Chapter XXVII: Part VI: They Sang (23)

Accordingly, it is absurd, on your part, to pretend that an appeal to such a conviction is “unscientific.” Nothing is more unscientific than to lay aside the effects while one wishes to investigate the causes.

As to your aphorism, “either something accords with reason and experience—it is then true; or it does not accord—then it is untrue,” I do not think that it can help you much. A thoughtless reader may indeed be dazzled by its fine glittering, and candidly believe that you are a most resolute champion and acute investigator of truth; but he who reflects on your reckless disregard of logic, tergiversation, and intellectual perversity will only wonder at your audacity in appealing to a principle which you trample upon in every page of your production. Yes, sir; what accords with reason and experience is true; but how can this be a plea for denying immortality?

_Büchner._ “It may be that it would be very fine if in heaven, as in the last act of a heart‐stirring drama, everything would resolve in a touching harmony or in general joy; but science has nothing to do with what _may be_, but with what _is_, and is accordingly compelled to infer from experience the finiteness of human existence. Indeed, a perfect solution of the enigmas of the universe, as Carrière desires, must be considered as impossible for the human mind. The moment we arrive at this point we are creators and capable of shaping matter according to pleasure. Such a knowledge would be equivalent to dissolution—annihilation—and there exists no being which can possess it. Where there is no striving there can be no life; perfect truth would be a sentence of death for him who has acquired it, and he must perish in apathy and inactivity” (p. 206).

_Reader._ It is of no use, doctor, to heap up assertions of this kind. They are all groundless. When you say that science has nothing to do with what may be, but with what is, you latently assume that between what may be and what is there must be opposition; whereas it is plain that nothing is but what could be. And again, when you mention _science_, what do you mean? Physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, and the like have certainly nothing to do with the immortality of the soul; but philosophy has something to do with it, and philosophy, the highest of sciences, decides that the human soul not only _may be_, but _must be_, immortal. In the third place, it is ludicrous to affirm that “experience shows the finiteness of human existence”; for our experience is limited to human life upon earth, whereas our discussion refers to after‐life. In the fourth place, you pretend that a full knowledge of truth is impossible to the human mind, for the wonderful reason that we would then be “creators and capable of shaping matter according to pleasure.” In this you commit two blunders; for, first, the knowledge of natural truths does not necessarily entail a physical power of shaping matter according to pleasure; and, secondly, were our souls to acquire such a power, we would not yet be creators, as creation is infinitely above the shaping of matter. You are never at a loss to find false reasons when needed to give plausibility to false assertions. Thus you invent the prodigious nonsense that a perfect knowledge of natural things “would be equivalent to annihilation,” and to support this strange notion you argue that “where there is no striving there can be no life,” as if a human soul, when in full possession of truth, could not find in its contemplation a sufficient exercise of intellectual life. Yet it is clear that striving for a good must end in a peaceful enjoyment of the same good; or else all our striving would be purposeless. On the other hand, if “perfect truth were a sentence of death for him who has acquired it,” would it not follow that the more we know, the less we live? But to conclude. How can you conciliate these two things: “The moment we possess full knowledge we are creators,” and “the moment we possess full knowledge we are annihilated”? or these two things: “We become capable of shaping matter according to pleasure,” and “we perish in apathy and inactivity”? Answer, old fox?

_Büchner._ “It may be that we are surrounded by many riddles” (p. 206). “In doubtful questions we must apply human knowledge, and examine whether we can arrive at any solution by experience, reason, and the aid of natural sciences. . . . Some believe they can give scientific reasons for the doctrine of individual immortality. Thus Mr. Drossbach discovered that every body contains a limited number of _monads_ capable of self‐ consciousness . . .” (p. 208).

_Reader._ There is no need of discussing such absurdities. We know, that monads are not self‐conscious.

_Büchner._ In fact, “Drossbach’s monads are too intangible to concern ourselves about them. We may, however, take this opportunity of alluding to the unconquerable difficulties which must arise from the eternal congregation of innumerable swarms of souls which belonged to men who, in their sojourn upon earth, have acquired so extremely different a degree of development” (_ibid._).

_Reader._ What unconquerable difficulties do you apprehend?

_Büchner._ “Eternal life is said to be a perfectioning, a further development, of earthly life, from which it would follow that every soul should have arrived at a certain degree of culture, which is to be perfected. Let us think, now, of the souls of those who died in earliest childhood, of savage nations, of the lower classes of our populations! Is this defective development or education to be remedied beyond? ‘I am weary of sitting on school‐benches,’ says Danton. And what is to be done with the souls of animals?” (pp. 208, 209).

_Reader._ Indeed, doctor, the ignorance of the unbeliever is astounding! Our children and the lower classes of our populations are not half as ignorant as you are. They would tell you that the light of the beatific vision dispels with equal facility all degrees of darkness which may remain in our souls in consequence of imperfect education, without any need of your “school‐benches” or other imaginary devices. They would tell you also “what is to be done with the souls of animals,” on which you most stupidly confer “the same rights” as are possessed by the human soul. If beasts have the same rights as men, it is a crime to kill them; or, if this is no crime, it must be as lawful to kill and devour men! Are you ready to accept this doctrine?

_Büchner._ “There is no essential and natural distinction between man and animal, and the human and animal soul are fundamentally the same” (p. 209).

_Reader._ Do you understand what you say? What do you mean by “fundamentally”?

_Büchner._ I mean that the animal soul is only distinguished from the human soul “in quantity, not in quality” (_ibid._).

_Reader._ Then you yourself must have the qualities of an ass, and there will be no difference between you and the ass, except in this: that the asinine qualities are greater in you than in the ass. Your efforts to prove that beasts are endowed with intellect, reason, and freedom are very amusing, but lack a foundation. It would be idle to examine minutely your chapter on the souls of brutes; it will suffice to state that your reasoning in that chapter is based on a perpetual confusion of the sensitive with the intellectual faculties. Sense and intellect do not differ in quantity, but in quality. No sensation can be so intensified as to become an intellectual concept or a universal notion. Hence no intellect can arise from any amount of sensibility. Brutes feel; but, although their sensitive operations bear a certain analogy to the higher operations of the intellectual soul, nothing gives you the right to assume that brutes can reason. So long as you do not show that asses understand the rules and the principles of logic, it is useless to speak of the intellect of beasts. Their cognitions and affections are altogether sensitive; reasoning, morality, and freedom transcend their nature as much as your living person transcends your inanimate portrait in the frontispiece of your book.

But reverting to the immortality of the human soul, I wish you to understand that in the course of your argumentation you have never touched the substantial points of the question. You not only have not refuted, but not even mentioned, our philosophical proofs of immortality. You have been prating, not reasoning. To crown your evil work a couple of historical blunders were needed, and you did not hesitate to commit them. The first consists in asserting that “the chief religious sects of the Jews knew nothing of personal continuance,” while it is well known that the chief religious sect of the Jews was that of the Pharisees, who held not only the immortality of the soul, but also the resurrection of the body. The second consists in asserting that “among the enlightened of all nations and times the dogma of the immortality of the soul has had ever but few partisans” (p. 213), while the very reverse is the truth.

_Büchner._ “Mirabeau said on his death‐bed, ‘I shall now enter into nothingness,’ and the celebrated Danton, being interrogated before the revolutionary tribunal as to his residence, said, ‘My residence will soon be in nothingness!’ Frederick the Great, one of the greatest geniuses Germany has produced, candidly confessed his disbelief in the immortality of the soul” (p. 213).

_Reader._ You might as well cite Moleschott, Feuerbach, yourself, and a score or two of modern thinkers, all _enlightened_ by Masonic light, _celebrated_ by Masonic pens and tongues, and _great geniuses_ of revolution. But neither you nor your friends are “among the enlightened of all nations and times.” Before you can aspire to this glory you must study your logic, and, I dare say, the Christian doctrine too.

_Büchner._ If the soul survives the body, “we cannot explain the fear of death, despite all the consolations religion affords” (p. 214).

_Reader._ You cannot; but we can.

_Büchner._ Men would not fear death, “if death were not considered as putting an end to all the pleasures of the world” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ I too, doctor, acknowledge that death puts an end to all the pleasures of this world; but this does not show that our soul will not survive in another world. We fear death for many reasons, and especially because we are sinners, and are afraid of the punishment that a just Judge shall inflict on our wickedness. We would scarcely fear death, if we knew that our soul were to be annihilated. And therefore our fear of death is a proof that the belief in the immortality of the soul is more universal than you imagine.

_Büchner._ “Pomponatius, an Italian philosopher of the XVIth century, says: ‘In assuming the continuance of the individual we must first show how the soul can live without requiring the body as the subject and object of its activity. We are incapable of thought without intuitions; but these depend upon the body and its organs. Thought in itself is eternal and immaterial; but human thought is connected with the senses, and perceptions succeed each other. Our soul is, therefore, mortal, as neither consciousness nor recollection remains’ ” (p. 214). Can you answer this argument?

_Reader._ Very easily. That the soul can live without the body is proved by all psychologists from its spirituality—that is, from its being a substance performing operations in which the body can have no part whatever. Such operations are those which regard objects ranging above the reach of the senses altogether; which, therefore, cannot proceed from an organic faculty, nor from any combination of organic parts. Now, if the soul performs operations in which the organs have no part, it is evident that the soul has an existence independent of the organs, and can live without them. Accordingly, the body is _not_ the “subject and object” of the activity of the soul.

That “we are incapable of thought without intuitions” is true, in the same sense as it is true that we are incapable of digesting without eating. But would you admit that therefore no digestion is possible when you have ceased eating? Or would you maintain that I cannot think to‐day of the object I have seen yesterday? Certainly not. Yet it is evident that I have to‐day no sensible intuition of that object. That thought in itself is “eternal” is a phrase without meaning. Thought is never in itself; it is always in the thinking subject. That “human thought is connected with the senses” in the present life is true, not, however, because of any intrinsic dependence of the intellect on the senses, but only because our present mode of thinking implies both the intellectual and the sensible representation. The consequence, “our soul is therefore mortal,” is evidently false, as well as the reason added, that “neither consciousness nor recollection remains.” Pomponatius was a bad philosopher, but still a philosopher. His objection is vain, but still deserves an answer. His reasoning is sophistical, but there is still some meaning in the sophism itself. Not so with you. After three centuries of _progress_ you have not been able to find a single objection really worth answering, either in a scientific or in a philosophical point of view.

Pomponatius brings in another argument against immortality by saying that virtue is much purer when it is “practised for itself without hope of reward.” You quote these words (p. 214), but without gaining much advantage from them. You might have argued that “as the hope of reward makes virtue less pure, it would be against reason to suppose that God can offer us a reward, the hope of which must thus blast our virtue.” In your next edition of _Force and Matter_ you may develop this new argument, if you wish. Your future adversaries, however, will refute it, as I fancy, with the greatest facility, by observing, first, that the hope of a reward may accompany the practice of virtue without interfering with its purity; for we can love virtue _for itself_ without renouncing the reward of virtue. Do you not expect your fees from your patients as a compensation for your services? And yet I presume that you would take it as an insult if any one pretended that you practise medicine for the love of money. It might be observed, secondly, that as sin deserves punishment, so virtue deserves reward; hence a wise and just Providence, which we must recognize as an attribute of Divinity, cannot leave the virtuous without a reward, nor the sinner without a punishment. And, since it is plain that neither the reward nor the punishment is adequately meted out in this world, it remains that it should be given in the next. I shall not enter into any development of this argument, which is the most intelligible among those usually made use of by philosophers to prove the immortality of the human soul. It suffices for me to have shown the utter falsity of your reasons against this philosophical and theological truth.

XIX. Free‐Will.

_Reader._ Do you admit free‐will?

_Büchner._ “A free‐will,” says Moleschott, “an act of the will which should be independent of the sum of influences which determine man at every moment and set limits to the most powerful, does not exist” (p. 239).

_Reader._ Do you adopt this view?

_Büchner._ Of course. “Man is a product of nature in body and mind. Hence not only what he is, but also what he does, wills, feels, and thinks, depends upon the same natural necessity as the whole structure of the world” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ Then free‐will, according to you, would be a mere dream; political and religious freedom would be delusions; _free_‐thinkers could never exist; and, what may perhaps strike you most of all, _Free_‐masons would be actual impossibilities.

_Büchner._ “The connection of nature is so essential and necessary that free‐will, if it exists, can only have a very limited range” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ What! Do you mean that free‐will can exist, if “what man does, wills, feels, and thinks depends upon the same natural necessity as the whole structure of the world”? Can you reconcile necessity and freedom?

_Büchner._ “Human liberty, of which all boast,” says Spinoza, “consists solely in this, that man is conscious of his will, and unconscious of the causes by which it is determined” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ This answer does not show that liberty and necessity can be reconciled. It would rather show, if it were true, that there is no liberty; for if the human will is determined by any cause distinct from itself, its volition cannot be free. Accordingly, your assertion that “free‐will, _if it exist_, can only have a very limited range,” is inconsistent with your principle of natural, essential, and universal necessity, and should be changed into this: “Free‐will cannot exist, even within the most limited range.” If you admit the principle, you must not be afraid of admitting the consequence; or if you shrink from the consequence, it is your duty to abandon the principle from which it descends.

_Büchner._ “The view I have expressed is no longer theoretical, but sufficiently established by facts, owing to that interesting new science, statistics, which exhibits fixed laws in a mass of phenomena that until now were considered to be arbitrary and accidental. The data for this truth are frequently lost in investigating individual phenomena, but, taken collectively, they exhibit a strict order inexorably ruling man and humanity. It may without exaggeration be stated that at present most physicians and practical psychologists incline to the view in relation to free‐will that human actions are, in the last instance, dependent upon a fixed necessity, so that in every individual case free choice has only an extremely limited, if any, sphere of action” (p. 240).

_Reader._ “Limited, if any”! It is strange that you hesitate to say which of the two you mean to advocate. Why do you not say clearly, either that free‐will has a certain sphere of action, or that it has no existence at all? Instead of explaining your opinion on this point, you try to obscure the question. Individual free‐will is to be ascertained by the statistics of the individual, not by that of the collection.

When a crowd moves towards a determinate spot, individuals are carried on to the same spot, be they willing or unwilling, by the irresistible wave that presses onward. So also when any collection of men, from a nation to a family, lives under the same laws, experiences the same wants, enjoys the same rights, and holds the same practical principles, the general movement of the mass carries in the same direction every individual member of the collection, by creating such conditions all around him as will morally compel his following the general movement. But this is only _moral_ necessity, against which man can rebel in the same manner as he can rebel against the divine or the human law; whereas our question regards the existence or non‐existence of a _physical_ necessity, physically binding the human will, and determining every one of its actions. Hence, even were it true that “a strict order inexorably rules humanity”—that is, the collection of human beings—it would not follow that the individual will is inexorably ruled by a physical necessity.

_Büchner._ “The conduct and actions of every individual are dependent upon the character, manners, and modes of thought of the nation to which he belongs. These, again, are, to a certain extent, the necessary product of external circumstances under which they live and have grown up. Galton says: ‘The difference of the moral and physical character of the various tribes of South Africa depends on the form, the soil, and the vegetation of the parts they inhabit.’ ... ‘It is about two hundred and thirty years,’ says Desor, ‘since the first colonists, in every respect true Englishmen, came to New England. In this short time they have undergone considerable changes. A peculiar American type has been developed, chiefly, it appears, by the influence of the climate. An American is distinguished by his long neck, his spare figure, and by something irritable and feverish in his character.... It has been observed that, during the prevalence of easterly winds, the irritability of the Americans is considerably increased. The rapidity of the American state development, which surprises us, may thus, to a considerable extent, be ascribed to the climate.’ As in America, so have the English given rise to a new type in Australia, especially in New South Wales....” (pp. 241, 242).

_Reader._ Has all this anything to do with the question of free‐will?

_Büchner._ Certainly. “If the nations are thus in the aggregate, in regard to character and history, dependent upon external circumstances, the individual is no less the product of external and internal natural actions, not merely in relation to his physical and moral nature, but in his actions. These actions depend necessarily, in the first instance, upon his intellectual individuality. But what is this intellectual individuality, which determines man, and prescribes to him, in every individual case, his mode of action with such force that there remains for him but a minute space for free choice? What else is it but the necessary product of congenital physical and mental dispositions in connection with education, example, rank, property, sex, nationality, climate, soil, and other circumstances? Man is subject to the same laws as plants and animals” (pp. 242, 243).

_Reader._ I do not see any ground for this conclusion. Our “intellectual individuality” is, I surmise, our individual soul, or our individual intellect. Now, our intellect may speculatively prescribe, in individual cases, some mode of action, but even then it lets our will free to obey the prescription. Moreover, it is not true that our intellect prescribes, in every individual case, a determinate mode of action. How often do we not hesitate, even after long intellectual examination, what line of action we should adopt! How often do we not entertain distressing doubts, and have no means of emerging from our state of perplexity! It is therefore false that our “intellectual individuality” prescribes to us, in every individual case, our mode of action. Hence your other assertion, that the same intellectual individuality urges us “with such a force that there remains for us but a minute space for free choice,” needs no further discussion, as being contrary to constant experience and observation. It is curious that a man who professes, as you do, to argue from nothing but facts, should coolly assume as true what is contradicted by universal experience; but you have already accustomed us to such proceedings. What strikes me is that your blunder cannot here be excused by the plea of ignorance, as you cannot be ignorant of your own mode of action; whence your reader must infer that your direct intention in writing is to cheat him to the best of your power.

As to education, example, rank, climate, soil, and other circumstances, I admit that they are calculated to favor the development of particular mental and physical dispositions; but I deny, first, that such dispositions are the “intellectual individuality,” and, secondly, that the existence of such dispositions is incompatible with the exercise of free‐ will. Of course, we experience a greater attraction towards those things which we are accustomed to look upon as more conducive to our well‐being, and towards those actions of which we may have acquired the habit; but this attraction is an invitation, not a compulsion, and we can freely do or choose the contrary, and are responsible for our choice.

_Büchner._ “Natural dispositions, developed by education, example, etc., are so powerful in human nature that neither deliberation nor religion can effectually neutralize them, and it is constantly observed that man rather follows his inclinations. How frequently does it occur that a man, knowing his intellectual character and the error of his ways, is yet unable to struggle successfully against his inclinations!” (p. 244.)

_Reader._ I do not deny the power of natural or acquired dispositions, and I admit that men usually follow their inclinations; but this is not the question. The question is, “Do men follow their inclinations freely or necessarily?” The assertion that “neither deliberation nor religion can effectually neutralize” such inclinations is ambiguous. If you mean that, in spite of all deliberation, we continue to feel those inclinations, the thing is obviously true, but proves nothing against free‐will; if, on the contrary, you mean that, after deliberation, we cannot act against such inclinations, the assertion is evidently false; for we very often do things most repugnant to our habitual inclinations.

That a man, knowing the error of his ways, “is unable to struggle successfully against his inclinations,” is a wicked and scandalous proposition. As long as he remains in possession of his reason, man is able to struggle successfully, not only against his own inclinations, but also against his predominant passions. The struggle may indeed be hard, for it is a struggle; but its success is in the hands of man. How could criminals be struck by the sword of justice, if, when committing crime, they had been unable to check the temptation? Your doctrine would, if adopted, soon put an end to the existence of civil society, and transform mankind into a herd of brutes. If we cannot successfully struggle against our bad inclinations, then theft, murder, adultery, drunkenness, and all kinds of vice and iniquity are lawful, or at least justifiable, and nothing but tyranny can undertake to suppress them or to inflict punishment for them. Is it necessary to prove that a theory which leads to such results is a libel against humanity?

_Büchner._ “The most dreadful crimes have, independently of the will of the agent, been committed under the influence of abnormal corporeal conditions. It was reserved for modern science closely to examine such cases, and to establish disease as the cause of crimes which formerly were considered as the result of deliberate choice” (p. 245).

_Reader._ Modern science pretends, of course, to have established a great many things. But how can you explain the fact that, when “the most dreadful crimes” are committed by common criminals, science still considers and condemns them as a result of deliberate choice, whilst, if such crimes are committed by members of secret societies, science attributes them to abnormal corporeal conditions? Can we trust a science which so nicely discriminates between the Freemason and the Christian? Yet even your modern science, not to become ridiculous, is obliged, in order to absolve criminals, to put forward a plea of _temporary insanity_, thus acknowledging that a man who enjoys the use of his reason is always responsible, as a free agent, for his actions. Hence, even according to your modern science, our actions, so long as we are not struck with insanity, are the result of our deliberate choice. It is only when you lose your brain that you are “under the influence of those abnormal corporeal conditions” which prevent all deliberate choice.

_Büchner._ Yet man’s freedom “must, in theory and practice, be restricted within the narrowest compass. Man is free, but his hands are bound; he cannot cross the limit placed by nature. For what is called free‐will, says Cotta, is nothing but the result of the strongest motives” (pp. 245, 246).

_Reader._ It is difficult, doctor, to hold a discussion with you. Your views are contradictory, and your argumentation consists of assertions or quotations for which no good reason is, or can be, adduced. If man is free, his hands are _not_ bound; and although he cannot cross the limits of nature by which he is surrounded, he has yet a great latitude for the exercise of freedom within said limits. We are not free to attain the end without using the means, to live on air, to fly to the moon, to add an inch to our stature; but these are limits of physical power, not limits of free volition. Our will is moved by objects through the intellect; and no object which is apprehended as unnecessary to our intellectual nature can necessitate the will. To admit that what is presented to the will as unnecessary can produce necessity, is to admit an effect greater than its cause. Hence the range of free‐will is as wide as creation itself; for no created object can be considered by the intellect as necessary to our rational nature. One object alone may be so considered—that is, God, whose possession alone is sufficient, and therefore necessary, to fill the cravings of our heart. Thus man’s freedom is not to be restricted “within the narrowest compass,” as you pretend, but is to be stretched to the very limits of creation.

But “what is called free‐will,” you say, “is nothing but the result of the strongest motives.” I answer that the stronger the motive is, the intenser is the movement of the will, since the effect must be proportionate to its cause. But the movement of the will is not a reflex act; it is merely an indispensable condition for it, and its existence does not necessarily entail the existence of the rational volition. The first movements of our appetitive faculty are not formally free; for they are not originated by the will, but by the objects. It is only when we reflect upon ourselves and our movements that we become capable of rationally approving or reprobating that towards which or against which we feel moved; and consequently it is only after such a reflection that our will makes its choice. Now, it is impossible that the rational soul, reflecting upon itself and its first movements towards a finite good, should consider its possession as a necessity of its own nature; for all good that is finite is deficient, and if the rational soul considered finite good as necessary to its happiness, it would in fact consider its deficiency also as necessary to its happiness; which cannot be. Hence, whatever the strength of the motives by which we are impelled, no movement excited by finite good interferes with the freedom of the volition.

And now, is it true that our choice always answers to the strongest motives? This question may be understood in two ways, according as the motives are considered objectively or subjectively. The motives which are the strongest objectively may become the weakest subjectively, and _vice versa_. It is with our will moved by different motives as with the lever loaded with different weights. The heavier weight absolutely prevails over the lighter; but if the arms of the lever be suitably determined, the lighter will prevail over the heavier. Thus the lightest motives may prevail over the strongest ones, when our soul adapts itself to them, by shifting, so to say, its own fulcrum, and thus altering the momenta of the opposite forces. The motives which prevail are therefore the strongest in this sense only: that the will has made them such; and, properly speaking, we should not even say that they are the strongest, but only that they are the most enhanced by the will.

These explanations may be new to you, but they are the result of experience and observation. I abstain from developing them further, as it is no part of my duty to vindicate them by positive arguments. No truth is so universally and unavoidably recognized as the existence of free‐will. A man of common sense must be satisfied of this truth by simply reflecting upon his own acts. Criminals may pretend that they have not the power to avoid crime; but doctors should not countenance such a pretension contrary to evidence. To excuse crime on such a miserable plea is to encourage the triumph of villany and the overthrow of human society.

_Büchner._ Indeed, it has been said that “the partisans of this doctrine denied the discernment of crime, and that they desired the acquittal of every criminal, by which the state and society would be thrown into a state of anarchy.... What is true is that the partisans of these modern ideas hold different opinions as regards crime, and would banish that cowardly and irreconcilable hatred which the state and society have hitherto cherished with so much hypocrisy as regards the ‘malefactor’ ” (p. 247).

_Reader._ To denounce the state and society as hypocritical is scarcely a good method of exculpating yourself. Yet your denunciation is false, so far at least as regards Christian states and Christian society; for as regards anti‐Christian societies connected with Freemasonry, and states fallen under their degrading influence and tyranny, I fully admit that they cannot, without hypocrisy, hate malefactors. Those who plunder whole nations, who corrupt public education, who persecute religion, who sow everywhere the seeds of atheism, materialism, and utilitarianism, have no right to hate malefactors. As to those who teach that “neither deliberation nor religion can effectually neutralize the dispositions of man,” and that “man, knowing the error of his ways, is yet unable to struggle successfully against his inclinations,” what right have they to speak of crime or of malefactors? Can there be crime and malefactors without free‐will? You see, doctor, that your materialistic doctrines do away with all morality, and that a society imbued with them cannot be moral. Hence it is bad taste in you to declaim against modern society, as you do (p. 247), on account of vices which are nothing but the result of materialism. “We are astonished,” you say, “that our society is so ticklish as regards certain truths taught by science—a society whose social virtue is nothing but hypocrisy covered by a veil of morality. Just cast a glance at this society, and tell us whether it acts from virtuous, divine, or even moral motives! Is it not, in fact, a _bellum omnium contra omnes_? Does it not resemble a race‐course, where every one does all he can to outrun or even to destroy the other?... Every one does what he believes he can do without incurring punishment. He cheats and abuses others as much as possible, being convinced that they would do the same to him. Any one who acts differently is treated as an idiot. Is it not the most refined egotism which is the spring of this social mechanism? And distinguished authors who best know human society, do they not constantly depict in their narrations the cowardice, disloyalty, and hypocrisy of this European society? A society which permits human beings to die of starvation on the steps of houses filled with victuals; a society whose force is directed to oppress the weak by the strong, has no right to complain that the natural sciences subvert the foundations of its morality.” These last words should be slightly modified; for the truth is that such a society is the victim of your modern theories, which you dignify with the name of _natural sciences_, and which have already subverted the foundations of social morality. The society you describe in this passage is not the old Christian society formed on the doctrine of the Gospel, but the materialistic society formed on modern thought. The moral distemper of modern society is the most irrefragable condemnation of all your doctrines. By its fruits we know the tree.

Conclusion.

We ask the indulgence of our readers for having led them through so many disgusting details of pestilential philosophy. Without such details it was impossible to give a clear idea of the futility and perversity which characterize the teaching of one of the greatest luminaries of modern infidelity. We have shown that Dr. Büchner’s _Force and Matter_, in spite of all its pretensions, is, in a philosophical point of view, a complete failure. We have omitted many of the author’s passages, which we thought too profane to be inserted in these pages, and which, as consisting of vain declamation, arrogance, and assumption, had no need of refutation. As to our mode of dealing with our adversary, we have been pained to hear that some consider it harsh. We beg to say that a man who employs his talents to war against his Creator has no right to expect much regard from any of God’s creatures. Men of this type are frequently treated with too much forbearance, owing to the false idea that every literary character should be treated as a gentleman. Blasphemers are not gentlemen, nor should they be dealt with as gentlemen. They should be made to feel the disgrace which attaches to their moral degradation. Such was the practice in the good old times; and we may justify it by the example of One who did not hesitate, in his infinite wisdom, publicly to rebuke the Scribes and Pharisees in terms not at all complimentary, and certainly much stronger than those which we have used in censuring the author of _Force and Matter_.

The Ice‐Wigwam Of Minnehaha.

The winter of 1855‐56, memorable for its excessive and prolonged cold, while it brought suffering to many a household throughout the land, and is recalled by that fact almost solely, is fixed in my memory by its verification of an old Indian legend of the ice‐wigwam of Minnehaha. Longfellow has made this name familiar to the English‐speaking world, and beyond. A little waterfall, whose silvery voice is for ever singing a love‐song to the mighty Father of Waters, and into whose bosom it hastens to cast itself, bears the name and personates the Indian maiden.

On the right bank of the Mississippi, between the Falls of St. Anthony and the mouth of the Minnesota, is a broad, level prairie, starting from the high bluffs of the Mississippi, and running far out in the direction of sundown. In the month of June this prairie is profusely decked with bright flowers, forming a carpet which the looms of the world will never rival. Stretching far into the west is a tortuous ribbon of rich, dark green, marking the path of a stream which stealthily glides beneath the shadows of the long grass. As it nears the eastern border of the prairie, this stream becomes more bold. Its expanded surface glistens in the noon‐day sun. Here it passes slowly under a rustic bridge, upon an almost seamless bed of rock. Then its motion quickens, as if in haste to reach the ledge which overhangs the broad valley of the Mississippi, when, with one bound, it plunges into its basin sixty feet below. This is Minnehaha, the little hoiden who throws herself upon the outstretched arm of the great Father of Waters with a merry laugh that wins the heart of every comer. Beautiful child of the plain! How many have sought you in your flower‐decked home, and loved you! Hoiden you may be; but coquette, never. Your life is freely given to be absorbed in the life of him you seek.

But Minnehaha is at times the ward of another—an old man whose white locks are so often the sport of the winds, whose very presence makes the limbs of mortals tremble, and their teeth chatter at his approach. Yet he is wondrous kind to his beautiful ward—touchingly kind is the Ice‐King of the North. When the blasts from his realms, freighted with the chill of death, scourge the lands over which they pass, and a silence awe‐inspiring and complete falls on all; when the flowers are being buried beneath the snow, and the mighty river bound with ice, then it is the ice‐king exhausts his powers to build for Minnehaha a palace worthy of her. The summer through (and spring and autumn scarce are known where Minnehaha dwells) the maid has worn about her, as a veil, a cloud of mist and spray. O wondrous architect! Of mist and spray you build a palace even Angelo might not conceive in wildest dreams, were marbles, opals, pearls, all gems and stones and precious metals, cut and fashioned ready to his hand! Thy breath, O ice‐king! fashions mist and spray into grand temples, palaces, more chaste and cold than any stuff Italian quarries yield! Behold the ice‐king build! He breathes upon the mist, and on all sides strong‐based foundations fix about the space he would enclose. The walls on these rise up, as mist and spray are gathered there and set with his chill breath. Height on height they rise, until the arch is sprung; and then the dome is gathered in to meet the solid rock above, and all the outer work is done. Within, the decorations form as do the stalactites within the caves. Then these are covered with the diamond frost, such as December’s shrubs and trees so oft put on to greet the rising sun. And Minnehaha, so the legend says, sings here the winter through. This is the masterpiece of the great ice‐king. Solomon in all his glory possessed no temple to compare with this, nor Queen of Sheba ever saw its counterpart.

A party of four started from St. Paul in the latter part of March, 1856, to visit this wonder of the North. For many years the winters had not been protracted enough to permit the planting of a Maypole upon the ice of Lake Pepin, nor had eye seen the ice‐wigwam of Minnehaha. Marquette, Hennepin, Lesueur, and the early Catholic missionaries had carried with them their love for the month of Mary into that cold region, and settlers and Christian Indians made the opening day of this month one of joyful festivity. To plant a May‐pole upon the ice of Lake Pepin (which is always the last point on the Upper Mississippi where the ice breaks up, as no current helps to cut or break it) was quite an event. The May‐pole, decked with garlands of green and dotted with the many‐colored crocuses that spring up and bloom at the very edge of the melting snow, and long before the drifts and packs have disappeared, if planted on the ice, permitted dancing on its smooth surface, and pleasanter footing than the loose, moistened soil. May‐day can seldom be pleasantly celebrated in that region out‐of‐doors, except upon the ice. Ice on Lake Pepin, then, is to the young folk of that latitude as important an event as a bright, sunny day in latitudes below.

During the month of March, 1856, a bright, warm sun melted the snows to such an extent as to cover the level prairies with several inches of water, confined within banks of melting snow. Wheels were taking the place of runners. Our party drove over the undulating prairie to St. Anthony, crossed the Mississippi by the first suspension bridge which spanned its waters just above the Falls of St. Anthony, and from Minneapolis, on the west bank, moved out into the dead level which extends south and west toward the Minnesota River. A splashing drive of four miles brought us to the bridge above the Falls of Minnehaha, from which we could see on our left a cone of dirty ice, disfigured here and there with sticks and stones and clods of earth; its base far down within an ice‐lined gorge, its top close pressed upon an overhanging ledge. Was _this_ the wonder we had come to see? A wonder, then, we came. But we did not turn back at this unsightly scene. There was a charm about this legend of Minnehaha’s ice‐ wigwam that surely did not have its source in the charmless thing before us. Nor could we believe the imagination of the red man capable of drawing so poetic an inspiration from so prosaic a source. We therefore set to work to discover the hidden things, if such there were. With large stones we broke away the ice about the top of the cone, hoping to peer through the opening by which the water of the stream entered. We failed in this, but let in the western sun through the opening we had made. Then we descended to the bottom of the gorge, over ice and snow, to seek a new point of observation. Here, to the east, lay the broad, snow‐covered valley of the Mississippi; before us, at the west, rose the cone of ice full sixty feet in height, its wrinkled surface all discolored and defaced, inspiring naught of poetry, stifling imagination. Moving northward around the ungainly mass, and part way up the north side of the gorge, we reached a terrace which led behind the cone and underneath the overhanging ledge. We enter from the north (by broad steps of ice, each rising three or four inches above the other) a hall twelve by twenty feet, floored, columned, curtained, arched, and walled with ice. At somewhat regular intervals elliptical columns of ice rose from floor to spring of arch. Between these columns curtains hung, with convolutes and folds and borders, filling all the space—and all of ice. Above us was the ledge of rock overhanging the basin of the fall, behind us the bluff, and under our feet the terrace of earth midway the cone; and all was paved and curtained and ceiled with ice. Before us stood the upper half of the cone, meeting the ledge above.

While giving play to admiration of the architectural beauties of the place, our ears were greeted with a sound muffled or distant, as of falling water. Whence could this come? Could there be life or motion within that frozen mass? In the chill of that drear winter was not the laughing voice of Minnehaha hushed?

The sun was dropping down the western sky, and a shadow lengthened in the gorge below. The broken edges of the ice which overhung the quiet stream gave back the borrowed rays of sunlight more brilliant than they came.

One of the party had, slung to his side, the customary long‐knife of those days. With it in hand he started in search of the creature whose voice lured him on, not, as the siren, to destruction, but to a scene of beauty, brilliance, glory, with which the fabled cave of Stalacta was but as shadow. Between him and the voice he sought a wall of ice imposed. The knife at once was called to play its part. Between two columns this wall was cut away, a window opened, through which we saw the glories of the wigwam. Our eyes were dazzled and our senses mazed. The curtain rent exposed to view the inner surface of a dome high‐arched and perfect in its curves. From base, through all its height, it was hung with myriad stalactites of ice, which seemed to point us to the laughing voice still rippling on the waters far below. These stalactites were covered thick with richest frost‐work; and from ten thousand upon thousand points the glinting light fell off in floods. Near to the centre of the upper dome the waters of the stream pour in in one broad sheet. An instant only is such form preserved. The sheet of water breaks, and countless globes, from raindrops to a sphere the hand would scarcely grasp with ease, come down, and break still more in passing through the air, until within the basin all is mist and spray. These globes at first arrange themselves in systems not unlike the planetariums of the schools, where sun and planets, with their satellites, are shown the youths, to aid such minds as seek to learn the grander works of God in space. These systems, as they fall, are countless; and by common impulse, which means law, the smaller range themselves about a greater central orb. And so they pass through space, to fall upon the bosom of the pool in mist. Is there no emblem here of life and God?

And as we look, behold! the walls and dome are striped and slashed with silver and with gold; then barred; and then again are panelled with this silver sheen and gold. The gold and silver interchange positions, fade, return, as the Northern Lights dissolve or chase each other here and there. The mystery of this party‐colored scene was soon resolved. The ice we broke away with stones had let the sun shine through the opening, and the waters, flowing in, disputed passage with the light. There is an ebb and flow in running water so like to pulse‐beats that it may not seem strange to those who stop to think, that ruder men have worshipped streams as gods. This ebb and flow upon the ledge so changed the depth of water there that the sunlight, as it struggled through these different depths (for ever changing), cast the light in silver or in gold upon the walls and dome.

And now the sun bows down still more, and shines still more within the dome; its rays are kissed by countless water‐drops, and changed by that caress from white to all the colors of the bow or prism. But, strange, no bow is formed; but in its stead a circle of the varied hues is poised within the midst of all this splendor, as though the sun and flood had come to crown the Indian maid, and vie with the ice‐king in doing fullest homage to his ward.

Such is the legend realized. The time, the accidents, and every impediment we overcame seemed but steps so prearranged that we might see complete the efforts of the cold, the light, the water, all combined to create The Beautiful. It was the meeting of extremes in harmony for common end, instead of conflict. Here was a grand display of powers without jealousy. The cold took irresistible possession of the water, mist, and spray, and reared a work that art can scarcely copy. But all was cold and chaste and white. The light possessed itself of the water also, but with a touch so delicate and warm that color mantled the coldest, chastest, whitest ice.

Do you, dear reader, imagine this a fancy sketch? Be undeceived. Three of the “four” still verify its truth. The fourth has fallen upon the outstretched arm of the great Father of mankind. It is in tribute to his memory that I write; for never soul more chaste, or heart more warm, or life more full of love for all the beautiful, made up a man.

A Russian Sister Of Charity.

By The Rev. C. Tondini, Barnabite

On the fifth of August died in Paris Sister Nathalie Narishkin, a Russian by birth, and descended from the same family from which sprang the mother of Peter the Great. Born on the 1/13th of May, 1820, Sister Nathalie Narishkin abjured the Greek Church August the 15th, 1844. This first step had cost her a fearful struggle—that struggle of heart for which Jesus Christ prepared us when he said, “I came to set a man at variance against his father, _and a daughter against her mother_” (S. Matt. x. 35). We mean that endurance which is perhaps the hardest of martyrdoms, at least when God requires it of a soul whose love of him is combated by an unusual tenderness of affection towards the authors of her being. Such was Nathalie Narishkin.

But as any sacrifice we offer to God enables us, by strengthening our will, to make fresh sacrifices for his love, she had not yet attained the age of twenty‐eight when she resolved to follow more closely the footsteps of our Lord, and in March, 1848, she entered the novitiate of the Sisters of Charity in Paris. A few years afterwards she was named superioress of the convent in the Rue St. Guillaume, where she died.

Foreigners who visit Catholic countries often imagine themselves acquainted with Catholicity when they have hastily glanced through the streets of our capitals, visited the museums, the public buildings, and theatres, and inspected the Catholics in the churches at some mid‐day or one o’clock Mass on Sundays. Hence it follows that in reality they have nothing to relate concerning the influence of the Catholic faith in the sanctification of souls. What would have been their edification, and perhaps surprise, had they visited that convent of the Rue St. Guillaume, and had the good‐fortune to converse with Sister Nathalie! No one who approached her could help feeling that he was in presence of a soul in continual union with God, and in whom self‐abnegation and the profoundest humility had grown, as it were, into a second nature. With these qualities, which at once struck the beholders, she combined the most refined gentleness of manners and language—a gentleness which, let us remark, was in her the same when soliciting from the Emperor Alexander II., at the Elysée, in 1867, permission to enter Russia for the purpose of nursing the sick attacked with cholera, as when answering the meanest beggar asking at her hands a morsel of bread. “Every one who had to deal with Sister Narishkin departed satisfied”—this is the general testimony of all who ever had occasion to speak with her.

It is needless to add that, with regard to charity—that virtue which is the special vocation of the daughters of S. Vincent de Paul, and the surest token of true Christianity, as pointed out by Christ himself—Sister Nathalie was second to no one; and this was made manifest on the day of her funeral by the multitude of poor who accompanied her remains to the cemetery, and the tears they shed on their way to the grave. What is the pomp of the sepulture of kings and the great ones of the nations when compared to this tribute to the memory of a Catholic Sister?