effects to causes. But you construe the technical phrases into real and absolute principles, and try to explain causation by substituting the effect for the cause; which is as ridiculous an abuse of the word “force” as if a carpenter pretended that his iron square is the square spoken of in the treatises of geometry. But this is not all. What right have you to apply such a theory, whether right or wrong, to gravitation?

_Büchner._ “The pendulum of every clock shows the conversion of gravitation into motion” (p. 21).

_Reader._ Indeed? What do you mean by gravitation? The attractive power of the earth, or its action, or the weight of the pendulum? Surely the attractive power of the earth is not converted into movement; for it remains in the earth, and it continues its work. Neither is the weight of the pendulum converted into movement; for the pendulum does not cease, while moving, to have weight, nor does it weigh more when, at rest; and at the end of its oscillation is not found to have expended or consumed any portion of its weight. You are therefore obliged to say that it is the action of the earth that is converted into movement. But such an expression can have no meaning; because the action is the production of an act, and it is the act itself, not its production, that constitutes the formal principle of the movement. On the other hand, a production which becomes the thing produced is such an absurdity that not even a lunatic could dream of it. Thus it is quite evident that in no imaginable sense can gravitation be considered as _converted_ into movement. It produces movement, but is not converted into it. You see, doctor, that your so boasted theory has no foundation either in reason or in fact.

_Büchner._ But we cannot deny that mechanical movement is convertible into heat, that heat may become light, and that all other such forces can be transformed.

_Reader._ I repeat, and, on the strength of the reasons which I have brought forward, I maintain that the term “conversion of forces” may be admitted as a conventional phrase, but not as exhibiting a philosophical notion. A real conversion of mechanical movement into heat would require that a movement of translation should be transformed into a movement of vibration by being distributed among the molecules of the body which is heated. This I have already shown to be impossible. Things follow a different course. When the hammer falls upon the anvil, its action (and not its movement) shakes the first range of molecules which it encounters. These molecules are thus constrained to approach the following set of molecules lying immediately under them, and to trouble their relative equilibrium. These latter, in their turn, trouble the equilibrium of the following set, and so on till all the molecules of the anvil partake in the movement, each molecule undergoing alternate _compression_ and _dilatation_, the first through the violent action of its neighbors, and the second by the reaction due to its immanent powers. The consequence of all this is that a rapid succession of vibratory movements is originated in each molecule; and thus, as soon as the movement of translation of the falling hammer is extinguished, the movement of vibration is awakened in the molecules of both the anvil and the hammer. Now, what is this but a case of impact? For just as the hammer impinges on the surface of the anvil does each molecule of the anvil impinge on its neighbor; and therefore what you call a transformation of mechanical into vibratory movement is not a real transformation of the one into the other, but the extinction of the one and the production of the other. Thus heat is generated by percussion; and in a similar manner it would be generated by friction and by other mechanical processes. Whenever heat is produced, molecules are set into vibrations of a certain intensity, and their relative equilibrium disturbed. Evidently, such a disturbance of the molecular equilibrium is due to interaction of molecules—that is, to molecular impact. Now, I have already shown, and you have understood it, I hope, that, in the case of impact, the movement never passes identically from this matter to that, but is produced in the one at the same rate as it is extinguished in the other.

I might say a great deal more on this subject, but here I stop, as I almost regret having said so much. Your theory of the conservation of force does not bear out your “immortality of force,” and is so destitute of proof that it does not deserve the honor of a longer refutation.(154)

VI. Infinity Of Matter.

_Reader._ How do you account, doctor, for your assertion that “matter is infinite”?

_Büchner._ In a very simple manner: “Whether we investigate the extension of matter in its magnitude or minuteness, we never come to an end or to an ultimate form of it. When the invention of the microscope disclosed unknown worlds, and exhibited to the eye of the investigator the infinite minuteness of organic elements, the hope was raised that we might discover the ultimate organic atom, perhaps the mode of its origin. This hope vanished with the improvement of our instruments. The microscope showed that in the hundredth part of a drop of water there existed a world of animalcules, of the most delicate and definite forms, which move and digest like other animals, and are endowed with organs, the structure of which we have little conception of” (p. 23). “We term the most minute particle of matter, which we imagine to be no longer capable of division, an _atom_, and consider matter to be composed of such atoms, acquiring from them its qualities, and existing by their reciprocal attraction and repulsion. But the word _atom_ is merely an expression for a necessary conception, required for certain purposes. We have no real notion of the thing we term _atom_; we know nothing of its size, form, composition, etc. No one has seen it. The speculative philosophers deny its existence, as they do not admit that a thing can exist which is no longer divisible. Thus neither observation nor thought leads us, in regard to the minuteness of matter, to a point where we can stop; nor have we any hope that we shall ever reach that point” (p. 24, 25).

_Reader._ That point has been reached, doctor. The theory of primitive, unextended elements is well known and advocated by good scientists and thoughtful philosophers. But let this pass, as I long for your demonstration of the infinity of matter.

_Büchner._ “Like the microscope in respect to the minuteness, so does the telescope conduct us to the universe at large. Astronomers boldly thought to penetrate into the inmost recesses of the world; but the more their instruments were improved, the more worlds expanded before their astonished eyes. The telescope resolved the whitish nebulæ in the sky into myriads of stars, worlds, solar and planetary systems; and the earth with its inhabitants, hitherto imagined to be the crown and centre of existence, was degraded from its imaginary height to be a mere atom moving in universal space. The distances of the celestial bodies are so immense that our intellect wonders at the contemplation of them, and becomes confused. Light, moving with a velocity of millions of miles in a minute, required no less than two thousand years to reach the earth from the galaxy! And the large telescope of Lord Rosse has disclosed stars so distant from us that their light must have travelled thirty millions of years before it reached the earth. But a simple observation must convince us that these stars are not at the limit of space. All bodies obey the law of gravitation, and attract each other. In assuming, now, a limitation, the attraction must tend towards an imagined centre of gravity, and the consequence would be the conglomeration of all matter in one celestial body. However great the distances may be, such an union must happen; but as it does not happen, although the world exists from eternity, there can be no attraction towards a common centre. And this gravitation towards a centre can only be prevented by there being, beyond the bodies visible to us, others still further which attract from without—and so forth _ad infinitum_. Every imagined limitation would render the existence of the world impossible” (pp. 25, 26).

_Reader._ Is this the whole of your argument?

_Büchner._ Yes, sir.

_Reader._ I should like to know how could the large telescope of Lord Rosse disclose stars so distant from us that their light must have travelled thirty millions of years before it reached the earth? Do you not know that in thirty millions of years light travels two million millions of times over the distance from the earth to the sun? And do you hope the world will believe that, thanks to Lord Rosse’s telescope, it has been possible to determine the parallax of a star two million millions of times more distant from us than we are from the sun? The world indeed is ignorant and credulous; but when the lie is too impudent, it is apt to cry you down as a charlatan. You are most imprudent, doctor. You had no need of Lord Rosse’s telescope for your argumentation; and your mention of the distant stars disclosed by it was therefore an inexcusable blunder. But the argument itself has no foundation. You imagine that, if the world were not infinitely expanded in all directions, all matter, by universal gravitation, would have conglomerated into one celestial body. But tell me, Does the moon gravitate towards the earth?

_Büchner._ Of course it does.

_Reader._ How do you account, then, for the fact that the moon has not fallen, nor is likely to fall, on the earth? Is it because the moon is attracted by some matter lying outside its orbit?

_Büchner._ It is on account of centrifugal force accompanying its curvilinear motion.

_Reader._ I am delighted to see that you can explain the fact without appealing to the infinity of matter. Let us go on. As the moon gravitates towards the earth, so do all satellites towards their planets, and all planets towards the sun. And yet none of the satellites have fallen into their planets, and none of the planets into the sun. Is this owing to the matter which lies outside of the planetary and solar system? I presume, doctor, that the enormous distance of fixed stars from us will not encourage you to believe that their attraction on any planet can cope with its gravitation towards the sun. On the other hand, this gravitation is not neutralized by the action of any exterior matter; for all planets actually obey the solar attraction, as their orbital movement conclusively shows. This same orbital movement implies also a centrifugal tendency; and this tendency sufficiently prevents the falling of the planets on the sun. This is unquestionable doctrine.

_Büchner._ I admit the doctrine.

_Reader._ Accordingly it is evident there is no need of infinite matter to prevent the celestial bodies from clustering into one central body. Centrifugal forces, in fact, are sufficient, even by your own admission, to remove all danger of such a catastrophe; and centrifugal forces are to be found wherever there is curvilinear movement around a centre of attraction, that is, throughout all the world, according to astronomical induction. Consequently your argument in favor of the infinity of matter is a mere delusion.

_Büchner._ “If we can find no limit to minuteness, and are still less able to reach it in respect to magnitude, we must declare matter to be infinite in either direction, and incapable of limitation in time or space. If the laws of thought demonstrate an infinite divisibility of matter, and if it be further impossible to imagine a limited space or a nothing, it must be admitted that there is here a remarkable concordance of logical laws with the results of our scientific investigations” (p. 27).

_Reader._ Your great scientific investigations give no result that favors the infinity of matter. This we have just seen. Logical laws give no better results. It is idle, doctor, to assume that there is any law of thought which demonstrates the infinite divisibility of matter; and it is as capricious to assert the impossibility of imagining that the space occupied by matter is limited. You say that outside that space there would be nothing, and therefore there would be no space except that occupied by matter; whence you conclude that space would be limited. Do not fear, doctor, for the fate of space. Outside the space which is occupied by matter there is yet infinite space unoccupied by matter. Space is not made up of matter. Move the matter; you will not move space. Remove all matter; space will not disappear. Of course you cannot understand this, because whoever blots God out of the world extinguishes the source of his intellectual light, and is therefore doomed to grope for ever in the dark. But we Christian philosophers, who admit a God infinite and immense, have no great difficulty to understand how there can be space not occupied by matter. Wherever God is, there is space which can be occupied by matter; for wherever God is, there he can create any amount of matter; and wherever matter can be placed, there is space; for space is nothing but the possibility of locating matter.

It is not my intention to dilate on this topic, nor is it necessary. To answer your difficulty I need only say that space, though void of matter, is always full of God’s substance, to whose immensity alone we must resort, if we desire to account at all for the existence of infinite space.

VII. Dignity Of Matter.

_Reader._ I scarcely expected, doctor, that you would devote a chapter of your book to such a trifling and unscientific subject as the dignity of matter. Is not matter, as such, the lowest of all known substances? What is the dignity of matter?

_Büchner._ You belong to the old school, sir. I will tell you what is the modern view of matter: “To despise matter and our own body because it is material, to consider nature and the world as dust which we must endeavor to shake off, nay, to torment our own body, can only arise from a confusion of notions, the result of ignorance and fanaticism” (p. 28).

_Reader._ You begin with a false assumption, doctor. We of the old school do not despise the body “because it is material.” God created matter; and whatever proceeds from God is very good. We, however, consider the body as of a lower nature than our rational soul, and try to put a check to its unruly appetites—a thing which you, being a physician, will surely approve and commend as conducive to the preservation of health, not to say of morality.

_Büchner._ “Matter is not inferior to, but the peer of, spirit; the one cannot exist without the other; and matter is the vehicle of all mental power, of all human and earthly greatness” (p. 28).

_Reader._ This is, doctor, the most abject and degrading materialism.

_Büchner._ I am not afraid of this word, sir. “We frequently hear those persons contemptuously called _materialists_ who do not share the fashionable contempt for matter, but endeavor to fathom by its means the powers and laws of existence; who have discerned that spirit could not have built the world out of itself, and that it is impossible to arrive at a just conception of the world without an exact knowledge of matter and its laws. In this sense the name of materialist can nowadays be only a title of honor. It is to materialists that we owe the conquest over matter and a knowledge of its laws, so that, almost released from the chains of gravitation, we fly with the swiftness of the wind across the plain, and are enabled to communicate, with the celerity of thought, with the most distant parts of the globe. Malevolence is silenced by such facts; and the times are past in which a world produced by a deceitful fancy was considered of more value than the reality” (p. 29).

_Reader._ You commit blunders upon blunders, doctor. We do not call materialists those who do not share “the fashionable contempt for matter,” but those who deny the existence of a spiritual soul, or teach that matter is not inferior to, but the peer of, spirit, and that the one cannot exist without the other, just as you teach. And therefore your definition of materialism is your first blunder. Again, contempt for matter is not, and never has been, “fashionable”; second blunder. That materialists endeavor “to fathom the powers and laws of existence” is a third blunder; for they are not even capable of fathoming their own ignorance, as our present discussion shows very clearly. A further blunder is to speak of “the powers and laws of existence,” as if there were any law of existence. A fifth blunder is to give credit to the materialists for having discerned “that spirit could not have built the world _out of itself_.” This was discerned long ago by Christian philosophers; whereas your materialists have even failed to discern that spirit could create the world _out of nothing_. A sixth blunder is contained in your assertion that “it is to materialists that we owe the conquest over matter and a knowledge of its laws.” Indeed, you might as well say that we owe light to darkness, and wisdom to dolts. Go and study, O great doctor and president of the medical association of Hessen‐Darmstadt! and then tell us whether Newton, Volta, Galileo, Galvani, Biot, Ampère, Cuvier, Faraday, Liebig, and scores of other great scientists were materialists. To such men we owe modern science; but what does science owe to your materialists? What law did they discover? What conquests have they achieved? It is absurd for them to complain of “malevolence” when they are treated with the contempt they deserve. They are, in fact, mere plunderers and traitors of science.

But I wonder, doctor, whether your love of materialism is much calculated to show the _dignity_ of matter. You have not adduced as yet any reason why we should think of matter very highly. You have said, indeed, that matter is “the peer of spirit”; but this is mere twaddle, as you admit of no other spirit than what would be a result of material combination. I want something better—something like a good argument—before I can appreciate the dignity of matter.

_Büchner._ “Pretended worshippers of God have in the middle ages carried their contempt for matter so far as to nail their own bodies, the noble works of nature, to the pillory” (p. 29).

_Reader._ What do you mean?

_Büchner._ “Some have tormented, others crucified themselves ...” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ Who crucified himself? When? Where? Can any one nail himself to a cross any more than he can raise himself by his belt?

_Büchner._ “Crowds of flagellants travelled through the country, exhibiting their lacerated backs. Strength and health were undermined in the most refined manner, in order to render to the spirit—considered as independent of the body—its superiority over the sinful flesh” (p. 29).

_Reader._ The flagellants were a set of fanatics; but their excesses do not prove the dignity of matter. After all, had they been materialists, they would surely have done something worse than to scourge themselves. They may have undermined their strength and their health, as you remark; but how much greater is the number of materialists who shorten their lives by shameful disorders, since they have lost all hope of a future and better life? Do you pretend that what is done by your adepts for the sake of worldly or sensual pleasure cannot be done by Christians for the sake of eternal salvation? We believe in eternal salvation, and we know what we believe. Strength and health are goods of a lower order than morality, and no true man would hesitate to endanger them for a superior good. But on what authority do you assume that in the middle ages strength and health were undermined “in the most refined manner”?

_Büchner._ “Feuerbach relates that S. Bernard had, by his exaggerated asceticism, lost his sense of taste, so that he took grease for butter, oil for water” (p. 30).

_Reader._ You know that Feuerbach is no authority; and yet I should like to know, how can a man lose his sense of taste _by asceticism_? Does asceticism affect the tongue or the palate? S. Bernard lived sixty‐three years, in spite of continuous intellectual and corporal work, so that you can scarcely say that his manner of undermining his strength and health was “most refined.” As to grease and butter, I have the honor to inform you that S. Bernard seldom tasted either, as they were excluded from the Cistercian table. What do you say to that?

_Büchner._ “Rostan reports that in many cloisters the superiors were in the habit of frequently bleeding their monks, in order to repress their passions” (p. 30).

_Reader._ Bosh.

_Büchner._ “He further states that injured nature avenged itself, and that rebellion, the use of poison and the dagger against superiors, were by no means rare in these living tombs” (p. 30).

_Reader._ And you believe such lies? Of course there is no reason why they should not be circulated among the ignorant and superstitious. They are fond of believing such things, and they are served according to their taste. The supply always meets the demand. Oh! how truly right was S. Paul when he said that _those who turn a deaf ear to truth are doomed to swallow fables_! Those who do not believe the Catholic Church, the highest authority on earth, by just judgment stupidly believe the lies of a Rostan and of a hundred other charlatans of modern times. But let us not forget the real point at issue. Your object was to show the dignity of matter. Where are your proofs? Do you think that the dignity of matter can be established by defamation? Every intelligent reader will infer, on the contrary, that it is from lack of reasons that you are obliged to disgrace your work with libel and slander.

_Büchner._ I am not a forger, after all. I have cited my authorities. But the dignity of matter appears from the fact that it is to matter that we owe science. “Have those who start from God and not from matter ever given us any clue as to the quality of matter and its laws, after which they say the world is governed? Could they tell us whether the sun moves or is at rest? whether the earth is a globe or a plain? what was God’s design? No! That would be an impossibility. To start from God in the investigation of nature is a phrase without meaning. The unfortunate tendency to proceed in the investigation of nature from theoretical premises, and to construe the world and natural truths by way of speculation, is long abandoned; and it is by pursuing an opposite course of scientific investigation that the great advance of our knowledge of nature in recent times must be ascribed” (pp. 31, 32).

_Reader._ It is evident that all our knowledge begins in sensible representations, and therefore depends on matter. But how can you infer from this the dignity of matter? When you ascend a ladder, the first step is always the lowest; which shows the contrary of what you wish to prove. Matter is the lowest of all objects of knowledge, while the highest is God. From matter we start, and in God we must end. This every one admits; you, however, assume that some philosophers “start from God, and not from matter.” Who are they? Are they, forsooth, those who teach that matter has been created by God? Then you are unjust to them, and falsify the history of science, by giving us to understand that they could not tell us whether the sun moves or is at rest, and whether the earth is a globe or a plain. It was not the atheist or the materialist that taught us astronomy and geography. The materialist can only tell us, as you do, that “all natural and mental forces are inherent in matter” (p. 32), which is no science at all; and that “in matter alone forces can manifest themselves,” or that “matter is the origin of all that exists” (_ibid._), which is the reverse of science. _This_ they can prate; but as for the great laws of nature, they had to learn them from us—I mean from men who did not preach the dignity of matter with the foolish and ignoble purpose of dethroning God. You condemn those who “construe the world and natural truths by way of speculation.” This I have already answered; but I may remind you that by condemning speculation you condemn yourself. Experimental knowledge is very good; but it is by speculation alone that our knowledge acquires its scientific character. Hence your view of science without speculation is as absurd as your assumption of matter without spirit and without God. This may suit materialists, for they stop supinely at the lowest step of the ladder; but intellectual men have a mind to ascend the ladder to the very top. What is the use of knowing matter, if you know nothing else? Matter is the alphabet of science; to study matter, and to ignore the methods of rising from matter to spirit, and from the world to God, is to study the alphabet alone during all your life, and to die an abecedarian. This is what you crave; this is what you adorn with the venerable name of science; whereas we believers not only study the alphabet, but also read the great book of the universe, and know that the book has an Author, whose thoughts it reveals. You have vainly labored to establish the dignity of matter. Had you known how to read the book of nature, you would have discovered that matter has no natural dignity but that of being the lowest work _of Him whose works are all perfect_.

To Be Continued.

Who Will Remember?

Like as a pebble on the salt sea‐sands
That some wave washes to an unknown shore,
So shall we quietly be swept away
From out the millions to be seen no more.

Who will remember, who will say “dear friend”?
Who will walk sadly seeking yet a trace
Of well‐known footsteps, of caressing hands,
Of some remembrance of a lost, dead face?

Ask not too much of human hearts that wait;
Fresh buds will blossom for their eyes at last,
And flowers dead, however sweet they were,
Are, like the whole of earth’s dead treasures, past.

Church Music.(155)

I.

From the earliest times music has had a place in the public worship of all peoples—among the pagans, among the Jews, among Christians. Its use in this connection has been dictated by God himself in the act of constituting the human mind; it has, moreover, received his express sanction, as we learn from the ordinances of the Jewish people. In the new law it has even been consecrated by his own divine example, since we read that our Lord and his apostles sang hymns together. His birth was heralded to the world by the song of his angels, and heaven is represented to the Christian as a place where we shall sing for ever the praises of God.

Church music, therefore, dates from the origin of Christianity, and has constituted ever since an integral, though not an essential, part of public worship among Christians.

The church has her simple offices and her solemn offices, and she has made the use of music one of the chief marks by which they are distinguished.

Church music grew with the growth of the church. As Christians increased and prospered, music was more and more cultivated, and was more largely introduced into their solemn exercises of worship.

The extent to which sacred music was cultivated in the early church cannot be easily determined; we have no reason to think it was very great.

When Europe emerged from that sad state of confusion which came over it with the invasion of the northern barbarians, and music was revived as a science and an art, it was, like the other branches of learning, at first confined mostly to the clergy, and its productions were for a long time almost exclusively of a sacred character.

The church being an indestructible institution, her traditions are handed down by one generation of her children to another. It was thus that in a dark day of confusion and destruction she preserved for us the treasures of ancient learning and the arts; and the world to‐day owes to her not only the modern developments of poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture, but also the beautiful and varied combinations of modern music.

At first, as we have just said, there was no music but that which was dedicated to holy purposes, except such rude melodies as nature in all ages teaches the most uncultivated.

The musical drama did not exist; and music does not seem to have made any essential part of the pageants or spectacles destined for the public entertainment.

It was from the church that music was introduced into the chamber, the hall, and the street, and in the beginning secular music imitated and borrowed the forms of that which was sacred.

The music used in the sacred offices at first and during many centuries was the plain chant. How much of this chant was taken from pagan or Jewish sources cannot be determined, for authorities differ widely; but in any case it was so modified and improved by the fathers of the Eastern Church, and afterwards in the West by SS. Ambrose and Gregory, when they adapted it to the purposes of Christian worship, that it is now frequently called the _ecclesiastical chant_, though it is oftener called _Gregorian_, from the pope just mentioned.

In the beginning it was what its name indicates—_plain_ and simple. It was sung in unison, and its melodies did not exceed the compass of the most ordinary voices.

But unison was found monotonous, as also the uniformity of time or measure generally observed in plain chant. The first departure from the old and severe forms was made when, about the middle of the IXth century, they introduced a sort of rude harmony constructed on the chant.

But this did not satisfy the craving for change, and the love of novelty, once indulged, led the way to many excesses.

Baini gives us an example of the abuses that then became prevalent. “They would write, for example, a Mass,” he says, “taking as a subject the melody of the Gregorian _Ave Maria_. Three parts in the harmony would sing portions of the _Kyrie_, _Gloria_, and _Credo_ at the same time, while a fourth would take up at intervals the entire _Ave Maria_.”

Not merely were the sacred words of the composition itself “shaken together in most admired confusion,” but, as we have just said, the words of other sacred pieces were foisted among them, so that they no longer expressed any one idea. Worse far, the gaps were even sometimes filled up “with snatches of old songs,” the ballads of the day, and those not always of the most unexceptionable character.

Attempts were also made to vary the stately measure of the chant.

Indeed, all sorts of devices were introduced in the search for novelty, and so great had become the abuse about the period of the Council of Trent that a celebrated cardinal declared that some of the church music of his day was so unfit to be offered to God that nothing but invincible ignorance could excuse from mortal sin those who offered it.

At this juncture arose the illustrious Palestrina.

Born in an age of the most vitiated taste, and himself not quite exempt from its unfavorable influences at the opening of his professional career, his exalted and discriminating genius was guided to disentangle the sweet spirit of song from the mazes in which it was well‐nigh lost, and to rescue his art from the merited reproaches which it was receiving on every side. He was encouraged and assisted in his task by two saints, S. Charles Borromeo and S. Philip Neri. When his celebrated _Missa Papæ Marcelli_ was first heard in 1565, it at once banished from the churches all the profane novelties that had preceded it, and became the model for church compositions during the next hundred years, when with Carissimi began the change to what is modern.

When Pius IV., the reigning pontiff, heard it, he declared it satisfied all the requirements of sacred music; in fact, so charmed was he by its exquisite strains that he compared it to the melodies that the Apostle S. John had heard in the heavenly Jerusalem, saying that another John (Palestrina’s Christian name was John) had given us in the earthly Jerusalem a foretaste of the music in heaven.

From that day to this the use of Palestrina’s music has been retained in the Pope’s own choir, to the exclusion of all other except the simple plain chant, with which it is made to alternate. Even when the Pope officiates or presides at any celebration outside his own chapel, his choir accompanies him and sings the same music.

It is this music, _alla Palestrina_, that travellers go to Rome to hear, especially during Holy Week. One generation has thus followed another to Rome for three hundred years; and the harmonies of Palestrina, though ever ancient, are, like the beauty of divine truth, found to be ever new.

Though Palestrina has retained his hold on the Papal choir at Rome, music far different in character from his has been introduced into the other choirs, even of Rome.

The perfection of the organ and of other instruments used to accompany the voices of singers, and the consequent discovery of other and more scientific complications in the art of harmony, especially since the introduction of the natural discord, the development of melody, joined with much greater skill in execution and the incessant thirst for novelty, have led to the introduction into nearly all the churches of compositions in which the voices and instruments are heard together in every variety of combination.

Add to this that about two centuries ago the opera took its rise, and the dramatic style, followed in it and developed by it, made its influence felt in the church.

For kings and princes then began the practice of selecting the same musician to preside over the performances of their theatres and of their chapels; nay, the whole staff of the theatre was brought into the chapel on Sundays, as is done to‐day in Dresden. Nothing better and nothing different was required for the chapel, except the substitution of other words and a toning down of the measures of the drama, and thus the chapel became merely a sort of sacred concert‐room.

But the _maîtres de chapelle_ at these courts were the first musicians of their day, and their success in operatic music, sounded over all Europe, caused their sacred compositions to be looked on with undiscriminating favor by the public. And as the weakness of human nature is such that inferiors naturally imitate their superiors, and sometimes even copy their faults, it became the fashion to sing in churches the sacred music used in court‐chapels, especially as this was more easily obtained, being printed at the expense of the courts.

Besides this, the modern composers of opera seem to have the ambition of composing also for the church. But they generally forget how very different the church and the theatre are, and they seldom care to follow a different method in the church from that which gains them applause in the theatre; and the public are frequently as forgetful in this matter as the composers.

It must be added that the directors of choirs seem to have a fatal habit of following, even in church, if they are allowed, the _prevailing __ style_ set by the latest and most popular writers for the stage.

When the model so successfully set by Palestrina was first departed from, and instrumental music used in conjunction with vocal, there may have been a certain gain, as the chant became more melodious and less monotonous without losing its depth and solemnity. Gradually, however, the grave style of the older musicians disappeared, and the music of the church has become, at least in some places, almost as light and as airy as that of the theatre.

This music sometimes seems written in derision or contempt of the sacred words; as, 1, when a prayer of supplication, such as the _Kyrie eleison_ and _Dona nobis pacem_, is set to numbers as lively as those of a jig (frequently the case with Haydn). 2. When the words are omitted, even though they be of importance; as the words of the Creed, _qui ex Patre Filioque procedit_ (nearly always omitted, even in the longest Masses of Haydn). 3. When they are interminably repeated or senselessly inverted. In Mozart’s Twelfth Mass we have: _Crucifixus, et homo factus est_.

What shall we say of the operatic solos, duos, trios, etc., instrumental interludes, sincopations, etc., which, to any one who reflects, are in direct contradiction to all our notions of what is reverent and appropriate to the church?

II.

From what has been said in the preceding pages, there are three general forms of church music: the plain chant, the music termed _alla Palestrina_, and modern figured music.

(a.) Plain chant is the old and original song of the church, of which the forms, like those of a dead language, are fixed and immutable. Long, long ago the secret of plain chant _composition_ was lost, and it is probable that we have lost in great measure also the secret of its proper _execution_.

“The leading idea which is represented by plain chant,” says Canon Oakeley,(156) “and in no degree by any other style of music, except that which consists in bare recitative, is that in certain cases music best discharges her office by retreating, as it were, in despair before certain divine words, and contenting herself with merely providing a vehicle for their utterance, so simple as not by any studied beauty of its own to detract from their intrinsic majesty and power. This, I think, will be admitted to be the leading idea of plain chant, though I am far from denying that accidentally this idea produces some of the most attractive charms of the divine art in its results.... In many of these accidental instances plain chant not only excels other music, but absolutely sets it at defiance in its own particular line.” Hence a celebrated musician is reported to have said that he preferred the plain chant of the Preface and the _Pater Noster_ to all he himself had ever written.

In the beginning this chant was not even harmonized. It was plain and unadorned, as its name implies—_cantus planus_.

(b.) The music of Palestrina is the last and triumphant result of the efforts that were made in his time and before it to vary, to modify, and to adorn the plain chant, which all had found too simple and too monotonous.

Pope John XXII., elected in 1316, complains of the novelties introduced into the execution of plain chant in his day. These innovations he condemns as unbecoming and undevotional, especially the attempts to vary the measure; but he immediately adds: “We do not intend by this to prohibit that occasionally, especially on festival days, either at the solemn Masses or the other divine offices, some harmonious combinations (_consonantiæ quæ melodiam sapiunt_), viz., harmonies of the octave, the fifth, the fourth, and such like, on the simple ecclesiastical chant, be sung; in such manner, however, that the integrity of the chant remain untouched, and nothing of this grave and stately music (_musica bene morata_) be changed, especially since _these harmonies delight the ear, excite devotion, and prevent the spirit of those who sing to God from drooping_” (_torpere non sinunt_). (Extr. Comm., lib. iii., cap. 1, _Docta Sanctorum_.) This Constitution is the earliest utterance of the popes concerning church music—at least since innovations were attempted—that we possess. The abuses of which Pope John XXII. complained continued to exist, and even to increase, till the time of the Council of Trent, when Palestrina produced that style of music which is known by his name, and which, though built upon the plain chant, is as unlike it as Grecian is unlike Italian architecture. It is equally unlike modern music. It differs from plain chant, being an unbroken series of artistically‐constructed harmonies, in which unison is unknown. It differs from modern music by the absolute disuse of instruments of any kind (even the organ), by the exclusion of all passages for _soli_, and by being written in plain chant tonality. “With the grave Gregorian melody, learnedly elaborated in rigorous counterpoint, and reduced to greater clearness and elegance without any instrumental aid,” says Picchianti, “Palestrina knew how to awaken among his hearers mysterious, grand, deep, vague sensations that seemed caused by the objects of an unknown world, or by superior powers in the human imagination.”(157)

(c.) Modern music differs essentially from all that went before it, and this difference is attributable to two principal causes: 1. The improvement in the manufacture and the use of instruments, and their introduction into the church; and, 2, The influence of theatrical music on that of the church, before alluded to. Modern music could not be in ancient times, for the want of modern instruments. As the perfection of the art of vaulting gave us that advance on the simple lines and heavy masses of Grecian architecture which we have in Gothic and Italian architecture, so the modern developments in orchestration have changed the whole character of music in the church and out of it.

The influence of operatic music on that of the church is seen in the attempt of modern composers of church music to make it dramatic. Church music, as Palestrina and the other great masters of the old Roman school had conceived it, had been treated as an emanation of pure sentiment, stripped of all human passion—as something ideal. The modern composers, on the contrary, pretend by their music to express dramatically the sense of the text. They say that, to be dramatic, it is not necessary to be theatrical, and they point to certain compositions of Cherubini, Beethoven, Hummel, and even Haydn, in which they say the contrary is practically demonstrated.(158)

It must, however, be confessed that modern composers, by trying to be dramatic, have more frequently fallen into the great fault of being theatrical than they have avoided it.

The use of instrumentation and of dramatic expression has given them immense scope, but their success bears no proportion to their talents, their opportunities, their numbers, and the immense quantity of their compositions.

Like the Athenians of old (Acts xvii.) spoken of by S. Paul, they incessantly crave something new, and, in their search for novelty, more often give us what is novel and strange than what is beautiful and appropriate, so that their compositions hardly ever continue to be used for a long time; they are soon thrown aside and forgotten; and, indeed, we think it no exaggeration to say that, if all their compositions, except a very few, were burned, or should otherwise perish, the church would suffer no loss.