Chapter XIV.

Out Of Harm's Way.

Common sense goes a great way in nursing; and when there is added a sympathetic heart, steady nerves, a soft voice, and a gentle hand, your nurse is about perfect, though she may not have gone through a regular course of training.

Ward six considered itself highly favored in having Miss Hamilton's ministrations, even for a few days. The nauseous doses she offered were swallowed without a murmur, fevered eyes followed her light, swift step, and men took pride in showing how well they could bear pain when such appreciative eyes were looking on.

Mrs. Black, rushing over to expostulate and entreat, became a convert. It was certainly very romantic, she said; and since her young friend was not treated like a common nurse, but had everything her own way, it was not so bad. And without, perhaps, having ever heard the name of Rochefoucauld, the good lady added, "Anything may happen in Washington now."

Moreover, Miss Hamilton would sleep and take her meals at Mrs. Black's, which was another palliating circumstance.

Mr. Lewis, with a fund of gibes ready, came also to see the new nurse. But the sight of her silenced him.

Bending over a dying man to catch the last whisper of a message to those he would never see again; speaking a word of encouragement to one who lay with his teeth clenched and with drops of agony standing on his forehead; mediating in the chronic quarrel between regulars and volunteers; hushing the ward, that the saving sleep of an almost exhausted patient might not be broken--in each of these she seemed in her true place. As he looked on, he began to realize how impertinent are conventionalities when life and death are in the balance.

"I don't blame you, Margaret," he said seriously, "though I am glad that you don't think of staying any longer than I do. I will give you till Friday afternoon. If we start then, we can reach home by Sunday morning. The track is open, and I am just off for Baltimore. Good-by."

She accompanied him to the door. "If you should see Mr. Granger, or write to him," she said, with some confusion, "don't mention why I came here. I am ashamed of it."

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"Oh! you needn't feel so," he replied soothingly. "We have had a nice little adventure to pay us for the journey; and you were breaking your heart with inaction and anxiety."

"Women should break their hearts at home!" she said proudly, her cheeks glowing scarlet.

That was Wednesday. Thursday morning, as she rose from a five o'clock breakfast to go over to the hospital, a carriage stopped at the door, and, looking out, she saw Mr. Lewis coming up the walk.

O God! The blow had fallen! No need even to look into his white and smileless face to know that.

He stopped, and spoke through the open window. "Come, Margaret!"

Morning, was it? Morning! She could hardly see to reach the carriage, and the earth seemed to be heaving under her feet.

As they drove through that strange, feverish world that the sunny summer day had all at once turned into, she heard a long, heavy breath that was almost a groan. "O dear!" said Mr. Lewis.

She reached out her hand to him, as one reaches out in the dark for support. "Tell me!"

"It is a wound in the head," he said; "and any wound there is bad. I got the dispatch at Baltimore last night, and came right back. They forwarded it from Boston. Why did not you tell me that you saw him Monday?"

"Saw him!"

"Then you didn't know him?" Mr. Lewis said. "I thought it strange you shouldn't mention it. Louis says that when they were going out past Columbia College, he glanced up at one of the windows, and saw you leaning out and looking at him. You were very sober, and made no motion to speak; and after a moment your face seemed to fade away. It made such an impression on him that he asked to be carried there and to that room, though it isn't an officers' hospital. He was almost superstitious about it, till I told him that you were really here."

It was true then. The intensity of her gaze, and the concentration of her thoughts upon him at that moment had by some mystery of nature which we cannot explain, though guesses have been many, impressed her image on his mind, and thrown the reflection of it through his eyes, so that where his glance chanced to fall at that instant, there she had seemed to be.

"You must try to control yourself, Margie," Mr. Lewis went on, his own lip trembling. "There is danger of delirium. He is afraid of it, and watches every word he says. He can't talk much. I'll give you a chance to say all you want to; and whenever I'm needed, you can call me. I will wait just outside the door. Give your bonnet and shawl to the lady. There, this is his room, and that is yours, just across the entry."

Then they went in.

The pleasant chamber was clean, cool, and full of a soft flicker of light and shade from trees and vines outside. On a narrow, white bed opposite the windows lay Mr. Granger. Could it be that he was ill? His eyes were bright, and his face flushed as if with health. The only sign of hurt was a little square of wet cloth that lay on the top of his head. But in health, in anything short of deadly peril, he would have smiled on seeing her after so long a time, and when she stood in such need of reassuring. His only welcome was an outstretched hand, and a fixed, earnest gaze.

She seated herself by the bedside. "I have come to help take care of you, Mr. Granger." Then smiling, faintly, "You don't look very sick."

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"I was in high health before I got this," he said, motioning toward his head.

Perhaps he saw in her face some sharp springing of hope; for he closed his eyes, and added almost in a whisper, "It isn't as wide as a barn-door, nor as deep as a well; but it will do."

The room swam round before her eyes a moment, but she kept her seat.

Presently the surgeon came in, and she gave place to him. But as he removed the cloth from his patient's head, she bent involuntarily, with the fascination of terror, and looked, and at the sight, dropped back into her chair again. She had looked upon nature in her inmost mysterious workshop, to which only death can open the door. It was almost like having committed a sacrilege.

Mr. Lewis wet a handkerchief with cologne, and put it into her hand. The others had not noticed her agitation.

When the surgeon left the room, he beckoned Margaret out with him. "All that you can do is, to keep his head cool," he said. "Don't let him get excited, or talk much without resting. He has kept wonderfully calm so far; but it is by pure force of will. I never saw more resolution."

There was nothing to do, then, but to sit and wait; to make him feel that he was surrounded by loving care, and to let no sign of grief disturb his quiet.

She returned to the room, and Mr. Lewis, after bending to hold the sick man's hand one moment in a silent clasp, went out and left them together.

After a little while, when she had resumed her seat by him, Mr. Granger spoke, always in that suppressed voice that told what a strain there was on every nerve. "I should have asked you to marry me, Margaret, if I had gone back safe," he said, looking at her with a wistful, troubled gaze, as if he wished to say more, but could not trust himself.

"No matter about that now," she replied gently. "You have been a good friend to me, and that is all I ever wanted."

"We could be married here, if you are willing," he went on. "Mr. Lewis will see to everything."

Margaret lightly smoothed his feverish hands. "No," she said, "I do not wish it. I didn't come for that. We are friends; no more. Let me wet the cloth on your head now. It is nearly dry."

He closed his eyes, and made no answer. If he guessed confusedly that his proposal, and what it implied, so made, was little less than an insult, it was out of his power to help it then. And if for a breath Margaret felt that all her obligations to him were cancelled, and that she could not even call him friend again, it was but for a breath. His case was too pitiful for anger. She could forgive him anything now.

"I shall always stay with Dora, if you wish it," she said softly. "Do not have any fears for her. I will be faithful. Trust me. I could gladly do it for her sake, for I never loved any other child so much. But still more, I will take care of her for yours."

"I arranged everything before I came away," he said, looking up again. And his eyes, she saw, were swimming in tears. "I looked out for both of you. Your home was to be always with her, and Mr. Lewis to be guardian for both."

Margaret could not trust herself to thank him for this proof of his care for her.

"Have you seen the chaplain?" she asked, to turn the subject.

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"Yes; but I don't feel like seeing him again. He does me no good, and his voice confuses me. You are all the minister I need"--smiling faintly--"and yours is the only voice I can bear."

While he rested, she sat and studied how indeed she should minister to him.

Mr. Granger had never been baptized; and, though nominally what is called an orthodox Congregationalist, he held their doctrines but loosely. He had that abstract religious feeling which is the heritage of all noble natures, the outlines of Christianity even before Christianity is adopted, as Madame Swetchine says; but his experience of pietists had not been such as to tempt him to join their number. If a man lived a moral life, were kind, just, and pure, it was about all that could be required of him, he thought. Such a life he had lived; and now, though he approached death solemnly, it was with no perceptible tremor, and no painful sense of contrition.

She watched him as he lay there, smitten down in the midst of his life and of health. He was quiet, now, except that his hands never ceased moving, tearing slowly in strips the delicate handkerchief he found within his reach, pulling shreds from the palm-leaf fan that lay on the bed, or picking at the blanket. It was the only sign of agitation he showed. His face was deeply flushed, his breathing heavy, and his teeth seemed to be set.

Once he raised himself, and looked through the open window at the treetops, and the city spires and domes. Margaret wondered if they looked strange to him, and what thoughts he had; but she never knew.

After waiting as long as she dared, she spoke to him. "Can I talk to you a little, Mr. Granger, without disturbing you?" she asked.

"Speak," he said; "you never disturb me."

She began, and without any useless words, explained to him the fundamental doctrines of the church, original sin, the redemption, the necessity and effects of baptism. What she said was clear, simple, and condensed. A hundred times during the last two years she had studied it over for just such need as this.

"You know of course," she concluded, "that I say this because I want you to be baptized. Are you willing?"

"I would like to do anything that would satisfy you," he said presently. "But you would not wish me to be a hypocrite? You cannot think that baptism would benefit me, if I received it only because you wanted me to. I don't think that I have led a bad life. I have not knowingly wronged any one. I am sorry for those sins which, through human frailty, I have committed. But if I were to live my life over again, I doubt if I should do any better. No, child, I think it would be a mockery for me to be baptized now."

She changed the cloth on his head, laid the ice close to his burning temples, and fanned him in silence a few minutes.

Then she began again, repeating gently the command of our Saviour regarding baptism, and his charge to the church to baptize and teach.

"It is impossible to force conviction," he said. "I cannot profess to believe what I do not."

The words came with difficulty, and his brows contracted as if some sudden pain shot through them.

"I am not careless of the future, dear," he said after a while. "I know that it is awful, and uncertain; but it is also inevitable! It is too late now for me to change. But I wish that you would pray for me. Let me hear you. Pray your own way. I am not afraid of your saints."

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Margaret knelt beside the bed, and repeated the Our Father. He listened reverently, and echoed the Amen. She repeated the Acts, and there was no response this time; the Creed, and still there was no answer. She could not rise. In faltering tones she said the Memorare, with the request, "Obtain for this friend of mine the gift of faith, that though lost to me he may not be lost to himself."

Still he was silent. All the pent emotion of her soul was surging up, and showing the joints in her mail of calmness. He was going out into what was to him the great unknown, and she, with full knowledge of the way, could not make him see it. One last, vain effort of self-control, then she burst forth with a prayer half drowned in tears.

"O merciful Christ! I cannot live upon the earth unless I know that he is in heaven. Thou hast said, Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. With my heart and my voice I knock at the door. Open to me for thy word's sake! Thou hast said that whatever we ask in thy name, we shall receive. I ask for faith, for heaven, for my friend who is dying. Give them for thy word's sake! Thou hast said that whoever does good to the least of thy children has done it unto thee. Remember what this man has done for me. I was miserable, and he comforted me. I was at the point of death, and he saved me. I was hungry, and he fed me. I was a stranger, and he took me in. Oh! look with pity on me, who in all my life have had only one year of happiness, but many full of sorrow; see how my heart is breaking, and hear me for thy word's sake! for thy word's sake!"

As her voice failed, a hand touched her head, and she heard Mr. Granger's voice.

"I cannot make you distrust the truth of God," he said. "I do not believe; but also, I do not know. I am willing to do all that he requires. Perhaps he does require this. Such faith as yours must mean something. Do as you will."

"May I send for a priest right away? And will you be baptized?"

"Dear little friend, yes!" he said.

"O Mr. Granger! God bless you! I am happy. Doesn't he keep his promises? I will never distrust him again."

His grave looks did not dampen her joy. Of course it was not necessary that he should have much feeling. The good intention was enough. She wet his face with ice-water, laid ice to his head, put the fan in his hand, in her childish, joyful way, shutting his fingers about it one by one, then went out to send Mr. Lewis for a priest.

He stared at her. "Why, you look as if he were going to get well," he said almost indignantly.

"So he is, Mr. Lewis," she answered. "He is going to have the only real getting well. I shall never have to be anxious about him any more. He will be out of harm's way."

She went back to the sick-room then, quiet again. "Forgive me if my gladness jarred on you," she said. "I forgot everything but that you were now all safe. You will go straight to heaven, you know. And of course, since it is to be now, then now is the best time."

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He said nothing, but watched her with steady eyes, wherever she moved. What thoughts were thronging behind those eyes, she could never know. Nothing was said till Mr. Lewis came back with the priest.

It was sunset when he came, and the father staid till late in the evening. Then he went, promising to say mass the next morning for his new penitent, and to come early to see him.

Mr. Granger was evidently suffering very much, and Margaret would not talk to him. Only once, when he opened his eyes, she said,

"You wish Dora to be a Catholic?"

"Yes, surely! O my child!" with a little moan of pain.

When the priest came up in the morning, they had some difficulty in rousing Mr. Granger; and when at length he comprehended their wishes, he looked from one to the other with an expression of incredulity.

"Communion for me!" he repeated.

The priest sat beside him, and as gently as possible prepared him for the sacrament.

"What! it is really and indeed the body and blood of Jesus Christ that is offered me as a viaticum?" he asked, now thoroughly roused.

"God himself has said so; and who shall dispute his word?"

The patient raised himself upright. "After I have spent all my life in forgetfulness of him, when I turn to him only on my death-bed, will he come to me now, and give me all himself?"

"Yes," the priest answered. "He forgives generously, as only God can. He does not wait, he comes to you. 'Behold! I stand at the door, and knock.'"

The sick man lifted his face; "O wonderful love!" he exclaimed.

The priest smiled, and put on his stole.

"The angels wonder no less than you," he said.

Left alone with him once more, Margaret knelt, praying continually, but softly too, so as not to disturb one sacred thought in that soul for the first time united to its Saviour. When a half-hour had passed, she touched his folded hands. He had always before opened his eyes at her faintest touch; but now he did not.

"He has lost consciousness," the surgeon said, when she called him. "He will never speak again."

"Oh! never again? What? never again?"

Mr. Lewis took her by the hand. "Try to bear it, Maggie," he said. "Think what comfort you have."

"But he never said good-by to me! I wanted to say something to him. I had so much to tell him; but I thought of him first!"

Ah! well. When we go down to the valley of the shadow of death with our loved ones, and find the iron door that admits them shut in our faces, then indeed we know, if never before, how precious is faith. And those who can see the pearly gates beyond the iron one should take shame to themselves if they refuse to be comforted.

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Beethoven.

His Youth.

At eighteen, Louis Beethoven became conscious of new perceptions, and new capacities for joy. A young kinswoman of his mother, a beautiful, sprightly girl, whose parents lived in Cologne, came on a visit to Bonn. The voice and smile of Adelaide called his genius into full life, and he felt he had power to do as he had never done. But Adelaide could not understand him, nor appreciate his melodies, which were now of a bolder and higher, yet a tenderer cast. He never declared his love in language; but his brother Carl discovered it, and one evening, Louis overheard him and Adelaide talking of his boyish passion, and laughing at him. The girl said she "was half inclined to draw him out, it was such a capital joke!"

Pale and trembling, while he leaned against the window-seat concealed by the folds of a curtain, Louis listened to this colloquy. As his brother and cousin left the room, he rushed past them to his own apartment, locked himself in, and did not come forth that night. Afterward he took pains to shun the company of the heartless fair one; and was always out alone in his walks, or in his room, where he worked every night till quite exhausted. The first emotions of chagrin and mortification soon passed away; but he did not recover his vivacity. His warmest feelings had been cruelly outraged; the spring of love was never again to bloom for him; and it seemed, too, that the fair blossoms of genius also were nipped in the bud. The critics of the time, fettered as they were to the established form, were shocked at his departure from their rules. Even Mozart, whose fame stood so high, whose name was pronounced with such enthusiastic admiration, what struggles had he not been forced into with these who would not approve of his so-called innovations! The youth of nineteen had struck out a bolder path! What marvel, then, that, instead of encouragement, nothing but censures awaited him? His master, Neefe, who was accustomed to boast of him as his pride and joy, now said, coldly and bitterly, his pupil had not fulfilled his cherished expectations--nay, was so taken up with his newfangled conceits, that he feared he was for ever lost to real art.

"Is it so indeed?" asked Louis of himself in his moments of misgivings and dejection. "Is all a delusion? Have I lived till now in a false dream?"

Young Beethoven sat in his chamber, leaning his head on his hand, looking gloomily out of the vine-shaded window. There was a knock at the door; but wrapped in deep despondency, he heard it not, nor answered with a "come in."

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The door was opened softly a little ways, and in the crevice appeared a long and very red nose, and a pair of small, twinkling eyes, overshadowed by coal-black bushy eyebrows. Gradually became visible the whole withered, sallow, comical, yet good-humored face of Master Peter Pirad.

Peter Pirad was a famous kettle drummer, and was much ridiculed on account of his partiality for that instrument, though he also excelled on many others. He always insisted that the kettle-drum was the most melodious, grand, and expressive instrument, and he would play upon it alone in the orchestra. But he was one of the best-hearted persons in the world. It was quite impossible to look upon his tall, gaunt, clumsy figure---which, year in and year out, appeared in the well-worn yellow woolen coat, buckskin-colored breeches, and dark worsted stockings, with his peculiar fashioned felt cap--without a strong inclination to laugh; yet, ludicrous as was his outward man, none remained long unconvinced that, spite of his exterior, spite of his numerous eccentricities, Peter Pirad was one of the most amiable of men.

From his childhood, Louis had been attached to Pirad; in later years, they had been much together. Pirad, who had been absent several months from Bonn, and had just returned, was surprised beyond measure to find his favorite so changed. He entered the room, and walking up quietly, touched the youth on the shoulder, saying, in a tone as gentle as he could assume, "Why, Louis! what the mischief has got into your head, that you would not hear me?" Louis started, turned round, and, recognizing his old friend, reached him his hand.

"You see," continued Pirad, "you see I have returned safely and happily from my visit to Vienna. Ah! Louis! Louis! that's a city for you. As for taste in art, you would go mad with the Viennese! As for artists, there are Albrechtsberger, and Haydn, Mozart, and Salieri--my dear fellow, you _must_ go to Vienna." With that Pirad threw up his arms, as if beating the kettle-drum, (he always did so when excited,) and made such comical faces, that his young companion, spite of his sorrow, could not help bursting out laughing.

"Saker!" cried Pirad, "that is clever; I like to see that you can laugh yet, it is a good sign; and now, Louis, pluck up like a man, and tell me what all this means. Why do I find you in such a bad humor, as if you had a hole in your skin, or the drums were broken--out with it? My brave boy, what is the matter with you?"

"Ah!" replied Beethoven, "much more than I can say; I have lost all hope, all trust in myself. I will tell you all my troubles, for, indeed, I cannot keep them to myself any longer!" So the melancholy youth told all to his attentive auditor; his unhappy passion for his cousin; his master's dissatisfaction with him, and his own sad misgivings.

When he had ended, Pirad remained silent awhile, his forefinger laid on his long nose, in an attitude of thoughtfulness. At length, raising his head, he gave his advice as follows: "This is a sad story, Louis; but it convinces me of the truth of what I used to say; your late excellent father--I say it with all respect to his memory--and your other friends, never knew what was really in you. As for your disappointment in love, that is always a business that brings much trouble and little profit. Women are capricious creatures at best, and no man who has a respect for himself will be a slave to their humors. I was a little touched that way myself, when I was something more than your age; but the kettle-drum soon put such nonsense out of my head. {609} My advice is, that you stick to your music, and let her go. For what concerns the court-organist, Neefe, I am more vexed; his absurdity is what I did not precisely expect. I will say nothing of Herr Yunker; he forgets music in his zeal for counterpoint; as if he should say he could not see the wood for the tall trees, or the city for the houses! Have I not heard him assert, ay! with my own living ears, slanderously assert, that the kettle-drum was a superfluous instrument? Only think, Louis, the kettle-drum a superfluous instrument! Donner and--! Did not the great Haydn--bless him for it!--undertake a noble symphony expressly with reference to the kettle-drum? What could you do with '_Dies irae, dies illa_,' without the kettle-drum? I played it at Vienna in _Don Giovanni_, the chapel-master Mozart himself directing. In the spirit scene, Louis, where the statue has ended his first speech, and Don Giovanni in consternation speaks to his attendants, while the anxious heart of the appalled sinner is throbbing, the kettle-drum thundering away--" Here Pirad began to sing with tragical gesticulation. "Yes, Louis, I beat the kettle-drum with a witness, while an icy thrill crept through my bones; and for all that the kettle-drum is a useless instrument! What blockheads there are in this world! To return to your master--I wonder at his stupidity, and yet I have no cause to wonder. Now, my creed is, that art is a noble inheritance left us by our ancestors, which it is our duty to enlarge and increase by all honest and honorable means. My dear boy, I hold you for an honest heir, who would not waste your substance; who has not only power, but will to perform his duty. So take courage, be not cast down by trifles; and take my advice and go to Vienna. There you will find your masters: Mozart, Haydn, Albrechtsberger, and others not so well known. One year, nay, a few months in Vienna, will do more for you than ten years vegetating in this good city. You can soon learn, there, what you are capable of; only mind what Mozart says, when you are playing in his hearing."

The young man started up, his eyes sparkling, his cheeks glowing with new enthusiasm, and embraced Pirad warmly. "You are right, my good friend!" he cried. "I will go to Vienna; and shame on any one who despises your counsel! Yes, I will go to Vienna."

When he told his mother of his resolution, she looked grave, and wept when all was ready for his departure. But Pirad, with a sympathizing distortion of countenance, said to her, "Be not disturbed, my good Madame van Beethoven! Louis shall come back to you much livelier than he is now; and, madame, you may comfort yourself with the hope that your son will become a great artist!"

Young Beethoven visited Vienna for the first time in the spring of the year 1792. He experienced strange emotions as he entered that great city; perhaps a dim presentiment of what he was in future years to accomplish and to suffer. He was not so fortunate this time as to find Haydn there; the artist had set out for London a few days before. He was disappointed, but the more anxious to make the acquaintance of Mozart. Albrechtsberger, Haydn's intimate friend, undertook to introduce him to Mozart.

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They went several times to Mozart's house before they found him at home. At last, on a rainy day, they were fortunate. They heard him from the street, playing; our young hero's heart beat wildly as they went up the steps, for he looked on that dwelling as the temple of art. When they were in the hall, they saw, through a side-door that stood open, Mozart, sitting playing the piano; close by him sat a short, fat man, with a shining red face; and at the window, Madame Mozart, holding her youngest son, Wolfgang, on her lap, while the eldest was sitting on the floor at her feet.

The composer greeted Albrechtsberger cordially, and looked inquiringly on his young companion. "Herr van Beethoven from Bonn," said Albrechtsberger, presenting his friend; "an excellent composer, and skilful musician, who is desirous of making your acquaintance."

"You are heartily welcome, both of you, and I shall expect you to remain and dine with me to-day," said Mozart; and taking Louis by the hand, he led him to the window where his wife sat. "This is my Constance," he continued, "and these are my boys; this little fellow is but three months old"--and throwing his arm around Constance's neck, he stooped and kissed the smiling infant.

Louis looked with surprise on the great artist. He had fancied him quite different in his exterior; a tall man, of powerful frame, like Handel. He saw a slight, low figure, wrapped in a furred coat, notwithstanding the warmth of the season; his pale face showed the evidences of long-continued ill-health; his large, bright, speaking eyes alone reminded one of the genius that had created _Idomeneus_ and _Don Giovanni_.

"So you, too, are a composer?" asked the fat man, coming up to Beethoven. "Look you, sir, I will tell you what to do; lay yourself out for the opera; the opera is the great thing!"

Louis looked at him in surprise and silence.

"Master Emanuel Schickaneder, the famous impressario," said Albrechtsberger, scarcely controlling his disposition to laugh.

"Yes," continued the fat man, assuming an air of importance, "I tell you I know the public, and know how to get the weak side of it; if Mozart would only be led by me, he could do well! I say if you will compose me something--by the way, here is a season ticket; I shall be happy if you will visit my theatre; to-morrow night we shall perform the _Magic Flute_, it is an admirable piece, some of the music is first-rate, some not so good, and I myself play the Papageno."

"You ought to do something in that line," said Mozart, laughing, "your singing puts one in mind of an unoiled door-hinge."

The impressario took a pinch of snuff, and answered with an important air, "I can tell you, sir, the singing is quite a secondary thing in the opera, for I know the public."

Here several persons, invited guests of the composer, came in; among them Mozart's pupils, Sutzmayr and Holff, with the Abbé Stadler and the excellent tenorist, Peyerl. After an hour or so spent in agreeable conversation, enlivened by an air from Mozart, they went to the dinner-table. Schickaneder here played his part well, doing ample justice to the viands and wine. The dinner was really excellent; and the host, notwithstanding his appearance of feeble health, was in first-rate spirits, abounding in gayety, which soon communicated itself to the rest of the company. After they had dined, and the coffee had been brought in, Mozart took his new acquaintance apart from the others, and asked if he could be of any service to him.

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Louis pressed the master's hand, and without hesitation gave his history, and informed him of his plans; concluding by asking his advice.

Mozart listened with a benevolent smile; and when he had ended, said, "Come, you must let me hear you play." With that, he led him to an admirable instrument in another apartment; opened it, and invited him to select a piece of music.

"Will you give me a theme?" asked Louis.

The master looked surprised; but without reply wrote some lines on a leaf of paper, and handed it to the young man. Beethoven looked over it; it was a difficult chromatic fugue theme, the intricacy of which demanded much skill and experience. But without being discouraged, he collected all his powers, and began to execute it.

Mozart did not conceal the sur prise and pleasure he felt when Louis first began to play. The youth perceived the impression he had made, and was stimulated to more spirited efforts.

As he proceeded, the master's pale cheek flushed, his eyes sparkled; and stepping on tiptoe to the open door, he whispered to his guests, "Listen, I beg of you! You shall have some thing worth hearing."

That moment rewarded all the pains, and banished all the apprehensions of the young aspirant after excellence. Louis went through his trial-piece with admirable spirit, sprang up, and went to Mozart; seizing both his hands and pressing them to his throbbing heart, he murmured, "I also am an artist!"

"You are indeed!" cried Mozart, "and no common one! And what may be wanting, you will not fail to find, and make your own. The grand thing, the living spirit, you bore within you from the beginning, as all do who possess it. Come back soon to Vienna, my young friend--very soon! Father Haydn, Albrechtsberger, friend Stadler, and I will receive you with open arms; and if you need advice or assistance, we will give it you to the best of our ability."

The other guests crowded round Beethoven, and hailed him as a worthy pupil of art! Even the silly impressario looked at him with vastly increased respect, and said, "I can tell you, I know the public-well, we will talk more of the matter this evening over a glass of wine."

"I also am an artist!" repeated Louis to himself, when he returned late to his lodgings.

Much improved in spirits, and reinspired with confidence in himself, he returned to Bonn, and ere long put in practice his scheme of paying Vienna a second visit.

This he accomplished at the elector's expense, being sent by him to complete his studies under the direction of Haydn. That great man failed to perceive how fine a genius had been intrusted to him. Nature had endowed them with opposite qualities; the inspiration of Haydn was under the dominion of order and method; that of Beethoven sported with them both, and set both at defiance.

When Haydn was questioned of the merits of his pupil, he would answer with a shrug of his shoulders--"He executes extremely well." If his early productions were cited as giving evidence of talent and fire, he would reply, "He touches the instrument admirably." To Mozart belonged the praise of having recognized at once, and proclaimed to his friends, the wonderful powers of the young composer.

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Sauntering.

NO. 11.

Among the churches of Paris which I visited in my saunterings, whose very stones seemed to have a tongue and cry aloud, was the interesting one of St. Germain des Près.

"Each shrine and tomb within thee seems to cry."

Here were buried Mabillon and Descartes, and also King Casimir of Poland, who laid aside his crown for a cowl in 1668, and died abbot of the monastery in 1672. He is represented kneeling on his tomb offering his crown to heaven. Two of the Douglases are likewise buried here, with their carved effigies lying on their tombs clad in armor. One was the seventeenth earl, who died in 1611. He had been bred a Protestant, but, going to France in the time of Henry III., was converted to the faith of his fathers, those old knights of the Bleeding Heart, by the discourses at the Sorbonne. He returned to Scotland after his conversion, but was persecuted there on account of his religion, and had the choice of prison or banishment. So he chose to be exiled, and went back to France, where he ended his days in practices of piety. He used to attend the canonical hours at the abbey of St. Germain des Près, and even rose for the midnight office. It was no unusual thing in the middle ages for the laity to assist at the night offices, and the church encouraged the practice. There was a confraternity in Paris, in the thirteenth century, composed of devout persons who used to attend the midnight service. This was not confined to men, but even ladies did the same. Many people used to pass whole nights in prayer in the churches, as, for example, King Louis IX. and Sir Thomas More.

There is in this church a statue of the Blessed Virgin, under a Gothic canopy all of stone, at the west end of the edifice, and looking up the right aisle. It pleased me so much that I never passed the church afterward without turning aside for a moment to say my Ave before it. Tapers were always burning before it, and there was always some one in prayer, who, like me, would doubtless forget for a few moments the cares and vanities of life at the feet of the Mother of Sorrows. This statue was at St. Denis before the revolution, having been given to that church by Queen Jeanne D'Evereux.

King Childebert's tomb formerly occupied a conspicuous place in this church, but it is now at St. Denis, where he is represented holding a church in his hands, and with shoes which have very sharp and abrupt points at the ends, like an acuminate leaf. He was the original founder of this church and the abbey once adjoining. It was called the Golden Church, because the walls outside were covered with plates of brass, gilt, and inside with pictures on a gold ground. It took its name from St. Germain, Bishop of Paris, who was buried here, and was the spiritual adviser of Childebert. St. Germaine l'Auxerrois was named from the sainted bishop of Auxerre of that name, renowned for his instrumentality in checking Pelagianism in England. He visited that country twice for that purpose. And at the head of the Britons he was the instrument of the great Alleluia victory in 430.

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Whatever other people discover, I found a great deal of piety in Paris. The numerous churches and chapels are frequented at an early hour for the first masses; and all through the day is a succession of worshippers. I particularly loved the morning mass in the Lady Chapel at St. Sulpice, at which a crowd of the common people used to assist and sing charming cantiques in honor of the Madonna or the Blessed Sacrament. And at Notre Dame des Victoires, one of the most popular churches in the city, and renowned throughout the world for its arch-confraternity to which so many of us belong, there is no end to the stream of people. The wonderful answers to prayer and the many miracles wrought there draw needy and heavily-laden hearts, not only from all parts of the kingdom, but of the world. The altar of Notre Dame des Victoires looks precisely as it is represented in pictures. The front and sides are of crystal, through which are seen the relics of St. Aurelia, from the Roman catacombs. Seven large hanging lamps burn before it, and an innumerable quantity of tapers. On the walls are _ex voto_ and many marble tablets with inscriptions of gratitude to Mary; such as: "_J'ai invoqué Marie, et elle m'a exaucé._" "_Reconnaissance à Marie_," etc. It is extremely interesting and curious to examine all these, and they wonderfully kindle our faith and fervor.

Among them is one of particular interest---a silver heart set in a tablet of marble fastened to one of the pillars of the grand nave. On it are the arms of Poland and a votive inscription. This heart contains a portion of the soil of Poland impregnated with the blood of her martyred people--hung here before her whom they style their queen, as a perpetual cry to Mary from the bleeding heart of crushed and Catholic Poland. This was placed here on the two hundredth anniversary of the consecration of that country to the Blessed Virgin Mary, by King John Casimir, on the first of April, 1656. On the same day, 1856, all the Polish exiles in Paris assembled at Notre Dame des Victoires, to renew their vows to Mary and make their offering, which was received and blessed by M. l'Abbé Desgenettes, the venerable curé, and founder of the renowned arch-confraternity of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. A lamp burns perpetually before this touching memorial, emblem of the faith, hope, and charity of the donors.

In the national prayer of the Poles is the following touching invocation:

"Give back, O Lord! to our Poland her ancient splendor. Look down on our fields, soaked with blood! When shall peace and happiness blossom among us? God of wrath, cease to punish us. At thy altar we raise our prayer; deign to restore us, O Lord! our free country."

This prayer is a _Parce nobis_ which will be echoed by every one who sympathizes with the down-trodden and oppressed.

Coming out of the church of Notre Dame des Victoires I heard the words, "Quelques sous, pour l'amour de la Sainte Vierge," and looking around I saw an old man holding out his hat in the most deferential of attitudes--one of the few beggars I met in the city. I could not resist an appeal made in the holy name of Mary, and on the threshold of one of her favorite sanctuaries. I thought of M. Olier, the revered founder of the Sulpicians, who made a vow never to refuse anything asked in the name of the Blessed Virgin--a resolution that would not often be put to the test in the United States, but one which in Catholic countries is less easy to be kept, where the name of Mary is so often on the lips. {614} M. Olier never left his residence without encountering a crowd of cunning beggars crying for alms in the name of the Sainte Vierge, and, when he had nothing more, he would give them his handkerchief or anything else he had in his pocket.

Some do not approve of indiscriminate charity; but if God were to bestow his bounties only on the deserving, where should we all be? Freely ye have received; freely give.

The Sainte Chapelle has peculiar attractions. It was built in the middle of the thirteenth century for the reception of the precious relics connected with the Passion of our Lord, given by Baldwin II., Emperor of Constantinople, to Louis IX., in 1238. There is a nave with four windows on each side, and a semi-circular choir with seven windows, all filled with beautiful old stained glass, representing the principal events of the life of St. Louis and of the first two crusades.

Among the relics enshrined here was the holy crown of thorns. The king sent two Dominican friars, James and Andrew, to Constantinople for it. When it approached Paris, St. Louis, Queen Blanche his mother, with a great many of the court, went out beyond Sens to meet it. Entering Paris, the king and his brother Robert, clad in woollen and with feet bare, bore the shrine on their shoulders to the church. The bishops and clergy followed with bare feet. The streets through which they passed were sumptuously adorned. In 1793, the holy crown was transferred to the Hotel des Monnaies, where it was taken from its reliquary and given with other relics to the commission of arts under the care of Secretary Oudry, from whom the Abbé Barthélemi obtained it in 1794. He was one of the conservateurs of the antique medals in the Bibliothèque Nationale, where the sacred relic remained till 1804, when the Cardinal de Belloy, Archbishop of Paris, reclaimed the relics from the ministre des cultes. Every proper means was taken to identify them, which being satisfactorily done, the holy crown was transported with great pomp to Notre Dame, August 10, 1806.

A portion of the holy cross, once in the Sainte Chapelle, was saved in 1793 by M. Jean Bonvoisin, a member of the commission des arts and a painter. He gave it to his mother, who preserved it with veneration during the revolution and restored it to the chapter of Paris, in 1804, after M. Bonvoisin and his mother had sworn to the truth of these facts in order to authenticate the relic. It was then allowed to be exposed in the reliquary of crystal in which we see it.

There were at Paris other portions of the holy and true cross on which our Saviour was crucified. One was the Vraie Croix d'Anseau, so called because it was sent in 1109 to the archbishop and chapter of Paris by Anselle or Anseau, _grand-chantre_ of the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, who had obtained it from the superior of the Georgian nuns in that city, the widow of David, king of Georgia. In 1793, M. Guyot de St. Hélène obtained permission to keep the cross of Anseau. He divided it with Abbé Duflost, guardian of the four crosses made of the part he kept, of which three only have been restored to Notre Dame. M. Guyot took the precaution to have them authenticated, and they were restored to the veneration of the faithful in 1803.

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Another portion of the true cross was called the Palatine cross, because it belonged to Anna Gonzaga of Cleves, a Palatine princess, who left it by her will to the Abbey of St. Germain des Près, attesting that she had seen it in the flames without being burnt. This relic was enclosed in a cross of precious stones, double, like the cross of Jerusalem. This cross had belonged to Manuel Comnenus, Emperor of Constantinople, who presented it to a prince of Poland. It is eight inches high, without measuring the foot of _vermeil_ of about the same height, ornamented with precious stones. It has two cross-pieces, like the crosses of Jerusalem, which are filled with the wood of the true cross. It is bordered with diamonds and amethysts. The Palatine princess received it from John Casimir, King of Poland, who took it with him when he retired to France. It was preserved by a curé in 1793, and restored, in 1828, to Notre Dame.

There are two portions of the holy nails at Notre Dame de Paris--one formerly at the abbey of St. Denis, and the other at St. Germain des Près. The first was brought by Charles the Bald from Aix-la-Chapelle, it having been given Charlemagne by the Patriarch of Jerusalem.

In 1793, M. Le Lièvre, a member of the Institute, begged permission to take it from the commission des arts to examine and analyze it as a specimen of mineralogy. He thus saved it from profanation, and restored it to the Archbishop of Paris in 1824.

The second portion was given to St. Germain des Près by the Princess Palatine, who had received it from John Casimir of Poland.

There are many curious old legends respecting the wood of the cross. Sir John Mandeville says it was made of the same tree Eve plucked the apple from. When Adam was sick, he told Seth to go to the angel that guarded paradise, to send him some oil of mercy to anoint his limbs with. Seth went, but the angel would not admit him, or give him the oil of mercy. He gave him, however, three leaves from the fatal tree, to be put under Adam's tongue as soon as he was dead. From these sprang the tree of which the cross was made.

One of the first portions of the holy cross received in France was sent by the Emperor Justin to St. Radegonde. It was adorned with gold and precious stones. When it arrived with other relics, and a copy of the four Gospels richly ornamented, the archbishop of Tours and a great procession of people went out with lights, incense, and sound of holy chant to bear them into the city of Poitiers, where they were placed in the monastery of the Holy Cross founded by St. Radegonde. The great Fortunatus composed in honor of the occasion the Vexilla Regis, now a part of the divine office. I quote two verses of a fine translation of this well-known hymn:

"O tree of beauty, tree of light! O tree with royal purple dight! Elect on whose triumphal breast Those holy limbs should find their rest!

"On whose dear arms, so widely flung, The weight of this world's ransom hung, The price of human kind to pay, And spoil the spoiler of his prey!"

One pleasant morning I took the cars to visit St. Denis, the old burial-place of the kings of France. As Michelet says, "This church of tombs is not a sad and pagan necropolis, but glorious and triumphant; brilliant with faith and hope; vast and without shade, like the soul of the saint who built it; light and airy, as if not to weigh on the dead or hinder their spring upward to the starry spheres."

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Mabillon was at one time the visitor's guide to the tombs of St. Denis. I do not know whether I should prefer his learned details and sage reflections over the ashes of the illustrious dead, or be left as I was to wander alone with my own thoughts through the church of the crypts. What a great chapter of history may be read in this sepulchre of kings! What a commentary on the text, "_Dieu seul est grand,_" is that stained page of the revolution, when the bones of the mighty dead were torn from their magnificent tombs and cast into a trench! It was then earth to earth and ashes to ashes, like the meanest of us. What a long stride may be made here from King Dagobert's tomb at the entrance, all sculptured with legendary lore, to the clere-story window, all emblazoned with Napoleon's glory; from the recumbent Du Guesclin to the tomb of Turenne, and from the chair of St. Eloi to the stall of Napoleon III.! A fit place to moralize, among these statues of kneeling kings and queens, with their hands folded as if they had gone to sleep in prayer.

"For heaven's sake, let us sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the death of kings."

I sought out the tomb of one of my favorite knights of the middle ages--that of Bertrand du Guesclin, who, by his devotion to his country and his prowess, merited a place here among kings and to have his ashes mingled with theirs in 1793. There are four of these knights of the olden time in this chapel, all in stone, lying in armor on their tombs. I sat down at the feet of Du Guesclin to read my monographie before going around the church.

My visit was in the octave of the festival of St. Denis and his companions, and their relics were exposed on an altar covered with crimson velvet. Huge wax tapers burned around them, and the chancel was hung around with old tapestry after the designs of Raphael--

"Whose glittering tissues bore emblazoned Holy memorials, acts of zeal and love Recorded eminent."

This church is a monument of the genius and piety of Suger, one of the most noble and venerable figures in French history, the Abbot of St. Denis, and a statesman. He has been styled "the true founder of the Capetian dynasty." He was one of those eminent men so often found in the church of the middle ages who were raised from obscurity to positions of authority. In his humility, when regent of France, he often alluded to his lowly origin, and once in the following words: "Recalling in what manner the strong hand of God has raised me from the dunghill and made me to sit among the princes of the church and of the kingdom."

The princes of France used to be educated in the abbey of St. Denis, and it was here Louis VI. formed a lasting friendship for Suger, which led him afterward to make him his prime minister.

The monk Suger was on his way home from Italy in 1122 when he heard of his election as abbot of St. Denis. He burst into tears through grief for the death of good old abbot Adam, who had cared for him in his youth. That very morning he had risen to say matins before leaving the hostelry where he lodged, and, finishing the office before it was light, he threw himself again on his couch to await the day. Falling into a doze, he dreamed he was in a skiff on the wide raging sea, at the mercy of the waves, and he prayed God to spare and to conduct him into port. He felt, on awakening, as if threatened with some great danger, but, as he afterward said, he trusted the goodness of God would deliver him from it. {617} After travelling a few leagues, he met the deputation from St. Denis announcing his election as abbot.

When Louis le Jeune, with a great number of nobles, decided to go to the Holy Land, it was resolved to choose a regent to govern the kingdom during his absence. The Holy Spirit was invoked to guide the decisions of the nobles and bishops. St. Bernard delivered a discourse on the qualities a regent should possess. The Count de Nevers and Abbot Suger were chosen. The former declined the office, wishing to enter the Carthusian order. Suger accepted this office with extreme reluctance, and only at the command of the pope. He showed himself an able statesman. St. Bernard reproached him for the state in which he lived while at court, but he proved his heart was not in such a life by resuming all his austerities when he returned to his monastery.

He rebuilt the abbey church of St. Denis in a little more than three years. He assembled the most skilful workmen and sculptors from all parts. But he himself was the chief architect. The very people around wished to have a share in the work, believing it would draw down on them the blessing of Heaven. They brought him marble from Pontoise, and wood from the forest of Chevreuse, sixty leagues distant. But he himself selected the trees to be cut down. Bishops, nobles, and the king assisted in laying the foundations, each one laying a stone while the monks chanted, "_Fundamenta ejus in montibus sanctis._" While they were singing in the course of the service, "_Lapides pretiosi omnes muri tui,_" the king took a ring of great value from his finger and threw it on the foundations, and all the nobles followed his example.

When the church was consecrated, the king and a host of church dignitaries were present. Thibaud, Archbishop of Canterbury, consecrated the high altar, and twenty other altars were consecrated by as many different bishops.

Suger had a little cell built near the church for his own use. It was fifteen feet long and ten wide. When he built for God his ideas were full of grandeur, but for himself nothing was too lowly. This little cell beside the magnificent church was a continual act of humility before the majesty of the Most High. "Whatever is dear and most precious should be made subservient to the administration of the thrice holy Eucharist," said he. We read how Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, came to visit St. Denis. After admiring the grandeur of the church, they came to the cell. "Behold a man who condemns us all!" exclaimed Peter with a sigh. The cell had neither tapestry nor curtains. He slept on straw, and his table was set with strictest regard to monastic severity. He never rode in a carriage, but always on horseback, even in old age.

When Abbot Suger felt his end approaching, he went, supported by two monks, into the chapter room where the whole community was assembled, and addressed them in the most solemn and impressive manner on the judgments of God. Then he knelt before them all, and with tears besought their pardon for all the faults of his administration during thirty years. The monks only answered with their tears. He laid down his crosier, declaring himself unworthy the office of abbot, and begged them to elect his successor, that he might have the happiness of dying a simple monk. There is a touching letter from St. Bernard written at this time, which commences thus:

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"Friar Bernard to his very dear and intimate friend Suger, by the grace of God abbot of St. Denis, wishing him the glory that springs from a good conscience, and the grace which is a gift of God. Fear not, O man of God! to put off the earthly man --that man of sin which torments, oppresses, persecutes you--the weight of which sinks you down to earth and drags you almost to the abyss! What have you in part with this mortal frame--you who are about to be clothed with glorious immortality?"

Toward Christmas Suger grew so weak that he rejoiced at the prospect of his deliverance, but fearing his death would interrupt the festivities of that holy time, he prayed God to prolong his life till they were over. His prayer was heard. He died on the twelfth of January, having been abbot of St. Denis twenty-nine years and ten months, from 1122 to 1152. His tomb bore the simple inscription:

"Cy gist l'Abbé Suger."

The charter for the foundation of the abbey of St. Denis was given by Clovis. It was written on papyrus, and among others the signature of St. Eloi was attached to it. Pepin and Charlemagne were great benefactors of the abbey. Pepin was buried before the grand portal of the old church with his face down, wishing by his prostrate position to atone for the excesses of his father Charles Martel. Charlemagne with filial reverence built a porch to the church, as a covering over his father's tomb, and that he might not lie without the church. In rebuilding it, Suger had the porch removed and the body transferred into the interior.

The treasury of the abbey was once exceedingly rich. The old kings of France left their crowns to it, and on grand festivals they were suspended before the high altar. Here were the cross and sceptre of Charlemagne, and the crown and ring of the holy Louis IX. Philip Augustus gave the abbey in his will all his jewels and crosses of gold, desiring twenty monks to say masses for his soul. The chess-board and chess-men of Charlemagne were kept here for ages. Joubert, the Coleridge of France, says:

"The pomps and magnificence with which the church is reproached are in truth the result and proof of her incomparable excellence. Whence came, let me ask, this power of hers and these excessive riches, except from the enchantment into which she threw all the world? Ravished with her beauty, millions of men from age to age kept loading her with gifts, bequests, and cessions. She had the talent of making herself loved and the talent of making men happy. It is that which wrought prodigies for her, it is thence she drew her power."

Sixty great wax candles used to burn around the high altar of St. Denis on great festivals. Dagobert left one hundred livres a year to obtain oil for lights, and Pepin allowed six carts to bring it all the way from Marseilles without toll.

In the middle ages there were fairs near the abbey which lasted for a month. Merchants came from Italy, Spain, and all parts of Europe, and, to encourage them to be mindful of their souls as well as of their purses, indulgences were granted to all who visited the church.

These are a few notes of my saunterings. Each one of these holy places, as well as every church in those old lands, has its history which is interesting, and its legends that are poetical and full of meaning. They would fill volumes. Travelling is like eating; what gives pleasure to one only aggravates the bile of another. Some only find tyranny in the authority of the church, a love of pomp and display in her splendor, and superstition in her piety. Thoreau says, "Where an angel treads, it will be paradise all the way; but where Satan travels, it will be burning marl and cinders."

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Spiritualism and Materialism.

Professor Huxley, as we saw in a late number of this magazine, in the article on _The Physical Basis of Life_, while rejecting spiritualism, gives his opinion that materialism is a philosophical error, on the ground of our ignorance of what matter is, or is not. There is some truth in the assertion of our ignorance of the essence or real nature of matter or material existence, though the professor had no logical right to assert it, after having adopted a materialistic terminology, and done his best to prove the material origin of life, thought, feeling, and the various mental phenomena. Yet we are far from regarding what is called materialism as the fundamental error of this age, nor do we believe that there is any necessary or irrepressible antagonism between spirit and matter, either intellectual or moral. In our belief, a profound philosophy, though it does not identify spirit and matter, shows their dialectic harmony, as revelation asserts it in asserting the resurrection of the flesh, and the indissoluble reunion of body and soul in the future life.

The fundamental error of this age is the denial of creation, and, theologically expressed, is, with the vulgar, atheism, and with the cultivated and refined, pantheism. Atheism is the denial of unity, and pantheism the denial of plurality or diversity, and both alike deny creation, and seek to explain the universe by the principle of self-generation or self-development. What is really denied is God THE CREATOR.

There are, no doubt, moral causes that have led in part to this denial, but with them we have at present nothing to do. The assertion of moral causes is more effective in preventing men from abandoning the truth and falling into error than in recovering and leading back to the truth those who have lost it, or know not where to find it. We lose our labor when we begin our efforts, as philosophers, to convert those who are in error by assuring them that they have erred only through moral perversity or hatred of the true and the good, the just and the holy, especially in an age when conscience is fast asleep. We aim at convincing, not at convicting, and therefore take up only the intellectual causes which lead to the denial of creation. Among these causes, we shall, no doubt, find materialism and a pseudo-spiritualism both playing their part; but the real causes, we apprehend, are in the fact that the philosophic tradition, which has come down to us from gentilism, has never been fully harmonized with the Christian tradition, which has come down to us through the church.

Gentilism had lost sight of God the Creator, and confounded creation with generation, emanation, or formation. Why the gentiles were led into this error would be an interesting chapter in the history of the wanderings of the human mind; but we have no space at present for the inquiry. It is enough, for our present purpose, to establish the fact that the gentiles did fall into it. The conception of creation is found in none of the heathen mythologies, learned or unlearned, of which we have any knowledge; and that they do not recognize a creative God, may be inferred from the fact that in them all, so far as known, was worshipped, under obscure symbols, the generative forces or functions of nature. {620} In no gentile philosophy, not even in Plato or Aristotle, do you find any conception of God the Creator. Père Gratry, indeed, thinks he finds the fact of creation recognized by Plato, especially in the _Timaeus_; but though we have read time and again that most important of Plato's dialogues, we have never found the fact of creation in it; all we can find in it bearing on this point is what Plato, as we understand him, uniformly teaches, the identity of the idea with the essence or _causa essentialis_ of the thing. As, for instance, the idea of a man is the real, essential man himself; and is simply the idea in the divine mind, impressed on a preexisting matter, as the seal upon wax. God creates neither the idea nor the matter. The idea is himself; the matter is eternal. Aristotle does not essentially differ from Plato on this point. The individual existence, according to him, is composed of matter and form; the form alone is substantial, and matter is simply its passive recipient. The substantial forms are supplied, but not created by the divine intelligence. In no form of heathenism that existed before the Christian era have we found any conception of creation. The conception or tradition of creation was retained only by the patriarchs and the synagogue, and has been restored to the converted gentiles by the Christian church alone.

St. Augustine, and after him the great medieval doctors--especially the greatest of them all, the Angel of the schools--labored assiduously, and up to a certain point successfully, to amend the least debased gentile philosophy so as to make it harmonize with Christian theology and tradition. They took from gentile philosophy the elements it had retained from the ancient wisdom, supplied their defects with elements taken from the Christian tradition, and formed a really Christian philosophy, which still subsists in union with theology.

This work of harmonizing faith and philosophy, or, perhaps, more correctly, of constructing a philosophy in harmony with faith and theology, was nearly, if not quite completed by the great western scholastics or medieval doctors; but, unhappily, the East, separated from the centre of unity, or holding to it only loosely and by fits and starts, did not share in the great intellectual movement of the West. It made little or no progress in harmonizing gentile philosophy and Christian theology. It retained and studied the gentile philosophers, especially of the Platonic and Neoplatonic schools; and when the Greek scholars, after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, in 1453, sought refuge in the West, they brought with them, not only their schism, but their unmitigated gentile philosophy, corrupted the western schools, and unsettled to a fearful extent the confidence of scholars in the scholastic philosophy. We owe the false systems of spiritualism and materialism, of atheism and pantheism, to what is called the Revival of Letters in the fifteenth century, or the Greek invasion of western Christendom.

The scholastics, especially St. Thomas, had transformed the peripatetic philosophy into a Christian philosophy; but the other Greek schools had remained pagan; and it was precisely these other schools, especially the Platonic, and Neoplatonic, or Alexandrian eclecticism, that now revived in their unchristianized form, and were opposed to the Aristotelian philosophy as modified by the schoolmen. {621} Some of the early fathers were more inclined to Plato than to Aristotle, but none of these, not Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, or even St. Augustine, had harmonized throughout Plato's philosophy with Christianity, and we should greatly wrong St. Augustine, at least, if we called him a systematic Platonist.

With the study of Plato was revived in western Europe a false and exaggerated spiritualism, and a philosophy which denied creation as a truth of philosophy, and admitted it only as a doctrine of revelation. The authority of the scholastic philosophy was weakened, a decided tendency in pantheistic direction to thought was given, and the way was prepared for Giordano Bruno, as well as for the Protestant apostasy. We say _apostasy_, because Luther's movement was really an apostasy, as its historical developments have amply proved. With Plato was revived the Academy with its scepticism, Sextus Empiricus, and after him Epicurus; and before the close of the sixteenth century, Europe was overrun with false mystics, sceptics, pantheists, and atheists, who abounded all through the seventeenth century, in spite of a very decided reaction in favor of faith and the church. What is worthy of special note is, that in all this period of two centuries and a half it was no uncommon thing to find men who, as philosophers, denied the immortality of the soul, which as believers they asserted; or combining a childlike faith with nearly universal scepticism, as we see in Montaigne.

Gradually, however, men began to see that, while they acknowledged a discrepancy between what they held as philosophy and the Christian faith, they could not retain both; that they must give up the one or the other. England, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, swarmed with free thinkers who denied all divine revelation; and France, in the eighteenth century, rejected the church, rejected the Bible, suppressed Christian worship, rebuilt the Pantheon, and voted death to be an eternal sleep. But the eighteenth century was born of the seventeenth, as the seventeenth was born of the sixteenth, as the sixteenth was born of the revival of Greek letters and philosophy, thoroughly impregnated with paganism, supposed by unthinking men to be the most glorious event in modern history, saving, always, Luther's Reformation.

In the seventeenth century, Descartes undertook to reform and reconstruct philosophy after a new method. He undertook to erect philosophy into a complete science in the rational order, independent of revelation. If he recognized the creative act of God, or God as creator, it was as a theologian, not as a philosopher; for certainly he does not start with the creative act as a first principle, nor does he, nor can he, arrive at it by his method. God as creator cannot be deduced from _cogito, ergo sum;_ for, without presupposing God as my creator, I cannot assert that I exist. Gentilism had so far revived that it was able to take possession of philosophy the moment it was detached from Christian theology and declared an independent science; and as that has no conception of creation, the tradition preserved by Jews and Christians was at once relegated from philosophy to theologian, from science to faith. Hence we fail to find creation recognized as a philosophical truth in the system of his disciple Malebranche, a profounder philosopher than Descartes himself. The prince of modern sophists, Spinoza, adopting as his starting point the definition of substance given by Descartes, demonstrates but too easily that there can be only one substance, and that there can be no creation, or that nothing does or can exist except the one substance and its attributes, modes, or affections. Calling the one substance God, he arrived at once at pantheism, now so prevalent.

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That Descartes felt a difficulty in asserting creation in its proper sense, may be inferred from the fact that he always calls the soul _la pensée_, thought; never, if we recollect aright, a substance that thinks, which was itself a large stride toward pantheism, for pantheism consists precisely in denying all substantive existences except the one only substance, which is God. Spinoza developed his principles with a logic vastly superior to his own, and brought out errors which he probably did not foresee. Indeed, we do not pretend that Descartes intended to favor or had any suspicion that he was favoring pantheism; but he most certainly did not recognize any principle that would enable his disciples to oppose it, and in former days, before we knew the church, we ourselves found, or thought we found, pantheism flowing logically from his premises, and we escaped it only by rejecting the Cartesian philosophy.

Descartes revived in modern philosophy that antagonism between spirit and matter which was unknown to the scholastic philosophy, and which renders the mutual commerce of soul and body inexplicable. The scholastic doctors had recognized, indeed, matter and form; but with them matter was simply possibility, existing only _in potentia ad formam_, and was never supposed to be the basis or substratum of any existence whatever. The real existence was in the form, the _forma_ or the _idea_. They distinguished, certainly, between corporeal and incorporeal existences; but not, as the moderns do, between spiritual and material existences, and the question between spiritualism and materialism, as we have it to-day, did not and could not come up with them. The distinction with them was between sensibles and intelligibles, the only distinction that philosophy by her own light knows. _Spirit_ was a term very nearly restricted to God, and _spiritual_ meant partaking of spirit, living according to the spirit; that is, living a godly life begotten by the Holy Spirit, as in the inspired writings of St. Paul.

Even the ancients did not distinguish, in the modern sense, between spirit and matter. Their gods were corporeal, but ordinarily impassible. The spirit was not a distinct existence, but was the universal principle of life, thought, and action, and the spirit of man was an emanation from the universal spirit, which at death flowed back and was reabsorbed in the ocean from which it emanated. Their ghosts were not disembodied spirits, as ours are, were not departed spirits, but the umbra or shade--a thin, aerial apparition, bearing the exact resemblance of the body, and had formed during life, if I may so speak, its inner lining, or the immediate envelope of the spirit. It is the body that after death still invests the soul, according to Swedenborg, who denies the resurrection of the flesh. According to ancient Greek and Roman gentilism it was not spirit, nor body, but something between the two. It hovered over and around the dead body, and it was to allay it, and enable it to rest in peace that the funeral rites or obsequies of the dead were performed, and judged to be so indispensable. The Marquis de Mirville, in his work on _The Fluidity of Spirits_, seems to think the umbra was not a pure imagination, and is inclined to assert it, and to make it the basis of the explanation of many of the so-called spirit-phenomena. {623} He supposes it is capable of transporting the soul, or of being transported by the soul, out of the body, and to a great distance from it, and that the body itself will bear the marks of the wounds that may be given it. In this way he also explains the prodigies of bilocation.

But however this may be, the ghost of heathen superstition is never the spirit returned to earth, nor is it the spirit that is doomed to Tartarus, or that is received into the Elysian Fields, the heathen paradise. Hades, which includes both Tartarus and Elysium, is a land of shadows, inhabited by shades that are neither spirit nor body; for the heathen knew nothing, and believed nothing, of the resurrection of the flesh, and the reunion of soul and body in a future life. The spirit at death returns to its fountain, and the body, dissolved, loses itself in the several elements from which it was taken, and only the shade or shadow of the living man survives. Even in Elysium, the ghosts that sport on the flowery banks of the river, repose in the green bowers, or pursue in the fields the mimic games and pastimes that they loved, are pale, thin, and shadowy. The whole is a mimic scene, if we may trust either Homer or Virgil, and is far less real and less attractive than the happy hunting grounds of the red men of our continent, to which the good, that is, the brave Indian is transported when he dies. The only distinction we find, with the heathen, between spirit and matter, is, the distinction between the divine substance, or intelligence, and an eternally existing matter, as the stuff of which bodies or corporeal existences, the only existences recognized, are formed or generated.

But Descartes distinguished them so broadly that he seemed to make them each independent of the other. Why, then, was either necessary to the life and activity of the other? And we see in Descartes no use that the soul is or can be to the body, or the body to the soul. Hence, philosophy, starting from Descartes, branched out in two opposite directions, the one toward the denial of matter, and the other toward the denial of spirit; or, as more commonly expressed, into idealism and materialism, but as it would be more proper to say, into intellectism and sensism. The spiritualism of Descartes, so far as it had been known in the history of philosophy, was only the Neoplatonic mysticism, which substitutes the direct and immediate vision, so to speak, of the intelligible, for its apprehension through sensible symbols and the exercise of the reasoning faculty. From this it was an easy step to the denial of an external and material world, as was proved by Berkeley, who held the external world to consist simply of pictures painted on the retina of the eye by the creative act of God; and before him by Collier, who maintained that only mind exists. It was an equally short and easy step to take the other direction, assert the sufficiency of the corporeal or material, and deny the existence of spirit or the incorporeal, since the senses take cognizance of the corporeal and the corporeal only. Either step was favored by the ancient philosophy revived and set up against the scholastic philosophy. It was hardly possible to follow out the exaggerated and exclusive spiritualism of the one class without running into mystic pantheism, or the independence of the corporeal or material, without falling into material pantheism or atheism. These two errors, or rather these two phases of one and the same error, are the fundamental or mother error of this age--perhaps, in principle, of all ages--and is receiving an able refutation by one of our collaborateurs in the essay on Catholicity and Pantheism now in the course of publication in this magazine.

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It is no part of our purpose now to refute this error; we have traced it from gentilism, shown that it is essentially pagan, and owes its prevalence in the modern world to the revival of Greek letters and philosophy in the fifteenth century, the discredit into which the study of Plato and the Neoplatonists threw the scholastic philosophy, and especially to the divorce of philosophy from theology, declared by Descartes in the seventeenth century. Yet we do not accept either exclusive materialism or exclusive spiritualism, and the question itself hardly has place in our philosophy, as it hardly had place in that of St. Thomas. It became a question only when philosophy was detached from theology, of which it forms the rational as distinguishable but not separable from the revealed element, and reduced to a mere _Wissenchaftslehre_, or rather a simple methodology. True philosophy joined with theology is the response to the question, What is, or exists? What are the principles and causes of things? What are our relations to those principles and causes? What is the law under which we are placed? and what are the means and conditions within our reach, natural or gracious, of fulfilling our destiny, or of attaining to our supreme good? Not a response to the question, for the most part an idle question, How do we know, or how do we know that we know?

Many of the most difficult problems for philosophers, and which we confess our inability to solve, may be eluded by a flank movement, to use a military phrase. Such is the question of the origin of ideas, of certitude, and the passage from the subjective to the objective, and this very question of spiritualism and materialism. All these are problems which no philosopher yet has solved from the point of view of exclusive psychology, or of exclusive ontology, or of any philosophy that leaves them to be asked. But we are much mistaken if they do not cease to be problems at all, when one starts with the principles of things, or if they do not solve themselves. We do not find them, in the modern sense, raised by Plato or Aristotle, nor by St. Augustine or St. Thomas. When we have the right stand-point, if Mr. Richard Grant White will allow us the term, and see things from the point of view of the real order, these problems do not present themselves, and are wholly superseded. Professor Huxley is right enough when he tells us that we know the nature and essence neither of spirit nor of matter. I know from revelation that there is a spirit in man, and that the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding, but I know neither by revelation nor by reason what spirit is. God is a spirit; but if man is a spirit, it must be in a very different sense from that in which God is a spirit. Although the human spirit may have a certain likeness to the Divine spirit, it yet cannot be divine, for it is created; and they who call it divine, a spark of divinity, or a particle of God, either do not mean, or do not _know_ what they literally assert. They only repeat the old gentile doctrine of the substantial identity of the spirit with divinity, from whom it emanates, and to whom it returns, to be reabsorbed in him--a pantheistic conception. All we can say of spiritual existences is, that they are incorporeal intelligences; and all we can say of man is, that he has both a corporeal and an incorporeal nature; and perhaps without revelation we should be able to say not even so much.

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We know, again, just as little of matter. What is matter? Who can answer? Nay, what is body? Who can tell? Body, we are told, is composed of material elements. Be it so. What are those elements? Into what is matter resolvable in the last analysis? Into indestructible and indissoluble atoms, says Epicurus; into entelecheia, or self-acting forces, says Aristotle; into extension, says Descartes; into monads, each acting from its centre, and representing the entire universe from its own point of view, says Leibnitz; into centres of attraction and gravitation, says Father Boscovich; into pictures painted on the retina of the eye by the Creator, says Berkeley, the Protestant bishop of Cloyne, and so on. We may ask and ask, but can get no final answer.

Take, instead of matter, an organic body; who can tell us what it is? It is extended, occupies space, say the Cartesians. But is this certain? Leibnitz disputes it, and it is not easy to attach any precise meaning to the assertion "it occupies space," if we have any just notion of space and time, the _pons asinorum_ of psychologists. What is called actual or real space is the relation of co-existence of creatures; and is simply nothing abstracted from the related. It would be a great convenience if philosophers would learn that nothing is nothing, and that only God can create something from nothing. Space being nothing but relation, to say of a thing that it occupies space, is only saying that it exists, and exists in a certain relation to other objects. This relation may be either sensible or intelligible; it is sensible, or what is called sensible space, when the objects related are sensible. Extension is neither the essence nor a property of matter, but the sensible relation of an object either to some other objects or to our sensible perception. It is, as Leibnitz very well shows, only the relation of continuity. Whirl a wheel with great force and rapidity, and you will be unable to distinguish its several spokes, and it will seem to be all of one continuous and solid piece. Intelligible space as distinguished from sensible space is the logical relation of things, or, as more commonly called, the relation of cause and effect. When we conform our notions of space to the real order, and understand that the sensible simply copies, imitates, or symbolizes the intelligible, we shall see that we have no authority for saying extension is even a property of body or of matter.

That extension is simply the sensible relation of body, not its essence, nor even a property of matter, is evident from what physiologists tell us of organic or living bodies. There can be no reasonable doubt that the body I now have is the same identical body with which I was born, and yet it contains, probably, not a single molecule or particle of sensible matter it originally had. As I am an old man, all the particles or molecules of my body have probably been changed some ten or twenty times over; yet my body remains unchanged. It is evident, then, since the molecular changes do not affect its identity, that those particles or molecules of matter which my body assimilates from the food I take to repair the waste that is constantly going on, or to supply the loss of those particles or molecules constantly exuded or thrown off, do not compose, make up, or constitute the real body. This fact is commended to the consideration of those learned men, like the late Professor George Bush, who deny the resurrection of the body, on the ground that these molecular changes which have been going on during life render it a physical impossibility. This fact also may have some bearing on the Catholic mystery of Transubstantiation. {626} St. Augustine distinguishes between the visible body and the intelligible body--the body that is seen and the body that is understood--and tells us that it is the intelligible, or, as he sometimes says, the spiritual, not the visible or sensible, body of our Lord that is present in the Blessed Eucharist. In fact, there is no change in the sensible body of the bread and the wine, in Transubstantiation. The sensible body remains the same after consecration that it was before. The change is in the essence or substance, or the intelligible body, and hence the appropriateness of the term _transubstantiation_ to express the change which takes place at the words of consecration. Only the intelligible body, that is, what is non-sensible in the elements bread and wine, is transubstantiated, and yet their real body is changed, and the real body of our Lord takes its place. The nonsensible or invisible body, the intelligible body, is then, in either case, assumed by the sacred mystery to be the real body; and hence, supposing us right in our assumption that our body remains always the same in spite of the molecular changes--which was evidently the doctrine of St. Augustine--there is nothing in science or the profoundest philosophy to show that either transubstantiation or the resurrection of the flesh is impossible, or that God may not effect either consistently with his own immutable nature, if he sees proper to do it. Nothing aids the philosopher so much as the study of the great doctrines and mysteries of Christianity, as held and taught by the church.

The distinction between seeing and intellectually apprehending, and therefore between the visible body and the intelligible body, asserted and always carefully observed by St. Augustine when treating of the Blessed Eucharist, belongs to a profounder philosophy than is now generally cultivated. Our prevailing philosophy, especially outside of the church, recognizes no such distinction. It is true, we are told, that the senses perceive only the sensible properties or qualities of things; that they never perceive the essence or substance; but then the essence or substance is supposed to be a mere abstraction with no intelligible properties or qualities, or a mere substratum of sensible properties and qualities. The sensible exhausts it, and beyond what the senses proclaim the substance has no quality or property, and is and can be the subject of no predicate. This is a great mistake. The sensible properties and qualities are real, that is, are not false or illusory; but they are real only in the sensible order, or the _mimesis_, as Gioberti, after Plato and some of the Greek fathers, calls it in his posthumous works. The intelligible substance is the thing itself, and has its own intelligible properties and qualities, which the sensible only copies, imitates, or mimics. All through nature there runs, above the sensible, the intelligible, in which is the highest created reality, with its own attributes and qualities, which must be known before we can claim to know anything as it really is or exists. We do not know this in the case of body or matter; we do not and cannot know what either really is, and can really know of either only its sensible properties.

We know that if matter exists at all, it must have an essence or substance; but what the substance really is human science has not learned and cannot learn. We really know, then, of matter in itself no more than we do of spirit, except that matter has its sensible copy, which spirit has not. {627} Matter, as to its substance, is supersensible, and as to the essence or nature of its substance is superintelligible, as is spirit; and we only know that it has a substance; and of substance itself, we can only say, if it exists, it is a _vis activa_, as opposed to _nuda potentia_, which is a mere possibility, and no existence at all. Such being the case, we agree with Professor Huxley, that neither spiritualism nor materialism is, in his sense, admissible, and that each is a philosophical error, or, at least, an unprovable hypothesis.

But here our agreement ends and our divergence begins. The Holy See has required the traditionalists to maintain that the existence of God, the immateriality of the soul, and the liberty of man can be proved with certainty by reason. We have always found the definitions of the church our best guide in the study of philosophy, and that we can never run athwart her teaching without finding ourselves at odds with reason and truth. We are always sure that when our theology is unsound our philosophy will be bad. There is a distinction already noted between spirit and matter, which is decisive of the whole question, as far as it is a question at all. Matter has, and spirit has not, sensible properties or qualities. These sensible properties or qualities do not constitute the essence or substance of matter, which we have seen is not sensible, but they distinguish it from spirit, which is non-sensible. This difference, in regard to sensible qualities and properties, proves that there must be a difference of substance, that the material substance and the immaterial substance are not, and cannot be one and the same substance, although we know not what is the essence or nature of either.

We take matter here in the sense of that which has properties or qualities perceptible by the senses, and spirit or spiritual substance as an existence that has no such properties or qualities. The Holy See says the _immateriality_, not _spirituality_, of the soul, is to be proved by reason. The spirituality of the soul, except in the sense of immateriality, cannot be proved or known by philosophy, but is simply a doctrine of divine revelation, and is known only by that analogical knowledge called faith. All that we can prove or assert by natural reason, is, that the soul is immaterial, or not material in the sense that matter has for its sign the mimesis, or sensible properties or qualities. We repeat, the sensible is not the material substance, but is its natural sign. So that, where the sign is wanting, we know the substance is not present and active. On the other hand, where there is a force undeniably present and operating without the sign, we know at once that it is an immaterial force or substance.

That the soul is not material, therefore is an immaterial substance, we know; because it has none of the sensible signs or properties of matter. We cannot see, hear, touch, smell, nor taste it. The very facts materialists allege to prove it material, prove conclusively, that, if anything, it is immaterial. The soul has none of the attributes or qualities that are included, and has others which evidently are not included, in the definition of matter. Matter, as to its substance, is a _vis activa_, for whatever exists at all is an active force; but it is not a force or substance that thinks, feels, wills, or reasons. It has no sensibility, no mind, no intelligence, no heart, no soul. But animals have sensibility and intelligence; have they immaterial souls? Why not? We have no serious difficulty in admitting that animals have souls, only not rational and immortal souls. {628} Soul, in them, is not spirit, but it may be immaterial. Indeed, we can go further, and concede an immaterial soul, not only to animals but to plants, though, of course, not an intelligent or even a sensitive soul; for if plants, or at least some plants, are contractile and slightly mimic sensibility in animals, nothing proves that they are sensitive. We have no proof that any living organism, vegetable, animal, or human, is or can be a purely material product. Professor Huxley has completely failed, as we have shown, in his effort to sustain his theory of a physical or material basis of life, and physiologists profess to have demonstrated by their experiments and discoveries that no organism can originate in inorganic matter, or in any possible mechanical, chemical, or electrical arrangement of material atoms, and is and can be produced, unless by direct and immediate creation of God, only by generation from a preexisting male and female organism. This is true alike of plants, animals, and man. Nothing hinders you, then, from calling, if you so wish, the universal basis of life _anima_ or soul, and asserting, the psychical basis, in opposition to Professor Huxley's physical basis, of life; only you must take care and not assert that plants and animals have human souls, or that soul in them is the same that it is in man.

There are grave thinkers who are not satisfied with the doctrine that ascribes the apparent and even striking marks of mind in animals to instinct, a term which serves to cover our ignorance, but tells us nothing; still less are they satisfied with the Cartesian doctrine that the animal is simply a piece of mechanism moved or moving only by mechanical springs and wheels like a clock or watch. Theologians are reluctant chiefly, we suppose, to admit that animals have souls, because they are accustomed to regard all souls, as to their substance, the same, and because it has seemed to them that the admission would bring animals too near to men, and not preserve the essential difference between the animal nature and the human. But we see no difficulty in admitting as many different sorts or orders of souls as there are different orders, genera, and species of living organisms. God is spirit, and the angels are spirits; are the angels therefore identical in substance with God? The human soul is spiritual; is there no difference in substance between human souls and angels? We know that men sometimes speak of a departed wife, child, or friend as being now an angel in heaven; but they are not to be understand literally, any more than the young man in love with a charming young lady who does not absolutely refuse his addresses, when he calls her--a sinful mortal, not unlikely--an angel. In the resurrection men are _like_ the angels of God, in the respect that they neither marry nor are given in marriage; but the spirits of the just made perfect, that stand before the throne, are not angels; they are still human in their nature. If, then, we may admit spirits of different nature and substance, why not souls, and, therefore, vegetable souls, animal souls, and human souls, agreeing only in the fact that they are immaterial, or not material substances or forces?

It perhaps may be thought that to admit different orders of souls to correspond to the different orders, genera, and species of organisms, would imply that the human soul is generated with the body; contrary to the general doctrine of theologians, that the soul is created immediately _ad hoc_. {629} The Holy See censured Professor Frohshamer's doctrine on the subject; but the point condemned was, as we understand it, that the professor claimed _creative_ power for man. But it is not necessary to suppose, even if plants and animals have souls, that the human soul is generated with the body, in any sense inconsistent with faith. The church has defined that "anima est forma corporis," that is, as we understand it, the soul is the vital or informing principle, the life of the body, without which the body is dead matter. The organism generated is a living not a dead organism, and therefore if the soul is directly and immediately created _ad hoc_, the creative act must be consentaneous with the act of generation, a fact which demands a serious modification of the medical jurisprudence now taught in our medical schools. Some have asserted for man alone a vegetable soul, an animal soul, and a spiritual soul, but this is inadmissible; man has simply a human soul, though capable of yielding to the grovelling demands of the flesh as well as to the higher promptings of the spirit.

But we have suffered ourselves to be drawn nearer to the borders of the land of impenetrable mysteries than we intended, and we retrace our steps as hastily as possible. Our readers will understand that what we have said of the souls of plants and animals is said only as a possible concession, but not set forth as a doctrine we do or design to maintain; for it lies too near the province of revelation to be settled by philosophy. All we mean is that we see on the part of reason no serious objection to it. Perhaps it may be thought that we lose, by the concession, the argument for the immortality of the soul drawn from its simplicity; but, even if so, we are not deprived of other, and to our mind, much stronger arguments. But it may be said all our talk about souls is wide of the mark, for we have not yet proved that man is or has a soul distinguishable from the body, and which does or can survive its dissolution, and that our argument only proves that, if a man has a soul, it is immaterial. The materialist denies that there is any soul in man distinct from the body, and maintains that the mental phenomena, which we ascribe to an immaterial soul, are the effects of material organization. But that is for him to prove, not for us to disprove. Organization can give to matter no new properties or qualities, as aggregation can give only the sum of the individuals aggregated. Matter we have taken all along, as all the world takes it, as a substance that has properties and qualities perceptible by the senses, and it has no meaning except so far as so perceptible. Any active force that has no mimesis or sensible qualities, properties, or attributes, is an immaterial, not a material substance. That man is or has an active force that feels, thinks, reasons, wills, we know as well as we know anything; indeed, better than we know anything else. These acts or operations are not operations of a material substance. We know that they are not, from the fact that they are not sensible properties or qualities, and therefore there must be in man an active force or substance that is not material, but immaterial. Material substance is, we grant, a _vis activa_; but if it has properties or qualities, it has no faculties. It acts, but it acts only _ad finem_, or to an end, never _propter finem_, or for an end foreseen and deliberately willed or chosen. But the force that man has or is, has faculties, not simply properties or qualities, and can and does act deliberately, with foresight and choice, for an end. Hence, it is not and cannot be a substance included in the definition of matter.

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That this immaterial soul, now united to body and active only in union with matter, survives the dissolution of the body and is immortal, is another question, and is not proved, in our judgment, by proving its immateriality. There is an important text in Ecclesiastes, 3:21, which would seem to have some bearing on the assumption that the immortality of the soul is really a truth of philosophy as well as of revelation.

"Who knoweth if the spirit of the children of Adam ascend upward, and if the spirit of the beasts descend downward?"

The doubt is not as to the immortality of the soul, but as to the ability of reason without revelation to demonstrate it. Certainly, reason can demonstrate its possibility, and that nothing warrants its denial. The doctrine, in some form, has always been believed by the human race, whether savage or civilized, barbarous or refined, and has been denied only by exceptional individuals in exceptional epochs. This proves either that it is a dictate of universal reason, or a doctrine of a revelation made to man in the beginning, before the dispersion of the human race commenced. In either case the reason for believing the doctrine would be sufficient; but we are disposed to take the latter alternative, and to hold that the belief in the immortality of the soul, or of an existence after death, originated in revelation made to our first parents, and has been perpetuated and diffused by tradition, pure and integral with the patriarchs, the synagogue, and the church; but mutilated, corrupted, and travestied with the cultivated as well as with the uncultivated heathen. With the heathen Satan played his pranks with the tradition, as he is doing with it with the spiritists in our own times.

But if the belief originated in revelation and is a doctrine of faith rather than of science, yet is it not repugnant to science, and reason has much to urge in its support. The immateriality of the soul implies its unity and simplicity, and therefore it can not undergo dissolution, which is the death of the body. Its dissolution is impossible, because it is a monad, having attributes and qualities, but not made up by the combination of parts. It is the form of the body, that is, it vivifies the organic or central cell, and gives to the organism its life, instead of drawing its own life from it. Science, then, has nothing from which to infer that it ceases to exist when the body dies. The death of the body does not necessarily imply its destruction. True, we have here only negative proofs, but negative proofs are all that is needed, in the case of a doctrine of tradition, to satisfy the most exacting reason. The soul may be extinguished with the body, but we cannot say that it is without proof. Left to our unassisted reason, we could not say that the soul of the animal expires with its body. Indeed, the Indian does not believe it, and therefore buries with the hunter his favorite dog, to accompany him in the happy hunting grounds.

The real matter to be proved is not that the soul can or does survive the body, but that it dies with the body. We have seen that it is distinguishable from the body, does not draw its life from the body, but imparts life to it; how then conclude that it dies with it? We have not a particle of proof, and not a single fact from which we can logically infer that it does so die. What right then has any one to say that it does? The laboring oar is in the hands of those who assert that the soul dies with the body, and it is for them to prove what they assert, not for us to disprove it. {631} The real affirmative in the case is not made by those who assert the immortality of the soul, but by those who assert its mortality. The very term _immortal_ is negative, and simply denies mortality. Life is always presumptive of the continuance of life, and the continuance of the life of the soul must be presumed in the absence of all proofs of its death.

We have seen that the immateriality, unity, and simplicity of the soul prove that it does not necessarily die with the body, but that it _may_ survive it. The fact that God has written his promise of a future life in the very nature and destiny of the soul, is for us a sufficient proof that the soul does not die with the body. That God is, and is the first and final cause of all existences, is a truth of science as well as of revelation. He has created all things by himself, and for himself. He then must be their last end, and therefore their supreme good, according to their several natures. He has created man with a nature that nothing short of the possession of himself as his supreme good can satisfy. In so creating man, he promises him in his nature the realization of this good, that is, the possession of himself as final cause, unless forfeited and rendered impossible by man's own fault. To return to God as his supreme good without being absorbed in him, is man's destiny promised in his very constitution. But this destiny is not realized nor realizable in this life, and therefore there must be another life to fulfil what he promises, for no promise of God, however made, can fail. This argument we regard as conclusive.

The resurrection of the flesh, the reunion of the soul and body, future happiness as a reward of virtue, and the misery of those who through their own fault fail of their destiny, as a punishment for sin, etc., are matters of revelation or theology as distinguished from philosophy, and do not require to be treated here, any further than to say, if reason has little to say for them, it has nothing to say against them. They belong to the mysteries of faith which, though never contrary to reason, are above it, in an order transcending its domain.

We have thus far treated spiritualism and materialism from the point of view of philosophy, not from that of psychology, or of our faculties. The two doctrines, as they prevail to-day, are simply psychological doctrines. The partisans of the one say that the soul has no faculty of knowing any but material objects, and therefore assert materialism; the partisans of the other say that the soul has a faculty by which she apprehends immediately immaterial or spiritual objects or truths, and hence they assert what goes by the name of spiritualism, which may or may not deny the existence of matter. Descartes and Cousin assert the cognition of both spirit and matter, but as independent each of the other; Collier and Berkeley deny that we have any cognition of matter, and therefore deny its existence, save in the mind. The truth, we hold, lies with neither. The soul has no direct intuition of the immaterial or intelligible. We use _intuition_ here in the ordinary sense, as an act of the soul--knowing by looking on, or immediately beholding; that is, in the sense of intelligible as distinguished from sensible perceptions--intellection, as some say, as distinguished from sensation. This empirical intuition, as we call it, is very distinct from that intuition _a priori_ by which the ideal formula is affirmed, for that is the act of the divine Being himself, creating the mind, and becoming himself the light thereof. {632} But that constitutes the mind, and is its object, not its act. No doubt, the intellectual principles of all reality and of all science are affirmed in that intuition _a priori_, and hence these principles are ever present to the soul as the basis of all intelligible as well as of all sensible experience. Yet they are asserted by the mind's own act only as sensibly represented, according to the peripatetic maxim, "Nihil est in intellectu, quod non prius fuerit in sensu." The mind has three faculties, sensibility, intellect, and will, but it is itself one, a single _vis_ or force, and never acts with one faculty alone, whether it feels, thinks, or wills; and, united as it is in this life with the body, it never acts as body alone or as spirit alone. There are then no intellections without sensation, nor sensations without intellection; purely noetic truth, therefore, can never be grasped save through a sensible medium.

We have already explained this with regard to material objects, in which the substance, though supersensible, has its sensible sign, through which the mind reaches it. But immaterial or ideal objects are, as we have seen, precisely those which have no sensible sign of their own--properties or qualities perceptible by the senses. For this order of truth the only sensible representation is language, which is the sensible sign or symbol of immaterial or ideal truth. We arrive at this order of reality or truth only through the medium of language which embodies it; that is to say, only through the medium of tradition, or of a teacher. So far we accord with the traditionalists. We do not believe that, if God had left men in the beginning without any instruction or language in which the ideas are embodied, they would ever have been able to assert the existence of God, the immateriality of the soul, and the liberty or free will of man--the three great ideal truths which the Holy See requires us to maintain can be _proved_ with certainty by reason; and we do not hold that, like the revealed mysteries, they are suprarational truth, and to be taken only on the authority of a supernatural revelation. If God had not infused the knowledge of them into the first of the race along with language, which he also infused into Adam, we should never by our reason and instincts alone have found them out, or distinctly apprehended them; but being taught them, or finding them expressed in language, we are able to verify or prove them with certainty by our natural reason, in which respect we accord with those whom the traditionalists call rationalists.

We have studiously avoided, as far as possible, the metaphysics of the subject we have been considering, and perhaps have, in consequence, kept too near its surface; but we think we have established our main point, that neither spiritualism nor materialism, taken exclusively, is philosophically defensible. We are able to distinguish between spirit and matter, but we can deny the existence or the activity, according to its own nature, of neither. We know matter by its sensible properties or qualities, We know spirit only as sensibly represented by language. Let language be corrupted, and our knowledge of ideal or non-sensible truth, or philosophy, will also be corrupted, mutilated, or perverted. This will be still more the case with the superintelligible truth supernaturally revealed, which is apprehensible only through the medium of language. Hence, St. Paul is careful to admonish St. Timothy to hold fast "the form of sound words," and hence, too, the necessity, if God makes us a revelation of spiritual things, that he should provide an infallible living teacher to preserve the infallibility of the language in which it is made. {633} We may see here, too, the reason why the infallible church is hardly less necessary to the philosopher than to the theologian. Where faith and theology are preserved in their purity and integrity, philosophy will not be able to stray far from the truth, and where philosophy is sound, the sciences will not long be unsound. The aberrations of philosophy are due almost solely to the neglect of philosophers to study it in its relation with the dogmatic teaching of the church.

Some of our dear and revered friends in France and elsewhere are seeking, as the cure for the materialism which is now so prevalent, to revive the spiritualism of the seventeenth century. But the materialism they combat is only the reaction of the mind against that exaggerated spiritualism which they would revive. Where there are two real forces, each equally evident and equally indestructible, you can only alternate between them, till you find the term of their synthesis, and are able to reconcile and harmonize them. The spiritualism defended by Cousin in France has resulted only in the recrudescence of materialism. The trouble now is, that matter and spirit are presented in our modern systems as antagonistic and naturally irreconcilable forces. The duty of philosophers is not to labor to pit one against the other, or to give the one the victory over the other; but to save both, and to find out the middle term which unites them. We know there must be somewhere that middle term; for both extremes are creations of God, who makes all things by number, weight, and measure, and creates always after the logic of his own essential nature. All his works, then, must be logical and dialectically harmonious.

Whether we have indicated this middle term or not, we have clearly shown, we think, that it is a mistake to suppose the two terms are not in reality mutually irreconcilable. Nothing proves that, as creatures of God, each in its own order and place is not as sacred and necessary as the other. We do not know the nature or essence of either, nor can we say in what, as to this nature and essence, the precise difference between them consists; but we know that in our present life both are united, and that neither acts without the other. All true philosophy must then present them not as opposing, but as harmonious and concurring forces.

We do not for ourselves ever apply the term spiritualism to a purely intellectual philosophy. We do not regard the words spirit and soul as precisely synonymous. St. Paul, Heb. iv. 12, says, "The word of God is living and effectual, ... reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit," or, as the Protestant version has it, "quick and powerful, ... piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit." There is evidently, then, however closely related they may be, a distinction between the soul and the spirit. Hence there may be soul that is not spirit, which was generally held by the ancients. The Greeks had their [Greek text] and [Greek text], and the Latins their _anima_ and _spiritus_. The term spirit, when applied to man, seems to us to designate the moral powers rather than the intellectual, and the moral powers or faculties are those which specially distinguish man from animals. St. Paul applies the term spiritual uniformly in a moral sense, and usually, if not always, to men born again of the Holy Ghost, or the regenerated, and to the influences and gifts of the Holy Spirit; that is, to designate the supernatural character, gifts, graces, and virtues of those who have been translated into the kingdom of God and are fellow-citizens of the commonwealth of Christ, or the Christian republic. {634} Hence, we shrink from calling any intellectual philosophy spiritualism. If it touches philosophy, as it undoubtedly does--since grace supposes nature, and a man must be born into the natural order before he can be born again into the supernatural order, or regenerated by the Spirit--it rises into the region of supernatural sanctity, into which no man by his natural powers can enter; for it is a sanctity that places one on the plane of a supernatural destiny.

But even taken in this higher sense, there is no antagonism between spirit and matter. There is certainly a struggle, a warfare that remains through life; but the struggle is not between the soul and the body; it is, as is said, between the higher and inferior powers of the soul, between the spirit and concupiscence, between the law of the mind, which bids us labor for spiritual good which will last for ever, and the law in the members, which looks only to the good of the body, in its earthly relations. The saints, who chastise, mortify, macerate the body by their fastings, vigils, and scourgings, do not do it on the principle that the body is evil, or that matter is the source of evil. There is a total difference in principle between Christian asceticism and that of the Platonists, who hold that evil originates in the intractableness of matter, that holds the soul imprisoned as in a dungeon, and from which it sighs and struggles for deliverance. The Christian knows that our Lord himself assumed flesh and retains for ever his glorified body. He believes in the resurrection of the body and its future everlasting reunion with the soul. Christ, dying in a material body, has redeemed both matter and spirit. Hence we venerate the relics of our Lord and his saints, and believe matter may be hallowed. In our Lord all opposites are reconciled, and universal peace is established.

Translated From The German Of Conrad Von Bolanden.

Angela.