Chapter LIV: Part V: They Sang (6)

The first conclusion I arrive at is that there was more sameness and less multiplicity. For instance, there was a certain received form for lamps. You had your choice, in the ornamental parts, of the heads of lions or of griffins, but the shape was the same. In the kitchen the like shape reigned as in the _triclinium_ or the _œci_—the dining‐room and drawing‐ rooms of the ancients—minus the ornaments.(182) The same absence of diversity is observable among the jewels. There could be very little difference, except in size and weight, between one lady’s necklace and another’s. The houses, judging from the discoveries at Pompeii, and borne out by the classic writers, were all built on the same model, some large and magnificent, others small and mean, but alike in structure. I pause, and ask myself how life went on without modern china in the houses of the great. Though much of their glass was beautiful, yet what a difference between their earthenware pots and our Sèvres and Dresden, Worcester and Minton! Everywhere the tables and seats and chairs were alike. The difference lay in the draperies and the cushions, never in the shape. It sounds bald and trite to register these remarks; but if we carry out the thought, and try and place ourselves where the men and women of Rome and its subject provinces stood, and in imagination sleep in a _cubiculum_(183) six feet long and four wide, sit on a marble representation of a camp‐stool, and lay our work or our book—which latter will be in the inconvenient shape of a long roll of papyrus—on a round marble table with three lion’s paws for legs; if we fancy our rooms divided one from the other by _portières_, or hangings, instead of doors, artistically draped in longitudinal folds, and fastened with cords by the fashionable upholsterer of the day; if to this we add an almost entire absence of washing‐basins, and, instead, a lavishness in the article of marble baths, all more or less taken in public; if from vestibule and _atrium_,(184) from _hospitium_(185) and _exedra_,(186) we dismiss all notion of knicknacks, all glass‐fronted cabinets, all buhl and _marqueterie_, all enamelled snuff‐boxes, china pug‐dogs, and filigree; with no Berlin‐wool work and no miniatures; a few severely beautiful bronze figures, some busts, some heathen goddesses in tinted marble, standing cold and naked in a niche; an ever‐plashing fountain like the pattering of incessant rain—if we bring all this vividly before us, we shall soon feel that the minute yet all but infinite circumstances of external life having been so different from our own, the whole flow of thought and fancy must have been different.

We owe more than we are aware, both for good and evil, to the way we furnish our houses. And if we decorate them according to our own ideas, we must remember that those decorations are for ever throwing back our ideas upon ourselves in a perpetual reflection until a sort of moral identity is established.

My impression is that the greater simplicity of form, combined, as was the case with the ancients, with a very high though but slightly varied style of decorative art, may have left a greater solidity, unity, and intensity in the old‐world characters, as compared with what we find in modern minds, distributed amongst such an endless variety of objects.

It is a great thing to be elevated by noble desires and high Christian aims above the trivialities of modern life. But if those high aspirations are absent, it is perhaps a safeguard to take to old china, old lace, and Louis Quinze furniture. It breaks up the thoughts into a kaleidoscope of fancies; and that, on the whole, is decidedly preferable to the restlessness of youth, health, and idleness, leading to a craving for gladiatorial fights and scenes of bloodshed and cruelty. In those days the virtuous were nobly virtuous, and were very rare. The vicious were horribly vicious, and formed the generality. It always struck me that an old Roman house must have been a dull home. And _ennui_ is the mother of naughtiness quite as surely as the devil is the father of lies. There are minds which cannot be great, as there are lives which never are much more than harmless. Surely for these the multiplicities of modern times, the toys of fashion, the novelties of the day, in dress, furniture, and ornament, are safety‐valves and almost godsends! At least they are better than the arena, with its brutalizing scenes of blood and horror, where a vestal had but to turn her thumb to take the life of the victim bleeding before her eyes!

These results of modern civilization are not Christianity; and I am taking a very low standard in all I am now saying. But they are the dross of a civilization leavened by Christianity, and they are very different from the poison that found its way into the daily life of Roman men and women from the seething wickedness of the great heathen empire.

Nothing can exceed the interest of the paintings taken from Pompeii. Of course I was intimately acquainted with them from engravings, and had been all my life. One of the early impressions of my childhood was the delight of finding that the grave old Romans (and therefore the Greeks before them), for whom I had a very pagan admiration, were capable of appreciating humor as expressed in the movements and attitudes of animals. I was overjoyed at this touch of sympathy with a dead past; and I recommend all visitors to Naples to look out for certain cocks and hens and other creatures among the lesser mural decorations taken from Pompeii. The well‐known dancing girls I had never properly admired until I saw them being copied by a Neapolitan artist in the Museum. He had not deviated one hair’s breadth from the original outline; but the mere restoration of vivid coloring had imparted to them an airy, floating grace which I had failed fully to detect in the scratched and faded originals, but which I at once felt must have belonged to them when they decorated some rich Pompeian’s house.

While I was wandering about, trying to live for an hour the inner homespun life of a Roman maiden by gazing long on the walls she must have looked on, Mary had gone in search of the Farnese Bull and the exquisite half‐ head and figure of the Psyche, that wonderful embodiment of virginal grace and feminine delicacy which makes one long to have seen the statue in its unmutilated condition. She had stood for a good quarter of an hour before the Aristides (for we insist on believing it is Aristides), and was, as she told me afterwards, growing more and more in the consoling belief that many of the old pagans will have found a place among the thrones of the blest through the mercy of Him who never asks for more than he has given, and who since the creation has never left the world without a witness of himself. Then she visited the Farnese Flora, that wonderful triumph of art over matter, where in a statue of above twelve feet such floating grace is expressed that she seems to be skimming along the ground, while the light wind plays in the drapery.

I found Mary lost in thought before a beautiful bronze statue of Mercury in repose. The lithe figure has just sat down to rest on the edge of a rock. The tension of the muscles is gradually relaxing. One foot as yet only touches the ground with the heel. Wait a moment, and the foot will yield and rest. Never was fatigue gradually giving way to repose more exquisitely depicted. Then Mary turned to the dead Amazon with the death‐ wound beneath her breast, and finally declared that having satisfied herself by revisiting these, that for one reason or another had haunted her for twenty years, she was ready to admire the others. It is curious how the long lines of statues and busts seem to give out cold. The same stone walls covered with pictures could never be so severely cold. The old gods and heroes seem to breathe upon you with an icy breath from out of the grave of the old classic world.

The best pictures in the Naples Museum are not very numerous, but are admirable specimens of the Italian schools. They are collected into one or two rooms, deserving time and study. A cursory view of the others will be sufficient to satisfy most people. There is much more to be seen besides the relics from Pompeii and Herculaneum, the statues and pictures. It is all worth visiting, and, to be fully appreciated, requires many hours to be spent on each different class of objects.

I had a very distinct and not altogether a pleasant recollection of the mysterious grotto of Pozzuoli, which had haunted my imagination ever since I was here as a child. Ida and I had made an engagement to visit Astroni, Victor Emanuel’s happy hunting‐grounds, one day when we were to have the carriage to ourselves; and accordingly we were to pass through the grotto. You approach it by a deep cutting in the rock, the sides of which are draped with ivy and hanging plants, with bright tufts of wild flowers wherever a few grains of earth give them a roothold. There is a small oratory to the right as you enter, of a most simple and rustic kind, and kept by a Capuchin, whom I cannot call a venerable hermit, as he happened to be of rather youthful appearance. On _festas_ his little altar was covered with flowers, and a few votive candles burnt before the obscure picture of the Madonna within the dark recesses of the cave. When the poor Capuchin heard a carriage approaching, he would hurry forth with a little tin box, which he held up to us for an alms. We seldom failed to give him some, and from time to time it would be silver instead of the more frequent copper; and then his gratitude became eloquent, and many a blessing followed us down the murky gloom of the long, unsavory grotto. Certainly, this strange road, which it appears dates from the middle of the first Christian century, is not calculated to leave a pleasant impression, though in many ways it presents picturesque bits which reminded me of some of Salvator Rosa’s pictures. It would be quite dark but for the yellow, faint light of gas‐lamps, not sufficient in number to dispel the gloom, which is greatly increased by the clouds of dust the numerous carts, carriages, and herds of goats are constantly raising, the latter adding thereto their own peculiarly suffocating odor. It is paved in the same way as the Neapolitan streets, and the noise reverberates from the roof. It has a curious effect when you lean forward to see the bearded goats just visible through the dusty air, and further on, perhaps, a cabriolet laden with people—six inside, four out, and one boy at least, after the Neapolitan fashion, hanging in a net beneath the vehicle—drawn by one horse, always equal to his load, no matter how starved and miserable he may be. On it comes, the merry inmates singing, shouting, piercing the darkness, but compelled thereby to slacken their pace a little, lest there should be a collision in this Erebus. We were always silent and a little uncomfortable in the din, the dust, and the darkness. Yet it had to be passed through again and again, as being the only road out into the country, unless we went all round by the Strada Nuova and Nisida. At the entrance of the grotto from Naples is the supposed tomb of Virgil, hidden beneath ivy and acanthus leaves‐just as a poet would have wished! We came out from the grotto on the busy, picturesque village of Fiorigrotta, where the whole population seem to live out in the one long street. Astroni is an extinct volcanic crater, the sides of which are clothed with ilex and other trees. It is circular, and a wall runs along the upper rim to prevent the escape of the deer and wild boar that are kept there for the king’s pleasure. There are two carriage‐roads through the dense forest. At the bottom of the basin there are a few open spaces, marshy land, and water. The solitude and silence are intense; for, as usual in Italy, there are not many singing birds, and what there are do not give song during the heat of the day any more than in our northern climes. I never shall forget the silence that reigned, nor the feeling of solitude induced by peering through the trees, looking down on the small lakes of intensely blue water below, and knowing that in those dense thickets myriads of wild animals were hiding in their lair, while we were the only human beings. The gates are kept locked, and it requires a special order to penetrate this sylvan scene. It does not seem to me a very satisfactory way of sporting. You are too sure of your game, walled in as it is all round. After visiting the extinct crater, we saw the emptied lake of Agnano, once notorious for malaria, now drained off and leaving a wide plain more or less adapted for agriculture. At present it seems in a rather neglected state, of which nature has taken advantage to cast her unsolicited gifts of flaunting bright wild flowers broadcast over the whole space.

One of our most interesting excursions was to the Solfatara, not far from the Lago Agnano. This also is an extinct crater; and yet so barely extinct that we feel, as we tread the sulphur‐checkered soil, and hear the hollow reverberation if we stamp on the ground, as if at any moment it might again burst forth.

From time to time our nostrils were disagreeably met by a puff of steam redolent of sulphur; and occasionally these puffs grow stronger and more threatening. The stones you pick up are tinged with yellow. The vegetation is sparse and dwarfed. At the further end of the plain is a cave, from whence at regular intervals rush clouds of hot steam, while a roaring, boiling sound surges within. The aperture is large enough for a person to enter by stooping a little. Most of our party peeped in, but instantly retired from the suffocating and horrible stench and great heat.

The rocks are covered with sulphur and alum; and in my eagerness that we should all equally benefit by the sight, I wanted to persuade Ida just to take one peep. It would, however, have been a risk to do anything which even for a second might embarrass the action of her delicate lungs and weak heart. She tried to approach, but turned back with the feeling that one puff more would have suffocated her.

I think we all felt as if we were standing in one of the outer halls of a region never to be mentioned “to ears polite,” and almost too “Dantesque” to be pleasant. We gladly breathed a purer atmosphere as we passed out of the gate (inside which is a fabric of sulphur‐works), and bent our steps between white walls on which the green lizards basked, and between fields of unripe corn and mulberry‐trees, till we reached an open space commanding a fine view of the Gulf of Pozzuoli and the hills beyond. From thence we turned into the Capuchin church dedicated to S. Januarius, and said to be built over the spot where he suffered martyrdom in 305. There is a stone, on which he is believed to have been beheaded, let into the wall, and protected with an iron grating. It is seamed with red marks as of blood. It is very probably a stone on which he knelt and on which the blood fell. But a block, whether of stone or wood, for the purposes of beheading, is a modern invention. The Romans used a sword—as the Turks use a scymitar for that ghastly purpose to this day—and the patient knelt upright.

It was pleasant to rest in the cool church, which, humble as it is, is not without its quota of beautiful marbles, and is kept exquisitely clean, with fresh flowers on the altar, and all care taken of it as if the community were still there. We found only a lay brother left in charge. I think he said he had a companion. All the poor fathers were dispersed by Victor Emanuel’s government, and Mass is only said on feast‐days; though it seemed to be the only church in that immediate neighborhood, and the poor of the district must greatly miss the presence of the Capuchin fathers, those special friends of the poor.

As we came down the hill, we were met by peasant lads, who wanted us to buy lumps of sulphur and the skeletons of the pretty little fish called the sea‐horse, which abound in this part of the Mediterranean, and which are just like the knights among chessmen. They may be seen alive in quantities in the aquarium at Brighton. They twist the tapering end of their tails round a fragment of sea‐weed, or indeed, as the buoyancy of the water keeps them up, they need but to touch something stationary. And there they stand in groups, motionless, and looking for all the world like a grave assembly of horses’ heads of the most delicate race, and with noses slightly turned up. Nothing can be more graceful than the way they hold themselves. Their heads are not bigger than those of ordinary‐sized chessmen.

As the Vernons had been at Posilippo all through the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in April, 1872, they were naturally anxious we should see something of the devastation it had occasioned. We determined, therefore, to drive to San Sebastiano, a village which was almost entirely destroyed. As we approached the spot, it seemed as if we were driving into the kingdom of chaos, where “the earth was void and empty.” On either side lay wide plains of gray‐black lava, looking as if a dead, unfertile earth had been furrowed with the burning shares of some gigantic and infernal plough, and had remained calcined and sterile for ever after. We left the carriage and climbed up a large mound of lava. I found myself nearly on a level with the low roof of the small church, round which the lava had crept, but had spared it. I looked down into the basement of a house below me. The lava had poured in and filled what once were rooms, but had left the walls and the roof standing. There was part of a street left, the lava having, with seeming caprice, turned off to the left, as it poured down the mountain, just in that spot. Our friends told us that as they used to sit by the hour and watch the progress of the burning stream through glasses, they could see the small white houses, with the fiery flood approaching, when suddenly each house seemed to leap into the air like a lighted straw, and then was seen no more. A cat ran past me, in haste to save her paws. We could not stand still long, for, though more than a year had elapsed, the land was still too hot to be pleasant; and when we reached home, we found our feet were blistered. The poor creatures whose homes have thus perished approach you timidly with bits of lava to sell. They still have a scared look in their faces. But nothing will persuade them to shift their quarters and leave their grand but dangerous neighbor. They are trying to rebuild their village, and are deaf to all the remonstrances of the great scientific philosopher(187) who lives a hermit’s life in the observatory half‐way up the mountain. He has a Capuchin priest as a companion; and the latter was able to give the last rites of the church to about forty of the unfortunate people, who, actuated by curiosity, had attempted to climb the mountain during the eruption. It seems they had never calculated upon the effect of the burning heat from a distance. They thought if there were a certain space between them and the lava, they should be safe. They forgot that actual contact was not needed; and they were scorched to death long before the stream reached the spot where they stood. Not one of those thus licked up by the breath of the volcano ever recovered, or even lived long enough to quit the place.

Signor Palmier and the Capuchin saw a carriage full of people, coachman and two horses, advancing up the mountain. Suddenly the whole was submerged. They could only tell where it had been arrested by the carrion birds hovering over a certain spot for many days after!

A Discussion With An Infidel.

VIII. Laws Of Nature And Miracles.

_Büchner._ We differ very widely in many points, sir; but there is one point about which we shall have no difficulty in agreeing—the immutability of natural laws. In fact, you have already conceded that the laws of nature are unchangeable.

_Reader._ Yes, I admit the unchangeability of the laws of nature; but I most strongly protest against your rash inference that therefore miracles are impossible.

_Büchner._ Yet my reasoning is very plain. “The law of nature, observes Moleschott, is a stringent expression of necessity. There exists in it neither exception nor limitation; and no imaginable power can disregard this necessity. A stone not supported will in all eternity fall towards the centre of the earth; and there never was, and never will be, a command for the sun to stand still” (p. 33).

_Reader._ Is this what you call “reasoning”?

_Büchner._ Yes. “The experience of thousands of years has impressed upon the investigator the firmest conviction of the immutability of the laws of nature, so that there cannot remain the least doubt in respect to this great truth” (p. 34).

_Reader._ This I grant.

_Büchner._ “Science has gradually taken all the positions of the childish belief of the peoples; it has snatched thunder and lightning from the hands of the gods ...” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ It was Christianity, not science, that conquered the gods.

_Büchner._ “The eclipse of the stars and the stupendous powers of the Titans of the olden times have been grasped by the fingers of man” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ How can the _fingers_ of man grasp the eclipses and the Titans?

_Büchner._ “That which appeared inexplicably miraculous, and the work of a supernatural power, has, by the torch of science, proved to be the effect of hitherto unknown natural forces” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ You dream, doctor. Has “the torch of science” made known those hitherto unknown forces? No scientific work has yet explained how, by an act of the will, water can be changed into wine, how the deaf and dumb can be instantaneously cured, how the blind can be made to see, the paralytic to walk, and the dead to rise, at the sound of a voice, four days after burial, and when already in a state of advanced putrefaction. You may of course deny these facts, as you deny that the sun ever received a command to stand still; but to say that “the torch of science” has shown these facts to be the effect of unknown natural forces is to tell us the most stupid lie that can be uttered. Lies, you know, should at least be credible.

_Büchner._ “We have the fullest right, and are scientifically correct, in asserting that there is no such thing as a miracle. Everything that happens does so in a natural way—_i.e._, in a mode determined only by accidental or necessary coalition of existing materials and their immanent natural forces. No revolution on earth or in heaven, however stupendous, could occur in any other manner” (p. 34).

_Reader._ These are mere words. I deny that science gives you the least right to suppress miracles. How can you establish such a right?

_Büchner._ “Wherever fire and water meet, vapors must arise and exert their irresistible power. Where the seed falls in the ground, there it will grow; where the thunderbolt is attracted, there it will strike. Can there exist any doubt as to these truths?” (p. 35).

_Reader._ Please, doctor, come to the point.

_Büchner._ “How is it possible that the unalterable order in which things move should ever be disturbed without producing an irremediable gap in the world, without delivering us and everything up to arbitrary power, without reducing all science, every earthly endeavor, to a vain and childish effort?” (p. 36).

_Reader._ All this rhetoric is most absurd, doctor. “The order in which things move” is not unalterable; and He whom you call an “arbitrary power” can alter it when he pleases without asking your permission, or without reducing science to a childish effort.

_Büchner._ What? You contradict yourself, sir. For, if the order in which things move is changeable, the laws of nature cannot be unchangeable.

_Reader._ Not at all. You sophistically confound two things entirely different—the _law_ of nature, and the _course_ of nature. The first is unchangeable, because it is connected with the essence of things; but the second is changeable, as a constant and universal experience compels us to admit. However much you may hate “arbitrary power,” you cannot deny that, besides necessary causes, there are others which are free in their exertions. Can you deny, for instance, that a stone may be thrown upwards in spite of gravitation, or that we can catch hold of the stone from the window, and, in spite of gravitation, we can prevent it from falling back to the ground? Now, if we do this, we do not change the _law_ of nature, and nevertheless we modify the _course_ of nature by freely producing a phenomenon which nature would not produce.

_Büchner._ Would you call this a miracle?

_Reader._ The question is impertinent. I call it a change in the course of nature. Now, if the course of nature can be modified without the law of nature being altered, it is absurd to pretend that there is contradiction in holding the unchangeableness of the latter and the changeableness of the former. This being evident, let us go a step further, and draw an obvious conclusion. We can, when we please, catch the stone from the window, and prevent it from falling; and cannot God do the same? We are free to exert our power; but is not God free, or has he less power than we have? If you are honest, you will own that what can be done by us can be done by our Creator and Lord. Now, if he stops the stone in the air, a miracle will be wrought, and no law of nature violated. You cannot deny the possibility of miracles without denying God.

_Büchner._ “A spirit independent of nature cannot exist; for never has an unprejudiced mind cultivated by science perceived its manifestation” (p. 36).

_Reader._ Are you not ashamed, doctor, to repeat such a nonsensical assertion? You have already failed to prove it, and I have shown its absurdity in a preceding discussion. Must I answer it anew? The only answer you now deserve is that “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ ” Fools, in fact, deny God in their hearts, but cannot deny him in their minds, because atheism is not the result of intellectual knowledge, but of moral depravity. Our present question, however, is not theism or atheism, but the possibility of miracles without any breach of natural laws. Surely, if there were no God, no miracle would be possible; but your argument was that if the laws of nature are unchangeable, no miracle is possible; and this I have shown to be false. If there is a God, as we must now assume, miracles are possible. In the same manner, if a single true miracle has ever been wrought, there is a God.

_Büchner._ “Apparent exceptions from the natural order have been called _miracles_, of which there have been many at all times” (p. 36).

_Reader._ You should know better, doctor. The church is not satisfied with “apparent” exceptions from the natural order; the exception must be rigorously proved.

_Büchner._ “We should only waste words in our endeavor to prove the natural impossibility of a miracle. No educated, much less a scientific, person who is convinced of the immutable order of things can nowadays believe in miracles. We find it rather wonderful that so clear and acute a thinker as Ludwig Feuerbach should have expended so much logic in refuting the Christian miracles. What founder of religion did not deem it necessary, in order to introduce himself to the world, to perform miracles? And has not his success proved that he was right? What prophet, what saint, is there who has not performed miracles? The miracle‐seeker sees them daily and hourly. Do not the table‐spirits belong to the order of miracles? All such miracles are equal in the eye of science; they are the result of a diseased fancy” (pp. 36, 37).

_Reader._ This is miserable logic, doctor. Why do you speak of the _natural_ impossibility of miracles? Have we ever taught that miracles are _naturally_ possible? We know that nature works no miracles, and that all miracles are supernatural. It is therefore either a mean trick or a logical blunder on your part to pretend that the _natural_ possibility of miracles is the point in question. That no educated or scientific man can nowadays believe in miracles is not only an empty boast, but also a disgraceful calumny. We Christians believe in miracles, and yet, I venture to say, we need not resort to you for lessons in science or education. As a reason for not believing in miracles, you allege “the immutable order of things”; that is, you assume what is to be proved. The order of things is so far from being immutable that we see it modified at every moment. It is the laws of nature, not the order of things, that are immutable. That Feuerbach “expended so much of logic in refuting Christian miracles” I will not deny; I only say that his logic, like your own, is mere sophism and cavil. Of course you call him “so clear and acute a thinker”; but we know what this means on the lips of Freemasons. If he was “so clear and acute a thinker,” why did he not furnish you with at least one good argument against Christian miracles?

Besides, you pretend that all founders of religion deemed it necessary to perform miracles. What then? Were it true, the fact would scarcely help your cause; for it would only prove that there have ever been impostors, as there have been quacks and coin‐forgers. Now, who would think of selling counterfeited articles, if there had existed none genuine? Would there be quacks, had there been no doctors? And yet your reasoning leads to the conclusion that, because there are so many quacks, there can be no doctors. Are you, then, a mere quack yourself?

You say with a malicious sneer that all prophets and saints performed miracles. Yes; they performed miracles, or rather, to speak more correctly, God wrought miracles through them. Yet, in the teeth of sacred and ecclesiastical history which testifies to an infinite number of unquestionable miracles, you are shameless enough to conclude that no miracle has ever been performed, on the plea that miracle‐seekers, table‐ spirits, and diseased fancy must have conspired to deceive the world. Is it necessary to refute such a silly assertion? Was Elymas the magician a miracle‐seeker when S. Paul, to punish him for his opposition to Christianity, struck him blind with a word in the presence of the Roman centurion? Was it a trick of table‐spirits that made the blind see, the lame walk, or the dumb speak? Was it diseased fancy that impressed on an immense crowd the belief that they had been miraculously fed by Christ in the desert, where no provisions were at hand? No, doctor, you are not silly enough to believe anything of the sort.

_Büchner._ But what do you answer to the following difficulties? First, if we admit miracles, “science will be reduced to a vain and childish effort” (p. 36). Secondly, how can we conceive “a supreme legislator who allows himself to be moved by prayers and sobs to reverse the immutable order which he himself has created, to violate his own laws, and with his own hand to destroy the action of natural forces?” (p. 38). Thirdly, “every miracle, if it existed, says Cotta, would lead to the conviction that the creation is not deserving the respect which all pay to it, and the mystics would necessarily be obliged to deduce from the imperfection of the created world the imperfection of the Creator” (p. 38). Fourthly, “is it a view worthy of God to represent him as a power which now and then gives a new impulse to the world in its course, and puts on a screw, etc., like the regulator of a watch? If the world has been created by God perfect, how can it require any repairs?” (p. 39). Fifthly, we see that nature works without superior control; “its action is frequently quite independent of the rules of a higher reason, now constructing, now destroying, now full of design, then again perfectly blind and in contradiction with all moral and rational laws. That in the formation of organic and inorganic bodies, which are constantly being renewed, there can be no direct governing reason at work is proved by the most striking facts. The _nisus formativus_ inherent in nature is so blind and so dependent on external circumstances that the most senseless forms are frequently engendered, that it is often incapable of obviating or overcoming the slightest obstructions, and that frequently the contrary of what according to reason should happen is effected” (pp. 41, 42). These are serious difficulties, sir.

_Reader._ I hardly think them to be serious, doctor. The first entirely disappears when you reflect that the conclusions of physical science are _all hypothetic_, inasmuch as they regard phenomena which must take place under the action of given powers, to the exclusion of any other power extraneous to those taken into account. Such conclusions, therefore, imply the condition that no extraneous agent and no disturbing cause interferes with the production of the phenomena. If an extraneous power interferes, the conditions are changed, and with them the phenomena; but science is not upset. A stone not supported must fall. _Not supported_; such is the condition. Now, whether you, or I, or the roof, or God, or an angel support it, the consequence will be that the stone will not fall. Now, I ask you, is science “reduced to a vain and childish effort” because you or I or the roof prevent the stone from falling? I presume, doctor, that if such were the case, science would long since have disappeared from this world. Why, then, should science become a vain and childish effort as soon as God would do himself what we can freely do without destroying science? Take another example. Nature builds no stately palaces, no fine steamers, no locomotives, no railroads. All such things are our free creations. Yet surely you will not maintain that by building palaces or by boring mountains we destroy science, although we may interfere very materially with the works of nature.

Now, if our free action upon nature does not destroy science, why should God’s free action destroy it? Answer me in the name of reason: What theory of natural science would be falsified were God to send angels to build you a palace, or devils to dig you a grave?

And now I come to your second difficulty. You assume that the supreme legislator cannot work a miracle without destroying the action of natural forces and violating his own laws, thus reversing the immutable order which he himself has created. But you are mistaken. The order of things is not immutable; this I have already shown. On the other hand, we have just seen that no law of nature is ever violated by a miracle. Lastly, God’s action does not destroy the action of natural forces, but produces an effect superior to and independent of them. Nor is this strange; for we ourselves can do the like within the range of our limited powers. When we go up‐stairs, do we destroy the action of gravity that urges us downwards? By no means. The action of gravity continues its work, but our contrary exertion prevails; and thus our body obeys the resultant of the two opposite actions, both of which obtain their effect. You see, therefore, that there is no need of destroying the action of natural forces in order to produce an effect which natural forces cannot produce. After these remarks, nothing remains of your second difficulty but “the prayers and sobs” which you cruelly ridicule as useless and superstitious. But our Father who is in heaven listens to such prayers and is moved by those sobs. This is abundantly proved by innumerable authentic facts; and this suffices for us.

Your third difficulty is based on Cotta’s notion that the creation deserves respect on account of its perfection. Cotta may be one of your great men, but surely he does not know what he is speaking about. What “respect” do we owe to creation? Benighted barbarians thought, indeed, that the sun, the earth, and the stars deserved respect; but how can a man who pretends to be a philosopher, and who professes himself an enemy of superstition, adopt such a stale pagan view, unless he blinds himself and renounces reason by bestowing upon matter the worship which he refuses to the living God? To say that the world is “perfect” is a mere equivocation. The world is perfect after its own manner, inasmuch as it serves all the purposes for which it has been made; it is perfect in the same sense in which we say that a thermometer, a telescope, or an engine is perfect; it is a perfect instrument in God’s hand for the attainment of a determinate end; and therefore its perfection is _relative_ only, and might be greater and greater without end. Now, Cotta’s argument overlooks this obvious restriction, and presents the world as _absolutely_ perfect. If the world is imperfect, says he, God is imperfect; but miracles would show that the world is imperfect; and therefore miracles would show that God is imperfect. Now, is not this, doctor, asinine logic? We might as well argue thus: If an engine is imperfect, its maker is imperfect; but the opening of a turning‐cock for admitting more steam shows that the engine is imperfect; and therefore that opening shows that the engine‐maker is imperfect. And this leads me to your fourth difficulty, which is nothing but a repetition of the third.

You ask: “Is it a view worthy of God to represent him as a power which now and then gives a new impulse to the world in its course?” I answer, _Yes_; it is quite worthy of God to exercise his power in the world in the way he thinks fit. Shall we say, then, that God, “like the regulator of a watch, puts a screw on the world”? Why not? The watchmaker is not degraded by regulating his work. But, then, “the world requires repairs”? I say, _Yes_. And if you conclude that the world “has not been created perfect,” I reply that although it came out relatively perfect from the hands of the Creator, it has gradually and most sadly deteriorated by the malice of man. Moreover, the world, whether more or less perfect in itself, without a constant active intervention of its Creator can neither work nor last for a moment. The world is, therefore, constantly “repaired,” to use your expression, and has “screws put on it,” as history testifies; and other “screws” are undoubtedly ready for further “repairs” when they will be wanted.

Your last difficulty arises from your assumption that nature works without being controlled by a superior power. But how do you know that nature is not controlled? What are the “striking facts” which prove that “there is no direct governing reason at work” in the formation of organic and inorganic bodies? Your _nisus formativus_ proves nothing. You say that the _nisus_ is “blind.” You may well call it blind, inasmuch as it is a work of secondary causes; but you cannot deny that it is ruled by a superior reason. What does it matter if “most senseless forms are frequently engendered”? You yourself admit that the _nisus formativus_ depends very much “on external circumstances,” which may mar or spoil the work of organization, and which nothing obliges the superior reason to alter or improve. On the other hand, such senseless forms are not so “frequently” engendered as you pretend; and if a few such senseless or monstrous forms can move you to doubt whether their formation is controlled by a superior reason, I do not see why the immensely greater number of other forms perfectly constituted should not constrain you to banish the doubt, and to recognize that matter not controlled and not directed by reason cannot co‐ ordinate its efforts towards the formation of an organism of which it knows neither the plan nor the object.

I trust, doctor, that these remarks suffice to solve your difficulties, and to show that the world is governed by a superior reason.

_Büchner._ It may be; yet “what this or that man may understand by a governing reason, an absolute power, a universal soul, a personal God, etc., is his own affair. The theologians, with their articles of faith, must be left to themselves; so the naturalists with their science. They both proceed by different routes” (p. 43).

_Reader._ This is no reply, doctor, and your remark is misplaced. The existence of a personal God, the possibility of miracles, and many other such truths, are proved by natural reason. Had I refuted your objections by quoting “theologians” and “articles of faith,” your reply might have some meaning. But since your allegations have been answered by reason, what does it avail to say that “theologians, with their articles of faith, must be left to themselves”? Moreover, you unwittingly condemn your own tactics. For if theologians are to be left to themselves, why do you, then, who are no theologian, and not even a philosopher, invade the province of theology, and fight against faith?

If you have any desire to know the truth about the reality of miracles, I will tell you what you have to do. M. Artus, a Frenchman, on the 23d of July, 1871, publicly challenged all the free‐thinkers of the world to show the falsity of any two out of the many miracles registered in M. Lasserre’s book entitled _Notre Dame de Lourdes_, and staked 10,000 francs upon the issue of the contest. This money was safely deposited by him in the hands of a notary‐public in Paris; and fifty judges were appointed, some of whom were members of the French Institute, and others fellows of other celebrated institutions and academies, or members of the bar, including even a Protestant; so that there could be no suspicion of fanaticism, ultramontanism, or mysticism about them. Now, incredible as it may appear to you, none of your great braggarts has dared from that day till now to accept the challenge. It is for you, who are so peremptory in denouncing miracles, to come forward, and to blot out by an act of philosophical valor the stain which the cowardice of your enlightened friends has left on the glory of free‐thinkerism. It is for you, I repeat; for if a man of your standing and reputation quails before the challenge, the world will most reasonably conclude that you have no faith whatever in your own doctrines.

IX. The Heavens.

_Reader._ The laws of nature are universal. Such is the subject of the seventh chapter of your _Force and Matter_. I need hardly say that, while admitting with you the universality of the natural laws, I cannot but condemn the materialistic spirit which disgraces your explanation of that obvious truth. But in the chapter which follows you speak of the heavens in a most objectionable style.

_Büchner._ “Every school‐boy knows that the sky is not a glass shade covering the earth, but that, in contemplating it, we behold an immense space interrupted by infinitely distant and scattered groups of worlds” (p. 51).

_Reader._ This I grant; but I am at a loss to understand how the contemplation of the heavens can furnish you an argument against the existence of God. Is it not strange that what has hitherto been considered to proclaim most loudly the existence, and magnify the power, of God, has become, in your hands, an evidence in support of atheism?

_Büchner._ The heavenly masses “are in constant motion—a motion singularly combined and complicated, yet in all its modifications merely the result of a single universal law of nature—_the law of attraction_.... All these motions may be determined and predicted with mathematical exactness. As far as the telescope of man reaches, the same law, the same mechanical arrangement, according to the same calculated mechanical formula, is found. Nowhere is there a trace of an arbitrary finger which has ordered the heavens or pointed out the path of comets. ‘I have searched the heavens,’ says Lalande, ‘but have nowhere found the traces of God.’ And when the Emperor Napoleon asked the celebrated astronomer Laplace why there was no mention of God in his _Mécanique Céleste_, he replied, ‘_Sire, je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse_.’ The more astronomy progressed in its knowledge of the laws and motions in the heavens, the more it repudiated the idea of a supernatural influence, and the easier it became to deduce the origin, grouping, and motions of the heavenly bodies from the properties inherent in matter itself. The attraction of atoms rendered the bodies compact, whilst the law of attraction, in combination with their primary motion, produced the mode of their reciprocal rotation which we now observe” (pp. 51, 52).

_Reader._ Waiving the more than problematic plausibility of your premises, and setting aside the blasphemies which you have diligently copied from the books of the French unbelievers, and which are too stolid to need an answer, I reply, doctor, that you are always too hasty in drawing your conclusions. Why did you not reflect that the matter of which the celestial bodies are formed must have had an origin, that the revolutions of those bodies cannot be ruled by an abstract law, and that their enormous distances, as well as the expanse of their orbits through the immensity of space, compel the admission of an infinite being ranging infinitely above matter and necessarily prior to it? You should not have overlooked the fact that the heavens proclaim God’s existence by their immensity far more eloquently than by the revolutions of the celestial bodies. You speak of movements ruled by a law. I admit the movements and the law which rules our calculation of the movements. But without space there is no movement, and without God there is no space; therefore without God there is no movement. Extricate yourself, if you can. Do you concede that without space there is no movement?

_Büchner._ It is evident.

_Reader._ Do you admit that without God there is no space?

_Büchner._ This I deny.

_Reader._ Then what do you mean by “space”?

_Büchner._ I fancy that space is nothing but the volume of bodies.

_Reader._ How is this possible? A body moves through space. Now, does a body move through its own volume, or does it move through the volume of other bodies? On the contrary, the body cannot move without pushing away before it all other bodies and volumes whatever from the space they occupy. It is therefore evident that space, as such, is not the volume of bodies.

_Büchner._ Then I shall say that space is the capability of bodies and motion.

_Reader._ This definition of space may be admitted if properly understood. But what is such a capability? Is it, in your opinion, a real and positive entity?

_Büchner._ I should not think so, unless, indeed, it be occupied by bodies.

_Reader._ I know that many are of this opinion, that the reality of space depends on the presence of bodies; but I say that, if such were the case, then empty space would be mere nothing. Now, if you admit this, you will be compelled to admit also the absurdity that a mere nothing can be greater or smaller. For between two neighboring atoms there may be a greater or smaller interval of space; and such an interval, by the hypothesis, would be nothing. Hence it is evident that space, no matter whether occupied or unoccupied, must be something real.

_Büchner._ Then I say that space is a mere relation of material objects.

_Reader._ There are relations of bodies in space; but all such relations _presuppose_ the existence of absolute space, and therefore space itself is none of those relations. Moreover, since all real relations have their reason in something real, which is the foundation of the relativity, it follows that space, as that through which one body is really related to another, is in itself a reality, independently of the relations which may result from the existence of bodies in it. And again, before bodies can be considered as related through space, they must be each located in space. But, evidently, they cannot be located in space if there is no space. And therefore there must be space before any local relation of bodies can be imagined as possible. Hence you cannot maintain that space is a mere relation.

_Büchner._ Perhaps I shall be obliged to say with Kant that space is only a subjective form of the mind.

_Reader._ Then you will entangle yourself still more. The assumption would imply the denial of all real distances, of all real volumes, of all real movements, of all real phenomena, and of all natural laws. For if space is only a subjective form of our mind, then there is no space out of the mind; and consequently there are no real distances and no real movements in the outside world, and science becomes an array of lies.

_Büchner._ What is, then, your notion of space?

_Reader._ Space is the region of all possible ubications and movements. Do you accept this definition?

_Büchner._ Why not? It is substantially the same as that which I have given by saying that space is the capability of bodies and motion.

_Reader._ Very well. Then, since I have shown that this capability of bodies and motion is a positive reality, space is a positive reality. Moreover, space is neither matter nor any of the forces of matter, nor dependent on matter, but prior to it, and is prerequired as a necessary condition for the existence of matter. Lastly, space is independent of time and motion, and therefore is absolutely and strictly eternal and unchangeable. Do you object to these conclusions?

_Büchner._ No, sir.

_Reader._ Then you concede that space is an infinite, eternal, unchangeable, independent reality, prior to matter and above matter, and therefore, according to your own theory, prior to the world and above it. Now, to concede so much, and then to deny God, would be an evident contradiction. For you must admit that absolute space is either a substance or not. If it is a substance, then it is an infinite, eternal, independent, unchangeable substance, embracing and transcending with its immensity all imaginable worlds; and a substance having such attributes is what we call GOD. If space is not a substance, it must still have the reason of its reality in a substance from which it borrows its infinity, its eternity, its immutability, and of which it is the extrinsic manifestation. Hence the contemplation of the heavens and of “the immense space interrupted by infinitely distant and scattered groups of worlds” affords an irresistible proof of God’s existence, and leaves no room for your pretended “scientific” objections. If there is no God, there is no space; and if there is no space, science is a dream and scientists mere visionaries.(188)

_Büchner._ I cannot fight on this ground, sir. Space is a mystery which our reason has no power to explain; and I decline to argue about anything that transcends reason. The strongest argument in favor of the existence of a personal God was ever drawn from the necessity of a first mover, in order to account for the movement of the celestial bodies. But such a necessity has never been proved; and therefore “even in this remote position a personal creative power cannot hold its ground” (p. 52).